A Therapist Takes Her Own Advice - Introduction

This episode of A Therapist Takes Her Own Advice is a sort of mission statement. I wanted to introduce myself and talk a little about my life, my practice and my goals for this podcast. Talking about myself felt weird so my husband/producer suggested that we frame this episode with a casual conversation. We discuss my background, my goals for this podcast, and a DBT skill called the STOP skill. I hope you enjoy listening. Please subscribe and look for future episodes where I'll be chatting with interesting people about parenting, self care, and a monthly meditation.

Thanks so much for joining me today for A Therapist Takes Her Own Advice. If you have enjoyed what you’ve heard here, please subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. And tune in this Friday to our first guided meditation. If you have questions, comments or suggestions for future episodes go to my website, rebekahshackney.com and send a message through my contact page

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Transcript

Hi Everyone, I’m Rebekah Shackney. I’m really excited to be here finally. I’ve been talking about doing a podcast for about 7 years, but somehow something always got in the way…a new baby, a new town, a new job…As a therapist, I encourage my clients to reach for their goals while I continued to put off mine even though I live with a recording engineer and producer with unlimited studio access. Now that we are here sheltering in place, I guess have no more excuses. I wanted to tell you a bit about me and what this podcast is all about. My producer and husband, David, thought it would be a good idea to introduce me by way of a casual conversation. This is, A Therapist Takes Her Own Advice.

David: Tell us who you are, first of all. 

Rebekah: I’m Rebekah Shackney. I’m a wife and mother of three sons. I live in Ossining, New York. I am a licensed clinical social worker, and I work as psychotherapist. I have a private practice here in Ossining.

David: What types of people do you see in your private practice?

Rebekah: I work with teens, adults and their families. 

David: What type of therapy are you doing?

Rebekah: I do a model of therapy called DBT, Dialectal Behavior Therapy. It was created by Marsha Linehan. She created it to treat people with chronic suicidality and self-injurious behaviors, but it’s also really effective for people with depression and anxiety. The most important thing I do is to build a relationship with people and make them feel like they can come and not be judged. They can open up and feel safe.

David: Who’s your population generally?

Rebekah: A lot of the people who come to see me are struggling with depression and anxiety and what I find is that if you had an episode of depression or anxiety even when you're doing better your brain still thinks like a depressed person or an anxious person so DBT skills help rewire your brain so you think like you did before you were depressed. Think of it this way, when you break your leg the bone heals, but you need to go to rehab to strengthen the muscle. DBT is kind of like rehab for the brain.

David: What's an example of a skill? What’s the number one skill you end up teaching? 

Rebekah: One of the first skills I teach is a distress tolerance skill called the Stop Skill. It's an acronym and it stands for Stop, Take a break, Observe and Proceed mindfully. So, let's say you're in an argument with someone you're starting to get agitated rather than continue to escalate which is our natural instinct, anger is motivating. We want to keep arguing when we start to argue, but it's often not effective. When you're angry and they're angry the only thing that's going to happen is you're going to continue to up the ante and raise the stakes and it's not going to lead anywhere good. So, you stop what's happening. You take a break either a mental break or you physically leave the room. You observe what's going on in your mind and body. Think about what are your goals in the situation, what you want to achieve, take some deep breaths. When you're ready to proceed mindfully go back in there and have a reasonable conversation that's when you can re-enter the situation.

David: That sounds very difficult to do. It doesn't sound like something that comes completely naturally.

Rebekah: Right... 

David: When you’re in a state of anger or being upset.

Rebekah: Right, first of all any skill takes a lot of practice.

David: Are you able to do this?

Rebekah: Sometimes and sometimes I'm not. So, this is this is the thing you learn the skills and then you try to use them, and we talked about them the next time you come in what worked what didn't work. One thing about any distress tolerance scale is you can't use it when you're at a 10 emotionally you're gone when you're at a 10 emotionally. You can’t make any rational decisions. You have to start using the skill when you're at a 5 6 7 tops. So, you learn the skill one week and you come back in the next week. “I couldn't use it I got so angry at my mom and blah blah blah and we blew up.” So, we look at the situation. We look backward. When was the moment where you could have made a different decision and we identify where it was and we talked about it and talk about what you would have done differently and then you go back out there and you try it again. The more you talk about it, the more you think about it, hopefully the next time you can use it or maybe the next time after that. We keep looking, we keep working and it's not about being perfect. It's about, you know, doing your best and my goal is not to shame people or tell them what they should be doing. It's about helping people try and reduce their suffering. And I always say to my clients anything I ever tell you it's not because I think you need to be a better person or a kinder person or you know a better human being or whatever I tell you things and make suggestions because I want to help you reduce your suffering. So, if you hear something in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable, or makes you feel like I'm judging you let's talk about it because that is not my goal.

David: So, you mentioned mindfulness. How does that fit into all of this?

Rebekah: Part of DBT is mindfulness and mindfulness is a number of different things, but the most obvious is meditation. You can do a lot of things mindfully. You can mindfully practice yoga or martial arts. You can take a mindful walk. We’re having a mindful conversation where we really listening or with each other in the present moment, but there's also mindful meditation. 

David: And how does meditation play into what you do professionally and personally?

Rebekah: I teach my clients to meditate and I encourage them to create their own meditation practice and I try to meditate myself. I don't always succeed.

David: So, what would you like improve in your life.

Rebekah: Well, I would like to incorporate meditation more regularly, to reduce emotional stress and improve my own creativity. I want to be I want it in dealing with my kids, our kids and dealing with you. I want to be more mindful of how I interact with people so I would like to meditate more. There are so many things that I think about doing and never actually do. You know and I feel like it's not just me we all have those things that, you know, we want to write a book, or we want to start a business or whatever it is. I want to start doing those things because you only live once. 

David: Therapy in general is a very personal one on one thing. How do you feel like a podcast like this, that's a deal so much in actual therapy can help a larger group of people?

Rebekah: Well, you’re right, therapy is an intimate relationship, and this is certainly is not a replacement for therapy, at all. But one of the things I’ve noticed wh in the years that I've worked with people as I often am saying the same things over and over again to the people. I feel like there are a lot of things that we are universally going through and a lot of things that we that many people could universally benefit from.

David: Yeah, for example what kinds of things would you call a universal problem for people in your therapy practice. 

Rebekah: I think that it's, I don't know if it's a problem, but I feel like we as a society are emotion phobic, but the thing is we are hardwired with emotions. We need them to survive. They keep us safe, they keep us connected and people are so uncomfortable with their emotions and I want to normalize that for them, for myself. I want to talk about emotions more so for instance telling someone to stop feeling what they're feeling is like telling someone to go out in the rain and not to feel wet so and I noticed I hear myself saying that again and again. And the point is that you're feeling what you're feeling. Telling people not to feel what they're feeling is not effective so I want to validate I hear you're sad I hear you're feeling this way I sure you're ashamed and teaching them how to process that those emotions so that they’re not suffering with them.

David: Tell me why you wanted to do a podcast.

Rebekah: So, I’ve wanted to do a podcast for a very long time.

David: What was stopping you?

Rebekah: Fear…it’s vulnerable, it’s vulnerable to take on a new challenge, and I kept thinking you know does anybody want to hear what I have to say and you know it's putting yourself out there it's it's scary that you just as were talking about it my my stomach is tightening up and I’m thinking oh my gosh what am I doing because just as the thing this isn't this is scary this is new it's a challenge.

David: If fear is what’s stopped you what made this finally come together? 

Rebekah: I think it was you. I think it was your pushing me, not to aggressively, but you're a really good producer. And you pushed me and encouraged me in a way that made me feel like I can actually do this and then several of my clients were having difficulty sleeping and I thought you know what I want to record a meditation that I have used with our sons to help them sleep better and maybe that will help my clients. So, I guess I kind of snuck it in to just be maybe one or two meditations that would help my clients sleep better and then the ball kept rolling.

David: Let’s talk about the title, A Therapist Takes Her Own Advice. Where did that come from?

Rebekah: Many years ago, I started a blog called A Therapist Takes Her Own Advice, and I had very basic goals. I wanted to meditate, I wanted to lose baby weight, I wanted to eat healthier and exercise and do all of those things that we all know we should do. And it worked for a while, and I kept it up for a little while. And then life got in the way, but I don't want this podcast to be just a I tell you what you're doing wrong, and here's how to fix it. I want this to be a learning experience for me and for the audience and for my guests hopefully. You know a way to create more connection and a way for me to hopefully grow as a therapist and grow as a human being I want this to be a nonjudgmental place where I can hear about your journey and here your insights and maybe that will help me on mine and you can hear about my journey and maybe that will help you on your journey and that's what this podcast about thank you for listening today to A Therapist Takes Her Own Advice and thank you David Shackney for helping me out with this. Please hit the subscribe button so you won’t miss an episode. Future episodes include more interviews and stories about parenting, managing mental health, self-care and a monthly guided meditation. If you have questions or topics, you’re interested in please let me know. Go my website, rebekahshackney.com and send a message through my contact page.