Navigating Mental Illness: A Conversation with John Cuturilo

John Cuturilo is the host of the Your Listener Podcast and the founder of Your Listener Counseling in Melbourne, Australia, where he works as a counselor focused on mental health, critical thinking, and human behavior. 

I sit down with John to talk about mental illness, therapy, and how personal experience shapes the way we understand the mind. We explore what works and what fails in traditional mental health systems, the limits of academic psychology, and why listening is one of the most powerful tools in counseling.

We also dive into free speech, social psychology, cancel culture, and the importance of having honest conversations without judgment. This episode is a thoughtful discussion on mental health, philosophy, and learning how to think more clearly in today’s world.

You can find his content on his website www.yourlistener.com.au

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Transcript

Intro Song

Rob Valincius: Take number two. We are live. This is the Drink o'clock podcast. I am your host, Rob Valincius, and I have the pleasure of having with me the host of the Your Listener podcast, founder of your listener counseling in Melbourne, Australia, coming at us from down south, way down south. John Cuturilo. Welcome to the show, man.

Did I say it right?

John Cuturilo: You did Robert, and thank you so much for having me. It's an absolute pleasure to have you.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. So you guys missed my initial rant, uh, because we had tech issues as me and him had tech issues at this point. So it's been one of those days. Um, we got walled here. Uh, so I, I do wanna start with talking a little bit about weather. I know it's, we're gonna go off track here, John, but we got crushed here in the Northeast.

Uh, I mean, it started out it was 12 to 18 inches, then it went down to. Like, yeah, I dunno. Eight to 12, then five to eight. And that's really kind of where it stopped. Now it did go, end up going down to one to three, but we, we here in Philly definitely got about six to eight inches. The issue is, is because it's so damn cold, the snow doesn't melt.

So the sun evaporates some of it, but outside of that, it doesn't melt. So at this point, I'm trying to put my tra, today is trash day 'cause it was pushed back a day with all the craziness. ICI have no idea where to put my trash because there's just mounds of snow and it's like, I, I brought out my shovel thinking maybe I could cut out a little, little corn.

It is hard as like, it's impossible to remove it. Now what, what's your weather like there? What's it, 80, 90 What? What are you looking at today?

John Cuturilo: Well, uh, this is where we come to our first impasse from because we use, uh, we use the metric system of measurement rather than imperial. So.

Rob Valincius: That's right.

John Cuturilo: at the MO today, it's set to be 32 degrees Celsius, which would probably be in the nineties in Fahrenheit, I believe it. It's it's summer here in, in Australia, so it's quite warm.

And in Melbourne especially the, the weather tends to be rather inconsistent. We're famous for that. So even in summer, it may be 20, 21 degrees Celsius the next one day. And then the next day it might be in the thirties. We had a 40 degree day, uh, this in the, in the past week, which is probably pushing a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

Rob Valincius: That's 

John Cuturilo: So it's, and it tends to, and it tends to get, it tends to get rainy in summer as well. Today's quite sunny, but when it gets rainy in combination with the heat, you could practically cut the air with a knife.

Rob Valincius: See, I, I, I'm a, I'm a summer baby and I just, I love the heat. So, have you ever been to the States?

John Cuturilo: I haven't, I, it would be nice to be, to visit one day and look at some of the different, some of the different happenings over there and see how things are, how things are different. But, uh, no, I'm, I'm very much Australian, born and bred, been here my entire life.

Rob Valincius: Yeah, so there's a, um, a state here, Nevada, and, uh, there's a place Las Vegas. I'm sure you've heard of it. Uh, 

John Cuturilo: I think I have. 

Rob Valincius: pretty, pretty renowned, uh, it is my favorite place to go, and they're known for, it's just hot and it's dry heat, like desert heat. And I, I love it. Me and the wifey love it. I'm cool with it.

Uh, I hate cold. I'm, I'm the worst northeasterner. I don't own boots. Um, I just got a jacket for the first time in 20 years because the wifey decided that you can't be outside in a hoodie when it's negative five degrees. So she got me a jacket, which it has been, it was a good call. It was a good call on her part.

It's been cold. Um. But I do, I I, I wish I could be experiencing 90 degree weather right now because it sucks. It's all awful.

John Cuturilo: I am, I'm more of a moderate weather person. I prefer it in Celsius, probably in the low twenties, and possibly not too sunny because then it amplifies the heat to me, or it makes it feel hotter, but just partly cloudy, perhaps that would be my ideal. That would be my ideal day personally.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. I mean, if you gimme 70, eighties year round, I'm good. Um, you know, but it's the weather here, the Northeast is, uh, you know, if you ever come here, the northeast in, in the United States is a weird place. It's, we get the worst of the summer and we get the worst of the winter and. You know, we don't get like middle ground for our seasons.

They're very harsh. Uh, snow has been good to us the past couple years. We haven't really been hit hard, uh, but apparently we're in some, I think we're in El Nina or La Nina pattern and it's supposed to be pretty bad this year. Um, and it's already hit us, you know, a little bit. And I, I had to work from home Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and, you know, instead of going into the office.

And, uh, I mean, I like it because I, I feel like I'm actually more productive when I work from home. 'cause I'm just, I zone out. I mean, you know, I know we're gonna get into the psychology aspect today, but I, for me, it's, I don't get bothered. People don't come to my desk. People don't ask me questions. I just can zone in to what I'm doing.

And a lot of times I can do all of the stuff that would've taken me the whole day in the office in a couple hours here, not even thinking about it here, you know? 

John Cuturilo: I identify with that.

Rob Valincius: So let's, let's get into you, man. Um, let's, let's start, uh, I'd, I'd love for you to tell me a little bit about your background growing up. Um, you know, before we kind of get into what you do now, and, uh, tell me and, and my listeners kind of a little bit about who, uh, who John is.

John Cuturilo: Sure. Well, I was born here in Australia and I came from a humble upbringing, uh, working upper working class family to middle class family. I was in incredibly fortunate. I always like to say, and I always like to remind myself because I always had most of what I needed and I was lucky enough to get a good education and have plenty of support to do what I wanted to explore largely, and also pursue the best of myself that I possibly could. And so that there were, there were certainly fortunate aspects of it, and I'm always grateful for those. There were some unfortunate aspects of them. I didn't have every aspect of my life easy. Um, I had mental illness from an early age, which meant that socializing was difficult, integrating into a school environment in which there were. Lots of stimuli, lots of noises, a lot of rapid, rapidly paced events happening. In terms of the people around me, in terms of how the environment operated, that was hard for me to integrate into, and it caused me a lot of distress in my young days. And so it took me a while to be able to adapt to that. I wasn't popular evidently, and that's not something I regret at all.

Uh, po Something that I've said before is that popularity doesn't equal quality. Just because something's popular, it doesn't mean it's of quality.

And it can be, but not, not inherently. So the fact that I wasn't one of the trendy kids certainly doesn't bother me. It doesn't, and it, it didn't, it didn't at the time, but being an UNT trendy person could get you bullied.

And it did get me bullied, but it didn't end badly because throughout the time that I was very young, I was always fascinated with the wonders of life. So from a very young age. I recall I was fascinated by music. Uh, my uncle was and still is a professional musician. And I remember from a young age seeing him perform live and watching him make these beautiful sounds and think, wow, wouldn't it be fantastic to be able to do that? Uh, my father was a professional musician many years ago, and he from a young age, I remember there was always a guitar in the house and I was. As a young child, very much fascinated by this, this object that to me was like a sculpt, like a work of art. And so from a, from a young age, I was learning the basics of how to play guitar.

And I was fascinated by music. And my dad would let me listen to lots of different music from the 1950s, sixties, seventies, and eighties. And I was fascinated by the, the, the, the creative process and what it took to produce a phenomenon like music that could make people have such an emotional reaction.

And I really had a really emotional connection with music. And so into my teen years, I explored that. I, I loved writing songs and I love playing guitar, and I love absorbing different influences. And that went well beyond what I was initially exposed to. I was exposed to a certain selection of music, but then I started exploring other types of music and was so fascinated by it. And, uh, from a young age, I was also fascinated by visual art. And I, I liked photography as a child as well, and pursued that well into adulthood. And again, the, I was always fascinated by the creative process. I'm taking this camera and I'm looking at something that is part of the landscape that many people consider to be quite ordinary, and I'm making art from it. That always fascinated me and it was very stimulating for me. I enjoyed writing as well, so the creative process were the, the, the creative pursuits were very much phenomena that fascinated me as part of the world,

but there was something else that influenced me, and that's probably the main influence that I have in the work that I conduct to this day.

And it's, I was always fascinated by the nature of how the world worked and why we think the way we do, what we feel the way we do, and the nature of truth and the nature of reality and whether what we. Believe is reality, or whether reality is something beyond our consciousness. And I, I believe I always had that curiosity, but as a child, obviously not being developed enough, I couldn't define it.

But then as I matured and grew into, grew into an adult, it became, uh, a face, a quite a strong fascination with me. And I was always, and I became more and more curious about it. And so after some, uh, some exploration of different pursuits, I decided I wanted to be a therapist because I was fascinated by how people solve problems of the mind, how we fa, how we, how we solve problems that don't involve physical objects.

It's so abstracted. It's such a, it seems like such a complicated process. How do we do it? I became fascinated with that question. And so I, I, uh, studied at university. I studied psychology at university and then studied, uh, counseling and. All throughout the time, my mind has just been constantly absorbing the world and absorbing how the world works. How can we explain how people function? And importantly, how can we separate popular thought from objective reality? And how can we think more critically to make the most use of our minds? How can we be more constructive thinkers? And ultimately, how can we have better relations with one another's? Because at the end of the day, we are social creatures and we are designed to integrate and work with each other. And largely when there are problems of the way that we perceive reality and the way that we conceptualize certain ideas, if they're severe enough, they cause problems with how we interact with society. And I, I've maintained and will continue to maintain that despite what politicians and the media will tell you, there is no one specific group that is responsible for the problems that we have in our social relations largely. It is all of our problem because we are not taught practical psychology.

We're not taught how to separate our beliefs and our feelings from objective reality and how to cut through rhetoric to find what is objectively most healthy for us. And none of us, or very few of us, take responsibility for actually owning our, the mistakes in how we see the world and actually committing to the process of being better. But so I argue if we all take that responsibility and we all are willing to own that we are imperfect and that we all have room to grow, and then we are willing to not just do that for ourselves, but be compassionate to other people and help them be a part of the process and humble ourselves that way, then we all win and we all have a better world. And I, I maintain to this day, although it's not often said, I don't think that to be a good therapist, you have to also be a good philosophy. You also have to be curious about not just the problems of the individuals who see you, but. How the world works and why problems develop. And more importantly, what we can learn about, what we can take from the, the, the explanations of how problems develop and translate that into how can we make individuals a better, and then how can they make the world a better place collectively? And I am, some people would call me eclectic, but I don't see that as who I am because you could, you could define eclectic a number of ways. Uh, wordplay is like that. Semantics is like that. But

Rob Valincius: Mm-hmm.

John Cuturilo: I consider myself to be quite strategic in the sense that I don't just choose something to believe because it's convenient.

I am very analytical of what I hold to be the truth. And I'm choosing my notions based on what I'm observing and what I can, what I can discern from all these different experiences of which I become aware and all these different f phenomenon events that I can observe. And so that. Leads me to not be a person who thinks in any conventional manner.

I I'm, and there are plenty of people who don't think conventionally as well. So being unconventional is not one specific set of traits. It can be anyone who doesn't follow popular thoughts. So there are plenty of us, but there's no religion philosophy or political belief that encapsulates what I believe because I'm not trying to fit into boxes, and I'm not trying to go against boxes either.

If something's popular and I genuinely believe it to be the case, then I'm, I'm more than happy to acknowledge that it's logical. But all I'm trying to do when I choose what to believe, which we all do, we all choose what to believe, consciously or not, is what are the merits of different ideas and how can we understand them separately from how we see them, how they are in themselves, and. That's a, a complicated journey. I'm, I'm on the journey to understanding the world and getting to speak to people such as yourself and other people on my podcast and, uh, my clients and all the people that I meet is constantly enhancing that because I'm constantly learning from other people and being able to self-assess whether my perception is accurate or whether I need to revise it.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. Yeah. If only, uh, more people did that, we would have, I think a, a different, you know, and I, I've talked about this, uh, you know, growing up, I'm, I'm a millennial, I guess I was born in 86, I'll be 40 this year. And, uh, I grew up in a time where you could have conversations with people and if you disagreed, you could still be friends and you could still have disagreements, um, because you, you each had a different philosophy or a different belief, and it was, it was cool.

It was okay. Um, and I think we got into a groove there with social media. Um, where if, if you didn't believe what the popular belief was, then you know, your belief didn't count and you were out. Right. You were cast out or whatever. The case was canceled, whoever you are, whatever it was. Right. Um, and I, I think we've, we've made an upturn.

I think we're, we're starting to get back to a point where people can have their own opinions. And I don't know if, uh, we're at a point where people can have debates, uh, casually. We're not there yet. But I think, I think, uh, you know, we're starting to get to a point where we're getting back to a little bit.

It's, it's always this like push and pull as a society. I think, um, you know, are some of the old ways outdated? Absolutely. But some of them aren't. And, uh, we got away from that. And then some of the new ideals, are they too radical? Yeah, but not all of them. Right. And it's, it's this. Crazy pool, uh, we live in and I'm sure as a psychologist you're probably gonna see that a lot amongst not just the people you talk to, but your patients as well.

John Cuturilo: I, I do. Um. Pardon me if I may, that I'm a counsel and not a psychologist. They're

Rob Valincius: Yeah. Sorry, counselor. My, my 

John Cuturilo: they have different legal status, but that's okay. But you're, you're absolutely right that there are a variety of different ideas that have existed in different times that were valid, and that just because times change, it doesn't mean that an idea inherently ceases to be valid. What I find fascinating is that I'm, I'm, I, I can't say this objectively, I haven't surveyed people on it, so the actual numbers of this aren't within my knowledge. But what I would predict is that the capacity of people to ha to experience events, like being able to have a civilized conversation, uh, with someone who disagrees with you largely depends on the pocket, so to speak, of society in which one is raised. W was it possible at one time to have. A civilized conversation with someone who disagreed with you more than it is today? Quite possibly, but I would argue that the psychology hasn't changed as much as people might think. It is not to say that you shouldn't continue living with those ideals if they're useful to you,

but more that our psychology has largely remained the same.

It's shifted in some ways, but there are a lot more similarities that have remained constant throughout our revolutionary history and they, the way that we have applied that psychology in our daily lives and how we operate society has largely just shifted towards different. different. different subject matter. And a good example of that is something that I'm going to ex, I've expanded upon it in my work before. I'm, I can intend to continue doing this. But think about what is allowed in terms of discussion in the popular space or in the public forum. Now, there have been different terms over the years to describe the phenomenon by which certain ideas are not allowed to be discussed by popular thought or by law. Uh, in the old days, it may have been called the thought police or a witch hunt. Nowadays we call it woke cancel culture, political

correctness, uh, political correctness as a term probably extends. The sense in which we use it now probably extends back to the eighties, if I remember correctly, but it, it has probably existed before that. But the problem is that these terms and these concepts get hijacked by political rhetoricians who want to convince you. This term refers to this specific concept that was instigated by this group, who we should consider to be the enemy so that we can rule society. But the psychology of it has remained, has actually existed all throughout history. Years ago, however, many years ago when scientists used the first telescope to look into space and ponder, maybe it's possible that the earth isn't flat. Many of them were subject to consequences. Now, is it healthy to be attached to a belief about whether the earth is flat or not? Definitely not, because whether the earth is flat or whether the earth is round, it is what it is.

Doesn't change who we are. We can still continue living our lives. And if the earth, all of a sudden, if we all of a sudden realize that it's round, we're not gonna all of a sudden fall off of it because we realize that it's round. That's not, that's not gonna happen. But people cling to beliefs for reasons, not just based on the validity of the belief.

In fact, more were often people clinging to them because there's a certain comfort in them. So there was that historically. For many years in the United States, even though I believe in your constitution, there is the, what they call the first Amendment, which guarantees the right of the people not to have laws imposed upon them that restrict freedom of speech. But historically, there have been certain jurisdictions in which I believe people have been subject to legal consequences, even criminal consequences for, for example, swearing in public. And that in itself is a form of what we would refer to as political correctness, but it's actually the, the, it's actually exactly the same psychology. Now, there are ideas that you can't discuss. There are laws, for example, in Australia that state that using certain words in public, not necessarily swear words, but terms that have specific, uh, connotations towards particular groups, they're illegal or maybe illegal. Um, there might be specific rules in workplaces, in different institutions in which you cannot. Express particular opinions because they're considered to be against scientific consensus. Uh, a long time ago in the, in the past, in, in, and still continues to be in certain jurisdictions. Pornography was illegal and that pornography is still censored in anything that has vague, even vague connections to the concept of sex or sexual intercourse, abandoned certain in certain forums. The objective reality of it is exactly the same, and it can be summed up in what we call in psychology, avoidance coping. Avoidance, coping is essentially the delusion, not to use that in a signatory sense, that if people are genuinely delusional, it's not to say that they're bad people, just, they may have, they haven't been taught to manage their, their beliefs in a healthy way,

but it's the delusion that if something makes you uncomfortable, the best way to deal with it is to not engage with it and moreover, try to prevent it from appearing. It's, it's, it's not, it. I, I don't wanna go off on too much of a tangent, so I'll, I'll just say this in, in a sim, in a simple sense that. Psychological studies over the years have demonstrated that refusing to engage with challenges just because they make you uncomfortable, genuinely doesn't lead to good outcomes. And as a society, we're seeing that. So regardless of whether you're on the left or the right of politics, if your response to something that makes you uncomfortable is ban it, be careful because you may not be doing yourself any favors, and you may also be, you know, attuning yourself to voting for people that wanna censor things, not for the right reasons. And that is the case, regardless of what your philosophy or politics are.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Um, now you, you obviously, and we talked a little bit about this before we hit record, right? You, you mentioned having your own history, um, with mental illness. Right. Um, how do you feel that that has shaped your approach, helping others and, and your view of the world?

John Cuturilo: There are two main ways. One of them, which I'd say probably would've developed regardless of my mental illness, um, just based on what I observed in the, in the industry. But my own experience allowed me to ha probably strengthened my determination to do this, is that it made me attuned to what doesn't work in therapy and what's not working in the industry. Um, all too often our therapy and mental health services are delivered in settings that aren't most attuned to what's in the client's best interest. There are a number of reasons for that. Number one, it's big money and so a lot of larger institutions are providing therapy and they're doing it on a production line basis in which. Clinicians have to see a large number of clients a day. They don't have time to really get to know each client. They don't have time to properly understand their context. They're trying to do as much as possible with as little interaction as possible. yes, making money is important. We live in an economy and I am a business person.

I have no shame about that. But at the same time, you sh my ethos has always been, if you want to make more money, either revise your model so it's more efficient and be better at what you do so that clients are more inclined to come to you if you wanna make money, make what your clients pay you worthwhile. So be the best at what you can. And that involves taking responsibility for that, for that, for that quality control yourself. But too often I was, I was seeing of instances in which. In all different types of settings. Clients going into in psychiatric, uh, wards at hospitals and being treated poorly or being in conditions where they were getting abused by other patients, or basically being dismissed and discarded by the clinicians who didn't have time to speak to them properly. People being turned away when they were suicidal because there wasn't enough room. Uh, people being blamed by clinicians for their, their problems or being told that their trauma didn't happen. As much as we like to think, especially in Australia, that we're a relatively progressive society, a lot of those institutions who have very progressive slogans on their websites still have bigoted clinicians working for them, where they will blatantly tell someone, you know, have you, have you cons considered that maybe you actually weren't sexually assaulted, or you know, that, that you did something to upset your boyfriend and that made him hit you. And hearing this

was making me so angry. Um, then there were. Then there were, uh, you know, in that there were, there were therapeutic paradigms, like norms and types of practices that weren't ultimately, weren't, uh, ultimately weren't in client's best interests. One of them leads into the second way that it's influenced me, but to start with the first, what we consider to be ethical. Often is and often isn't ethical. We have codes of ethics in our professions to stop us from inadvertently working in a way that's biased towards our own opinions and making sure that we are not unduly influenced to treat clients in a way that's unsafe. So we have standards about not having dual relationships with client.

If you are my client, that's all you ever will be. I can't have a relationship with you. I can't be friends with you. I can't be one of your clients if you run a business, that the relationship is singular and one way that protects conflict of interest, that protects us from being biased. If a client is a, a danger to themselves or other people, that we have laws about breaking confidentiality so that we can prevent harm to that person or to somebody else.

Those types of ethics are necessary, but there are instances in which ethics become paternalistic. There are many examples of this, but to keep it brief, there's one example that I've cited often in which I was seeing a therapist for a time and. I, uh, for, I came to a pa a point where I couldn't see the therapist in person because I was working full time and I couldn't travel all the way to their office.

I was living too far away. And I said to 'em, look, I understand that you may not feel that telehealth is as effective, but I'm willing to put in the effort to make this work. So if you're happy to see me via video conference, I'll put in the effort. And my, my therapist basically said to me, and this was at a vulnerable time, I'd expressed suicidal ideation back then. Um, my therapist said, um, John, I think you are self-sabotaging to make your, to, to, to basically put yourself in a situation where the therapy's not gonna be effective so that you don't have to take responsibility for, not, for, for not changing.

Rob Valincius: Wow.

John Cuturilo: said, no, no, no. That's not the case. I, I'm genuinely willing to like, no, my clinical judgment says that you, um, that you must come into clinic.

And if you're not gonna come into clinic, then I'm not gonna service you. And what's really frightening, and this is again. To anyone out there who has left wing political opinions, don't think I'm taking, having a go at you. I criticize politics as a phenomenon, not your individual opinions. And I know that most of you probably would be just as appall at this than I'm, so I'm not trying to box you, but this was a clinic that had very explicitly left wing and almost Marxist in some ways, political opinions as based on their, their advertising. Let me tell you something. If you've been traumatized and you've been subject to coercive control, telling someone my opinion's right, and yours wrong and yours is wrong, is a form of coercive control that mimics abusive relational dynamics. You're not tearing down oppressive systems by doing that.

You're reinforcing them. And part of progressivism is meant to be. Just because I'm more educated and get paid more than you, doesn't mean that I'm always right, doesn't mean I have the right to coerce you. And that's exactly how this person was acting.

So before you, before you just a, a lesson, before you follow ideology, be careful of what it means.

But just briefly, I'll speak to the second aspect of what, how my own experience influenced me. I realized that academic psychology did not adequately describe and explain how mental illnesses and how even just mental phenomena in general operate. Academic psychology has theories, but a lot can't be explained in words and can't be explained in theories.

It has to be experienced phenomenologically. So what I started to do was try to understand the essence, the objective core of what operates within every person with a particular type of mental illness. Um, use that as the basis, use that to be able to empathize more so that the client built a more strong, trusting rapport with me and was more likely to wanna engage in the therapy and then use that basis. To help the client learn why they were operating the way they were and what they could do to change it. And there's, there's a lot more to the phenomenology of mental illness, that subjective experience that ultimately people, but even though it's subjective, that people do share, that a textbook can describe or explain. And those are the ways that I believe I'm lucky enough to have an edge in that sense because I'm able to explain and experience and understand that in ways that academia couldn't have taught me.

Rob Valincius: Yeah, I mean, there's only so much in a book and you know that, that you can accurately or, you know, kind of present what you've been taught rather than, like, I'm a, I'm a do it person. Uh, and I'm a trainer. Like that's what I do at my job. I train people, but I, I'm a do it type of person, so I need to have my hand on the mouse and type in the keyboard and doing the steps, or I need to be like, that's just, that's, I learned better that way.

Um, and I know that there's some people that are, that have photographic memory and there's other people that, that would rather just read, and that's how they absorb knowledge. I'm good with that, but for me, I just gotta do things. Um, and I think, um, you know, at one point I, I wanted to be a psychologist. I, I've ta I took probably eight classes, uh, in college that were all psychology based.

I met my, my, uh, fiance at this point, she's my wife, but I met her in college in a psychology class. 'cause she was obsessed with psychology courses as well. And, uh, there's just a fascination with the mind. Uh, you know, I've always been fascinated with, uh, you know, mental aspects and how, how people think.

And, um, you know, I've dealt with mental illness in my family. I don't have any mental illness. Seasonal depression sometimes 'cause it, you know, it gets you, gets to me a little bit. But, um, my, my stepdad, uh, has really bad bipolar and I grew up, you know, for, at this point it's been 20 ish. 20, yeah, it's gotta be 20 years, probably, maybe even longer now.

At this point, maybe 23 years he's been in the family. So. I've seen him, I've seen him do some crazy shit, and somehow he's still alive. Uh, you know, I saw him take 50 Xanaxes, 

John Cuturilo: Oh my word. 

Rob Valincius: Christmas Eve and he still, still, I didn't see him do it. He did it and he had to be taken to the hospital, but he, he survived.

He's fine. Um, you know, 'cause, 'cause I bipolar's weird, right? You have your manic and depressive states and, uh, when they get into those depressive states, I mean, they'll do just, I mean, I, he's taken, he, so his, his, uh, his family, his dad and one of his brothers were killed in a car accident around the holidays.

um, because of that, he u kind of used that as like the, you know, one, he's bipolar, but he also had that. So around the holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas is always when he'd have some sort of relapse, he would stop taking his medications and it would be booze or, and he, he was never like, like a. Uh, someone that would hurt you.

He was not like violent. He would hurt himself in weight, you know, like the drugs, the alcohol. Um, he would just, he would, he would fall or he, and if he's, if you're bipolar and you're taking your medications and then you stop, 'cause one of them is seizure medications. He would have seizures because he's not taking his, his meds.

And, um, it's just, it, it's, it's tough. And I, I, I feel for anyone that's got a mental illness, especially on, you know, when, when you're, when you're reaching past like the depressive states and you're getting into like chemical imbalances, right? Your bipolars, your schizophrenics, I mean, when you get to that point, it's just.

You know, you gotta be on medication and then you gotta also, I feel like you should always have, uh, you know, a psychologist, a counselor. I, I'm not, I had a psychiatrist on my show. We, you know, and he, he was really good. Uh, but I, I, I've always had a, a little bit of a negative stigma towards psychiatrist just because of my experience with my stepdad, because they tend to push pills first instead of.

Talking some of that stuff out, it's, they'd rather give you, and, you know, if it's not right, come back in a week, I'll give you something else. That's, that's what his experience was for years. Um, now I'm sure there's plenty of psychiatrists, you know, if you're listening to this show and you're like, I don't do that.

You know, it's, I, I think the psych psychological aspect of, um, psychiatrists, psychologists, um, it is dependent on who you pick, right? Some are, some could be bigoted, right? Some could be that way, especially if they've been doing it for 40 years, and that's just what they were taught back in the day. I, I don't know.

Uh, but I do think, uh, when you're, when you are picking someone, you should, you should talk, I think, and this is just me. Maybe you can, uh, tell me if I'm right or wrong, but I've always been under the oppression and, and I had a couple people on my show tell me it's good to book two or three. Counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist, talk to each of them and see which one fits you better.

And if you just get a, a negative vibe, because I do think you need to vibe right then, then you just don't use them and you try someone else until you find that person where you have some sort of connection. And a lot of times as a human, you'll feel it

John Cuturilo: If, if cost allows it, if, if the, if your

budget allows it, then 

Rob Valincius: That's that's true.

John Cuturilo: I I wouldn't say there's anything, I wouldn't say there's anything inherently wrong with it. It might help to let each of 'em know I'm trying to find somebody with whom I have a, a good rapport. You, you're absolutely right that there is perhaps a problem in psychiatry and in medical mental health practice that medication is too heavily promoted. That can be drawn on a number of sources depending on where you are in the world and the type of culture around the economy and so forth. Keeping people medicated and keeping them dependent is business,

and I've received testimony from both patient side and uh, professional side that certain institutions do that to facilitate the ongoing sale of services and medication in terms of talking things through before resorting to medication and needing medication. There's a lot of, there's a lot of variability with some of the more severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia. Then medication is often necessary to help control the symptoms so that the person can work on themselves. I've known of people to be able to manage them without medication. I dunno how common that is, but I'd say. If you're any danger to yourself or other people, then it would certainly be prudent to have medication. But it should never negate proper psychotherapy. And this is where I speak to the phenomenological side of it that can't be described academically Too often, professionals haven't had the experience themselves, which is, again, it's not their fault.

I would never wish mental illness on anyone. So I'm glad that plenty of people don't have mental illness. I wish more people didn't have to suffer those problems. Um, but also a lot of them just aren't taught proper critical thinking. Universities claim to be havens for critical thinking, but too often we don't realize that our minds become attached to academic teachings in the same way that we become attached to beliefs and emotions. So they develop it, they, they develop into a dogma in which if you don't follow this particular method or this particular approach, then you're not trusting the science. You must be a conspiracy theorist or you must be haphazard. And what we have to understand is that science is important, and scientific thinking is essential if we wanna understand the world properly and develop proper solutions to problems. But the method has its limitations and you need to know how the method actually works. And ha know the intrinsic, solve it really deeply and with a lot of clarity so that you know when to sometimes violate from the norms and know when the norms are sometimes not in scientific interests. And a lot of therapists, not just psychiatrists, but psychologists as well, just follow the methods.

They were taught the theory, but they can't speak to the deeper, more complicated part of what the client's experiencing. So there's, there's certainly a balance to be struck, and it has to be based on each individual client's needs and their presentation.

Rob Valincius: Yeah, and I mean, look, I think it takes pioneers and it takes people to think outside the box. Someone like yourself, right? That to make changes. Because I mean, you look at the DSM, right? I mean, you know, as recent as even a, I don't know when they changed, it might have been DSM three or four or whatever, they're on five, right?

John Cuturilo: Uh, the, I think that the fifth edition was released in 2013, and I think in, in the time since then, they've released a modified DSM five as well.

Rob Valincius: Yeah, and I think, I mean, being gay was in the DSM as a, as a mental illness, right? I mean, uh, you know, I think we as a society move past certain things. Uh, but it probably took someone to say, Hey guys, this isn't a mental illness. Right? I that, you know, and, and I'm sure they got flack for it. Um, I mean, look, they, they were lobotomizing people in the forties and fifties, right?

I mean, that was a regular thing until they realized they were basically killing people, you know, like, um, so I, you know, um, the doctor side, you know, and that, that medical side of things has always been wild. Our history's just wild. And, and in the states to talk about pharmaceuticals, I mean. 

John Cuturilo: Uh, 

Rob Valincius: We're one of one of the few countries that allow pharmaceutical companies to have ads on tv.

And I could tell you it's every other ad is a, is a pharmaceutical company, uh, with ca a catchy song. Or maybe they took an 80 song that they jazzed it up to. I, I, I, I wish I was like, not, you know, uh, being facetious here. Like literally they take well-known songs and they'll jazz it up into their little lingo for the drug that they like, like, uh, you know, um, wegovy, things like that.

I mean, you see it, you see, you know, chubby people dancing around happy 'cause they're losing weight 

John Cuturilo: Oh my. 

Rob Valincius: know, little do you know, you know, wegovy is destroying your body and your pancreas and all this other shit. I mean, I, I'll be used to, to see what, you know, everyone that took wegovy and, and, and ozempic what, you know, their body's gonna look like in 10, 15 years.

'cause I'd imagine it's, it's not doing well on their organs. They're losing weight. Because that's big here in the States, but, uh, it's, it's wreaking havoc on their body. But, uh, I, I always digress when it comes to pharmaceuticals because, you know, here, um, you know, politics is always big, right? And, you know, we're a front runner for being, uh, on the headlines these days.

Um, and you know, the, one of the biggest, um, lobbyists of the government is pharmaceutical companies. Uh, so these guys get in place because these companies spend millions of dollars on them and they get into power. And that's why a lot of these things can continue to just be okay. And, um, is there ever gonna be a fix for it?

Maybe, maybe when, when all these people that are, you know, 80 and 90 get out of our, our Senate and, and you have people that are more progressive that aren't being bought, uh, but. Politics are politics, man. They're just, there's always someone being bought, there's always backdoor deals, there's always all this shit going on.

And I mean, it's, it's been that way for generations. It's not just the US and it's not just, uh, democracy. I mean, all that stuff has been going on for centuries. So, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's a dirty industry and that's how it is. And there's, I don't, I don't know if you're ever gonna really change it unless there's something drastic happens, but I do wanna talk to you about your therapeutic approach, right?

Um, you blend, person centered, cognitive behavioral, existential and schema methods. Um, how do you decide what your approach is based on, um, your clients and the people you're helping?

John Cuturilo: Well, often what I do is I, I actually use a combination of philosophies and techniques from those different methods and combine them based on what the individual is presenting and what the, what their individual needs are. So to, to, to give you, to give you an example, if a client doesn't have a lot of, let, let's, let's give a more concrete example. Let's say a client has trauma and they dunno much about trauma. They dunno how it's affecting 'em. They just know that something is wrong within them. Now, all of all therapy for me, has to involve education. I believe that the, the, the, the one factor that has to be in common is that you have to actually teach people. How their minds work and why, so that they can then take better control of them because we don't wanna, I don't otherwise that you risk making clients dependent on you. That's not what you want. You wanna help 'em be independent. But let's say a client of this description was, was presenting and perhaps they also had some quite, it had some quite severe effects on their life. Now, person centered therapy, which was mainly developed by Dr. Carl Rogers, an American psychologist, is based on the notion that providing empathy and being able to accurately show the person that you are understanding their experience and reflecting to them what those experiences are, and providing an environment that is completely nonjudgmental, you accept them as they are, regardless of who they're or what they've done. Provides a healing, provides healing properties. Now, in and of itself, I wouldn't say that that provides the kind of healing that is necessary, but, and again, not. Disparaged, Dr. Carl Rogers, he was an incredible p person from what we know, that was absolutely pivotal in the develop of modern, in the development of modern clinical psychology and, and psychotherapy.

So we needed him. He was, he was, he was absolutely pivotal. But and of itself, I wouldn't say that's sufficient, but it is necessary. And when a person doesn't have a lot of insight, I'm not gonna go straight to education because they're probably not ready to hear a lot of those explanations. It if, if if I need to tell 'em something for their safety, I certainly will.

But not withstanding that when you're just starting the recovery process, your mind's already processing a lot. You're already dealing with the weight of those problems. You don't need someone lecturing you. So I start with, I might start with a more person centered approach whereby I. I'm just reflecting their experiences to them in a way that helps them advance their clarity of their own.

The, the, the clarity of understanding of their own experiences. There are specific techniques and some more general, uh, ways that we do that. Once we are at a point where the client feels a little bit more stable and they feel more comfortable, then we can move on to psychoeducation, which is educating about that.

Rob Valincius: Yeah.

John Cuturilo: Then from that point, we can move on to a cognitive and behavioral approach. And cognitive and behavioral approaches effectively are based on the theory that when we think in certain ways and we act in certain ways, they perpetuate each other. So if we think a certain way, it influences our behavior.

That behavior yields a result. The result creates a particular event in the environment. We observe that event in the environment and then that. Influences how we think and feel and the cycle perpetuates. If we change those aspects. If we change what we think or we're more conscious of it at least, and we change what we do, we influence the outcomes, and then we influence how those, how our minds operate and how our lives operate. Once we have stability, we can then move onto that because another common factor that has to be across all therapeutic methods is it has to involve action. You have to actually do something. Just listening to a therapist is not gonna help. You have to develop a plan to do something, and once they're at that stage where they're able to receive that, then we can develop plans in that way to actually deal with it. If somebody is presenting and they're not so badly affected, for example, perhaps a client has more present focused anxiety where they don't have any history of trauma and no particularly adverse events, but the anxiety is what we call an anomaly. It's happened spontaneously, the. Yes, the empathy and the empathic listening is still necessary.

We're still gonna do that, but perhaps even in the first session, we're able to start conducting education and we're able to start giving homework tasks that involve changing how they respond to their anxiety. Even some people with long trauma histories who say, look, I've accepted it and I just wanna move on.

Yes, I'll still give them some maybe education on their past, but maybe even in the first session they, they might be comfortable. Moving on to that, the, the, the immediate, the, the immediate task of what can I start doing about my current situation? There are other instances in which the problems are a lot more abstract and this really comes to bear with, uh, issues such as grief, where grief itself is not a mental illness, it's just a natural part of. Processing that you've lost someone or something. Not necessarily through death. It can be through divorce. It can be through losing a job. It can be, uh, losing a, a, a, a bodily capacity if you become disabled or have or injured with grief. Often, not always, but often it doesn't necessarily stop people from functioning as they need to.

So a lot of clients with whom I've worked can still go to work, can still get up and do things for themselves. The grief isn't, doesn't involve a distortion or a, a, a, a miscon conceptualization of reality in the way that illnesses, such as anxiety, depression, and trauma might, but it's still important. If it's affecting them in such, in any way, then it's important to address them and really take it seriously. A lot of therapists don't do that. They look at it and go, oh, you're not trying to attempt su suicide. You're not attempting suicide, you're not doing drugs. You're still able to get up and go to work. You're fine. Get out. And that's not. That's completely immoral. If it's affecting them, we need to take it seriously. But education on how they're distorting reality would be completely inaccurate and completely, uh, inappropriate because grief doesn't involve those same distortions of reality. So we might take a more existential approach where we explore in a more fluid, abstract way. What does death or loss mean to you?

What beliefs do you have about it? For example, do you have a belief about what happens after death? Do you have a belief about the spirit of your loved one? Are they still in your presence? And explore maybe what it is about the situation that's bothering them, how they conceptualize the problem. Once we've conceptualized that, then we can perhaps develop healing rituals.

For example, clients who may wanna create a shrine of a departed loved one so that they don't forget them if they're concerned that they might forget them. And so that's how I decide. I, I have that understanding of. Both within myself, from my own experiences, from academic knowledge, and from what the client's teaching me about themselves, I develop an understanding of what's the phenomenology or what's the operation of the problem and what is most likely to be appropriate within the different stages of recovery and what's most likely gonna yield an outcome? Look, what can the client engage with that is specifically gonna allow them to achieve the outcome? And that has to be, it can be very qualitative, it can often be a little bit complicated. So I, I have to adapt that to every client. There are certain principles that are constant, but that's my, that's my philosophy. I.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. No, I mean, I, I, I like that because I think, um, you know, we're at a point where. I mean, you can get anxiety just because you can be depressed. Just because, and, uh, I think the whole point of, of being a counselor, being a psychologist is for you to help us figure out what that root cause is. Right?

Maybe we didn't have trauma, but, you know, maybe it was, uh, it's where you are in life and compared to like what, where you thought you'd be. And there's a lot of, um, that's the beauty of the human brain, you know? It's just, you never really know, uh, until you crack it open. You're almost like, as, as you, you're talking it out, but you're almost like dissecting.

The issue in their brain so that you can give them, uh, tools to sew it right back up. You know, it's, it's, it's a, I love the profession and, uh, I really enjoy, um, you know, what you do. And, uh, who knows, maybe I'll go back to school and, and, uh, study more. 'cause it was one of my favorite. I was always good. Uh, 'cause with psychology, there was not a whole lot of a, B, c, D tests, you know, because a lot of times the teacher was a psychiatrist or a psychologist.

It was a lot of. Alright, this person suffers from this. What do you think? And those were always my favorite. And I would just, I would, I would scribble down a, a whole paragraph of what I think is wrong with the person. And, uh, I feel like that's, it's cool that you have, because you know, they might sit down with me, they might sit down with you and we both have different approaches, but maybe at the same time, me and you come up with the same exact diagnosis, we just do it differently.

Um. And, you know, I do think that not every person fits into one thing too, right? Maybe, you know, my, obviously your way of talking to someone, maybe it doesn't fit everyone and it's the same. I don't know. It's cool. I, there's, I could talk about psychology until I'm blue in the face. It's just one of my favorite things to discuss.

But let's talk a little bit about your podcast before we get outta here, man. Um, you know, I guess for me you called it the Your Listener podcast. And I, and I was gonna ask you why is listening such a central theme for you? But I, I feel like throughout this conversation, it's, it's pretty, uh, noticeable.

It's just because, uh, the more listening you do, the more information you absorb and the better you can help. But maybe you can tell me, you know, is that, is that kind of why you went with your listener for your podcast?

John Cuturilo: It, it's, it was a simpler reason that then evolved into something more symbolic. So your listener as a name and a, a, a symbol. I developed that many years ago. And that was first in counseling. So your listener as a, as a counseling practice was the first inception of, was the inception of the, your listener name and the symbolism.

And that's, uh, that logo is actually my mother's, uh, my mother's hand holding the family Dog's paw, which I took that, I took that as my logo and

That's always been the Your Listener logo. Um, when I, when I conceptualized the name, I was very much fascinated by the work of Carl Rogers, as I mentioned before, Dr.

Carl Rogers. And

Rob Valincius: Yep.

John Cuturilo: I was so fascinated by how it, uh. How powerful listening and empathy were that I wanted to emphasize that in my public presentation, and so that's why I chose the name. Then, when I developed a podcast years later, I used the name because I wanted my counseling and my philosophical commentary in the podcast to be amalgamated so that people could learn about my podcast through my counseling practice, and people could learn about my counseling practice after, after listening to the podcast. But there was also a, my, my, the, the, the joining of the two was symbolic as well. As I said before, in order to really help people, you need to have a curiosity about how the world works. And my podcast is all about that. My podcast is about exploring various different topics of psychology, mental health, uh, how we work in society, our, so a big emphasis on social psychology, different mental phenomena that we experience, how we develop beliefs, how we develop feelings, politics, the psychology of politics, economics, the psychology of, uh, relational problems and how we overcome them.

The psychology of critical thinking, the psychology of healthy debate, all these different topics that are related to humans functioning and interacting with each other can all be based in psychology, and I like to explore all of those topics, but I explore them in a way that's reflective. I analyze them from the different perspectives.

These people have this perspective. Here are the strengths and weaknesses about that particular perspective. This group has this particular perspective. There are the strengths and weaknesses. This is what I believe to be the most objective answer. And in doing so, I'm actually modeling to the audience a number of different ideas, a number of different sort of tactics. First of all, I'm modeling de-stigmatization of criticism. All too often when we criticize something or we give advice on how someone could be better, they immediately take it as a personal attack. They say, how dare you say I'm this or that.

Rob Valincius: Yeah.

John Cuturilo: my philosophy, and in fact I, I would call it the objective reality, is that all of us are flawed in some way, including me. And just because we've made mistakes, it doesn't mean they were our fault. Like just because we believe in something that's distorted or that's not healthy, it doesn't mean we were deliberately doing that in order to self-sabotage. It doesn't mean that we were doing that in order to be a burden on society. There are all sorts of experiences that lead to our beliefs, and we can't be expected to know everything. That's why we need constant conversation. So I'm, I was modeling the idea that, and continue to model the idea that we can criticize things without saying that the people who believe them are bad people. What I always say is, I say this not to make you feel bad, I say it because I believe that each and every one of us is worth investing the time and effort into change to be the best that we can be. But what I'm also doing by, by exploring is I'm encouraging other people, including the guests that join me and the people with whom I have collaborations where we share credit for the episodes. I'm encouraging people to reflect on my reflections and say, okay, what are the strengths and weaknesses of John's arguments, but especially what are the counterpoints? I don't just, I, I always say to people, yes, I'm quite. Adamant that I have a healthy life philosophy and I live by my values, and they've stood me in good stead.

And I encourage people to really think deeply about their own values and what they hold to be important. But also importantly, what I'm doing, more importantly than lecturing is I'm, I'm instigating conversation. I'm encouraging people not just to take what I say on face value, but to question it and to say, okay, what are the strengths and weaknesses of John's argument?

And especially for people to come onto the show and say, Hey, John, I didn't agree with what you said. Let's talk about it. And I am all too, I'm all too thrilled when people wanna do that. In fact, I'm, I'm planning some, I'm planning some, uh, collaborations that are gonna be coming in the future whereby we're gonna have, I'm gonna have people that are, you know, wildly dis, probably wildly disagree with me, and I'm really excited for that because I get to hear other people's perspective firsthand.

I get to question it. And if I have maybe made a mistake in the way that I see the world, I get to, I get to hear it from someone with the experience to tell me, which makes me a better person. It makes me a better counselor. And just one, one final thing that I'll say is that in the future I may have people who are not so controversial, people who are quite moderate in their beliefs, people who are agree with me. I might have people who are extremely controversial.

I may not agree with them. In fact, I may even have reservations about the morality of what they believe. But this is not to satisfy people. This is not to say, Hey, I, I really love you. Let's give you more of, of a platform. I do believe in free speech. I do believe in healthy conversation. But more importantly, this is not about. It's the values of people. This is about about the values of ideas, not judging people, but exploring and analyzing ideas so that we can actually learn about how the world works by facing the things that are both palatable to us and the things that are not so palatable.

And that's my vision with Your listener podcast. And over time, it has adopted more symbolism whereby I am a listener, in the sense that I'm not just listening to my clients, I'm listening to the world and trying to understand it as best I can. And that has developed some more symbolism within itself.

Rob Valincius: I love that. Uh, it's, it's the whole reason why I even started this podcast too, is that I wanted a safe space where if I wanna talk about something, they wanna talk about something. We can have a healthy debate without. Uh, there be like, it's a judge free zone is what I always tell people. Um, it's funny, it's funny that you mentioned it 'cause I was having a conversation earlier today with, uh, with my team at work and I was, uh, someone mentioned, I, I was like, I really want a Tesla.

It's, it's like on my goal list, I just, uh, I like the, the approach of having an electric car, preserving the, the environment. I'm also a huge tech guy. I love that everything is digital. And I know that goes against a lot of things with cars. 'cause you have the people like gas, gas, gas. I'm like, all right, I've always been a tech guy, but we're having a conversation about Teslas and, uh, one of the, um, coworkers of mine said, I, I would never buy that.

I don't like Elon. I don't like what he stands for. And I'm like, okay, reasonable. Right. Elon's had some questionable issues, but I said, I said to him, I'm like, and, and ah, he's a trillionaire and I don't wanna give him any more money. And I said, all right. Do you buy stuff from Amazon? You're, you're feeding.

Jeff Bezos, he's probably not a good guy either. Uh, where did you go for lunch today? Uh, oh, you bought clothes from Target? They're a billion dollar corporation. That's probably not doing great for people like you. You gotta also look at it and, and uh, at the end they're like, oh yeah, I guess I get your point.

I'm like, you gotta also look at it like, yes, I, I get what you are saying, but you're also not practicing what you preach if you're also doing this. So you might wanna rethink that, you know, to a certain degree. And I'm like, the cell phone you have, do you know that slaves. You know, there's legit slavery right now in the Congo that's, that's getting the cobalt so you can charge your phone so you have an alarm to go to work.

Like, you know, these are the things you have to think about. And, and, uh, you know, I think that for me, that's always been my thing. And I, as, as a person, I've always picked, uh, like in, in high school, I would pick the opposite side of, of an argument in social studies just to see how many people I could sway to, to an argument because I'd like to educationally argue with people like facts.

And, uh, you know, uh, uh, I would win a lot of those arguments. I was pretty good at, I, I should have been a debater, you know, in, in high school. But, uh, I love what you're doing. I love what you stand for. Uh, keep doing what you're doing. Um, do me a favor, plug your podcast plug where you want people to go. And I, I mean, I, I, I'd imagine I do have some Australian listeners, maybe you can plug, uh, where they can find your stuff to maybe, you know, book a counseling session with.

John Cuturilo: No thank you Robin, and I really appreciate what you do as well. Um, my, uh, website is www.yourlistener.com au. That's Y-O-U-R-L-I-S-T-E-N-E-R com au. And, uh,

on that page you can find all information about my counseling services, my philosophy, and uh, my podcast, and there are links to all the different platforms on which you can find it and choose your favorite platform.

Rob Valincius: awesome. Yeah, I checked out your website. You got a good site, man. You got a good 

John Cuturilo: Thank you, Rob. 

Rob Valincius: Um, and then my podcast is Drink Clock Pod on all socials, drink o'clock podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. And, uh, we'll have this up soon. And, uh, maybe, uh, if you ever have a debate episode, man, and, and you need an American, you hit me up.

All right. I'd be happy to, uh, to hop in and, and be there.

John Cuturilo: Absolutely Rob, I, I'd absolutely love to have you on the program

Rob Valincius: Awesome. Well, look, John, you have a great morning and I'll have a great night over here and, uh, let's do this again soon.

John Cuturilo: and thank you, Rob, you Likewise.

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