Your Therapist Needs Therapy 23 - Social Construction and Revolutionary Therapy with Sheila McNamee

All guests are special on this podcast, but a very special guest this week with the incredibly insightful Dr. Sheila McNamee. Sheila is the VP and co-founder of the Taos Institute and a true game changer in the field of therapy and postmodern approaches. Sheila and Jeremy talk about her decades spent challenging the assumptions made in the field of mental health, the revolutions still needed to move the field forward, and all the thought-provoking work coming out of the Taos Institute. For Jeremy, the social construction ideology changed the course of his career, so a real dream come true to chat with such a formative figure in the field!

Sheila’s work with the Taos Institute can be found here, a list of her books can be found here, and some of her published articles and other free resources are available here. More information about the Taos Institute Commons can be found here. You can also follow the Taos Institute on Instagram and YouTube. (Jeremy strongly recommends checking out the community and some of the trainings available over there, so so good!)

More info on Jeremy and his practice can be found at Wellness with Jer.

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Podcasts about therapy do not replace actual therapy, and listening to a podcast about therapy does not signify a therapeutic relationship. 

If you or someone you know is in crisis please call or text the nationwide crisis line at 988, or text HELLO to 741741. The Trevor Project has a crisis line for LGBTQ+ young people that can be reached by texting 678678. 

Transcript

Your Therapist Needs Therapy - Sheila McNamee (2023-09-06 09:06 GMT-5) - Transcript

Attendees

Jeremy Schumacher, Sheila McNamee

Transcript

This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it was created.

Jeremy Schumacher: hello and welcome to another edition of your therapist needs therapy, the podcast for two mental health, professionals, get together and talk about their mental health journeys, and how they navigate mental wellness while working in the mental,

Jeremy Schumacher: And today I have a very specific therapist.

Jeremy Schumacher: The therapist.

Jeremy Schumacher: Sheila, thanks for joining me today.

Sheila McNamee: Thanks, Jeremy. it's great to be here. I'm honored to be invited and I look forward to our conversation.

Jeremy Schumacher: So, I am familiar with your work and I think I have a lot of listeners who do the therapy podcast. I'm curious how you kind of got into the field working around education and…

Sheila McNamee: yeah, there are a lot of stories to be told about that,…

Jeremy Schumacher: educating therapist.

Sheila McNamee: but basically when I was doing my PhD work, In the field of communication.

Sheila McNamee: I became interested in family therapy and probably, the real reason is because I'm from a large family and in my family of six children. Two parents I was sort of the middle person and the mediator and the peacekeeper and that sort of identity followed me into my friendships, in school, being friends with the

Sheila McNamee: the hippies and those days and then also the jocks and how do you navigate these two very different communities of people and it started so I guess I'd always saw myself and continued to see myself always in this liminal space between different identities, and so forth. And so, I was drawn to family therapy and started taking family therapy classes during my PhD. Coursework. And then,

Sheila McNamee: I had the privilege of sitting behind the one-way mirror that we used to use in those days and I was just, totally fascinated and I wrote my PhD dissertation on the therapeutic process and I was lucky enough to meet Carl Tom from the University of Calgary and he invited me to Calgary as a research associate in the last year of my PhD. And so, that's where I actually collected my data. I interviewed families and therapist in Calgary.

Jeremy Schumacher: Okay.

Sheila McNamee: And while we're there, he had a big conference with the Milan team, John Franco Chicken, and Luigi Boston, Matarana and Heinzman Forester. And all these names that it was a very exciting time. So I guess I was sort of marked through that whole process that this was my interest. And, from a communication perspective, I felt I had some

Sheila McNamee: A different way of looking at the therapeutic process and that kind of just grew and developed from there. I mean, I was because of the conference in Calgary with the Milan team, I was invited to Italy in 1986 as a visiting professor and I was there for several months. And so just one thing led to another because while I was in Italy, of course I was able to hang out at the Milan Center and watch families, in therapy and just, talk with people and stuff. So I feel I've had a very privileged life actually and I'm really grateful for the trajectory and I don't take any of it for granted.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, just a long list there of, kind of the heavy hitters in the postmodern therapy field, which is very cool for you. Was it kind of a paradigm shift, or was it this made more sense, kind of the approach and some of the postmodern work, around social construction, did that make sense? Or was that a paradigm shift? Happening in real time for you.

Sheila McNamee: Yeah, I know it was not a paradigm shift. It was so the people that I was studying with Verne Cronin and Barnett Pierce in the communication discipline I fell into that embarrassingly. I'll say, I went into communication because I thought I wanted to go into advertising, but then I met them and I had studied as an undergraduate philosophy and their approach was very philosophical and challenging the modernist individualist ideology and it resonated with me? It's sort of who I was. So for me it was never a paradigm shift. It was fine finding a home and putting names and…

00:05:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Sure.

Sheila McNamee: labels to a set of ideas that I feel. I had just always been living.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I think that's interesting looking at it. I mean, getting to work with some of the early pioneers in the field but for me coming at it much later I was in grad school and 2009-2010. And I had all this evidence-based practice they went to University of Minnesota which is a huge research institution. I was at Marquette University which also doing a lot of evidence-based practice. And I remembered just kind of being but that a lot of the stuff isn't useful in the room. That's not how I'm doing therapy. Theory is only so helpful to technique is only so helpful and I read Harlene Anderson's book, link conversation language and possibilities. And I was like,

Jeremy Schumacher: This is what my brain's been trying to do. And so I think it's interesting in my generation of therapist, I think it's interesting and…

Sheila McNamee: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: I started doing marriage family therapy. that was what I went into Immediately that's how I learned. That was my internship site during post-grad during my master's degree. So that works better. I think for me where I was looking at it from a systems perspective, right away, but really needing, that kind of postmodern, social construction piece to make more sense.

Sheila McNamee: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think that that's The thing that happens to people where they're introduced to these ideas and they say, there's a name for this. what, I've been thinking all my life, teaching under my undergraduates, many of them, of course, struggle with these ideas and just, I get angry actually with me for trying to tell them, that Maybe they're diagnosis isn't the best way to go, forward or what have you but then, there are those who just say, Okay, this is great. this resonates with me. So I think there's a lot of people like that and thankfully

Sheila McNamee: it's become more and more normal. I think I would like to thank that these ideas are not so foreign to people and yet we still know that we're living in this. pretty traditional old-fashioned and straight jacketed idea about what it should be, and in and of itself therapy as a profession. Is pathologizing. I mean I think in most cases makes things worse for people and what occupies me these days is wondering Should there really be taking place in a consulting room or in a clinic, shouldn't? We be out, with all the issues in the world today like climate change

Sheila McNamee: White supremacy authoritarianism. Just the list goes on and it's depressing but shouldn't we be doing things? Because I believe those larger macro issues are the source of people's personal challenges and the challenges that they confront in there. Every day interpersonal relationships. It's not something wrong with them. it's these larger issues. So, I love all these ideas and I think there, they're like a call to action, to be more social activists than I mean, that's maybe a better name identity than therapist I guess.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah, I find the therapy and working in the profession, I own my own practice now, because the rigid structure I think made worse by insurance companies and the medical model. Overlapping. A lot of what therapy is supposed to be about. Has made it hard to practice in a way that's helpful for people that's not pathologizing. If you're only getting reimbursed by a certain diagnosis as a family therapist I couldn't get paid for having a relational diagnosis like you had to use the proper diagnosis in order to get paid and I think that is a huge interest hindrance and the field of psychology I like to say,

00:10:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Always kind of behind where philosophy is. If you're looking at postmodernism in the 60s and here we are in the 2020s still trying to figure out how to apply some of these things or make it more known that these things might work better.

Sheila McNamee: Yeah. Yeah. I know, so many thoughts coming into my head at once now but I think, the reason that so the evidence-based practice and the medical model has such a grip is because

Sheila McNamee: People feel uncomfortable with uncertainty and I don't use the word fact, very often, but the fact is that, there we live among so much multiplicity, so much diversity. How could anyone ever be certain that, x is the right thing to do in why situation that? There's just so many ways of looking at things, but modernism and individualism just make life easy for people. It's, do this and that will happen and

Sheila McNamee: It applies on the professional level, you will be a good teacher. If you do x, Y and Z, you'll be a good therapist needs. As to become professionals, who are absolutely certain, we have certainty about what we do. That's what makes us a professional. I know what I'm doing but what liberation? As a professional Wow, I don't know what the heck's going on here and…

Jeremy Schumacher: He?

Sheila McNamee: I'm not quite sure what to do and in that way, you invite those you're working with into kind of talking through what's going on and getting multiple perspectives out there in the open. So Yeah, It is kind of depressing to ask the question, Will this, hold on certainty and the modernist stance ever recede or is it here to stay forever and ever?

Jeremy Schumacher: And I draw hope from the younger generations, just around some of the things with from the medical model, moving away from gender binaries and other social constructs as inherently useful and kind of questioning. Hey, I don't know that this fits that well for me. What other options are there?

Sheila McNamee: Yeah. Yeah, I think I agree with you that I think there's a both, and I think that there's younger generation who, are issuing all the entrapments of what

Sheila McNamee: What? Allegedly is normal and expected, right? But then's and I have conversations with a lot of my close friends and colleagues who are in the mental health field about how, going back to the late 70s and early 80s. When, it was just so exciting to be in these conversations with, what was happening with the Milan, guys, and with second order cybernetics and all of this stuff, it was so exciting. And what we see is that excitement is there for very few young people. Now, I was on a PhD dissertation that it really like

Sheila McNamee: it was just like I'm gonna do my research and write this dissertation and get my degree. So then I can have my job and get paid and live my life and unfortunately that I mean, I feel so lucky that I was part of this. What felt like a revolution at the time and it saddens me that while there is, some cluster of young people who are revolutionary. thankfully that there are also a whole lot who are not it's a job I'm training for a job.

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah, and I do think at a revolutionary period will be good. I think we look at something like deaths of despair being on the rise. I think statistically we're seeing all these different places where the modernist rigid structure is harming. People. we objectively can say This isn't helping.

00:15:00

Sheila McNamee: Yeah, yeah. And I mean the other issue here and Why I think the work that we do is so important is really bringing us back in a way to the sense of community, away from staunch individualism. You have to take care of yourself and that really is where therapy comes from. Right. I've got a problem. So I go you my therapist, I don't bother my family or my friends with my problems because I can pay somebody who's gonna help me and then I can insert myself back into those relationships and what we're talking about and why I think we need to question. Are we using the old model of going into a clinic or consultation room?

Sheila McNamee: but with these ideas of that we're relational beings and in collaborative dialogic engagements with each other with a therapist.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and…

Sheila McNamee: Yeah, and you

Jeremy Schumacher: I was reading one of your early papers. I think it came out in 93 or 94 prepping for this conversation. And it was so fascinating to read because the Internet wasn't Expansive, the way it is now. and this idea of community and…

Sheila McNamee: yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: there were mentions of email and digital communication but the way that social media exists, now I don't think very many people saw coming and so this idea of community is very open-ended, I just don't know that there's a lot of

Jeremy Schumacher: I don't want to say agreement but the way it gets used various still wildly from demographic.

Sheila McNamee: Yeah. Yeah but I mean reminds me of Bob Putnam's book old book now is in the 90s bowling alone. Are you familiar with that book? So he did this great research,…

Jeremy Schumacher: I don't think so. No.

Sheila McNamee: he had a big checklist but basically, it started by noticing, no one joins a bowling team anymore or bowling club and women don't go to the women's club and men don't go to the Elks or the Moose And so he developed this survey with questions like How many times a week do you have coffee with a neighbor? How often do you do this? Do you know number of things? And basically, then correlated health statistics with less and less connection with other people or death with, people dying earlier.

Sheila McNamee: Those who had less and less connections and then they're on top of that. That's old research but it's really fascinating to me. And then Johan Hari. I don't know if you are familiar with his book that he wrote, I think I was around 2015, called Chasing the Screen, and it's about addiction and he traveled around the world. And basically, there's a lot to be said about that book But the neoliberal impulse towards isolation. Is, in his view and many others view, highly correlated with addiction. it's not that your brain gets hijacked by chemicals and stuff. It's really about isolation and being alone and

Sheila McNamee: And when you think about the contemporary culture, the neoliberal culture that we live in today, there are lots of people who make the point of saying, Look, everybody has their own bedroom. you before, everyone had their own TV in their room. Now, they don't need it because they have their laptops, their devices, etc. and how houses, for those of means, got bigger and bigger and bigger, so that people had more of their own space. And so you can just see these measures of, whether the addiction is addiction to drug. or to gambling, or to shopping, or to eating, or it doesn't matter that these are the sorts of things that

00:20:00

Sheila McNamee: people turn to fill themselves up, which reminds me of another great article by another wonderful, his psychology historian, Philip Cushman, Wrote a piece in the 80s called Why the Self is Empty any talks about? all of these things that we do like shopping and eating and drugs and alcohol and things, to kind of fill this emptiness and that Therapy isn't What are we doing therapeutically to kind of change that what we should be doing is the things that I think we're interested in? Which is How do you emphasize the relational aspect of our being and help people survive in that way?

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and it's as a systemic thinker. It's so fascinating to look at it because In a relational sense is from my perspective in the therapy room, that is a relationship that's new, and it's exciting and we're creating. And that can be very helpful for people. But then to look at it, as a societal change can be I struggle with this and still work on balancing, this often it can be so overwhelming to take that systemic view because it is kind of depressing. I think sometimes to look at where things are or the trends of things, or Capitalism. and all these things that are Taking away relationships or limiting or making relationships more rigid than they need to be.

Jeremy Schumacher: so I think cultivating that ability to promote relational learning and help people not just in the therapy room, but in any place and so my role as a therapist needs, Sometimes you get pushed back as you mentioned, having a student who's angry, but it does open so many more doors for people than they may be realized, were there.

Sheila McNamee: Yeah, I mean it. yes, can be depressing to think about all these larger issues at the same time, it can be really liberating for people to say, this isn't my personal flaw. This is, something happening. And I think what the piece that's been missing in therapy for a long time, but now thankfully, I don't think is, we focused on the micro level, on, what's going on. A person's life in a family in a couple and looking at those dynamics and a little bit in the context of society or the community they live in but that was less. and now, it's

Sheila McNamee: what we see is that it's what we do, that keeps those macro discourses or ways of being alive. So, I always give this silly example, if we all of us, just stopped sending our children to school. The idea of education. As we know it would cease to exist.

Sheila McNamee: You know that if we stopped going to doctors, when we felt ill, the medical profession would cease to exist. that's not going to happen because you're not going to get everybody stopping that kind of thing. But it does show that in our unquestioning way that, I don't feel good, I'll call the doctor. I am having a problem. My relationship. I need a good therapist needs. and engage in that kind of conversation in the therapy room with people could actually Open up.

Sheila McNamee: This view of how. We all are part of keeping the very things we don't like alive, as you know, is a therapist needs.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and it's interesting, I think too because clients do come in that way clients come in Expecting a diagnosis or even looking for a diagnosis Help me make sense of this by giving it a label. And some of those conversations are very freeing and opening for people. When you start to question and unpack those things deconstruct, some of it. I work with religious trauma. So we use the term deconstruction all the time, but it's one of those things that also you mentioned earlier, makes people uncomfortable because it moves away from

00:25:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Some black and white thinking or some overly simplistic thinking still even after doing this and working this way. Most of my whole career, I was introduced to the social construction stuff while I was in grad school. So working this way there's so many people why are we talking about the way we're languaging or even just disliking kind of like let's have a dialogue because there's comfort in If you give me this diagnosis then I know what to do about it.

Sheila McNamee: Yeah, yeah. that's back to the point we're discussing earlier about ty. just saying. yeah I know and in fact, my view is that diagnosis in and of itself isn't always bad. I mean, for some people is exactly liberating like, my gosh, I'm clinically depressed. Now I know what to do. where for someone else? It's gonna be a tailspin, and you never know and also there's just so much out there. Now I just read recently well in the last year really wonderful book. what's it called anyway? It's about a journalist and her experience in the mental health system and

Sheila McNamee: and she and many others, make a great point. That this is not like a disease, in medicine where you can see that there's a virus in the body. I mean there's physical evidence for any kind of quote unquote, mental illness or mental diagnosis. So, It's really kind of. Amazing that people really believe, That Just because a group of psychiatrists over decades have gotten together and identified and defined and named that it's pretty amazing.

Jeremy Schumacher: And something that it wasn't designed for. If you're talking about the DSM was designed as a research tool so that we were organizing people in the same groups for research to eliminate some variables,…

Sheila McNamee: Right.

Jeremy Schumacher: not ever as a diagnostic tool for the purpose of diagnosing or clinical Techniques. So that's always weird. And it's weird too I would say at this time in history, for how many people I've interviewed for the podcast or just in general therapist, the DSM because it is just now ingrained as

Sheila McNamee: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: This is how you do therapy Diagnose and so not looking at that historical view and saying this was kind of arbitrary this was just these people's idea on what was going to be helpful. Not like, Objective Truth,…

Sheila McNamee: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: not Capital T Truth.

Sheila McNamee: I I mean, it's the amazing thing about all of these unquestioned beliefs, that circulate around us as long as you don't question and you don't go back, do sort of the fucodian archeology of knowledge. How did this start, the perfect example, do you know why we use utensils to eat? if you do the archeology of knowledge and you go way back in time and hear people coming in from the battlefield and sticking there, Jeremy hands into the center dish and, spreading disease. That's why we have, it's not that, this is proper and the right way to do things, it was a very practical reason, the same of the DSM or anything else. And again, we come back to that curiosity instead of certainty, if we could imbue.

Sheila McNamee: Ourselves and the people we work with curiosity, I think We be living in a much better way with each other.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah, it's I love finding and talking having these conversations with minded people because it's very validating and uplifting.

Jeremy Schumacher: I think one of the pushbacks I get from clients often academics but client kind of these ideas around social construction. And some of the postmodern stuff is they immediately jump to? then nothing has any meaning. And I think that's, To quickly address. that's not the end result, that's not the goal or That's not the drive for questioning. These things is to say that nothing has meaning but to acknowledge that the meaning is co-created, the movie, all these different contributors to why we think something has meaning. And if we don't pull that apart and look at it, then we're presupposing a lot of information.

00:30:00

Sheila McNamee: yeah, I mean that is the most common response like meaningless or you don't like something, just make up some other thing and my response to that is always To say that we live in a world of multiple realities. Multiple meanings is not to say, there is no meaning or reality. This is what we are doing. Now, is so incredibly real. And it could be other, And so there's nothing more real than what we are doing in any given moment.

Sheila McNamee: In any interaction with others in particular, contexts and histories, and cultures and so forth. but there's always possibilities of alternatives and that's the point of social construction. It's not to say there is no reality and it's really unfortunate that's how people hear They hear you saying no, this isn't a reality. There is no reality, everything's relative. It's whatever you want it to be. I

Sheila McNamee: Would say to undergraduate students. if I said I'm the President of the United States unless other people go along with that a collaborate with that construction of myself, I will probably be taken to an insane. And, you can't just declare something and there That's rampant relativism and that's not Social construction means negotiating.

Sheila McNamee: Engaging with others in the creation of a reality that, by the way, all people who've coordinated in that negotiation don't necessarily have the same understanding of what it is, either, so that notion of diversity and variety and multiplicity just is always there. and again, if that's the case, then we need to be curious. I love Tom Anderson, would say, if someone would say to him, I'm so depressed. Instead of just, most of us go, you are, because we know what that is, but he wouldn't go there. He would say. When you look into the word depression, What other words do you see? Because he didn't want to presume that his understanding of depression was the same as the clients understanding of depression. And so if it's that move of sort of recognizing

Sheila McNamee: many different meanings and understandings.

Jeremy Schumacher: And you have hinted up at this earlier. That opens up doors that creates freedom. we're not limiting things in that, so it's not taking away. Meaning, it's opening up the possibility for additional or new meaning.

Sheila McNamee: Yeah. Definitely.

Jeremy Schumacher: I'm going to shift a little bit.

Jeremy Schumacher: And I've experienced a lot of that in a different realm working as a coach women's volleyball at the collegiate level. What was how to sort of that come into? A lot of people at Taos Institute, we're a part of writing that book. It's a short little book that appreciative organizations like 90 pages or…

Sheila McNamee: People. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: something like that, but it's so dense with these ideas. it's fascinating to me. There's Guidebook really on how to kind of reshape an organization so that it's healthier and it's more creative. Can you talk a little bit about kind of how that came up and where those ideas? And adjoined from all those different creators.

Sheila McNamee: Yeah, it's a good story. So it goes back to the creation of the Taos Institute So Ken and Mary Gargan. Have a friend Diana. Whitney. Who is living in Taos, New Mexico. This was back in 1992.

Sheila McNamee: Or maybe? Yeah. And they went to go ski after the Christmas holidays out there and came back and can gave me a call and said, Hey, cows is a great place. We all love to ski what if we do a conference out there? we put on this conference and you'd really like our friend Diana Blah blah. So okay sure let's do that and then he made that same phone call to a few Another one being David Cooper Rider and another one being Harlene Anderson. And so, we had no institutional, or organizing

00:35:00

Sheila McNamee: Entity to sponsor this conference, this was just And we thought, we'll see if anybody comes and I don't know if you've ever been to Taos New Mexico but it's not an easy place to get to and we had I think 150 or 200 people came to this conference And at the end of the conference, we were sitting around at dinner and Ken said, What if we become an institute and we all looked at him and said Why, and he said, what would we do? we could have conferences. we talked about, We said, Okay, let's try for three years and see what happens. Okay, so that was the beginning of the Taos Institute, but David Cooper Rider

Sheila McNamee: Is the person with his PhD supervisor, who created this notion of Appreciative Inquiry it emerged out of the social constructionist orientation that says, the way in which we talk and relate to one, another makes a difference. And so if we're always talking about problems and problem solving, and what caused the problem, what do we need to do to The problem we are mired in a Saturated reality. instead we ask the question, What's working here, What gives us life?

Sheila McNamee: Then we can do more of that. by the way and there are lots of stories that could be told about this. But, when you focus on that all of a sudden, the problem is solved because you're doing more of what works in a given community or organization. And so that's how Appreciative inquiry came into my work and why it's so much a part of the Taos Institute because it's based on social construction.

Sheila McNamee: In terms of looking at language and when I say language, I mean all embodied activity, not just words but all that we do. and noticing that that makes a difference. So you talk about what gives joy, what brings life, what's fulfilling and you can do more of that. And the more you do of that the less you confront the same old challenges.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and it go ahead.

Sheila McNamee: but it's different than positive psychology.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yes.

Sheila McNamee: Yeah, I mean it's not just happy. We won't talk about problems. It's not if people want to talk about problems, you talk about the problems. But in the context of talking about the problems, can you also talk about? those exceptional moments, When did you do something when the problem didn't? Pop up, how did you do that? some of the narrative therapy, Ways of dealing with them exceptions.

Jeremy Schumacher: Intuitively coming from a social construction, background, it made sense. And I'm neurodivergent. So I think that's a piece in all of us do have ADHD. So looking at things I've always been that outside the box thinker, what other people gave me that label, but a lot of these things made sense, then because it's looking at some of the, relational interplay for a sports team, coaching a team of 30 people and having different roles on the team but also having different personalities, having different motivations athletes. Some of them like to win, some of them hate to lose, those are different things. Some of them want their teammates to be happy. So you have all these different motivations and getting into a point of appreciative inquiry. And what do we do? and how do we build on those things?

Jeremy Schumacher: It's so weird to see the process work because it's like we're not talking about problems. All of a sudden a lot of the problems have cleaned themselves up and…

Sheila McNamee: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: when problems arise we have such a healthier more productive way of working through them rather than just let's sit down and All the focus goes to the problem.

Sheila McNamee: Yeah, I mean it's kind of a no-brainer, once you step into that space of, who are we at our best, and how do we do more of that it's contagious. And you think weren't we thinking this way all along? I mean, it of reminds me of That cartoon, I don't know if you've ever seen it of these two scientists at a blackboard, and this big long formula and in the middle it says and then a miracle occurs. And one scientist is saying to the other scientists, I think you need to be a little more precise in that middle section there, but it is sort of like, Wow. this works, to talk about

00:40:00

Sheila McNamee: What is going? really helps redirect attention and focus and make possible, the movement forward for a group and organization. A team. What have you

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and I think it's the difference from positive psychology is. It's not just like a bag of tricks. It's not just technique and steer the conversation one way because I do think there's an arts or A component of being present in this process and genuine in this process, otherwise it doesn't work as well. Whereas just kind of bullishly saying,…

Sheila McNamee: Right.

Jeremy Schumacher: we're just going to talk about good things and almost becomes toxic in itself of that. Just positive, you…

Sheila McNamee: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: only good vibes, kind of mentality that falls apart because it's disingenuous. And so the Appreciative Inquiry Is much more about authentic approaching of. How do we come together and create something together that works better.

Sheila McNamee: Absolutely, I've worked with a lot of different groups, in a consulting role and Several times, sort of taken an appreciative inquiry approach and I prepare people, before they come together and ask them, There's a number of things. I ask people to reflect on before they come so they come in the right mindset and then we finally come together and I say, Okay, so what are the strengths or, something like that and inevitably someone will raise their hand and say, we can't talk about that until we've talked about the problem, even though I've done all this preparation beforehand, to why we're not

Sheila McNamee: Going to go there. but I never resisted. I say, Okay, you're right. let's talk about the problem. What are the things we must talk about? And I write them down on a flip chart or something. And once everybody's said, What they think we need to focus on, with around the problem. Then I just ask permission, I say, can I have your permission to pause this and we'll devote, x amount of time in a couple of hours but for now we do this and everybody is always fine because that they trust, Okay, my voice has been heard and we're gonna do this. And then at the end of the day, when I say, Okay, we need to now, go back to this, every single time

Sheila McNamee: The group always says, no, we don't need to talk about that anymore. We're good, we're fine.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Sheila McNamee: We're already in another space now. so yeah, it's not talking about problems. it's about how you manage that.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and sports is a fantastic avenue for it because each team is its own little ecosystem.

Jeremy Schumacher: What if we have a player who's not following the rules or, all these like that won't work for this reason?

Sheila McNamee: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: and then when you get the team together to sit down and kind of go through these things, like those reasons kind of evaporate not that they don't exist anymore but that were the problem solving looks so different that It's not relevant to talk about.

Sheila McNamee: Yeah, I mean, it's, the classic good child rearing redirection, right? When your kids are acting up.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Sheila McNamee: You redirects up to something else.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Sheila, what? Working as an educator working at it with the Taos Institute as a collaborator and all these different avenues, you've how do you Manage your own mental process. How do you check in with yourself? How do you kind of take care of yourself and make sure that you have the energy in the space for some of these? heavier, taxi or vulnerable conversations that you're a part of

Sheila McNamee: that's a really good question. Probably, I don't take care of myself in that way, to be honest.

00:45:00

Sheila McNamee: I'm kind of hard on myself. I, Have. Overly high expectations. I think for myself, but,

Sheila McNamee: I would say, What saves me is So the Taos community is an amazing. And life-giving kind of community. And so I know that there are always people that will listen and talk through, a current challenge but also I think While I can have some doubts about things. I generally just plow forward and so I try not to give much space to doubt or to. Now, I'm sounding, like, I take this dance of certainty, but I don't mean that either I think

Sheila McNamee: I guess optimism is the best word that I trust that things are going to work out.

Sheila McNamee: earlier when I was younger I would perseverate over things and worry and worry and worry and worry and now I'd say the last three or so decades, my motto Don't worry until you have to, because it's exhausting. and takes a lot of energy, and so,

Sheila McNamee: I look at things so a personal example right or around the start of the pandemic, my husband was diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer and, it was pretty held, I had to Drop him at the door of the hospital Boston for his surgery, I couldn't go in. He was raised in a religion that doesn't believe in medicine and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Mm-hmm

Sheila McNamee: so he was panicked, it just the whole thing. And so every day, I would not overly worry. I was concerned but, you kind of move through one day at a time. And I think that that saved me and saved us, to be able to do what needed to be done in that given moment without paralyzing myself with fear Of death of loss. whatever. So I think that. Sort of truck just trusting true trusting, the relations and trusting. The process are ways that I try to navigate the challenges. I confront

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I love it as you were talking, I just kept thinking trust the process and…

Sheila McNamee: it's a great old phrase.

Jeremy Schumacher: again, it's one of these things that I think For people who aren't coming at it, from this perspective, it sounds so foreign to just say, if we're being intentional and we're being authentic and we're trusting the process. we don't have much to worry about that almost sounds magical. And yet, once you get into it, and you're practicing it and you experience success with it becomes so much easier than You…

Sheila McNamee: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: perseverating or putting our energy towards things that we can't control.

Sheila McNamee: and I think that that's a key point, what you just said is things we can't control, in a medical situation like that, what can you control nothing? you don't know what the result of a surgery is going to be or diagnosed, So why? Put yourself and others through that, and again I think it's another theme for us who, are in this postmodern, relational way of being is, it's not just trusting the process but it's having faith that, things won't always work out but you'll find a way. To move forward. Why? Because you believe that others are there to help you.

Sheila McNamee: So you're not alone and I think that that's critically important and unfortunately as long as people stay in the kind of neoliberal ideology, they are alone and they do have to solve the problem on their own and if crisis, falls on them they don't have anyone to turn to and That's sad. That's really sad.

00:50:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah, I just had this thought that crisis is a lack of community, when these things come up and you are feeling alone or you don't have the support that you need. that's where a problem becomes a crisis.

Sheila McNamee: yeah, yeah, and I love the Chinese symbol for crisis is Danger and opportunity. It's too symbols, put together, danger, and opportunity and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Right.

Sheila McNamee: I think that summarizes it pretty nicely

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: Guess it's such a expansive topic because You can apply it anywhere, this has been so much fun. I got to do a training with you and Harley in a couple years ago which was really a fantastic thing. One of the silver, linings of the pandemic was some of those things were virtual

Sheila McNamee: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: But these are great topics for people who are interested in learning more for people who want to engage with some of these conversations. Where can they find the things? you're doing currently

Sheila McNamee: Good question. So yeah, there are things on the House Institute website. If you just Google Taos Institute and under my name it hasn't been updated for a long time but there are articles I had a website in the university. Just is transitioning it to a new platform. so it hasn't happened yet but eventually and I hope very soon. I'm some videos and articles publications and so forth there. But I would say probably the easiest thing to do is just Google my name and various things pop up. So yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and we'll have some links in the show notes, the Towers Institute has a pretty big list, maybe not most current, but a big list of a lot of, everybody who I think is on the board has a subsection for articles and PDFs that are free and accessible to people and then obviously the links for publications the books and things like that. But I think it's such a fascinating topic and…

Sheila McNamee: Right.

Jeremy Schumacher: for therapist.

Jeremy Schumacher: In general. But specifically, in helping professions this way of being this way of approaching things, this is so enriching that if it's interesting to encourage people to learn more about it,

Sheila McNamee: Yeah, let me there are two other things I wanted to share. I just published a few months ago book called Practicing Therapy of Social Construction with two of my colleagues from Brazil and that, is You Therapy of Social Construction. The original edited book with that I did with Ken Gargan was publishing 92. And this is, 30 years later and it's not edited. It we wrote the book and I think it's very practical and it's also got a real political edge to it, which I think is really important for us to consider that's another thing. But the other is the Toss Institute has now a platform called the Towson to Commons. And it's an online platform and anyone can join that. And if

Sheila McNamee: just I guess if you Google the Towel Institute, Commons, you'll find a way to get to it and you can sign up for it. And we have dialogues with the authors and house conversations. Anybody could offer, and say, I want to talk about x y or Z. So and there are resources and materials and all sorts of things available there. So I would encourage people to look into that.

Jeremy Schumacher: And it's as somebody who's done some of the trainings and gotten to sit on and some of the conversations with the authors these are fantastic resources that by and…

Sheila McNamee: Fantastic, thank you.

Jeremy Schumacher: large are free for people to join in. And so it's a great way to Get access to things.

Sheila McNamee: To. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: I've picked up several books just because I had a chance to talk to the author. So it's a very cool way to engage with this Highly recommend it. we'll have links for that stuff in the show notes, you brought something up and as long as I think we have a little bit of time. I want to talk about it a little bit.

Jeremy Schumacher: The new work and some of the things you're focused on currently.

Jeremy Schumacher: does that feel like a shift in perspective for the field or do you think that's there and it's just talking about it differently?

Sheila McNamee: I think it's a shift in the field, I think. have always been some people who have seen their therapeutic work as a form of social activism, so it's not brand new for everyone. But I think this is really a direction that

00:55:00

Sheila McNamee: our contemporary situation demands it, with all the challenges that we face in the ways in which those challenges at a global level, impinge on people's livelihoods and their being. So I think that is something new and it has serious implications the code of ethics for, we have a case in the book

Sheila McNamee: Practicing therapy of social construction of Emerson, my colleague in Brazil, working with AIDS patients, and they were cut out of some service by the local government. And he actually stepped out of his role as therapist in a letter writing campaign. And a lot of political activism that actually gained the services that they needed. and that some people will say that's not your role as a therapist needs therapy. Raises questions. About some of our Tried and true, Idols like ethics and so forth.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah and informed consent and confidentiality like those things are designed to protect the clients but often I think they protect the status quo or the systems that are exist in society right now.

Sheila McNamee: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: So that change On a systemic level isn't occurring.

Sheila McNamee: Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, I think we're on the precipice of maybe another revolution. I was lucky enough when I was young to feel like I was part of Maybe this is, really getting going. Now I would hope that because I do see more and more people seeing their work as much more than just helping a couple or family. Or an individual.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and I have a selective process for getting guests on and finding I think a lot of therapist in their clients' lives. And so, it's a unique profession, I think to see So many different people at such a deep level and see how some of these ideologies that we presuppose, as being normal that, they're not normal nor, are they healthy? And so I think it's a great step forward for the profession for therapist.

Sheila McNamee: Yeah, Exactly. Great.

Jeremy Schumacher: Sheila, this has been awesome. I'm so appreciative of you taking the time to chat today and all the work that you do in and around the field of therapy.

Sheila McNamee: Thanks Jeremy. I mean it's really been fun talking with you. I hope everything made sense but I enjoyed it.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, it's fascinating because I think you can read some of this content and if even people who maybe go back and read Fuko and Derida. And some of those postmodern thinkers it seems really heavy. But then I love conversing with you because it's so approachable. When we're just talking about it, it's not this heavy philosophy, that it may be sometimes appears to be.

Sheila McNamee: Thanks that's the very high compliment because this stuff can get very heady and it's really important to Talk about it in terms of every day, our everyday lives, and how these ideas are useful. So, thanks for the opportunity.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate having you on, and for all the listeners out there, make sure to check out those links in the show notes and thanks for tuning in. We'll be back next week with another new episode. Take care, everyone.

Meeting ended after 00:59:35 👋