The Wise Mind Happy Hour
Two therapists musing about the idea of an inner wise mind and how to connect with this psychic space in different contexts.
The Wise Mind Happy Hour
Getting Wise with Dr. Vijay Khilanani
Welcome aboard our first official guest, psychiatrist Dr. Vijay Khilanani, as we delve into the murky waters of pharmaceuticals, psychedelics, and negotiating at a car dealership.
- music by blanket forts -
okay, welcome to the wise mind. Happy hour yes, welcome we're having a little night recording um, and we have a special surprise for today. But first we'll just kind of catch up for a second I'm kelly, kelly.
Speaker 2:I'm john. As always, your favorite, favorite therapist or just two therapists.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just two therapists who decided to start a podcast, right.
Speaker 2:Out of nowhere.
Speaker 1:Out of nowhere. So, yeah, we're just going to check in. Tell us, john, what's been going on with you lately.
Speaker 2:Not a whole lot. We did get swag, though.
Speaker 1:So I'm really excited about that. Oh yeah, podcast merch we got podcast merch.
Speaker 2:We got shirts from my wife, sarah, and my brother who came up with the design, so I know I shouted him out last time. Jake butts really appreciate it, and certainly sarah for thinking about us yeah, shout out to both of them.
Speaker 1:That's so awesome. The shirt is so cool.
Speaker 2:We're gonna post a picture of it yeah, yeah, you're gonna post a picture of it I'll post a picture of it. Yeah, I don't know how're going to post a picture of it. I'll post a picture of it. Yeah, I don't know how to post.
Speaker 1:John's still figuring out the social media landscape.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was tasked to create an Instagram account. I created it.
Speaker 1:It was shut down immediately.
Speaker 2:An hour later that says this is fake. You have 180 days. It's on lockdown now.
Speaker 1:I know, one day we'll have to revive it.
Speaker 2:Don't ever put me in technology.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's okay, but that's how we started.
Speaker 2:I said I will totally be in this with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, which you will and do the least amount of work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, out of any way, which is normally my role, I know. So I know it's flipped around, hasn't it?
Speaker 1:I know it has it what about you?
Speaker 2:what have you?
Speaker 1:um, yeah, what's been going on well? I know I mentioned this on a previous podcast. Um, but josh and I did buy a new car it won't be here for four weeks, so we sadly just have to like keep talking about how excited we are, hasn't been born yet. Well, it hasn't been born yet because we did get to go down the stuff with the car salesman and kind of design it.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:It's a BlackRav4. It's a hybrid. It's the seats we wanted.
Speaker 2:Tell me more. It's heaven.
Speaker 1:And actually we went to this first dealership and the guy gave us a price and we were kind of like, all right, we want to go to other places. We kind of want to figure out if we can work this number down as you do, as I know from basically just movies and hearsay that you're supposed to haggle for a car. So we went to other dealerships and it turns out the first place we went they gave us the greatest deal.
Speaker 1:There was a guy who was just like that's a very good price like and we were sort of like, oh, and he wasn't even willing to talk to us about that price. And he was saying toyota rav4s, go for sticker because everybody wants one. They're very good cars. They last forever. The toyotas and the hybrids are great. So we were kind of like, oh wow, we're shopping for like the number one wanted car this is gonna be great.
Speaker 2:We're gonna get a sponsor by toyota. This is right. I mean, if we do?
Speaker 1:I will just drop 20s yeah, so we were like shopping around whatever had. It's so fun to go to different car dealerships and meet the different personalities, like it is some of them will kind of wait.
Speaker 2:Can we pause there for a second?
Speaker 1:it's fun for you I thought it was so fun really but it was fun in the way that, like I mean, I realize I'm 35, but it was fun in the way of like I really feel like an adult walking in here, yeah and I like walked up to the guy and I was like we're looking for pause because I didn't know what to say, and I was like a car and the guy was like laughing he was like you're in the right place yeah, and he was like this guy was very complimentary to us in that way.
Speaker 1:That's like you too. Yeah, you, we'll make it happen, we'll make it work, it'll be great. And then his their prices were like a lot higher and they had no inventory, but the guy was super nice and he showed us a couple of cars and we liked him. What was his name? Again, zoran Zoran.
Speaker 2:Shout out.
Speaker 1:Zoran Good guy, good man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wait, but did you feel like you were going into this, though with any type of you. Let's bring in the wise mind, did you feel? Cause I feel like when I go to buy a car, I'm already getting heightened into an emotional place.
Speaker 2:Okay, because I feel like when I step in there, I'm going to be talking to somebody who's going to tell me yep, that's great, let me go talk to somebody else and then I'll come back and get back to you. It's like why can't I just talk to that person? If you don't make any of the decisions here, why am I talking to you?
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, is that a rude take right there? I I'm sorry, is that a rude take?
Speaker 2:right there. I just feel like that already heightens me when it's like do you have any power? Cause I want to talk to the person who had who's like the making the decisions.
Speaker 1:I don't even have enough confidence to question that policy Like to me. It's like sometimes I go in those spaces that are so foreign to me, like car sales.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I just I'm like I guess this is how they do it.
Speaker 2:You know, like I, it's a little like I sort of defer maybe inappropriately so, and I don't know if that's confidence in me or just straight irritation, but there's a confidence in that irritation like to be like.
Speaker 1:This makes no sense To me. It's sort of like well, this is how it must be. You know like For me it's hard to just embody, yeah see, that's the thing.
Speaker 2:It's hard for me to embody that like wise, like this is the way this works, right. Like this is the system I'm in and I just have to kind of be not okay with it. But I have to engage park and are about to walk in. I have like a squeeze in my gut a little like Ooh, and. But then I also, as I always do.
Speaker 1:I think of it as like a self-worth exercise. I'm like because I feel anxious about this If I go in and I'm really authentic, and I am myself, and I speak freely, I will be connected to my self-worth and feel that vitality from that Like I'll go in there like confidently, as an idiot, and I think that works better than being like rude to them in the car sales space, like to kind of be like wait, wait, wait.
Speaker 1:I don't know anything, but I also know that I don't know anything, so I'm not going to walk out of here until I'm totally comfortable. If that takes me coming back five different times, you know.
Speaker 2:Like the guy was like writing down numbers and I was like what are these numbers Like? What are they Like? What for what stuff? You know, I'm like Googling. What is that? Is that a three or is that a five? What number is that?
Speaker 1:One of the guys thought I was being rude and I was like I genuinely was so confused and you're moving too fast, like I don't know, what this is For sure. And I think then you learn more. Yeah, it's like I now feel very comfortable in that space. So now it feels like this is a part of the world that doesn't intimidate me now and that feels so good.
Speaker 2:There is a nice feeling when you've accomplished it and purchased it that like man, that was an exercise of like doing something, because how often do you do it? Not that often, so there can be just a lot of like trepidation about it.
Speaker 1:But then when you do it, it's like I did that, I did that I adulted, that I adulted the shit out of that totally yeah and in the process, I'm correcting all these past mistakes I made as a young person. I'm younger person. I lost the title to the car I'm trying to trade in to like go to the dmv and of course I'm gonna get to the dmv. You don't have any of the proper documents no matter what you looked up online.
Speaker 1:When you walk in that door you are not going to have the right documents, so they send you to get them. I had to, like call the. They're like you have to get the lean release letter so we can make you a duplicate copy. The lien release company has gone out of business in the last 20 years.
Speaker 2:You're like lien release. I'm talking about numbers. What are these numbers?
Speaker 1:Totally so then, I had to call the FDIC, and the FDIC then told me where the loan or the lien was transferred on the original car.
Speaker 1:To Capital One Auto Finance. I had to have my mom talk to them because it's her car and she gave it to me when I graduated grad school. So all that later, like now, I know how to do that If someone needs a duplicate title. I truly make so many mistakes in my life that that's why I know how to do certain things, because I've messed it up the worst way.
Speaker 2:You could mess it up.
Speaker 1:So every step of fixing it, I've done so. Then when someone else is like I don't know where the title is on my car, I'm like I'm the person you got to because I've messed this up royally.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you how to do that, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'll walk you through it. It's not that bad. Same with, like medical insurance I've signed up for the wrong plan, I've done whatever and paid astronomical fees for. X and then fixed it and it's like I almost could have a side business coaching people on how to pick the right healthcare plan from the marketplace. I could sit down with them like interview them about what their medical needs are, go through the whole thing with.
Speaker 2:that Actually probably is a business and you would be really good at it.
Speaker 1:I could totally do it. I did it for Josh, I'll do it for anyone who asks.
Speaker 2:I actually offered it to someone who was like take it easy, I don't need that much help. I actually don't want your help.
Speaker 1:Shout out to Megan Marsh, who we all know.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, megan, she was a little like.
Speaker 3:I'm good.
Speaker 2:She knows how to hold a boundary, though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but yeah so, yeah. That was the big thing that we accomplished, that was the big thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I was mentioning earlier that the big thing recently was I took my boys to an NBA game recently. That actually made me think of a how wise is it? Question, which I know we're not getting into just yet. It made me think of like so the game I went to was the Bucks versus the 76ers, and I'm looking around and there's people wearing jerseys of every single team Because NBA is superstars.
Speaker 1:People follow the stars. Is that what it is? Yeah, it was like some guy wearing a kobe jersey, yeah, and like this isn't even the lakers aren't even playing.
Speaker 2:But it's like is it wise to just wear whatever gear you got?
Speaker 1:to now I'm of that school because you know I don't like the like super hyper competitive yeah we hate this team. They hate us. Like I like more of like.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm a fan yeah, generally, like generally, if you're a fan of the nba, just wear whatever nba gear you got yeah, yeah, I think I would fall in that category yeah yeah, like I like steph curry nice, good name yeah steph curry. I like steph curry.
Speaker 1:I'm not the biggest lebron fan, like I don't dislike him, but yeah I don't know. I think sometimes, when everybody likes one person, sometimes I'm like, yeah, this is kind of boring but it was me.
Speaker 2:I was like, oh, like, maybe I should just like have my kids wear whatever jerseys, yeah, because I was like trying to get their gear together and I was like yeah, we gotta wear like wear our bucks gear to support. And then I was like, well, they have a bunch of jerseys, they should just wear whatever they want Wear whatever they want, just to support the NBA, right? Yeah, yeah. So you're buying cars, I'm going to games.
Speaker 1:It's great. We're living with driving. We're living our life. Yeah, it's what therapists do. Yeah, I feel like I did so many other things this weekend. Now I have no memory of any. Um, no, you're just drawing blanks. Yeah, that's all right I had my own therapy this week, which was good maybe that'll come up in the episode. But yeah, nice well, today's a special day, yeah, we're very excited. We're kind of giddy right now because we have our first guest yeah, if you can tell.
Speaker 2:If you can tell, maybe you've heard him laugh but we're very excited to welcome Dr Vijay Kilanani with us who we've both worked with in the past and just to give a little background and then we want to hear from him. Dr Kilanani graduated from Wayne State University School of Medicine, completed his residency at the University of Michigan, fellowship at the University of Chicago Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, completed his psychoanalytic okay the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute for Adults, and that was a. That was five years training.
Speaker 3:Wow, a little bit more. A little bit more than that, a little bit more, yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:So we welcome Vijay to our podcast.
Speaker 1:Welcome.
Speaker 2:Yes, we're so excited and I think we're just excited because this is, in all honesty, when we first started the podcast, literally your name was like we have to have Vijay on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally Really. We got to get him. We have to have you on.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, no, thank you so much. I'm Totally Really. We got to get him, we have to have you. Well, yeah, no, thank you so much. I am. I'm giddy too, because I'm just happy to see you both.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's so fun to hang out, and I have to share this anecdote because I think it's just so funny. The first time I met you was, so we worked together, and my first day on the job, you walk into this. There's interdisciplinary rounds which for people, it's everybody who works with the page. You know the patients we're working with, so it's the therapist and it's the psychiatrist and sometimes the nurses, and you know every family therapist. They're all in there and I walk into this room and it's extremely intimidating.
Speaker 2:It's a huge, large table and we're talking about all the patients and so I sit down and everybody's coming in and introducing themselves and I'm like I'm not gonna remember any of these people. I don't know what they're talking about. I don't know any of these patients. So people are just like rounding on all these patients and talking about all these things and I'm like I'm not as smart. You know, I have all these doubts. And you're sitting like three seats down from me, maybe on the table, yeah, and you lean back in the chair and you whisper. You're like hey, John, John, and I like look over, and you look over at me and you go um, just so you know we have a men's poker game every week and what's your, what's your, phone number?
Speaker 2:And so that in and of itself made me feel so much more at ease, like you have no idea how like that had such a huge.
Speaker 2:I'll never forget that moment because, like everybody was like giving me their title, introducing things, and that was such a real, like just human moment and connection that I was like, so, like touched by that, that I was like I think I might make it through today, like that was like I think I might make it through today, like that was like a really big moment, and so I'll never forget that.
Speaker 2:But, and since you know I've had such great conversations with you, but it's like those little things that maybe you don't even remember that, or maybe you, but it just had such an impact on me.
Speaker 3:And you know what's interesting is, when we did work together, you both shared an office.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And I used to come to your office for that connection.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:It was like my little safe haven you know, in between seeing patients and talking to coworkers, I could just unbuckle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3:You know, Totally, yeah.
Speaker 1:No, that's the best. The best, like the safe bases you have at work. For sure, especially in a big place. Especially in a big place and when you're meeting a lot of people on a first day and it's like I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't know what I'm doing here. I'm way outside of my depth, Like there's yeah.
Speaker 3:Did you come? You came to my place, didn't you? Yeah, Did we play? We did play poker that one time.
Speaker 2:I mean horrible, I'm a horrible poker player.
Speaker 3:Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:I'm terrible, but that was another thing that made it so much fun was nobody was taking it seriously.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we were all just laughing about how bad we were really. I think there might have been one or two people that were taking it seriously, which is fine. They just took all. But yeah, yeah, that was fine, yeah, yeah, but anyway, tell us about, like, what got you into the field of psychiatry.
Speaker 3:Tell us a little bit about your story. Yeah, yeah, if you're willing. Yeah, yeah, sure, I let's see. Um, well, I am, I'm indian-american, so I that's relevant because I feel like both my parents are physicians. Okay, and being a physician is quite common in our community. And your brother, so I have a twin brother.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:He's a pediatric ICU doctor. I have an older sister, she's a psychiatrist but now she actually has moved past medicine and now she's into writing and other things. But we were at some point a family of physicians. Wow, and I just kind of grew up hearing my parents just old school traditional view of medicine, kind of caring for human being, and you know, really like getting personal and warm and the compassion, and it just was really appealing and I just kind of like idealized it for a lot of reasons, and on top of that, you know it was also the uh.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, sure, you can uh be a doctor or do nothing be nothing yeah, so your choice, your choice you do have a choice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you do.
Speaker 1:You could be nothing you're gonna be nothing or be a doctor I remember you told me that that you had a relative who was like trying to pay her son-in-law to become a doctor or something and he had like a successful hedge fund or something. And I'll never forget that I was like, yeah, that is really expecting everyone to be well, yeah, well, you know, it's just like I.
Speaker 3:I think the way I look on it now is that they came out of their time in history and they're part of the world. Really, I see it as a lot of historical trauma and then in survival mode and a lot of vigilance and certain ideas stuck, I think, in terms of how to just survive. I think in terms of how to just survive and and one of them, you know, was around the idea of, like, how to have a career and be a value and, you know, make a living and how to be viewed by other people, and so I think that was a prominent part of, I feel like, the community I grew up in, um, in, uh, michigan.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and we learned today that VJ is from essentially the same community that Josh is from Bloomfield Hills in West Bloomfield.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which is so great.
Speaker 3:I know, I know it is yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a great little spot. Those, those I'm I'm learning more about these outside of Detroit suburbs that are so charming.
Speaker 3:I know yeah.
Speaker 1:You know like great restaurants, great culture, yeah.
Speaker 3:Greenery too, greenery yeah.
Speaker 1:Near Detroit so you can have that Detroit kind of flavor. Yeah, it's great, buddy's Pizza. Buddy's Pizza which I'm going to die on the hill, that I think Jets is better and I know everybody hates that I say that, but I just will.
Speaker 2:What got you into psychiatry? Because I think I remember you telling me your dad was a cardiologist.
Speaker 3:Well, you know. So he's an oncologist. Oncologist it's interesting. You say that because my dad was going to do cardiology and he had a residency. And then his oldest sister. He learned that she had an advanced stage carcinoma, I think ovarian of some sort, and then she passed away. So after that, at a very young age, she had young kids and everything, so that really hit him and the family.
Speaker 3:So then after that he switched tracks into oncology and I remember him telling me at that time oncology was not an appealing field and that you know, there was a sense of poor outcomes you can't do anything for patients, whatnot but he felt personally invested and motivated to go in that field and he did that. And you know, when I went into med school I started out with all the like. You know I wanted to do the. You know the big fancy specialties and you know the ones that seem popular.
Speaker 1:Like derm or like.
Speaker 3:You know, I think I thought like cardiology or surgery, oh yeah yeah. And then, you know, I think I saw, you know, there's aspects of internal medicine that are really nice, but I just I'm not sure I totally felt compelled with anything yet. And even psychiatry, I had not thought about psychiatry actually that was not in my know plan at all because I also had this view that psychiatry I don't know just didn't, wasn't effective and couldn't help people. I don't know why I had that view, but I had that view and, frankly speaking, I you know the culture where I was training. Eventually, when I did tell people, oh yeah, I do want to do psychiatry, you know everyone's reaction at that time when I was in med school was a little bit like oh really why? You know, like disappointment.
Speaker 2:Is that how it's viewed? Or at least that was in the context you were in.
Speaker 3:That was in the context when I was in med school and I felt like that was kind of how it was viewed, in a sense that you know, there are specialties that generate a lot of revenue and you can build a lot of prestige and you have a lot of procedures etc. And psychiatry was not one of them. But I think I didn't have a good sense of what psychiatry did. But I definitely gravitated towards relationships, people. You know, the caring aspect.
Speaker 1:The loving cure. Say that again the loving cure, the loving, yeah I just didn't.
Speaker 3:And you know, I just at some point I think I met mentors and people in the field who kind of resonated with me. I think at some point someone recommended for me the road less traveled by Dr Peck I think Scottott peck and it was really just interesting and transformative for me reading that book because it was just a different view on something like depression and struggle. It was essentially looking at depression as a kind of like a having developmental purpose in that one can rework and rewire and remap who they are and it was like an important crisis, exactly yeah.
Speaker 3:And you know it was something to be utilized to grow as a person, versus something to kind of extinguish and, you know, combat. So reading that book just kind of got me to like connect with more and more people along those lines, and you know, and then I started doing some like rotations and I just started kind of going, you know, playing around with the idea and I thought, oh yeah, this, this feels like yeah, right for me like your pathology has meaning to it yeah, and, and you know right and that, like, unlike a wart, I need to remove my wart.
Speaker 3:Yes, depression, and and frankly I still think in some ways psychiatric psychopathology is looked at like a wart. You have an illness. You have a cure and you take it out, but it was helpful to view it as in a deeper context of meaning and and as an avenue for growth of an individual.
Speaker 1:you know and I really deeply believe in that. Even beyond depression. I even this is more my spirituality. I even believe like physical illness can be this, like crises are meant for you. I really do believe that and that if you can explore it, there's like a lot of richness to be. It's like it is a mechanism of change in itself. I've experienced that in my own life.
Speaker 1:Yeah big time yeah and I I have clients, I'll bring that too, and sometimes they're like I don't want to talk about it in that way and it's like fair enough, but really I feel like it's like an ethos and the work I do and it's why I like this work as well. I love that. I love that in psychiatry that was being said, because in medicine that's not so popular Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah that, like symptoms are something beyond just something to be eliminated. Yeah, right, right.
Speaker 1:Being more curious, like instead of targeting that behavior, more like I wonder how this protected you, where this served you, where you needed this, and could your own mind help you learn that? Like you don't need this now You're okay, and your own mind does it. Often that wise mind comes out. It's so nice. It gives me such faith in the wise mind, like it's in there. You know, you just have to help create the conditions, whether it's the therapy relationship itself, the emdr meditation, like whatever you know, gluten-free diet it's all in there, all of ice cream diet, yeah ice cream diet why not?
Speaker 2:why not? Yeah, yeah that's interesting, you know.
Speaker 3:It is interesting because I do feel like you know, there's some people in the medical field now who are trying to help us go towards more preventative, growth-based view of what medicine could be. You know, looking at lifestyle, like certain signals in body are something you can utilize to change your trajectory versus, like, high cholesterol, high lipids, and I just take a drug and that's it. Granted, that is appropriate in a lot of cases, but also depending on the radar of contact that you look at, the higher cholesterol can be a signal of many other things that are just maybe not going on well for the body, that individual. That could be looked at, you know.
Speaker 1:Totally I love that. So it was like incremental for you yeah.
Speaker 3:Very incremental and even in psychiatric training, I mean, it was, like you know, terrible weeks and a hundred hour weeks sometimes, and I used to ask that all the time I used to be like tell me, just tell me about like med school.
Speaker 1:Like I cause. I just wanted to.
Speaker 2:I wanted to know about like the grind. Like I want to know about like, what do you do in the morning to like get ready for work? Like I. I like to know about like a process, like what is your like process? Like I want to know, like the day to day, like what that was like at its worst. I don't know.
Speaker 1:There's something about it During med school? Yeah, Like I used to do that all the time.
Speaker 2:It used to be like just tell me about med school, Like how hard was that? Like how hard was that?
Speaker 3:I mean, you know med school was. I mean I just felt like it was tons of memorization and sacrifice and I think some people probably do it in a much better balanced way. But I know I went to med school doing what I needed to do but at the same time I just felt like all the things I was really interested in Because your curriculum is so pre-established, preordained and you have to spend all of yourself to get through it. It is just kind of life-sapping a bit. It was for me. I found myself actually with a really huge hunger for reading novels all of a sudden and autobiographies. At that time I was like I could care less reading some of my other texts.
Speaker 3:I'm sure I'm just like reading these, you know, biographies of people.
Speaker 2:I'm sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow. What did your family think of you going into psychiatry?
Speaker 3:Wow, what did your family think of you going into psychiatry? You know, initially my parents they weren't totally familiar with the field and so I think they had concerns I expected them to have in terms of, oh, you know, well, is it? You know that we have security and longevity and that kind of thing, and they wanted I think they needed some reassurance on that, and then I was able to kind of provide them that. So it wasn't their, they weren't totally familiar with the field, but they grew into it in the same way I did. So as I kind of felt myself in the field more and more I was able to like really, I think, present my own confidence, conviction about like the field being for me.
Speaker 3:And then you know they felt better, but they weren't completely familiar. And the good thing was I didn't choose to do nothing. I still was being a doctor.
Speaker 2:You were still an.
Speaker 3:MD, and that is important.
Speaker 2:Are you the only one in psychiatry in your family, no, actually.
Speaker 3:So okay, I'm in psychiatry. My sister, she went into forensic psychiatry. Really, yeah, she started out doing internal medicine, then she switched and then she went to forensic psychiatry. She also did psychoanalytic training she also had. She completed her master's in English.
Speaker 1:We got to get her on the pod.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know so she's. Yeah, we got the wrong Kilimani.
Speaker 2:No, I love that.
Speaker 1:So she's yeah, we got the wrong Kilimani. No, I love that. That's so cool, that is really cool.
Speaker 3:No, she's great, she lives in Harlem. She's yeah, she's a writer and she has lots of cool projects.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, that's really cool and I've always wanted to meet your brother because Vijay and I share that we have brothers that are PICU doctors.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, which is so funny.
Speaker 1:We also one of the first things you said to me when we met, or at least when I came to Chicago. You came to my office and you were like we're both kill, because I'm Kill Gallon and you're Killanani.
Speaker 2:I had no idea what that just meant when you said that that's true. Kill Kill Gallon, yeah.
Speaker 1:Killan. That, that's true. Kill, kill gallon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's funny, that's great, I love that. Okay, interesting, um. So I mean, maybe we want to mosey into our topic, yeah we're thinking we're going to talk today a bit about, because of vj, does psychiatry and psychoanalytic, what you would call it, analysis? Right, yeah yeah because you're doing it several times a week with each case.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have a few clients where I see them, you know, intensively, like that Okay, and some where I think that way, even though I'm not seeing them.
Speaker 1:Okay, totally, since you do the psychiatry and the analysis. We're therapists, we're seeing clients, whether group, whether individual. This idea, both in a clinical setting or in life, how, like relationships relating to other people, or we could take it even beyond, but for now maybe we'll say relationships with other people can be in itself, they can be a mechanism of change, like a healing mechanism, almost modality is, which sounds funny to say if you're talking about like my relationship with Josh or whatever, to say that it's like a modality but, you know, like a yeah, yeah, well, absolutely, no, absolutely, and you know to that point.
Speaker 3:In our field we have this term you know biological psychiatry, or you know biological interventions, etc. And I often feel like it's misused because to me it seems like it applies to pharmaceutical interventions only, or maybe even like electroconvulsive therapy or, you know, transcranial magnetic stimulation. But as I've grown as a therapist and the psychiatrist that I am, I really feel that the most biologically effective, potent intervention we have is the relationship, and I've never heard that being characterized as a biological intervention, but it is.
Speaker 2:It is the fundamental intervention that we have that is all based in biology and what makes it for, just for the audience, the lay person, what makes it fundamentally biological?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, it's essentially. You know, look at, you know the attachment relationship between a caregiver, a mother and the infant and essentially all the biological structures in the brain that somehow create this unique set of circumstances where any mother, animal or mammal all of a sudden now kicks in this new set of behaviors and ways of relating to their infant or their pup by licking and grooming and cuddling and nourishing, providing proximity. That wasn't there before and it's just like dance that is orchestrated by a whole set of hormones and up and down. You know, things that shift in physiology. That is so unique to delivery and nursing and taking care of children. And there's all these kind of structures in the brain that are so specialized for making sure babies and kids and adolescent animals stay close to their parents, largely because the connection, the proximity is nourishing and it provides security and safety. And then us as humans, it gets even more complicated because we can provide proximity not just physically but through understanding and intimacy, psychologically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and obviously a huge part of therapy is when there's ruptures and key ruptures in those relationships. Like the therapy relationship is a healing opportunity there. But it's interesting. Maybe we want to just think about this topic more generally because, as I'm thinking about it and I always do this, think about my own experience right With relationships with therapy, my own therapy. Think about my own experience right With relationships with therapy, my own therapy.
Speaker 1:The relationship piece is enormous and, like you know, meeting Josh, my person, who I'm always talking about, you know like so much the relationship with myself is so different. Being with you, like being kind of like relentlessly loved by someone, is so incredibly powerful and like easing. And you know, I felt it in friendships, I felt it in therapy relationships, you know family relationships and it's it. I I agree that like there is a I even can notice, especially because I'm doing EMDR and stuff like that and somatic stuff, and noticing more my body in the work, but noticing like healing and ease happening in real time in that kind of space. So like on a gut level in my own experience.
Speaker 1:I totally agree with this Like literally at the gut level, totally, you know totally like a, a warmth and kind of feeling like really at ease with myself, with the world, when you're loved, actually, you know what? There's a novel that Josh and I love by Otessa Moshfick. I don't know if you guys have read any of her work. She's brilliant, she's the best. She has this book called Eileen.
Speaker 1:That's a really interesting book about this character. She's like a young girl who's really, really, really lost and they made a movie recently about this. I didn't see the movie because the book is so good I can't taint it with the movie, but, um, there's a part of the book that like stayed with me. It hit me so hard where she finally makes a friend and in this really beautiful way it talks about how, like in one instant, you go from like feeling like everything's hopeless and you're lost to like I am okay to be alive in this world because I have this person to love me and I was like I remember I was like it's so rare I think it's happening more now but like for people to write about, like friendship and that what that kind of community does for the self and for well-being, and I thought it was so beautiful.
Speaker 1:The book is so interesting too because the character has all that is very grotesque in all these ways, but like so lovable at the same time, in that like vulnerability and honesty. And yeah, I remember thinking that, like what an amazing way to put it. That like in a second, like meeting a friend's gaze and knowing you're accepted, there is like there's nothing like that.
Speaker 3:And carrying that with you, yeah, yeah, and and and having that expectation that it's there, you can generalize it to others totally. You know all the you know influences that has on thinking and perception.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's amazing, it's incredible well, I I'm curious.
Speaker 2:If this is going off on a tangent, let me know. But I'm curious because you have such in-depth training in both analysis and therapy, as well as medicine. Do people come to you more looking for the medicine aspect of it, for the medicine aspect of it, and you have to kind of like back into the the like no, we have to develop a relationship here, the medicine will be. Does that make sense? Like, are people mostly coming to you because they just see psychiatry? I need something, I need you to prescribe something, or that's the agenda. And because of your training and analysis, you're like yes, that is a part of it and we need to cultivate. Maybe it's people that are looking for more analysis from you. I don't know.
Speaker 3:No, well, you know, frankly, the culture views psychiatrists as you know. Oh my goodness, we can prescribe these pills. I can really tinker with feelings in some really helpful ways. So please, let's prescribe something and let's do it. And there's a pressure and expectation. And yeah, I do feel this pressure at times to be quick on that and to kind of narrow my radar of focus. And you know it's a tension. I just kind of like live it, because I do also feel that sometimes people feel like, oh, she would just be a bit more quick. And you know, I will say, over time I've gotten more comfortable sitting with feeling states and not feeling a pressure, an urgency to prescribe. And I still feel very comfortable prescribing. You know, sometimes it's absolutely needed before the relationship kicks in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, to like show them like I'm going to help you.
Speaker 3:I'm here, yeah and oh my goodness, if you're, you know like you said you know, if you know like you said you know, kelly, like knowing, when you just feel like loved and accepted. Yeah, you're a different person Totally. Your physiology is different, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:Well, it's funny, like when you say like that physiological change, that biological change from being loved and accepted, the way I tend to conceptualize that in my own life and in my practice is like that's the real you coming out, I just for me that tends on like a center of my self level feel like that is you and that is the innate part of you that holds the worthiness that you were born with. And the rest is that I don't know if you call it egoic or protective parts, emotion, mind that's just defensive and ready for security, and I think the softer part is more like the self comes forth, the authentic yeah.
Speaker 3:Wise mind-ish.
Speaker 1:Wise mind yeah.
Speaker 3:Which and I would even say that that you well, I think you're right is not clearly defined. You either, it's a flexible, curious, open to change adaptation. You, that does feel distinctly different than the other versions, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, I almost think, and now this is like definitely getting into like spiritual, this self is like almost sort of nothingness. It's so like that collective and it's, like you said, flexible, open, curious, mindful, completely and totally present, kind of the eckhart tolle, like that essence, yeah, and what a freaky thing to be okay with identifying with, unless it's been bolstered by the embrace of others.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because it is like oh wait, what am I? I'm not, you know, I'm just open and an empty, you know yeah and it's like flexibility by virtue of emptiness, which feels kind of scary totally. But when you do feel it, you really feel like look, uh, I don't know if you said this on air or not oh, that the dealer you know, yeah, but you can kind of walk into the dealer confidently, knowing that you don't know, and embrace, like that's okay that's.
Speaker 1:That's why I find those spaces where it's like you're supposed to know what you're doing and everyone here's like a toxic man you know it's like, like that space. It's such a great space to like explore that nothingness.
Speaker 2:Cause it's like what, what if I tried?
Speaker 1:something else and tapped into that deep like open. I don't know anything and that's fine and I I find it's often very disarming for even like a toxic male environment. I really do they often, like when I said that we're here to buy a car, they kind of laughed and were like great, you know. Like I didn't come in there, like I need this and this and this is what I need, you know.
Speaker 1:It's like it was sort of like I don't know what the hell I'm doing yeah and maybe that's fine and like open and there's like a lightness in the air with it.
Speaker 2:It makes me think a group therapy, because I don't like a guided process group with like a topic.
Speaker 1:I don't think you do either.
Speaker 3:No, god no.
Speaker 2:I would rather go in not knowing anything, and even when I train group therapists they're so scared about like what if I don't know an answer to a question?
Speaker 3:And it's like that's great Totally.
Speaker 1:And maybe a client can come in.
Speaker 2:You're not going to know answers to all of these questions and so you don't have to feel confident and, at the same time, what an opportunity to just go in there and just be with that not knowing and being with that and even sitting with somebody and saying you know what? I don't know the answer to that. And it's okay that we don't know right now we can sit with one another in that unknown.
Speaker 3:And I think patience and frankly, other people respond when they feel that in you they're more likely that they'll get into the sweet spot themselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. I think I'm almost better at like coming to that place. This is maybe bad, but I'm better at it in work than maybe like life. I'm looking at Josh, like to remember that stance and that like slowing down and coming to that presence like I, in my daily life I can be a little more autopilot or a little more like this is the correct way to do this, you know, like and not open you just I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:You just said it's easier for you to do at work.
Speaker 1:Or like. For some reason I'm more like practiced at it.
Speaker 2:I completely agree with you. Yeah, because again, I'm not trying to like, but like the parenting of it all. Again like it's harder for me to show up, probably Instinctually. I want to have answers, especially for my children.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like they come to me and I want to have an answer for them, or I want to drop a dime on them of like, a nugget of like yeah instead of it's not instinctual to just say I don't know yeah it's like a child, you know, like yeah like they're so thirsty for like you.
Speaker 2:They look at you as like a somebody I mean not like, I don't think. In their mind they think you're wise, but you're available to them. So they're looking for so many answers and it's just not instinctual for me to just be like, yeah, I don't know. Let's sit on that for a little bit. I feel like I have to feed them something. That's the nourishment, that's what it is. It's like feeding them. I have to nourish them with something, and it would be almost like I'm depriving them of nourishment if I didn't have an answer for them.
Speaker 3:You know, I know my daughter, like we had somebody my wife's grandma passed away and there's like tons of questions about where do they go? Will you die too? Can we die together? Will we be together? Will we be able to walk? Will you look and you know, and sometimes there's a pressure to be like didactic or say, you know, okay, well, there's a heaven and well, will we be in heaven? Will we eat food?
Speaker 3:in heaven will we go to our favorite restaurant I mean there's endless buddy's pizza endless and and really really like at some point, just owning. How old was she when she was asking that? She was like, I feel like a couple years ago. I mean that's astounding, yeah, it is. Or even just like, you know, we're driving and sometimes I hand out snacks in the car to some people who are on the street and homeless and she's's like why'd you do that? They don't have, why don't they have food? And then you know, okay, well, I don't know what do I call them? What word do I use? You know, like they're just people, only some people don't have houses. Why don't they have houses? You know?
Speaker 2:why do we have? A house but there's an urge to want to be able to answer that. For me at least, there's like a, there's an immediate like kind of like. I have to answer this for them, I have to give them something something something you know it doesn't have to be the right answer, but I have to give them something.
Speaker 2:You know that actually, when you just said that about like grief and loss and death, when the pandemic hit shane, my youngest son was probably I mean, at that point he was two, two to three years old when it was like lockdown, lockdown and every night put him to bed. It was the same routine. I would turn off his lights, I would say, you know, good night, love you. And he would say I have two questions. When is the virus going to be over? He would say to every single night.
Speaker 2:Oh, like that was the first question he would always ask and I would always say soon, like I, I don't know soon like and it was so like I would leave his room like in tears, like, just like, because it was just such a moment where we didn't know I know he was so scary and it was just like soon, like I didn't.
Speaker 2:The other question was when are we going to milwaukee which is pretty funny because that's where my family's from. But that was what was torn away from him was like seeing family consistently. So the two questions were when is the virus going to be over and when are we going to milwaukee? But like that was his life, it was kind of like these are like the most important questions I need answers to and it was kind of like soon was like my answer to both of those.
Speaker 3:Anyway, but that's so interesting. It was that order. When will it be over? When will it be over and when are we going to?
Speaker 2:I'm pretty sure that was the order, if I had to. I mean, I'm sure there were iterations where it was mixed up, but it was, it was. It was just like the routine. Like you know, you get your into your bedtime routine and that had folded into the routine because of the pandemic. Like that was just a part of the routine now.
Speaker 1:Wow, where it was like asking those two questions. He's like wondering if you've been briefed that day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was like, yeah, I read the briefing and you know, probably like a necessary part of the routine.
Speaker 3:It was necessary.
Speaker 2:It was yeah, and I think it probably, if I really wanted to go deep on it.
Speaker 2:It was probably necessary for me to reassure myself that like this can't possibly go on forever, like I almost like I needed to be like saying it to him, but also probably like soothing myself in a way of like it has to be soon Right, like I it to him, but also probably like soothing myself in a way of like it has to be soon right, like I have to have hope that this is soon going to be different, but anyway, yeah, I wonder like, since I'm oh, were you gonna say something?
Speaker 1:sorry, no well, I'm just thinking this is what you do is like kind of like this is what happened with our gratitude, one where we got like yeah, we're into it, like really into it, but I love that. Well, where do you think medicine, medication like pharmaceuticals, fall into all this?
Speaker 2:you know, there's such like visceral, sometimes anti-psychiatry movement and there always has been. Yeah, and so it's like yeah, there's always, like you know, I get these, whether it be journal articles or things like that, or it's like. There's always, like you know, I get these, whether it be journal articles or things like that, or it's like new study that shows longitudinally like this.
Speaker 1:you know Pseudoscience.
Speaker 2:You know that type of thing. And it's like there's no real middle ground of like these medications are needed, right and then, and they're needed, but then there's not the conversation about let's use it as little as possible so that if we can get to a taper or if we can have you off of them, great like let's move in that direction and obviously, like you know, some psychiatric illnesses are different, exactly you know.
Speaker 3:But I do think, like, for example, let's just say antidepressants, ssris. You know I view them as affect attenuators. They kind of tinker with affect. They don't just find the depression in the brain, they tinker with emotional arousal. And we've all seen this where if somebody has side effects it can tinker with emotional arousal in the wrong direction. Some people get activated, some people get immediately blunted and some people get the right dose of just tinkering. Where the distress is engageable they can function and grow into other experiences that could then support and buttress them so that if they have the level of distress again they're a different person, they have different side relationships. But I do feel like with SSRIs what one wants in the beginning, let's say, is different than what one wants and needs five, six years later.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:I often feel like side effects, you know, like libido, or some people would say they can't cry, you know or they have loss of creativity, and so I often find that even prescribing is not just a categorical thing. Aha, you have depression, you're on it, end of story. It's an active, dynamic process. You know we have to, like, check in and make sure it's still supporting the agenda of the person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I know Kelly and I are curious also on your take on psychedelics and like where, because you read about that all the time. I mean even in just whatever, like New York Times or whatever. I mean there's articles everywhere about like psychedelics, and are they not that?
Speaker 1:Or even like ketamine, is somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 3:You know well, I'm still forming opinions. I don't know much, but I will say that you know. I don't know ketamine. I often hear something along the lines of you know it can be helpful, but it doesn't last.
Speaker 1:And research showing it's less effective than SSRIs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I don't even know, but I have more questions that come up yeah. You know, like the idea of flexibility is very appealing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like in psychedelics, like wow, that's like pretty cool. You could just like put this in the brain and you're open, and that makes a lot of sense. And that's kind of what I think therapy and relational experiences are trying to target. Over time, you are trying to open up a more rigid structure of a personality into kind of that space of, like, you know, curious nothingness. That you know can be, you know, adaptive and etc. And so then questions like well, what if you do really quickly?
Speaker 1:like what is it do?
Speaker 3:differently, like there's a whole structured version of oneself that is ingrained and in its stable, based on a different framework, a different way of referencing. So now, if you jolt it like and I know it's not a jolt because these are low-dose, but still if you open things up, this is like shifting identity structures so quickly. And it's interesting because, you know, isn't there like a caricature of the fear of what people have when they go to therapy? They're like I don't want to change who I am Right.
Speaker 3:And it's interesting because that's not coming up with psychedelics that fear. But it's interesting because it would change who you are. But who you are is something to change over time, but it is also a structure that provides you with stability, yeah, and so it just makes me wonder about the pace of change and what one loses in the process based on that pace.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's not as long-lasting? Yeah, it is a good question. It's like if you just kind of enter that space so briefly and dramatically, yeah, who knows, it is interesting. I feel this completely unfounded bias against it a little bit. I don't know why Against psychedelics? I think I'm just a little bit like ugh really. I don't know. I feel a little irate.
Speaker 2:Nothing we talk about here is founded, so we're totally fine with that.
Speaker 1:You know, like I think that sometimes like the culture around, the psychedelic use is like fucking annoying. It's just like I don't know. It's like the people hawking it are always, like you, just love drugs, Like I know you.
Speaker 2:I'm friends with you.
Speaker 1:I've been to concerts with you like that. You just like drugs. And they're the same people who are like I won't take an Advil. You're like oh, for God's sake, not everyone.
Speaker 3:So I do think that, like this kind of push to you know, explore further different pharmaceuticals, including psychedelics, explore further different pharmaceuticals, including psychedelics I still do feel like there's a pressure on the industry and the field to scale quick, you know, accelerated results. So a drug that can make things flexible really quickly is hopefully a shortcut for what Like really one's life changing right, you know, one having different relationship opportunities and life events and even luck that then make you different, you know, and there's just there's trade-offs, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. Well, that's. That's the great question. Where it's like quick change, it's like what is the change?
Speaker 2:Well, when you're saying quick change, like the medication will give you that quick change, and is the quick change that we're pathologizing, just normal feelings that people need to be able to feel like? You're feeling anxiety and so you need a quick change from anxiety. So I'm going to give you this pill, so don't feel it and it's like, well, sure, that's a quick change, I won't be feeling my anxiety, but like anxiety serves a purpose and like, in certain levels, yeah, you know it's, it's debilitating a hundred percent, and but that push for like there's something wrong, it's pathologized, we got to change it quick.
Speaker 3:Or this person's having not to minimize depression, but like this person's having like definitely an episode, but like, yeah, the quick, like it's got to be like immediate is having anxiety based on like who they are in their psychology and their past experiences and how that interfaces with their current situation and circumstances. So, if you know, the experience of too much anxiety, panic that needs to be changed right away, is also a byproduct of like who they are. Um, and so, if psychedelics, maybe they feel empty or not worthy or whatever, and and and maybe that feeling is based on a real history, yeah, a real history, that a drug won't change, but sometimes they do argue I think, people who use these a lot that it speeds up like insight, right like my, my mother's mother.
Speaker 1:So this is why this, and then they're like I'm changed. But I you'd wonder, is that like like having a dream like that, or is that profound?
Speaker 3:insight, that's right.
Speaker 1:Good point, right yeah because I feel like that's what I hear anecdotally, like I know what my soul did three thousand ago or whatever. And now I know, and you know, and it's like, and often people are, they're just chasing more of the use of like ayahuasca users. I feel like they're just looking for more ayahuasca all the time. You know, it's like I don't know if this is really sustainable. Hey, do what you want in your spare time, but like I just wonder. And then some people have a psychotic episode and they're forever different.
Speaker 2:And I don't know what you think of it?
Speaker 3:That's totally drug induced, I mean yeah, Well, no, I, you know, I I've heard really. Yeah, I mean that is a concern I, it's a concern to me, I.
Speaker 3:I feel, you know, worried about recommending, and I do think like and see. That's another thing about recommending. And I I do think like and and see that's another thing. How do you know if one's mind will welcome the opening up that the psychedelic induced? It could be panic inducing also, yeah, and I'm not sure how they would pharmaceutically control for that, because that's more of a mind thing. Like our minds, you know our minds. We want them to be flexible, but they also need to be rigid too. There's no stability in a mind if it's not a structure. So, you know, opening it up should feel like something, and it's understandable that it'll be a whole wide range of different types of anxieties for different people we haven't solved it.
Speaker 1:Believe it or not, we haven't solved it.
Speaker 2:You know what's crazy about all of this. You asked me early in the episode where you were like, yeah, what's come up for you? And I was like, yeah, nothing, whatever. I went to jury duty, oh whoa, you blocked it out I totally blocked it out.
Speaker 1:Were you like called to serve.
Speaker 2:So you're supposed to go down there 830 to 430?.
Speaker 1:Yeah to some like god, awful part of the city.
Speaker 2:They cut me off in the last one at 330. I was like I'm going to serve on this all week, Like the judges are like you're going to be here all week. If we pick you, it's like round after round. I'm like they're, they're gonna pick me oh my god I know this was a sharp left from what we were just talking about, but I was like, wait, why didn't I not bring that up? I blocked it out what did you feel?
Speaker 1:did you feel like annoyed? Did you feel anxious?
Speaker 2:that I was down there. Yeah, I felt like, well, definitely annoyed because I was, I don't want to do this and then, like I just didn't want to do it. But then when I got down there I was like, okay, well, this might be like an interesting story and just an experience, and then it just turned really boring for a lot.
Speaker 2:Just really boring sitting there listening to other people be interviewed. And then you go to lunch and you have to buy your own lunch they didn't provide it and then you come back and then you finally get in the jury box and they ask you your questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it was interesting they ask if you serve time right yeah, well, um, I don't think oh, I was in a criminal case.
Speaker 2:So maybe yeah, no, they've yeah, I they've asked you that, like if you were convicted, or anything like that. Um, but it was like it was like a lot more questions about like, okay, where do you work, what do you do, yeah, um, what, uh, and what do you do at that company or whatever? How long have you been there?
Speaker 2:And then they have, like the lawyers ask you questions like the two different lawyers, but yeah, and the bailiff will come out after they like meet in the judge's chambers and then they're like all right, we're going to give the checks to the people who thank you for coming, like, and there's like three rounds of that and I was not getting a check yet. So I was just like I'm going to be here all week.
Speaker 3:But I was not and you got your final check.
Speaker 2:And then I got my $35 check for serving my civic duty which pretty much paid for my lunch at Corner Bakery that I had to pay for in downtown Chicago across from Daily Plaza. But yeah, why did I not think of that? I really blocked that out.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's so awful Jury duty. I remember my dad was a lawyer and I was like God, son of a, I have to go in for jury duty.
Speaker 3:He was like it's an importance of service. I lived in.
Speaker 2:Chicago 20 years never got called for jury duty Wow, Never, wow. And I went down there too and what was interesting, what I noticed is they're going through, you know, the judge asks you what you do and they just like go like row by row people, and when they asked me what I did and I said it, both lawyers immediately wrote it down and I was like is this like a bad thing? They don't want. Like a therapist, they usually don't want a therapist.
Speaker 1:They usually don't want people emotionally intelligent or regular intelligent I mean I think yeah.
Speaker 2:Because then one of the lawyers came after me and she was like doctor, and I was like no, I'm not a doctor. And she was like you're a psychologist, and I was like no, I'm not a psychologist either.
Speaker 1:I'm a therapist, and she was like OK, she's like how could that be? You're a man.
Speaker 2:You have to be a doctor, so I don't know. They must have had it out for me that I was a therapist.
Speaker 1:They have it out for people that are kind of with it, the lawyers. Now, obviously the judge wouldn't feel that way, but I think typically they want people suggestible. And if you're a therapist and you seem like well adjusted, you're harder to control, like I guess they must.
Speaker 2:They might have also like kicked me out because they were like would you have any problem like with like getting legal documents on the internet, like legal zoom or something like that? I was like, no, not at all they're like next.
Speaker 2:This guy doesn't care about anything because a bunch of other people were like next, this guy doesn't care about anything, because a bunch of other people were like I would want a lawyer to see it, lawyers need to see it and they didn't come back to me to ask questions. But I feel like those people were also making the assumption that it's like they're not all good lawyers, just like they're not all good websites, legal websites. So it's like you're making the assumption that just because you find a lawyer to review something, they're a good lawyer.
Speaker 1:Right and it's like I don't know, probably the same deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I didn't get to that, but man, we could block out that jury duty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like for you they wouldn't ever want a doctor, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that would be tough, I bet, I tough, I bet I know, I know, I know one of my colleagues had served, but I somebody who did get picked, though had their phd, but they were a professor in like mathematics oh or something like that.
Speaker 2:So, but nobody on that was being interviewed was a medical doctor, interesting yeah, I feel like they don't usually want lawyers yet you could probably write and say that you're a medical doctor.
Speaker 3:I can't serve because I'm too busy with right. I, yeah, I feel like they don't like that too busy.
Speaker 1:Mia tried to do that, she got screamed at she's not a medical doctor.
Speaker 2:I'm saying, though, like the MD, I probably I you wouldn't word it that way, but you would probably word it like you know, I'm seeing patients. I have to, they're acute, I have to see them every day.
Speaker 1:Like this is you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're like on the way to the gym, you know it reminds me of like, when I was younger, my dad would tell me that he would sometimes he would be like get pulled over by the police for speeding or something oh yeah, and then he pulled the doctor, you know, and he had a white coat, and this was back in the day in Bloomfield Hills. It worked.
Speaker 2:And he would say listen, I have to see a patient immediately. You have to let me go.
Speaker 3:And then once he you know he said something and they said, oh, let's call the hospital, see if this is true, if you have to really go in for some emergency. And the police called the nurse and the nurse said yes, officer it's true, she covered.
Speaker 2:Good for her.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:That's an amazing story.
Speaker 1:I love it. So, okay, our question for today for our segment how Wise Is it? Is it wise to remain in the city for the long term, live in the city, maybe raise your family, whatever your family is made up of, in the city proper? We're in chicago here, versus like suburbs or country or you know, outside of that urban environment. How wise, is it?
Speaker 2:What do y'all?
Speaker 1:think we're all biased, by the way.
Speaker 3:We all live in the city.
Speaker 2:We all live in the city. I mean my first, yeah, my first inclination would be it is wise to live in the city. Now, I think I view it through the lens, at least right now, of the opportunities that my children have and the exposure that they have to so many different things living in a city like Chicago. Yeah, culturally, just different ethnicities, their school. I love the accessibility of things, not having to drive everywhere, taking public transportation. I mean, we have world-class museums here. I just feel like, at the age that they're at, it's exciting and I feel like it's really wise.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think you know making therapist money, you know you're sacrificing space. They don't have a yard so we're going to a park where you know. So I think that there's always there's give and take. But yeah, I think I see a lot more positives about it right now as they're developing in elementary school that I know that growing up in a more homogenous suburb where I grew up did not have so I had access to a city, growing outside of Milwaukee, but still even that was so much smaller.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So much more segregated. Milwaukee is a very segregated city. Yeah, I think it's wise, but again I don't know. Then I have all these parents that are talking about how high school is a whole nother thing of like figuring out where your children are going to go to school, and that's like difficult. And yeah, I don't know, vijay, what do you think?
Speaker 3:I mean the whole CPS thing is quite overwhelming when I think about it. I mean I agree with everything you said. Like it is, the city is wonderful. It's so diverse, it's so many things available. I'm not a fan of, you know, parking tickets and other tickets I get in the mail.
Speaker 1:True, yes.
Speaker 3:Sometimes repeatedly yeah.
Speaker 2:And then taxes. I mean, that is just like insane and you know it's funny.
Speaker 3:Like then you meet, you know friends or family move to the suburbs and they're like, oh my God, you have to move to the suburbs and they tell you about like something amazing. Like you know, they're, I don't know the park district there. Like you know, they're, I don't know the park district there. They're, they have like water slides, and you know like, yeah, amazing gym and indoor pool, you know, and yeah, it's just you know, here are the things that come.
Speaker 2:What's interesting, though, is I talked to a friend the other day too, though, but and and saying how, like you know, the, the lack of options that they have, though, as well as kind of like oh man, you live in the city Like it's just like God, I have to go eat at Applebee's again. Or you know, like I mean, I'm not speaking to Michigan because obviously you have the best food in the world I heard earlier.
Speaker 1:Oh, my gosh, josh's grandfather loves to go to Applebee's.
Speaker 2:Listen nothing against Applebee's, but I think also it's like what you don't, you know, you see what maybe you don't have. And then you know there's like that type of comments of kind of like, oh, my God, like, and the fact that they have to drive everywhere, Like that's another thing where it's like oh, you can jump on the train and you can do this and you know that type of thing so you know, actually we used to live downtown and, uh, then we moved to bucktown.
Speaker 3:When our daughter was born and I remember moving to bucktown, my first response was like wow, I feel so desolate and empty here yeah like and it almost felt unsafe to me really, in that emptiness.
Speaker 3:I don't have that feeling now, yeah, but just coming out of downtown sure, and it's weird because I'm from the suburbs originally but come from downtown I was just like familiar and used to like a lot of just people and I felt like something really felt wrong yeah when I, when we moved, and I noticed it, and now I, you know, now I go to downtown I'm like, oh my god, so many people, you know, and there's too many cars, and you know.
Speaker 2:But yeah, well, that's the thing and I, kelly, I want to hear from you. But, like, there are certainly days where it's like I'm driving and I'm like I just want a house that's I don't know 500 feet from the next house like I just want to be away from, like people, there's so many days where it's just like, god, it would be great to just be able to. We don't have any plans today and my kids can just go in a backyard and just run around for the entire day, because it's like I don't want to get out of the house and take them someplace, you know I know it's like really, it's like there's so many pros that I love and obviously we've chosen to do and our, our goal is to stay.
Speaker 1:but yeah, there are those moments where you're like oh, or like sometimes hosting things like more cramped in here and like it is such a dream to have like a big space and a bunch of people can come but, also like people, like people who live in LA.
Speaker 1:A lot of times, especially if they move from like New York, they'll be like, yeah, you have space, but nobody like ever wants to leave their house Cause it's like a long drive. So it's like sure, you have the space for all this, but like, are you really doing it? Whereas, like New Yorkers are like getting together because their places are so small, they're like not sitting at home. It's kind of a community to it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you share your spaces there. Yeah, yes, it's.
Speaker 1:You're more up in people's and here a little bit less probably, but sometimes in downtown definitely more of that, but sometimes in downtown definitely more of that. But, like, one of my favorite things in life is, like a summer night, like a Friday night, we walk to dinner in our neighborhood. That is a city thing, oh yeah, I mean, unless you live in, like Gilmore Girls Shout out to Sarah with the Gilmore Girls reference, stars Hollow, like you know, like that, we on Clark, here in andersonville, so many great places and luckily we live in the kind of neighborhood where, like you can walk into places, right, some of them and they're good places, like lonesome rose is so good and dollop for brunch yeah, you know, we, we like to go out a lot, so it's like diner grill, yeah, I mean I think that that's one of the huge positives is like there's.
Speaker 2:You can always find something I do.
Speaker 1:You would find some someplace in the summer is crazy in chicago, like there's always something to do, you know which sometimes that can also be annoying.
Speaker 2:But I just feel like there's so many more opportunities that it doesn't. It's not mundane by any means, and I feel like if I were in a suburb that would become a little bit too routine and mundane for me. Not that I'm going out all the time in the city of Chicago, I think it's that it's there when you want it. Yeah, and then you can just like engage on a whim and it doesn't take like a big like to do. Yeah, and then you can just like engage on a whim and it doesn't take like a big like to-do yeah.
Speaker 1:I wonder too, like now I might get in trouble for saying this because it's just like a little bit of a fantasy, like a negative fantasy, that like if we moved to some suburb, like would the other women and men that we'd meet to be friends with like be as like cool or intellectual or like I don't know? Like there's a part of me that's like oh, it's hard to picture, yeah, that's not fair, but it's like, and then it's like an assumption, and then vj and I have to drive out to do the podcast is that how it goes?
Speaker 3:down because how does this impact us?
Speaker 1:that's the rise wise question. Right, I know I have like a guest room for you. I'm like stay a while. I don't think that's very fair because I'm like casting. I know people live in the suburbs who are super actually stimulating and sorry, I'm eating and cool and you know, like wonderful I have so many.
Speaker 1:But I do feel like some of those people I know will say, like that's kind of a tough thing about the suburbs. That's not the average person, you're more likely to get people a little more with it in the city. Yeah, and that is kind of important to me.
Speaker 2:I think I, I also have like a deep rooted kind of like thing against having a lot of stuff and so I kind of like living in a place that feels a little bit more cramped, because I don't like a lot of stuff. Now that could change very quickly because my boys are only getting bigger and it already feels a little bit smaller. But like I just I don't like stuff Like I want to have like what's like necessary for me and I just I don't like stuff Like I want to have like what's like necessary for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you like minimal. I do Very much and so I don't like the idea because if I have like a house, if I move to a suburb and I have a house, I'm just going to fill it with stuff and that like I don't want to do that.
Speaker 3:You know my sister. She lives in Harlem and when I visit her it's it's just such a like. It's a welcome culture shock in a way, because you know, again like the space is so small. But yeah, let's just go like to Central Park or this place and it's just like kind of mind-boggling to me. Number one that I'm in this massive park is just like belongs to everyone. Yeah, you know it's. It's like your backyard, it's like her backyard. She just kind of walks out there every day.
Speaker 3:And then also the. I mean just the mom and pop you know, shops, restaurants, yeah, I mean, it's amazing, it really is.
Speaker 1:It is amazing. Yeah, yeah, my friend Leah, yeah, yeah, my friend leah we she lives in new york, um, and we facetimed with her this morning actually her and her adorable baby um shout out to leah but she one day was facetiming me from like the basement of her building. At the basement, like first floor of her building, has just like a giant kids playroom and the baby was with like a bunch of other kids and she's in there. So she was kind of at home but kind of like oh, just facetiming me from there and chatting and I'm like sure, like the spaces are smaller, maybe she'd have a bigger space in another city or whatever. She has a great place, but I think it's like she also in her own building, goes down and there's other kids and other parents she can talk to and it's like I'm sure people in the suburbs would kill for that sometimes when it's like Saturday morning and you're just like at your house right.
Speaker 1:You know, and the baby was like, so into it, like looking at every other kid. It was so cute and yeah, there's like down the street, is her friend and yeah, to have that community, especially when you're starting off as parents or having little ones it's so huge to have that yeah instead of having to like literally plan like a week ahead of like you gotta drive somewhere.
Speaker 2:Are they gonna nap? Everything revolves around the naps yeah look at this producer, right here we uh josh is serving us all pizza food this is just incredible. This is incredible.
Speaker 1:Oh careful.
Speaker 2:There it is. Yeah, so that community is like as a new parent. It's huge.
Speaker 3:You know, when we moved to Bucktown, we were right across the street from Lucy Flower Park and it was just like walk out of the house, go get coffee, go there. Oh, she has to go to the bathroom. We come back, it's not a problem, no car needed so nice yeah, that's like what kind of life.
Speaker 1:Do you want it's like, do you want all the comforts to be housebound?
Speaker 2:right or no, that's a good point, because then if you're, you're probably like cultivating that space to be more and I mean, when I visit friends in the suburbs, yeah it would, it would be great to have some of the basements that they have it would be like, oh, my kids would love this. Like they're huge, they got a ping pong table, they got this, they got that and it's like, wow, like so many like things that of course their kids are already sick of because that's where they live. But like when you're looking at it with fresh eyes, you're like, oh, look at all this room. Like this is great, totally, I don't know but you can really.
Speaker 3:I remember growing up in michigan you can go a long time without seeing people or moving yeah, yeah because you don't need to. You know, if you have the space or the ping pong table at home, we know we had that one too and it's just. You know it's so nice. But I, I do love about being here and then I even what I love about being in new york is like I'm forced to move yeah, yeah, you get so many steps.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and here you know it's there too I still drive, but like it's still there's, like you're just kind of forced to like interact with the city or you know people and not feel so you know Well.
Speaker 1:Also like in the pandemic, it seemed like a good amount of New Yorkers left the city and then a year or two later like really regretted it. You know, because obviously during the pandemic, actually my friend Leah, this other girl we went to college with, she and her husband moved to Westchester, maybe or somewhere like that, and they sold their apartment, bought a home and truly, maybe three to four months later, they're like we can't do this. And they moved back.
Speaker 3:And they did move back.
Speaker 1:They did move back, wow, and they're there now. They bought a place and they sold it. They sold it. I mean, her husband works in real estate, so maybe that helped. But yeah, wow, and they're happy as can be in the city. So, and they're happy as can be in the city. So there you go. I mean, that's something that's one person, but it is interesting like that city, if you like that city's lifestyle.
Speaker 2:and yeah, the grocery store is a nightmare I mean, I think it's also like somewhere like new york, like at least for you know, my marriage with Sarah, like Sarah grew up in a city and she can't even fathom moving to a suburb. Like that's not even like that that was, that's never been on the table, it's like and she grew up in a city that's very walkable. She grew up in Philadelphia and a lot of things are just very accessible. You can walk everywhere Right Same thing Subway. You can walk everywhere right same thing subway, and so like living in chicago is just never gonna like question.
Speaker 2:It's just like yeah, we live in the city yeah there's suburbs too boring not yeah, so whereas, again, like, I, grew up in a suburb, so it's like there are times I could picture myself doing that yeah sure I don't think I would at this point, but I could. I could picture it because I did it yeah but it's not even like something she considers.
Speaker 1:Right. Would you, vijay, ever consider like, would you consider moving to Bloomfield Hills? Would I?
Speaker 3:move back.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, I wouldn't. I mean, I'd probably bring my parents.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:But it's interesting because my wife she's the same. She feels she grew up in the.
Speaker 3:She's born in india, but she grew up in canton, which is another suburb and, um, she just, you know, she feels like the suburbs just so isolating and, you know, lonely, and especially in the winter and yeah, you gotta drive everywhere, and she just feels like she wouldn't be able to live or function or be alive, yeah, outside of the city and it's it's like grown on me too. I, I kind of I I didn't know until finally I moved to the city I'm like, oh wow, like I miss out on seeing a lot of people. You know, when you have all these amenities in your space and you have no reason and things are so spread out, you can really be, yeah, kind of lonely for sure yeah, it's like amenities galore yeah but social isolation yeah
Speaker 3:yeah, I'll have the in in the movie theater, but I won't.
Speaker 1:I'll forget about how lonely I am yeah, I think it's wise to be in a city yeah, I think, yeah, we solved it.
Speaker 2:I think we solved it and we excluded, no, no bias. Yeah, it's wise, it's's wise.
Speaker 1:Well, is it, from an environmental standpoint, better? Right, like.
Speaker 2:I don't know In what sense.
Speaker 1:Like smaller dwelling. Hmm, multiple units in one building.
Speaker 2:Okay, mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:I think they say that Smaller carbon footprint.
Speaker 3:Carbon footprint, yeah, smaller carbon footprint? Oh-hmm, I think they say that Smaller carbon footprint.
Speaker 2:Carbon footprint yeah, Smaller carbon footprint.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think I'm okay with saying you're the best guest we've ever had.
Speaker 1:Yeah, number one guest.
Speaker 2:I think it's clear. I concur.
Speaker 3:Best guest we've ever had.
Speaker 2:No, I really appreciate you coming on Just again, I think friend first, right Certainly colleague and somebody we look up to, but it means a lot that you would come in and support us and we would love to have you anytime.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for coming. It was wonderful.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me. This was great, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Any plugs plugs. You could plug your practice if you feel like it plugged Anything A cause you care about.
Speaker 3:I'll plug. Living in the city.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, love it.
Speaker 2:I do love it. What do you? Oh yeah, you gotta plug your practice, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you're interested in working with me or learning more about me, you can go to my website at KK psychotherapy dot com and yeah, you can shoot me an inquiry there if you need, but yeah, that's where you can find me. How about you, john?
Speaker 2:Always email me. Last name, butts B-U-T-Z. Dot. Jonathan J-O-N-A-T-H-A-N at gmailcom. Keep those questions coming yeah or send a question.
Speaker 1:We haven't gotten one yet I know we want more questions about, we want somebody. Is it wise? Is it wise? How wise is it? How?
Speaker 2:wise, is it? Or just even comments about how we're doing yeah more guests you'd like to see yeah, anything like that and, as always, josh, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Producer extraordinaire making, food providing everything for us, everything, all the clinking and chewing, all the clinking, uh jake butts.
Speaker 2:Jake butts and sarah cohen. Thank you for the the swag we're gonna yes, we're gonna put the merch immediately.
Speaker 1:Wear this.
Speaker 2:Yes, we're gonna wear that uh put it on your Instagram account maybe. Yeah definitely, and then Blanketforts, as always, for the music.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you to Mike Blanketforts. Mike Esposito, mike Esposito and that's it.
Speaker 2:That's it, Thanks everyone. Thank you Until we meet again. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 3:Thanks, vijay, thank you.
Speaker 1:The Wise Mind Happy Hour podcast is for entertainment purposes only, not to be treated as medical advice. If you are struggling with your mental health, please seek medical attention or counseling.