TPF #23: Linda Feig Knipe - Therapy, or why asking for help works

Linda Feig Knipe has a Bachelors Degree in Psychology from the State University of UNY at Potsdam, and a Master's Degree and Certificate of Advanced Study in Counselor Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She's also the author of “Braving Therapy”, a compelling memoir about the Triumphant Journey Over PTSD, where she delves into the profound journey of healing and self discovery.

In this conversation, Linda Feig Knipe shares her profound journey through trauma and therapy, discussing the complexities of PTSD, the importance of finding the right therapist, and the challenges of addressing mental health issues. She emphasizes the need for vulnerability in therapy, the distinction between pain and suffering, and the significance of self-compassion in the healing process. Linda's insights provide a roadmap for those navigating their own journeys of healing and self-discovery.

Follow Linda:

• on Instagram: #l._feig_knipe
• on Facebook: facebook.com/linda.z.knipe

Learn more about Asher's work at feigknipe.com.

Purchase Linda's book here.

The Pain Factor is a Project Fourtress podcast.

Project Fourtress is a secular, humanist project, dedicated to find answers to the physical, mental and emotional pain people experience, as well as offer help to deal with these issues. To learn more about Project Fourtress, please visit fourtress.org.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Welcome to the fight. Welcome to the pain factor. On this episode of The Pain Factor.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

My feeling about pain and my understanding of pain really started to change because I felt like my body was in pain, but it wasn't the same kind of pain that you feel like when you pinch yourself or cut yourself or anything like that. That it was this intense internal discomfort that was so bad you just needed to make it stop. But a lot of times, especially in traumatic situations, what has happened and the feelings that you get in your body are so uncomfortable, and the whole situation is often so uncomfortable to think about that you don't want to think about it. You don't want to think about putting a story to it. You just want to shove it all away because it was super uncomfortable. There were things that I was never gonna talk about. There were things I had shoved in that closet that I had sworn I was never going to let out of the closet because they were things that humiliated me. We all have hard, hard things because that's I I think that that's the goal of my life is to learn from the hard stuff that happens. So I would encourage anybody to be brave enough to go talk with someone.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Life is hard, it has its ups and downs. But when things are really tough and we can persevere through it, we learn. Getting help through therapy requires vulnerability, but it can be life-changing for those brave enough to persevere through it. Our guest today has a bachelor's degree in psychology from the State University of New York at Potsdam, a master's degree and certificate of advanced study in counselor education from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He's also the author of Braving Therapy, a compelling memoir about the triumphant journey over PTSD, where she delves into the profound journey of healing and self-discovery. Linda Fig. Welcome to the Pain Factor. So glad to have you here.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

Oh, thank you so much. I'm really delighted that uh you asked me. I like the whole um whole purpose of this podcast. I think it's important, and I appreciate being on.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

And I uh I really think that it's extremely important to talk about therapy. Did I pronounce your last name correct?

SPEAKER_03 3:33

So my my last name is actually Nype. I go by Lindy Feig Feignipe.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Uh Julie noted. So, Linda, tell us a little bit about yourself before we we delve into uh our talk today.

SPEAKER_03 3:48

Yeah. Um, well, the reason that anybody would want to listen to me is because I struggled through a number of years of therapy for some really significant mental health issues. And I did that at the same time that I was in my graduate program to become a counselor. So it gave me a really unique perspective of um learning about therapy and the therapeutic conversation while I was in class and then actually needing to be a patient with a therapist of my own. So I it was kind of like being a fly on the wall of my own therapy session when I was kind of um looking at everything that was happening and what I was feeling and the way I was responding to things. But I'll I'll back up a little bit and just tell you about myself. I come from a very large, close-knit family. I was really fortunate to have a loving and really fun family. Uh, it didn't prepare me for the bad stuff that can happen in life, though. So when I was assaulted and I was I had uh a couple of rapes in my in my background, I was totally unprepared for um how to deal with that. And so I did what a lot of people do, and I shoved it away and just continued on with my life until I got to my graduate program, which was when I was in my late 30s, and in the very first class, we were talking about therapy, and he got talking about therapy for rape, and particularly rape that had happened a long time ago, and how really difficult therapy is. It's harder before it gets better. That that triggered me. I mean, it was like having something thrown at my face. I felt like I needed to blink really fast, and I kept thinking to myself, don't do anything, everybody will know. And when I got out of there, I started before I even got home with full-blown symptoms of PTSD. I started re-experiencing. I had stopped my car to go into a store and I felt like somebody was climbing on me. It was the strangest sensation, and I couldn't make it stop. Um, all of the symptoms of PTSD uh started cropping up, but I was moved to the counselor ed program, so I didn't know what was happening. So I finally, after a couple of weeks, I couldn't eat by then, made an appointment with my professor and went back and told him what had happened, what he'd said, how I responded, and my history. And he explained about PTSD, and we talked about it, and you said you're you're going to need to pursue therapy, you know, not just for yourself, but you're not going to be able to be counseling people when you have issues yourself. So that was the next step I had to take was to find a therapist.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

Yeah. It's uh something incredible that at that stage in your life, you you it was only then that you learn about that. And you were made aware of where what you were going through without actually knowing what you were going through or there was anything to face at all.

SPEAKER_03 7:16

Yeah, yes. However, as I was in therapy, and even really in the first few months of therapy, I started realizing that a lot of the ways that I had handled things, I was married, I had kids, young kids, and I realized I was very, I needed to keep control of everything. And um, and I didn't relate to my husband very well. And I started to realize that all of that were like insidious ways that the trauma that being assaulted had just made me hyper-vigilant and trying to keep control of everything and probably pretty kind of difficult to live with sometimes. So but I didn't realize that at all until I got into therapy and started started talking about it and started realizing that a lot of my the way that I handled things was as a response to trying to keep myself safe.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

And we I want to delve on that, but uh let me ask you uh the first question that I ask my my guest every time. What is pain?

SPEAKER_03 8:32

Well, that's an interesting question because you know there's the physical pain that's really um really difficult to there's the there's the Lakert scale of pain like from one to ten, and you can deal with the discomfort of little pain, but as it goes up and up and up, you focus on it, which makes it even more unbearable because you're focused on the one thing that is really feeling uh unbearable in in your body. And when I was struggling with really severe depression, which was part of the PTSD at that point, my my feeling about pain and my understanding of pain really started to change because I felt like my body was in pain, but it wasn't the same kind of pain that you feel like when you pinch yourself or cut yourself or anything like that, that it was this intense internal discomfort that was so bad, you just needed to make it stop. Um and it felt like I described it, and I don't know why this is, but it felt like a sucking feeling, like I was just sucking into myself. And that was the most, if you can imagine the physical feeling of getting sucked into yourself, was kind of how uncomfortable it was. It wasn't the kind of pain you feel in your body, but it was definitely pain. So yeah, yeah, that emotional and mental pain awful.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

I I I would add that what makes it even worse is that you cannot place it necessarily in a specific part of your body, like what with physical pain. Right. That that is extremely frustrating. Talking about PTSD, what is exactly PTSD in layman terms for the people that are listening and and don't have a wider or better knowledge of these conditions?

SPEAKER_03 10:56

Um so it has to do with the parts of our brain and how we store store information, how we store memories. Um so I I'm gonna do really quick explanation of memory first. A description of memory that I've that I really loved was that memory is biology plus biography equals memory. So the biology are is everything that you feel in your body when you have an experience. And the biography is the narrative or the story that you put to those sensations, that experience. So you're putting you're putting a story together, putting words together with the feelings that you had at the time, both physical and mental, emotional. And then they store it away. And it's properly stored away with it.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

Do we control that? Do we control that in any sense?

SPEAKER_03 11:56

Do it we do it, well, yes, we do it pretty automatically throughout our lives, and things that are really significant that you think about a lot and you put a big story to, you're much more likely to remember. There's a lot that you have stored in your memory, at least a lot in my memory that I'll never remember. But you should be able to pull those memories up. If you're talking about something with somebody, you can go, oh yes, I remember the time and you can tell the story. And you can remember a lot about it. If you really sit with it, you can remember the way you felt and all of that. That's a properly stored memory. But we have so um the first place that everything goes in our brains is a part of the brain called the amygdala that you've probably heard about. It really operates on sensation and it is designed to protect us. So if something's happening that we need to be really aware of, things it will create things like it will make you hyper-vigilant, like your eyes may dilate, and that's to help you see better. And it may cause you to start breathing more quickly and your blood dips, your heartbeat to increase. That's designed to oxygenate your muscles so that if you need to run or fight, you're going to have more muscle strength at that moment. So that's the goal of the amygdala. But a lot of times, especially in traumatic situations, what has happened and the feelings that you get in your body are so uncomfortable, and the whole situation is often so uncomfortable to think about that you don't want to think about it. You don't want to think about putting a story to it. You just want to shove it all away because it was super uncomfortable. So, in situations with trauma and with what happens with PTSD, is that you just all of those feelings that you have, you just push them away. And they just get shoved into what I call a brain closet where they sit. And then as other stuff comes along in your life that you don't know what to deal with, you shove it into that closet. It is very much like I have a closet almost right behind me that is the downstairs closet that when people are coming over and I have stuff in the house that I don't know what to do with, get shoved into the closet. And about every six months or a year, the closet gets full and I have to clean it out. That's kind of how the junk closet in your head is that you're storing uncomfortable with for some people. If you have severe grief, if somebody suddenly dies and you're just trying to get through the grief. Some people will sit with the grief and keep and and mull it over and keep talking about it until they have it properly properly stored with the story. But there are other people, and I am absolutely one of them, that will power through, that will shove that grief down and keep going and act like everything is okay and tell myself I'm strong and I can manage this. Um so I had a lot of stuff in the junk closet in my in my head. And when with the junk closet in my house, if it gets too full and you try and shove anything else in, stuff will start falling out. That's kind of PTSD. When you keep trying to put stuff in that closet in your brain, the door can pop open and stuff starts falling out. And that's all of the sensations that you can have that are PTSD symptoms um that don't make any sense. Like it may be the it is the first thing that happened to me is feeling like someone was climbing on me. And it was a it was a physical sensation that I couldn't stop. Um but I had other really strange physical sensations that didn't seem to make sense to me. That kept going. Other PTSD symptoms are re-experiencing, that's one of them. Having a lot of negative, negative self-talk feelings uh about beating yourself up. And I think part of that is that we always feel like we should be able to control things better than we do when we blame ourselves for things that happened. I don't know why that is. But those are a couple of things that happened. I had I had strange physical sensations in my back that felt like bugs were crawling on my back or right behind my back. And one of the really fascinating things that happened when I was in therapy is after about six months of those weird sensations happening when in the strangest situations, and I written one of the significant ones was I was out at a football game at night and I was walking along, I didn't know most of the people, but I had that sensation in my back. Well, the the really terrifying rape for me was someone broke into my house in the middle of the night, and I was in the dark and woke up to somebody standing next to my bed. So when I finally realized all of a sudden that that sensation in my back was the same sensation that you get. I don't know if you've had this experience, but I did a lot as a kid. We would sit around the campfire telling ghost stories, and the whole purpose of a ghost story is to scare everybody. But it we'd be outside in the dark, and I would feel like somebody was behind me uh that was creeping up on me. And so you'd get that really awful sensation in your back, and you really wanted to turn around and look, but you knew if you did, everybody would laugh at you, so you didn't turn around. You just had the creepy sensation in your back. That was the exact sensation that I was having just at the strangest times. But when I realized that it was the same sensation I had telling ghost stories, feeling like somebody was behind me, I realized that that was dread. And that that was the physical sensation of dread. And I had gone for a long time really disassociating from my emotions, and so that was just fascinating that that was happening to me.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

Talking about therapy and what therapy does and how we can help, you are saying that there's no way you can outrun therapy TSD. You kind of already mentioned the cost of placing things inside a closet, but just to to get some more detail, what is the uh long time effects both emotional and physical of bearing that pain. How bad can it get?

SPEAKER_03 19:42

Well, uh there are I felt pretty crazy while I was while I was in the middle of it. Um there it's not just intrusive feelings or flashbacks, it's it's intrusive memories, like you can't stop thinking about it, which really made me crazy because I had always had pretty good control of my mind and what I thought about, and I couldn't I couldn't and you avoid things. So you avoid anything that might be a reminder of what happened. And so I realized that the cost, like you can, I think there are people who have PTSD who will have be triggered and have symptoms for a while, but they don't do anything about it until they can shove them back down. However, you're always living your life trying to manage not being triggered. And when you do get triggered, you're going to have like outsized responses. The reason, one of the reasons I wrote the book is because uh I was talking with a friend who was in a relationship with a woman who had 40 years before been raped, had never done anything about it, but the way she responded in their relationship wasn't beneficial at all. And and he couldn't figure out how to deal with her. She would avoid, you know, she would say whatever she needed to say to get out of the situation. She would agree to things that she didn't really mean to agree to. He never knew which end was off. And so so it's just that you're not really living your true self when you're so busy trying to manage keeping keeping memories away. You're living a life of avoidance, a lot of a lot of it.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

You're living a life of avoidance. Um your book, Braving Therapy, goes through your personal relationship with uh therapy.

SPEAKER_03 21:54

Yes, you were going to say Yeah, I was also going to say that it's it's not just avoiding things, but I one of the Things that I didn't know until I got into my first class was that I had depersonalized all my emotions. When I would talk about how I felt about something, I never said, I was so sad. I would say, and this got worse and worse over the years. It's a really sad feeling. It's a really scary feeling. And I depersonalized it. I made it uh something that was outside of myself. I didn't claim emotions at all. And I didn't realize I'd gotten so numb. So, yes, those are the kind of things that will happen with people because it's just too scary to let yourself feel anything anymore. So those things can happen without dealing with it.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

We have discussed before on this podcast the numbing effects of pain and trauma. Yeah. Um in your book, you go through um your personal relationship, your personal experience with therapy, and how hard it was for you to start doing that. Just to begin somewhere, how did you do it? How did you overcome those obstacles? You you say you mentioned that we manufacture obstacles. So how do you dismiss or overcome those obstacles? How did you start?

SPEAKER_03 23:33

I had a close friend who was a nurse, and um she was she was really good for me to talk to. I like there were a few people that I was able to talk to and just say I need to do something. And there were a lot of objections that I just had myself about it. Um that I kind of I worked through myself. I did a lot of writing at the time, just kind of journaling because I I I felt so crazy that I I had to get my thoughts out somewhere. But because I was in this graduate program, I was forced to do something. I couldn't go on like that. But I had within a year of the rape tried therapy. And I was I didn't have a good therapist. She was very directive about what we were talking about and it felt kind of judged. And so after a couple of sessions, I stopped going because I it was worse for me just to be with her because I we never talked about the assault at all, the rape. She was just kind of asking me questions about my life, but she was directing the therapy. So so that scared me, and I didn't want to, I didn't want another situation where I was with somebody that felt made me feel so bad. And that there are good and bad therapists, and some therapists will be great for one person and not good for another. So I just want to say that being a bad therapist for me didn't mean that she was bad for everybody. But I uh I'm trying to think of my uh objections for myself. There were things that I was never going to talk about. There were things I had shoved in that closet that I had sworn I was never going to let out of the closet because they were things that humiliated me. I had a date rape that I felt very responsible for, and I was really humiliated that I had put myself in that situation. And after it happened, I thought to myself, I'm never going to think about this again, and I'm never going to talk about it. And I was determined that I would never mention that, and I was very worried that if I got with a good therapist, they might be able to wrangle it out of me. And I was too humiliated by it. And then there were just the typical concerns of how do you pay for therapy? Well, I found that, you know, either my insurance paid for it or there are other options for therapy. There are mental health associations that have therapists within your counties. Um, so it took some research to find out all of the things that I needed to know, but what I actually started doing, and it was long enough ago that I couldn't search on the internet, it's a little easier now. But I, you know, I looked up in the yellow pages and I looked for a psychologist that had expertise in sexual assault. And I called several of them and they all got back to me. But my therapist that I ended up with uh talked with me for a bit and suggested that I come in and talk and make a decision, not to make a decision over the phone, but just to come in and meet him. And uh, and that's what I did, and that turned out to be a very good working relationship. But I think the other thing that I realized, and I had people say this to me, I mean my friend, that if you're if you're not with a person that you feel that you're getting anywhere with, part of the part of the difficulty of talking in therapy is especially with depression, you feel like you're everything is such a swirl and there's so much going on in your head that you don't know how you could possibly explain it to anybody. Like you can't absolutely you can't figure it out yourself. Absolutely. You can't figure out how you're going to even start explaining it to someone. And what I have said, and I've found this to be true, is that when you're with the right person, you're talking about the right things almost immediately. So that's how you know. And it doesn't mean that you have to go through everything again and again and again. When you get with the right person and you just know you're talking about the right stuff that matters, that's that's the therapist that you want. Because the largest, the largest indicator of whether therapy will be uh will be effective and successful for a person is their relationship with their therapist. So you want to make sure that you have a good relationship. It's like when they've done research, 40% of the um, it's 30 to 40% of the effectiveness of therapy is the relationship with your therapist. And the other, very large part is the happenstance of life that goes on outside of the therapy room. But I found for me that that was informed by what we talked about in therapy. And that's how my perspective started to change. And therapy, the the kind of therapy that I went through that that is used for that's very effective for PTSD, for especially rape and those kind of traumas, car accidents, you know, break-ins, things like that, is called cognitive behavioral therapy, or or there's a cognitive processing, but it's cognitive, it's what's going on in your head, the way you're thinking about it. And that therapy is got kind of three components. It's got a cognitive component, which is what you're thinking about, and then a behavioral component, which is what you do, and then an emotional component, which is how you're how your body is feeling about things. And they're all related, they're all interrelated. So a therapist might work primarily in one area, but it affects everything. So when you change how you're thinking about things, your behaviors are going to change the way that you're interacting with other people, and that changes your emotions. So they all affect each other. But for me, the cognitive behavioral was really beneficial because I would be able to talk about things a little bit and start to understand things and be able to take that outside of the therapy room and use that information for myself. I would always, I wrote every night because I couldn't go to sleep without writing because there was so much going on in my head. But it would start changing the way I was dealing with people outside of the therapy room. And that started changing my emotions. So it's all related, but I had uh a number of people in reviews say they they always had the impression of therapy, like what you would see in the stereotypical TV shows where it's how do how did you feel? That's a little bit, you know. I mean, we talk a little bit about how you felt, but a lot you talk about your perspective of how you were thinking and what perspective you're taking on something. And the really cool part about therapy is that you you you well, in good therapy, especially for PTSD, you should be able to control the session. So you should be talking about, you should be deciding what you're talking about. The therapist shouldn't be leading you. But then when you're talking about things, and sometimes that can be hard to just even start a conversation, but you get to just say what you're thinking, and then the therapist responds to that with it's called unconditional positive regard. Very accepting because how you think about things is valid. That's what's a driver in your life. And so that's fine, but it's good to have another perspective. And when you're mulling things over in your own head, the only perspective you're getting is your own. And when you start talking about things with somebody who can truly listen to you and understand your perspective, and then maybe s give it a twist and say, have you thought about this? Take it's something you're walking out of the room with with new thoughts and new perspectives. And that's the change of therapy. And it isn't necessarily fast. Some people can go to therapy and get through it pretty quickly. And it depends on if you're going for a situation that's happening in your life, or if you're going with a long-standing dysfunction in how you've been doing things. And for me, it had been a long-standing dysfunction of how I was operating in my life that took a long time for those little perspective shifts and a lot of discussion. Um, and that the the rapes was not the only thing that had happened in my life because I was nearly 40 years old. So there was a lot of, there was a lot to discuss. But I kept having little perspective shifts. And part of my problem, and this is another, this is another thing that I that I see with people, and especially with people who feel that they can power through and take care of themselves. They feel strong and they feel like they're not going to, they're not going to rely on somebody else. They're not going to complain, they're just going to power through. Um that perspective for me, I think, came from even as a child, I was kind of, I was the oldest daughter in a very large family, and I was really helpful. And so I was kind of on a pedestal. But that's a really hard position to maintain. You kind of get this perfectionist kind of thing going on, is I've got to be perfect, I've got to always show up, I've got to take care of everybody. So, on top of the dysfunctions that I had been dealing with, I also had to give up that idea that I might be perfect. I had to give that up and start recognizing that I was just a person like everybody else, and I had flaws. And one of the reasons it took such a long time for me is because I had a really hard time admitting that. And so it was difficult for me to even bring up topics that I really needed to discuss because I wanted to have that persona of being the perfect person on the pedestal. And I think for for me, one of the things that therapy really did is it it allowed me, I could say it knocked me off the pedestal, but it wasn't it wasn't drastic. It allowed me to step off of the pedestal and just be a person.

SPEAKER_02 35:15

Yeah, I I believe that the uh destiny of people that are on a pedestal is to fall down. Yeah. Eventually.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:23

Um and I keep hearing the more I talk about pain and trauma and PTSD, I keep hearing people mentioning guilt, shame, shameful um secrets that also comes with ignorance and also comes with fear. I was lucky to get a therapist that was both challenging and validating. If it was just one of those, it would have not worked uh at all. You already were getting into it, but let me just ask the question. Why is therapy a taboo even today? We don't talk about therapy, we don't say I am going to I am planning to go to therapy or my wife or my daughters are going to see a therapist or a psychologist. Even today, with all the openness, quote unquote, that we have, it is still a taboo. Why is that?

SPEAKER_03 36:26

Well, in this social media kind of society where everybody is putting forth their best self, you know, the the just kind of strengthens for people that they want to appear, to have it all together and be leading a great life. Um, I had a young woman who is a trauma nurse in intensive care unit who read my book and then wrote me a long letter and talked about that exactly what you're talking about, that she feels like for the most part, she has her life really together. She's doing what she what she cares about. She gets to travel with this. She was working as a traveling nurse. She gets to go hiking and things, and she really, she really appears to have it all together. She would always, she said, I would always be there for other people when they needed to talk, and um I would be the person they'd come to. I always wondered why when I needed to talk, nobody asked me how I was doing. And she said, because if someone had asked me how I was doing, I would say to them, I'm doing just fine. I'm handling things because I would want to continue that persona of having it all together. And she said, and then I would go for a hike or something to get out the stress of the work that I'm doing and the life and the life that I'm leading, it's very active. And she said, I just I realized in reading your book that that's probably not the healthiest way to handle it, and that I do need to be able to talk to somebody. But the other thing that I, I mean, the the thing that's really good about a therapist, as opposed to talking to your hairdresser or the local bartender or or you know, somebody else that maybe you start talking to is that a therapist keeps that relationship to themselves. They can't talk about it, they can't confirm that you're in therapy. The only person that's gonna say that you're in therapy is you. But I have been places, you know, you're you're at the at the barbershop or the salon or something, and you know, somebody has talked to their hairdresser because they treat them like a therapist, and the hairdresser who talks constantly is gonna tell the entire story to the next person that comes in. So if you want to make sure that what you're saying is staying confidential, the therapist is the place you want to be. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 39:20

And it sounds so simple, but that goes to how people end up accepting the need they have for someone to listen, but they also feel this quote unquote need to not make it public. Someone that has been considering therapy is listening to this podcast. That person has never been uh uh talking to a therapist or psychologist has been considering this for a while, regardless of her or his background. What can that person expect in therapy in regards to what help they can find and what challenges they will face? If you can if you could make uh a short description for them.

SPEAKER_03 40:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

You know, it's not easy ask.

SPEAKER_03 40:14

I think um starting therapy and then meeting a therapist that you want to be able to talk about yourself a little bit and tell them why you've come in, why you think um it would be good to be able to talk with somebody. And I have always said that if the thought has even crossed your mind that it might be good to talk to a therapist, it's probably going to be good to talk to a therapist. You know, if that thought has ever crossed your mind. But there's also it should be a conversation. And with me, even though I had assaults in my past, and that's what put me there, I also had a lot of other stuff that had gone on. And the therapy session was whatever I wanted to talk about. And it it really didn't matter. Like it, it was very difficult for me for a long time because I kept everything to myself. I didn't talk about things that were going wrong. But the therapist was very clear that he was not going to control the session, that I was going to be in charge. I could talk about anything I wanted. And what it turned out to be, that it didn't really matter what I talked about, that what we ended up doing was discussing perspective and the kind of way I looked at things, and that there were more ways to look at things than just what I had in my head. And so that was kind of an eye-opener. And the other thing is that uh a lot of times, you know, the fact that I had been raped a long time before wasn't on my mind all the time. And so I would go into the therapy session, and that wasn't something that was bothering me at all. However, we could start talking about something else that was going on, maybe at work or whatever. And there were often things that I would relate to what had happened. And so it was a way of getting into uncomfortable conversations just by talking about daily stuff. Um, because things kept popping up. They were always out of order, nothing came in cry. When I wrote the book, the editor said this would be so much easier for people to understand if you wrote it in chronological order. And I I thought back about it and I thought, well, that's not how therapy was. You know, my my therapy was not in chronological order. I would talk about things, and then I would go back and have to talk about them again, and new, like new insights or new memories would pop up, and it was all out of order. So one of the interesting things in writing the book was just trying to make it very clear when I was talking about and whether I was going back to something. And the book is kind of laid out. I originally wanted to write it as a companion to people who are going in therapy so that they would hopefully stick with it. And so it is laid out in the parts of like seeking therapy and starting therapy and what it's like to pursue therapy and the different kinds of issues that come up. The issue of trust. It's very important to wrestle with that. Who do you trust and trusting your therapist? Um, and being able to identify, I had a glossary. I kept this big dictionary with me because I had to be able To define emotion words so that I could finally start figuring out emotions. And I journaled. And so there's a chapter on journaling, and there's a chapter on depression and suicidal ideation, because it got to the point when I was really in the weeds of all of the bringing out all of the stuff that I wanted to keep hidden for years, that I got really depressed for a while. And so there's a chapter about that. And then there is a chapter about finally realizing that keeping secrets was making me sick and not talking about things and keeping it hidden inside is toxic.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

Going back to the closets.

SPEAKER_03 44:39

I had people when I talk about the book. How could you do that? And you don't say it because you're embarrassed by it, but that kind of stuff is toxic. And the really lovely thing that I discovered is when you start talking about those things to the right people, and my therapist was the right person. And then my second husband, in the end, after I'd completed therapy, but I still dealt with hiding stuff because that's how I've always been. And he would sit me down when I would start to get flat, kind of depressed. And we would talk and he would wheedle it out of me. And a lot of times I wouldn't even realize what I was hiding. But when I'd start talking about it, even though I was embarrassed by something, he was just like, you know, that's just how we are. That's how we act sometimes. This is not, you're not, you're not defective. This is just normal people stuff. And suddenly that's when I really, I think that's when I really totally realized that I was not on the pedestal, that I was just a person. And it's so freeing. It's so freeing to not um try and be something that nobody can really be. You can't be perfect. We're all human. And the really the really interesting things that I have come to realize in my life is that we are all on a journey. We all have our own journey. And whatever happens, that's our journey, and we learn from that. And that includes pain, and everybody has pain. Even the people that look like they're leading a wonderful life have things that are causing them serious pain, and they may be keeping it to themselves, but that's that's where we learn. And I think that's the grand adventure of this life is to have difficult experiences and learn from them and grow. And I feel like when you're avoiding the pain, because being in therapy can be emotionally painful because you're bringing up, you're you're finally pulling that stuff out and actually looking at it, and it can feel worse before it feels better, but you're going through a purging process that is freeing you. And it's it's you're learning, you're learning so much about life in general and about yourself, and you're becoming a more authentic person. And so that takes courage. It takes courage to actually do the hard work. But it's why I wrote the book. Actually, when I was in grad school, there was a book called The Heroic Client by Scott Miller, who did a lot of the studies of how change happens and the parts about the percentage of change that comes from your relationship with your therapist and what happens on the outside. His book was titled The Heroic Client because he gave credit to the people that are in therapy for doing the work. I that idea is important that you have to be brave. You have to have the courage to do it, but you need to stick it out. And I have talked to so many people who've read my book and said, I've started therapy so many times, and I never thought about the fact that I didn't finish it. Like I didn't stick with it. As soon as I felt a little better, I stopped.

SPEAKER_02 48:47

So it's not a straight line either. It's not a straight line. Therapy has a beginning, period. That's it. When or if it will end, and there's no way to tell. And referring to what you were saying about being alone and fear, there's so many people alone out there, and I understand that I attribute that to ignorance. Ignorance fits pain, feels shame. And what I have found by talking to people and just reading about depression and anxiety is that a high percentage of persons that deal with any issue, mental health or emotional health, they think they are an exception. They think they are part of a small group. And that isolation and that feeling of it's just me? What am I doing wrong? Why don't I have the life that I see others having in social media? It's all because of me. Again, ignorance is so destructive. Today, after all you have gone through after braving therapy, after writing your book, after over overcoming those things that were hidden after cleaning that closet. When you're faced with a specific challenge, regardless of where it comes from, what specific actions or what kind of mindset do you have today that you can attribute to having having uh therapy? Because the thing with therapy is that you have it's a tool. And the tools you acquire there will help you outside of that talking room. Right. It's not just about dealing with emotional stuff. It will help you in day-to-day to to to make day-to-day decisions or to be just more clear about life stuff. Right. So how does has that helped you?

SPEAKER_03 51:00

Right. Think, well, I I try to do things that keep me healthy, you know, just just wellness practices. Um I I'm I'm a Weight Watcher and I always go to the meetings because they're like group sessions just to keep that part of my life on track and uh try and get exercise. I have a spiritual community. And still, so I I um I was married to my my second marriage, was the love of my life and just a brilliant man, and he passed away. I'm sorry to did have did have his support for a long time, but what I realized is that when I do start to get down, I can start burying things again. But I have my therapist that I might see once or twice a year. But he challenged me to use all of the knowledge that I had gained and um had written about to not be holding things to myself when I'm starting to get down. And it's just the stuff of life, you know? So now what I'm trying to do is I call it toss my hat over the fence. Like I have a really hard time because of that, because of that chaotic feeling that you get when everything starts bothering you and it's just all a jumble and you can't explain it. And so I can't, when I'm feeling like that, I can't just walk up to somebody that I know and say, I'm really struggling right now. I just can't get it out of my mouth. But I can text it and I've realized that I can text that to friends that I'm really close to and say, I'm just really having a difficult time right now, so that when I'm with them, they know and we can start talking about it. But I found that just the action of letting somebody know, even through text, will make me start feeling better. It's like not holding it to yourself already starts releasing some of the power that it has.

SPEAKER_02 53:21

Is there a difference between pain and suffering for you?

SPEAKER_03 53:28

Uh I hadn't never thought about that. Severe pain, either emotional or physical, can cause suffering, but uh I think it's really interesting. Um and it has to do with gratitude and everything. Um I had uh three two and a half years ago, I had a total knee replacement, which is a very physically painful uh surgery to heal from. And so I was doing these pain meditations on headspace, and he talked about the fact that we are um we are biologically designed to focus on what's wrong in our lives, and that's that we can keep ourselves safe. So when we have pain, we will focus on that and it just makes it worse. And that's like suffering. I was suffering with that pain, but the meditation was find something in your body that feels good and focus on that. And as soon as I intentionally did that, it reduced the amount that I was suffering. It didn't actually reduce the physical pain, but it didn't bother me so much. It was real the suffering was how much I was letting it bother me. When I intentionally focused on a part of my body that was relaxed and feeling good at that moment, the suffering from the pain stopped. And I the same thing with psychological stuff, that when things are bothering me, I mean, one thing is to get it out and to say something. But also there are times when you zero in on what's bothering you. And if it's intense, if something intense has happened, you know, it could be grief or something like that, that you suffer through that for a while. But if you can focus on something good in your life, that can give you a break from the suffering that you're doing. And I did find with just my attitude about life in general. When I was young, I had always been really optimistic. And I uh I think I found for a number of years that I got kind of resentful. And suddenly, probably seven or eight years ago, I just I was feeling good. Life was pretty, pretty doing pretty well. And I was sitting outside in the summertime by the by the lake and just loving like the sun and the water and the tree that I was sitting under. And I was so grateful to be where I was right then, and it just all of a sudden hit me that that's the stuff of life that is the most wonderful. And I really focus on that now. I focus on the stuff that's good in my life. And it has kept me grateful when my husband died. I I was really waiting for depression to start. And all I felt was so grateful that I had met him and had him in my life. He changed me for the better. And I was just, I knew that we all die eventually. This this is journey, this is the journey, but that I was super lucky to have been in his life. And so I've held on to that gratitude. So it's it is intentionally a way of looking away from the hard stuff and the painful stuff and looking at what's positive. So I think the suffering is focusing on what's wrong and what's hard and thinking you're never going to come out of it. And maybe just dealing with the pain, but being able to also put it aside is to intentionally find what's good in your life or what feels good in your body and focus on that.

SPEAKER_02 57:47

Pain is inevitable. Suffering up to a point kind of is too, but then it's just us holding on to that to that pain. And you have beautifully expressed how they differ. I like to ask my guests when we are closing in the end of the interview what their pain factor is. And by that I am not necessarily talking about a number on a scale, but just what kind of challenges still get to you, what up to this day you struggle with the most to face or to solve. What thing today overpowers you regardless of that is for a minute, an hour, a month.

SPEAKER_03 58:38

Getting myself going. So um, so I live alone and I can get um I can get sucked into social media like everybody. Um I can have things that I want to do. Uh if I beat myself up about anything, it's letting myself letting myself just get pulled into time wasters for me. I don't so it keeps me from I like that that term time wasters. I'm going to it keeps me things that I intend to and want to do, uh like going out and exercising, or and I I don't know where you are, but I'm in the northeast. We've had single digits for quite a while now and a lot of snows.

SPEAKER_02 59:36

Um I am in Austin and we are having uh a really hotter than usual climate, we're in the 80s, and even for Austin is for Austin winter is a lot.

SPEAKER_03 59:50

Yeah. That's that's high for the winter. So so yeah, there's a lot of um, there's a lot of things that I feel like I should do that I don't feel like I am disciplined enough with myself, and so I get down on myself a bit about that. I don't I don't dwell on it, and I have a, you know, from this moment forward, and not I don't I don't uh ever let myself feel like I've just blown it. I may not do something that I meant to do in the moment, but I've the next moment is always coming. And I may wait and start over tomorrow if it's too late in the day, but other than that, I do have an attitude of well, you can you can start now.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:45

Yeah, the learning isn't enabled to realize what is going on or when where where you are failing or where you are just struggling. It's not that things are going to go in a perfect way because to begin with, perfect in life doesn't exist. At least not for me. There's always something else to to improve. There's always something that is going to be there bothering you or hurting you.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:11

I will just say, I think that therapy allowed me to give myself grace. It also, when I started to give myself more grace, I give other people more grace.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:24

That is something that my therapist used to tell me. Maybe she didn't use exactly the word grace, but she would tell me you need to give yourself a break. You are doing as much as you as you can. It doesn't have to work right away, but you need to give yourself a break. And yes, it sounds cheesy, but it's so hard. It's so hard.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:46

Well, I think the hard part of it, Gus, is that when when somebody says that to you, you kind of, at least for me, kind of it felt a little superior for you know being tough on myself and working so hard and never letting up.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:05

It could be, it could be.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:07

It wasn't until um until I realized how detrimental that was to me and everybody else that I stopped feeling superior about working so hard at stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:24

My psychologist told me maybe a month ago that maybe the impression I was giving to people around me, more more specifically my loved ones, was that I was being kind of a hulk. Okay, not that you get angry, but you are doing so many things, you are taking responsibility, and you are working on so many different projects and you are always saying, I'm going to take care of this, I'm going to take care of that. And you just push through things. It's hard to get close to Hulk and say, Hey man, I can help you with that. Hey, I can I can give you a hand. Not because people are scared of you, but because people think, Well, he's got it.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:20

He's got it. And that made me stop and think a lot. Because at the end of the day, you are not you are maybe not directly hurting the people around you, but you are not being your best, and you are doing them as a disservice because you are just trying to keep up an image or or a performance of something that you are not. Yes. With the best intentions, with the best of intentions, and being trying to be the best for them. And it's just uh almost invisible line that you cross.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:06

You're also not allowing them to be their best for you.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:11

You're right, yes, yes, because they don't believe that you need that, or they don't know how to help.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:20

Um my sisters would tell me is you wouldn't let us in. You know? That's tough.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:27

That's tough. Yeah. So and on the inside you might be thinking, hey, I I was just screaming for help.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:35

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:35

And they will tell you, no, you were not. And it's not that screaming one of them is right or wrong.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:41

Screaming inside the wall that you had built up around the outside of you.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:47

To shape. Yeah. You're right. You're right. Linda, is there something that you would like to add or refer to before we we finish today? Something that you like to uh share with us?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:02

I think think that we've covered everything, but I think a few things that I would want to highlight were that everybody, everybody has a journey that's difficult. It it may not be, you know, you may not have suffered the same things that I have, or somebody else you know that has something horrific, and you don't feel like your stuff is as important as that, but that is not true. We are all on our own journeys, and we all have It's not a competition. It's not a competition, and we all have hard, hard things because that's I I think that that's the goal of our our life is to learn from the hard stuff that happens. So I would encourage anybody to be brave enough to go talk with someone.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:54

Yeah. Agreed. Can you share with us your events or anything that? Is in the future for you and also share with us your your contact information, your social media, so we can add all of that in these episodes description.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:12

People want to buy your book if people want to follow you.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:15

So the book is Braving Therapy, and it is written under L Fag Knight. It's on Amazon and Kindle, but you can also order it from a bookstore. And I I have I'm not as active on social media as I should be, but everything is under L Fag Knight. Um, and my website is under L Fagnite.com.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:42

Perfect. We will make sure to uh to the uh episode description. Linda, thank you so much. Not just for today, not just for your time, which is uh time is our greatest treasure, but also for for your work, for your book, for your bravery, and as I like to say, turning hard things, bad things into something beautiful, which would be helping people. We did talk about a lot of things, but there's just so much to dig in. So maybe we will be able to do this again if you so choose.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:20

Well, thank you. I really enjoyed the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:24

Likewise. And for everybody listening and watching, we will see you next time when we continue to explore the pain factor. Ciao ciao.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:45

The Pain Factory is a Project Fortress podcast. Project Fortress is a secular humanist project dedicated to find answers to the physical, mental, and emotional pain people experience as well as offer help to deal with these issues. To learn more about Project Fortress, please visit Fortress.org. That is F-O-U-R-T-R-E-S.org. I am Gustavo Varela. I'm not a licensed medical professional, nor am I a nutritionist or hold a degree in exercise or sports medicine. All of the advice given on this podcast is what I have learned from my own experiences and mistakes navigating through depression, anxiety, and chronic physical pain. Project Fortress is not responsible for any actions that may occur as a result of your listening to and implementing the advice we provide. Use all of the information that we give at your own risk.