I’m on Warm Milk and Laxatives / Cherry-Flavored Antacids: How Modern Mental Health Keeps You Trapped in Pathology

In this scorched-earth episode of PrecisionCycle, Enrique pulls no punches as he recounts a recent therapy session that left him confronting the hollow mechanics of modern mental health. What begins as a casual drink with a licensed clinician morphs into a sharp critique of the therapy industrial complex, the illusion of clinical “space holding,” and the gaslit loop keeping high performers pathologized and disempowered.

Backed by personal history, clinical insight, and the ghost of Kurt Cobain, Enrique unpacks how traditional therapy often becomes a performance of care—rigid, defensive, and devoid of actual strategy. This episode is a call to arms for those tired of waiting for therapists to throw the rope. PrecisionCycle throws it—and shows you how to climb. elevate.epo

Transcript

I’m on Warm Milk and Laxatives / Cherry-Flavored Antacids: How Modern Mental Health Keeps You Trapped in Pathology
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[00:00:00] Last Friday I was at a conference and I found a colleagues that I had worked with in the past, and we invited each other for a drink and went to catch up because it'd been a couple years since the last time we had a chance to catch up with each other.

And one of the things that I started to, get from this other person was just how entrenched they were in the mental health industry. this particular person is an LMFT. This was a mental health conference, and we were. Discussing about some of our case experience, some of the things that had led me to, step away from clinical work and move into, elevate that EPO and really start to focus on the boundary regimes that are critical to, mental health and personal recalibration.

And as I began to unpack a lot of what I was doing and how I was doing it, I kept making the claim that I go where therapy doesn't go. I am a post therapeutic model because therapy itself is a [00:01:00] holding space. You go there in 40, 45 minutes of usually unpacking, emotions in a process oriented held space frame.

Very little of that leaves time for actual frameworks or, skills that we can build and practice in real time in those, private practice settings. And as I continue to make this case and claim to this practitioner, they continue to look at me with a quizzical look on their face.

mainly because. They couldn't really fathom what I was trying to say, and I couldn't tell if it was a Dunning Kruger moment or just some kind of incredulity blocking cognitive acceptance they were blocking in some way because they were defending their turf defending against what they heard and the projection they're putting upon my words, which is that therapy is invaluable. And that's not what I'm saying. and I'm think that's a message that maybe comes across, but no therapy is [00:02:00] valuable. I often find myself in conversation with people who end up asking me, if you rail so much against therapy, why are you still in it?

there's a few answers to that. One of them is because I value the opportunity to process with a professional. the other part is for what happened yesterday in a therapy session. as we start to unpack this, we realize that the more you start presenting post therapeutic models.

Akin to those in Europe and more progressive mental health models where we're looking to take some of the control from the white coat crowd and putting it more into the hands of actual clients, giving people the autonomy and power to find their own voice. What we're finding is that more clinicians are doubling down on turf protection.

This is a continuation if we really are to look at the art behind this, things that Kurt Cobain was talking about [00:03:00] over 30 years ago and as we look today to really accommodate and discuss a lot of this. Insight that I gained not only at the therapy, conference, but also with my own therapy.

We triangulate that with some of the words and warnings that Kurt Cobain had delivered, way back in 91. the receipts for his mental health journey is the album in utero. As we process what's new here, let's think about the failures of therapy and how Elevate dot EPO is just the thing that Kurt Cobain was asking for and potentially could have helped him through his journey.

I'm Enrique, this is Elevate epo. Let's open it up.

[00:04:00] So walking outta that conference on Friday, I found that it's interesting what people and what practitioners specifically like to think about what actual therapy is, because there's such a vast difference in the way people define that word. for some, and for this clinician I was speaking with, therapy is a space where people come in and relate for 45 to 50 minutes, and outside of the conversational connection they make, there's no real skills being built outside of that.

That's partly there's some hubris [00:05:00] and narcissism in the way that. These clinicians position their clients. this clinician unconsciously said, her clients are very dependent on her to self-regulate. That's an admission that , this clinician has positioned herself as that substitute substance.

doesn't allow clients and doesn't teach them the frameworks and structures to be able to take control over their own mental health and provide the type of intervention to be successful. that is by design because clinicians need you to keep coming week over week, year over year.

To process and keep providing them with a funding source for their lifestyle. And that's unfortunately capitalism as a whole. But when we see the insidious nature of the mental health game, that kind of starts to put a lot of what Kurt Cobain was talking about in the in Utero album into perspective.

And it does [00:06:00] really give a lot of insight into his frustrations. yesterday I go to therapy and I'm processing a lot of the things that I've had to deal with in my. Past childhood and as I've matured through adulthood, is reconciling the fact that I've had to perform for my mother's love for a long period of time.

Essentially, my entire life has been an exercise in trying to perform and show someone that I'm worthy of being given, their love and attention unfortunately. I've only felt the negatives of that because they've, ended up choosing my sister to value over me. I'm well past that.

that's therapy that I've taken dealt with myself it is interesting that when I'm processing that as a major issue It keeps presenting itself in relationships and how frustrated I feels sometimes when my [00:07:00] needs are dismissed because they're not understood and I'm labeled as too much or intense.

What that specifically is referring back to that isolation I felt when my mom was rejecting me in those moments. to have that brought up in a therapeutic space, is something that is activating. while we can talk about how that activation may be a good thing, the fact that there are no frameworks or ways to deal with that activation that we're presented, that's the problem.

as our therapy session occurred yesterday. We're sitting across from this clinician and this clinician is telling us how the referral service that I found this person from, likes to bill and operate a separate way.

So right off the bat my time. is being hijacked by this clinician to present their pricing structure and expectations for the frame that is being established. And that's fine as a organization, as [00:08:00] a clinician, as someone who wants to establish their frame in whatever format they want 

Utilizing the clinical space to. lay down the rules of the road and let the client know what the expectations are. That's valid, and that's a good use of time because you're leaving people with the valid information they need to make informed choices. But where I found the issue that led back to the original traumatic experience with my mother.

If you're gonna take that space to begin this very capitalistic sales driven, discussion, then that opens up the frame for the client to participate in other valid, constructive, marketing sales discussions and activities. What does that mean?

They're essentially telling me, I need you to show up every week. This is my rate. The service that you bought or that you're going through is paying me this rate, [00:09:00] the unspoken terms being, You should value my time. my skills. the fact that I'm in Santa Monica in this fancy office, and in private practice, and you should be lucky that this referral service found you and lets you come in.

But don't take that for granted. What that discussion was, if that's the way you wanna operate and be a therapist, absolutely. But my response to that then is the problem, because in my response I asked, so what frameworks and skills can I constructively and realistically get out of this experience?

In other words. You're gonna charge me this and hold me to the standard, what's in it for me? and what happened was, as soon as I presented that, rather than answer that question with any type of real clinical clarity saying something like the way that I practice is psychodynamic based and 

Utilize a cognitive behavioral or dialectic behavioral skill to augment my psychodynamic interpretations. But [00:10:00] primarily my style is to allow the client to process and then hold space, and then if time allows to utilize that for some type of, Redirect of intervention that perhaps helps build a skill, whether that be a boundary, whether that be grounding, whether that be mindfulness, that's pretty standard language in a proper way of responding clinically to that question.

It's establishing, this is the way I work, I understand that you have this expectation. this is what I do and how I do it, and the value comes in our relationship and how we're able to heal ourselves from this third entity that we're creating.

This particular therapist responded by asking me what my credentials were asking me what my. Theoretical training was practical guidance for assessing and practicing real time intervention with [00:11:00] clients essentially what's my method? So I asked, what can I get out of this session?

And the response that I got was, What do you know the sort of the juxtaposition and that is the takeaway here. we have a clinician defending a insecure position with a primal, primitive defense. and projecting onto that some type of perception that they feel I have towards them.

Which, is now being validated in real time because of that insecurity that is being registered and mirrored back. And this has really it establishes the groundwork here for where we are as a modern. Therapy, mental health, industrial complex, If you want to put a label on it. MHIC, mental health industrial complex, which is, 

showing us that there's countertransference in plain sight that is not understood, that is not validated that is not examined [00:12:00] further. And , this is the lie that supervision been able to propagate throughout mental health training circles. Because with this therapist, what struck me the most was just how fast the dynamic changed.

As soon as I established my. Independence. my autonomy in asking rightfully, if you're gonna hold me to a standard, what do I get in return that's not therapeutic, that's not indicative of someone who is grounded in their own process. That's telling me they don't know anything about what they're doing.

, That is code for. I'm here to live in this sort of analog world where I do my process notes and I don't really do much outside of that. When it comes to caring for my clients, I don't think about them any more than I have to outside of the hour [00:13:00] that they pay me to give a about what they're talking about.

That is the takeaway that you can have. When you listen to these two clinicians at a conference and in the office,

we see the dangers of therapists who just work in these isolated environments, these people who work in these isolated ecosystems where they're sole practitioners in many case, and they're receiving clients and working with new clients and working with referral services, but they're not in any type of consultation group or supervision, and the countertransference is left to run amuck.

And then we see it, how it expresses itself and how there are these microaggressions that occur that retraumatize clients. It's not retraumatizing me because I'm well past that, but for someone that hasn't done the type of work that I've done on myself, 

That type of thing is damaging. It can devolve someone into someone's pathology even further because it keeps them trapped in this [00:14:00] cycle of being gaslit, unconsciously, and enacting the same familiar formats. The danger is part of the industry and people having these, discussions often negatively about using modern technologies, specifically AI and the sort of hysteria around the industry with practitioners who think that AI is gonna lead to severely bad outcomes and people getting all kinds of bad advice 

Getting sicker and society itself devolving into further chaos. That is all projection for what is actually happening with actual analog mental health. Actual mental health clinicians are responsible for all of those things. Society is, , defunct and destroying itself actively.

by the over pathological nature of our DSM mental health industrial [00:15:00] complex. The more and more disorders that we're able to. traffic and normalize. The more and more people can not only defend their bad behavior with that, but they can stay stuck in it because now it's an actual medically recognized psychological position that's their primarily to help with billing codes, but is now being attached to personality.

And that is the problem with the DSM and its great growing evolution, is that we are, splitting atoms to create micro level acceptance of narcissism and to validate narcissism and to keep the distorted realities of it reality for people and for patients.

And the thing that never gets talked about here is how AI could actually work to improve outcomes to police the industry, and , act as [00:16:00] the guardrails to this very countertransferential phenomenon, which may potentially hurt clients because I can program the ai. To run self diagnostics and to run positions that keep me honest and guide my work and frameworks and keep reminding me to utilize certain empathetic states and to utilize certain words and positions so that I'm not committing these microaggressions so that my ego is not being tapped and activated when clients have their own.

narcissism tapped and activated, and this is what we can see as an industry, the benefits of technology. And , the industry's hysteria seems to want to not accept that technology and practitioners who have. pioneered and [00:17:00] revolutionized, AI to create strong mental health frameworks.

But what does this have to do with Kurt Cobain, as I teased in the beginning? We've talked about how, perceptions reality. We've talked about how countertransference is a thing. We've talked in the past how elevate that EPO precision cycle . Is a tool to measure that countertransference and that we do measure that with utilizing our seven dimensional components, to personality, composition.

But we also have to look at this as very real time data of how the industry has normalized its own dysfunction and. Inability to progress in technological advancement. clinicians are not the most technologically savvy individuals. They're not the most savvy individuals with business acumen.

, This mental health industry attracts a lot of people who, don't have the [00:18:00] type of credentialed pasts that. people with, advanced degrees who have done their corporate work and who have gone through that life and have integrated into their, thought process.

a lot of clinicians don't fall into that track. And what you end up with is clinicians who Aren't very good business people. In reality, we have a lot of people who are career academics, focused primarily on humanities, and when they come into this realm, they've never really utilized any other skills outside of those humanities to create relationships there's nothing wrong with that, but we see how that runs up against everyday business acumen.

And the understanding that if you're gonna engage in marketing activities, then you need to fall into marketing activity, types of personalities. Cobain knew this over 30 years ago. If we listen to his music, we can hear the pain he was expressing throughout that entire album.

[00:19:00] The novel ability to convey that pain to listeners and really speak from a position of this is my experience and this is how I've been able to incorporate it and sustain it for this long. When we get to end utero in 1993, Kurt Cobain has completely gone through A mental health journey that has shown him that the system and the models, they're not there for people like him.

People who have suffered severe childhood, traumatic experience, people that have experienced extreme family violence and isolation. People who have real strong addictive patterns and are locked in these addictive, stupors. , The industry is not made for that, and the songs as they are conveyed in utero , speaks as that receipt that he is bringing forth in this observation.

When we go through that album and walk through it, we see with him, there's this [00:20:00] progression of pain that is associated with being misunderstood and not having the types of people who could really help him, with a lot of these confusing, 

Thoughts and mental positions that he has in his head. right off the bat, the album starts with two quick hitters. real strong rock anthems serve the servants sent less apprentice. Both of these are set in stage for the, desperation that he's felt in this time. This inability to really be heard and understood .

Because the industry has commodified him, to see him as Kurt Cobain, not the person who is suffering, but as Kurt Cobain, the man who makes great music and is providing us with millions of dollars. that is really the help that he got and is pretty apparent as you go through that album.

that I actually was reminded of when I recently watched the Rick Beto video, where he was talking about how smells like Teen [00:21:00] Spirit is one of the greatest rock songs of all time. if you listen to it, it is, and I highly encourage you to

but as I was inspired by that, to revisit the catalog, and I'm going through. The in utero album, we get to heart shaped box, and that kind of tells you a little bit about the covert narcissism and the need collapse that occurs as he's going through this process, immediately into the song.

which essentially. Is discussing this rage for the therapeutic betrayal that is occurring. He is calling out elephant in the room when you look at the word therapist and break that down, that word cuts itself into a rather interesting descriptor of someone.

which is obviously just a linguistics, phenomenon that is occurring here, but if you look at it and separate from the other part, this is an interesting observation and I don't think it's one that's lost on Kurt himself when he is trying to make this claim in this song about the way that he feels [00:22:00] when he's having to go and process his vulnerability.

Leads us to the song Dumb, where he's essentially talking about how they've pathologized his joy. They've essentially said that the things that bring him happiness are the very same things that make him unstable. Sound familiar, right? Bringing questions to providers and being gaslit, milk it. Cynical submission to the cycle.

That is another song that brilliantly illustrates, how absurd and obscene some of these mental exercises are. And he finally comes to the reframe, look on the bright side of, and then he'll finish that with self-harm. But he's essentially coming to that realization and , I've gone through this process.

People who say that they're here to help me and relate. They're not doing that. And at this point, the only real thing that is attractive is the ultimate decision. [00:23:00] Tourettes a song with no lyric, just visceral audio explosion of. affect and then we would come to all apologies, and that really drives it home.

The spiritual resignation. What else? Can I be all? Apologies. That is the arc that Kurt knew 30 years ago was the problem with mental health and that is clinicians are not there to help you.

That is the story they keep telling themselves. To show up to work and keep collecting money. That is really the focus. This is by and large, a capitalistic endeavor. Where we utilize our skills of active listening and holding frame to sit there and listen to someone process for a significant portion of their time.

there's nothing wrong with that because people should have the ability and right to seek out others to offload mental stress. The problem then is where [00:24:00] do we go after that? at some point we need to stop talking about the problem and start talking about.

How we build the boundary, so that this problem doesn't come back? It was funny when this clinician that I had to drink with on Friday tried to argue that No Boundaries is a very therapeutic licensed endeavor. when I asked them specifically how many times is boundary featured in any of their clinical cases.

On a daily basis, they were hard pressed to think of one instance when they have actually worked with someone with a boundary. Instinctively they went to defend their turf, knowing full well that they never do any of that. It's all appearance. It's all the false fraud way of.

Delivering mental health that Kurt Cobain had written about 30 years ago. Because the truth is, if you come into Precision Cycle and you ask, what's the framework? What's in it for [00:25:00] me? I'm gonna tell you the framework is seven quantitative dimensions on a weekly basis, deliver to an app on your phone.

That's the framework. The framework is you come in here and we don't pathologize. Rather we utilize that data to align you with your best practice. The framework is you can come in here, talk to me for an hour and walk away with a blueprint. That 97% accuracy rate in moving towards 99 can accurately predict exactly what's going on with you, your relational style, and how you need to change it.

That's what Precision Cycle, dot EPO can provide. So when you ask what's in it for me? What's in it for you is hard takeaways, data receipts, actual tangible insight. That you can then read, interpret, utilize for how you wanna grow. Because what I was asking that clinician [00:26:00] yesterday was, how fast am I gonna get better seeing you?

And her response to me is, you might not, but that's the point. That's not precision cycle. Precision cycle is you get better because. there's hard data that tells you which direction to take, and this is why I'm offering Precision Cycle to, I'm looking for 10 local area professionals. If you're listening to this podcast and you're outside of that area, I welcome you to email me as well, because I am looking for professionals that I can work with in person, but I'll also work with you online virtually.

And deliver Precision Cycle and get you those frameworks that you need to start making those real changes. Because the reason you're stuck is because your therapist isn't helping you get outta that hole you're in. Your therapist is standing outside of the quicksand with the rope, and 

They're not throwing you that rope because they're trying to see if you'll think [00:27:00] of that rope in your moment of panic as opposed to precision cycle. We'll see that you need the rope. We'll throw you the rope and we'll even teach you how to use it and how to carry it for next time.

So that when you do fall in some quick sand, you can use your own rope to get out. That's what Precision cycle is. If you want to reduce it down to a nutshell, that's what it is. Yesterday's traditional therapist will let you drown just to prove a point. Precision Cycle will help you get out and will teach you how to stay out.

This has been a very great discussion, a great opportunity to. Understand the differences between traditional therapy and precision cycle. It has also been a great opportunity to discuss what Kurt Cobain knew 30 years ago and is still present today. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and there is no wonder why society keeps declining and therapy keeps increasing, the pop psychology.

Movement of [00:28:00] Instagram TikTok YouTube and LinkedIn has hijacked mental health and made it about vibes and made it about mindset and made it about you are morally bankrupt and corrupt if you don't think like one of these winners. No, that's not, that's ridiculous. And that mentality is being trickled down into the room where

the true pathology is in the inability to actually understand what's happening with these people and recalibrate them in a way that gets them out of their dysfunction. So hopefully we've been able to present to you the difference between precision cycle and instill the importance of distinguishing between a traditional therapeutic model.

And a post therapeutic model that is aligned with forward progress and motion. Because the reality is that you shouldn't be left so emotionally debilitated and weakened [00:29:00] that any little minor inconvenience is the cause for a psychotic episode. And that's what society has become a series of normalized psychotic episodes.

That is why if you're a high performer, if you're someone that is tired of feeling stuck if you're someone that can't seem to get past things from their past that are still holding them down and you've tried therapy and come to understand that therapy doesn't work for you, And you've come to see that maybe there's alternatives to the way that you've liked to process and you like to, undertake your mental health journey. Give precision cycle, elevate EPO a try. Give our framework a try. Give our actual tangible receipts, results, methods, indices, quantitative insights.

Let it help you tell you exactly where you're at. And show you with precision how to [00:30:00] recalibrate yourself into a well-rounded, integrated human being without the discussions about insecurities and counter transferences. Because again, I'm not here to pathologize you. I'm here to understand how you relate to people, and then I'm here to measure how that affects the field.

And in that we gain self-awareness.

Thank you very much. This has been a very compelling 35, 40 minutes. I appreciate the opportunity to come on and have this discussion. If anything has resonated with you, please feel free to contact me, enrique@elevateepo.com. Elevate dot EPO on Instagram and Facebook. Elevate EPO on Twitter. You can also find us on YouTube at Elevate epo, and now at Precision Cycle tv we have full videos of the podcast shorts as well as Precision Cycle behind the scenes, an intimate [00:31:00] look at the work that I do specifically with clients.

Some of the things that you can come to expect if you decide that you want to sign up for Precision Cycle. Let me show you how Precision Cycle can change your life, and by July put you on track for the best second half of your life. Let's open up 2026 on the right note.

Having gone through Precision Cycle and having understood just what we need to do to recalibrate and get us where we need to be. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you to everyone who has interacted with us. We really appreciate all of your help. We cannot do this without you and we really appreciate you downloading.

Even the simplest act of downloading a podcast is validating our work and a signal that is being heard and we appreciate that. We value that. We [00:32:00] welcome that. we hope that you find time to interact with us i'm very thankful grateful hopeful and excited about being able to share my insights with the community and to continue growing it.

So thank you very much for all your support. Thank you very much for tuning in. we will be back on Friday. Thank you for today. And again, I'm not here to demean therapy and to talk down about it. I am just here to be a critical voice and to deliver a solution and an alternative precision cycle.

Elevate epo, seven dimensions of personality measurement. Try it out. Maybe it's for you. Give us a shot. Thank you very much for all your help. It's been great talking to you. We'll be back on Friday. Take care.