Transcription of Independence #42
Speaker 1: You’re listening to the Dr. Lisa radio hour and podcast recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine Portland Maine and broadcast on 1310AM Portland. Streaming live each week at 11am on wlobradio.com. Show summaries are available at doctorlisa.org. Download and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle through iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.
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Dr. Lisa: Hello. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you’re listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast show number 42; Independence airing for the first time on WLOB Radio on 1310am Portland, Maine. Today’s show which we’re discussing with Genevieve Morgan who is in the studio with me today. Hi Genevieve.
Genevieve: Hi Lisa. Happy almost 4th of July.
Dr. Lisa: Thank you. Almost Independence Day … Our show today is going to focus on independence. Some people think about independence as fireworks and they think about watermelon and backyards and picnics. This is all good but those are all celebrating an independence from something that was onerous, and in our case is the country’s independence from larger evil empire powers that were.
Genevieve: This has various significant meaning in people’s lives and their overall health and well-being which is what we’re all about. Freedom from onerous habits.
Dr. Lisa: Yes, onerous habits. I do find that this is something that people come to see me in my acupuncture and integrative medicine practice a lot which is things that have gotten people to a bad place or not necessarily bad just not a place that they’d like to be in anymore. Whether they’ve gained too much weight or they’re still smoking or they’re still in an emotionally dysfunctional relationship. It’s the patterns that finally there’s some breaking point and people finally will come to see me and say, “My body is telling me or my life is telling me that I just can’t keep doing this.”
Genevieve: Yet it’s so hard to make those positive changes. When something has served you for a while and then it doesn’t serve you anymore, to actually leave it behind is very difficult.
Dr. Lisa We were talking about smoking and we’ll talk about smoking with Peggy Woodcock and the fact that you can actually see a positive change in your lungs pretty quickly. It’s always an interesting balance because you’ll simultaneously see a positive change and maybe a change that doesn’t feel quite so comfortable and makes you want to go … I always call it the comfy couch syndrome.
You always want to go sit back on the comfy couch where you’ve been for a long time. If you’re smoking and it’s done what you needed it to do for many years you want to go back to that smoking feeling. Even that small amount of positive can sometimes be not quite enough.
Genevieve: Well people often like you the way you are and don’t want you to change … your group or your community or your family, they like what you’ve been doing or they’ve gotten used to who you are. Making that decision, going to see somebody like yourself getting in tune with what you want to do, setting an intention for change is all well and good but then when a patient leaves their office they go back to the old way, the old community.
Maybe that’s how weight watchers works because there’s a buddy system. Need a buddy sometimes to make a change.
Dr. Lisa: Sometimes you need a buddy, sometimes you need a practitioner who can help you whether it’s a spiritual practitioner, whether it’s a healthcare practitioner or a psychologist. Today we’re going to have Peggy Woodcock from Reiki Partners in Kennebunkport and psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Kubik come in and they’re both individuals who help with guidance.
Sometimes you need somebody who can be in the trenches with you and sometimes you need somebody who can advice and give you more of an objective view. It does ultimately come back to your interest in changing. As I said people rarely do anything unless there is some positive benefit. Even if it doesn’t seem very positive in the long term they’re going to keep doing it. One of the things that we were talking with our audio guru John McCain before we started talking you and I is this idea of chasing the next high. Whether you have a drink, you have a few drinks, you start to feel good, the next day you feel bad and you think I’ll just have another drink or another two drinks.
The same with eating where you eat some ice-cream and that makes you feel temporarily good but then you feel bad and you think … the next day but that made me feel good yesterday. Why don’t I have some more ice-cream? I think the same thing can be true with smoking, drugs, prescription medications, relationships. Even people who have a little bit of either sex addiction or an emotional addiction they like that good feeling that the other person in their life gives to them however temporarily and they’re willing to overlook some other bad things in a relationship that probably don’t make it a good, sustainable, long-term effort.
I think too from all the research I did for the core balanced diet, one thing about health scares, I’m sure that many of your patients come to you because they have pain or they have some health scare. Sometimes the body speaks louder than the psyche. A health scare can actually just be like a tiny little red flag that gets raised that says something needs to change. Going and finding that guidance in your office or with Beth Kubik or with Peggy Woodcock, you can help figure out what it is. It doesn’t have to be all at once. It can be little baby steps towards a better future, independence from the things that aren’t working.
Sometimes those red flags are really important because you want to catch them when they’re little tiny red flags not big red flags.
That is one of the reasons why a lot of people will come to see me for acupuncture or they’ll come and join that Qigong class that I teach because there’s something that they saw as a red flag in their life. The interesting thing for me always is that I will have to keep in front of me my notes from past visits so that I can remind them because people start to feel a little bit better and all over sudden they think what’s the big deal? I can start eating the food I ate before.
They don’t realize that it’s all the work that they have done to get to the place where they’ve changed that makes them feel good. They start to backslide. It’s awfully nice for me to be able to as an advisor to go open the chart and say, “Remember last year at this time you were experiencing this.” They say, “Yeah, maybe I don’t want to do this anymore. Maybe this is a good reason to stay on the path.” That’s another important thing that people have to remember is that health scare is all well and good but there has to be some forward momentum that keeps you moving in the right direction.
Dr. Lisa: Maintenance … I think Beth Kubik will talk to us about maintenance. We do look forward to talking to Peggy Woodcock from Reiki Partners in Kennebunkport and local psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Kubik about independence. We hope that those who are listening will keep on listening and we appreciate having you be part of our listening community.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is pleased to be sponsored by the University of New England. As part of this affiliation every week we offer a segment we call wellness innovations. This week’s wellness innovations is the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale which has been developed at the faculty of psychology University of Bergen in collaboration with the Bergen Clinics Foundation, Norway. Are you a social media enthusiast or simply a Facebook addict?
Researchers from Norway had developed a new instrument to measure Facebook addiction, The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale. An article about the results has just been published in the renowned journal, Psychological Reports. The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale is based on six basic criteria. How much time you spend thinking about Facebook or plan use of Facebook, how often you feel an urge to use Facebook, you use Facebook in order to forget personal problems, you’ve tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without success, you become restless or troubled if you’re prohibited from using Facebook, you use Facebook so much that it has a negative impact on your job or studies.
The study shows that scoring often or always on at least four of the seven items may suggest that you are addicted to Facebook. Facebook addiction occurs more regularly among younger users and people who are anxious and socially insecure. The research also indicates that women are more at risk of developing Facebook addiction as are extroverts. For more information on this wellness innovation visit doctorlisa.org. For more information on the University of New England visit une.edu.
Speaker 1: This portion of the Dr. Lisa Radio hour and Podcast has been brought to you by The University of New England UNE. An innovative health sciences university grounded in the liberal arts. UNE is the number one educator of health professionals in Maine. Learn more about The University of New England at une.edu.
Dr. Lisa: On today’s Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast we’re discussing the theme of independence which we’ve taken down a slightly different route because we want to learn more about independence from perhaps patterns we’ve gotten into that are keeping us a little bit stuck in our lives. We thought it would be a good time to bring in Peggy Woodcock, nurse and owner, founder, everything she says of Reiki Partners. One of the things she does is hypnotherapy and we know that this has been shown to help people with their independence and breaking free of habits. Thank you for coming in today Peggy.
Peggy: It’s great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Dr. Lisa: I have Genevieve Morgan next to me. She’s the co-host and also Maine Magazine Wellness editor.
Genevieve: I am and yes … actually I covered Peggy in an article on energy medicine about a year ago in the magazine and had a session with her. I’m intimately acquainted with your work. Thanks for coming Peggy.
Peggy: Great to see you again Genevieve.
Dr. Lisa: Peggy, your practice was formed after many years in the traditional medical setting. You worked in doctors’ offices, in a hospital I understand … You had the chance to witness people repeatedly doing things to themselves that maybe weren’t healthy. Is that how you got to be where you’re doing what you’re doing?
Peggy: Yes. That’s exactly what I did. Many years of labor and delivery, neonatal intensive care and doctors’ offices and seeing that surely sometimes surgery, sometimes medicine was very helpful but not always. There seemed to be a lot more to healing and to making changes in one’s life than what we found in the traditional medicine path. I like to call the type of work that I do alternative or complementary therapy. That it doesn’t cut out the possibilities of certainly seeing doctors, seeing psychiatrists, taking medicine, having surgery when needed. However there are other ways that can be very helpful to heal.
Dr. Lisa: What were some of the biggest challenges you dealt with as a traditional medical practitioner?
Peggy: People not understanding that they have control over their own health and their own healing. That they needed to think about what felt right to them and what was going to work in their lives and not just take a pattern way of doing something and being told that that’s the way they needed to do it.
Genevieve: One of the conundrums that we have today is that we have a lot of information and we know that things are bad for us. We know that smoking causes lung cancer. We know that if we eat too much junk food it isn’t good for our health but we continue to do it because it feels good. I’m interested in your work. How do you fix that with people?
Peggy: First of all I don’t fix anything. Thank you for the suggestion. People turn to things that make them feel better at some point in their life. Those things then continue to be a habit. Sometimes we get to a point where they’re no longer helpful for us. Even if we know that smoking was probably never helpful for the 15 year old at the time that that 15 year old thought that it helped him with their friends, thought that it made them feel big, thought that it … it did something to their psyche to help them to fit in.
That feeling of depending upon that to make them feel comfortable with themselves and feeling good about who they were, that habit becomes part of who they are and gets settled into their subconscious. If you wouldn’t mind I’d like to talk a little bit about the conscious and the subconscious to explain how hypnosis works. The conscious part of the brain is only a very small part of our mind, of our brain. If you would think about the brain as a pie and you were to say that the conscious brain was one part of that it would be a very small sliver; like 5% to 10%.
The conscious brain is very important because it takes us through our day. It helps us make our list for our groceries, put things on our calendar, put the clothes in the washer, send the kids off to school and all of the things that we do consciously working step by step through our day. It’s very necessary on this earth to have those things going on. However the subconscious remembers everything; everything that you’ve ever done, everything you’ve ever seen, everything you’ve ever read, everything you’ve ever heard and stores it.
Most of the time we don’t access a lot of that however, the information is still stored there. The 15 year old who started smoking and felt good when they had a cigarette because it made them feel big or like part of the crowd then remembers that good feeling. The habit is stored in the subconscious. The mentioned or the memory comes forward and says but if you have the cigarette you’ll feel good, you’ll fit into this crowd, everything will be okay. That habit for that 15 year old gets stored in the subconscious and keeps coming forward throughout the years until a better idea, a better habit, a better thought replaces it.
Our conscious brain holds our will power. Someone who wants to lose weight says, “I just don’t have the will power.” Only 5% to 10% of their brain is working to help them. In the subconscious is stored the reason perhaps why that person overeats or someone else bites their nails or someone else smokes. It’s necessary then to get the new idea, the new thought, the new helpful, healing idea into the subconscious brain. Some of us do this very quickly. We learn something, we experience one time, we say that didn’t work very well and we very quickly move on to the next thing.
That means that both our conscious and subconscious brain tied into the change, tied into the positive move. Those things we all have trouble with and they can vary from person to person but we all have trouble with something. Those are the things that are stored in our subconscious and we haven’t replaced it with a better idea.
Genevieve: That’s where hypnotherapy helps.
Peggy: That’s where hypnotherapy helps. First of all hypnosis is not sleep, it’s not a weirded-out state, it’s not someone else taking control of you, making you do something that you don’t want to do. It’s always about getting you to relax enough for the conscious brain that hurries around all day long to settle down and the subconscious brain to come to the forefront. Then we can reach in to those habits and make positive suggestions that the client wants to make, that the client needs for those changes. Those positive suggestions then settle in to the subconscious.
If you hit on the right note, if you get the right feeling and the person buys into the idea then of course the new idea gets settled into the subconscious. That’s what comes forward. For the smoker what I would suggest and want and hope that would come forward is … but I’m smoke free, I’m a non-smoker if there is any idea of smoking that comes up. When we have habits that we’ve had for many years they settle in pretty deeply and your subconscious reminds you to smoke or reminds you to eat that extra bowl of ice-cream or reminds you to chew your nails because this has made you feel better at some point in the past.
Genevieve: Certainly maybe in times of stress.
Peggy: Absolutely in times of stress.
Dr. Lisa: Peggy, were there things that you had to re-teach your brain in bridging from “traditional” medicine to the new type of medicine that you’re practicing … this more integrative medicine?
Peggy: Yes. I think one of those things started out with I have to begin speaking positively to myself. As I began to do that I began to listen to how other people spoke to themselves and how we put out to the universe things like, my nose is getting stuffy this morning. By Friday for sure I’ll have a cold and miss that wedding on Saturday. Immediately our subconscious and our body takes on that thought. That we tell ourselves things that are negative, that are not helpful, that push us away from health. We’ve all been taught to do that.
I remember somebody saying, “Jeez, I’m going to just say I’m fat first because then maybe nobody else will say it or maybe nobody else will notice.” In some ways we all do that. We quickly point out our bad points. We quickly point out where we’ve failed, where we don’t do well. I think a good example is my own sense of direction which used to not be very good. In the past that wasn’t very good. I had difficulty finding my way to people’s houses or events. I then learnt that if I began saying to myself that I have a sense of direction, improves every day. It’s getting better and better.
Then the nervousness, the worry, the stress that came on … I’m going to be late because I can’t find that house number began to float away. I did things like getting other tools. I got a GPS. I told people I could find my way there. I told my relatives I could find my way there even though they said don’t ask Peggy. I can do it. I began to teach myself those types of things and realized that that’s what everybody does on some level or another in some section of their lives. They can tear themselves down.
Dr. Lisa: Let’s go back to smoking for one brief moment because that is an area where people have tremendous difficulty in stopping. Does repeated failure … if someone has been smoking for 30 years and they’ve tried to quit eight times but each time it’s failed, does that reinforce the negative script about … “I’m not a person who can stop smoking.”
Peggy: I think to some degree that is true but my job as a hypnotherapist is to say, you’ve tried all these times. What didn’t work? Let’s look at what didn’t work and let’s look at this in a whole new way. We grab all the big guns. If someone says to me, “I definitely need to use the patch. I’ve used it before and it worked for three weeks. Can I use the patch and come to hypnosis?” Absolutely if that works best for you. It is another replacement of nicotine and you also need to be weaned off the patch but if that’s what’s going to work for right now to get you going, use all the big guns you can.
Somebody asked about CHANTIX. If they feel that would be helpful for them, yes. Most people I see for example to stop smoking have already tried one, two, four, eight times. They’re coming to hypnosis as a last resort. It’s a big job to help that person to begin to see that it comes from their own mind and to teach them how to begin to think in a positive way and to reach in and get that information stored in the subconscious.
I have a wonderful story if you’d like me to tell it. An 80 year old man came to me with his oxygen tank, with very bad emphysema which of course we know smoking either causes or at least increases greatly. His lungs were not working very well at all. He said I need to stop smoking. My doctor says I’ve got to stop smoking and I just have to do this. We talked for a while. I learned a little about his life. One thing that I thought was an amazing thing was that he had started when he was nine. He had smoked unfiltered Pall Mall’s since he was nine. We’re talking 71 years.
He was in a foster home and his early years weren’t very happy or weren’t very good. This whole idea of him stopping smoking at this point seemed amazing and his relatives didn’t believe it or whatever. He came to his first session and he laughed feeling better about himself thinking that he could maybe do it but he smoked that week. He came back the second week which typically I do at least two sessions, he came back the second week and I regressed to a time before he smoked which for him was a long time ago.
He accessed a time when he felt really good about himself. That’s what I had him bring in but he did the work. He found that time when he felt good. It was at a sports event and he hit the home run or the final goal, whatever it was and the boys carried him around and he felt wonderful. He accessed that good feeling and brought that in. That helped him to see that he could feel good about himself. He walked out of there a non-smoker. He called me in three weeks and said, “My doctor says my lungs are better already. I’m on less oxygen.”
He called me about every month and would tell me his name and say, ‘I’m here to tell you I’m still a non-smoker. I’m telling all my friends and relatives.” It was a wonderful episode and a wonderful time in my life to see that people can change things no matter how long it’s been. If they truly want to change, allow the positive messages to soak in.
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Dr. Lisa: You’ve spoken about smoking and you’ve mentioned nail biting. What other types of habits tend to populate your reading room?
Peggy: Weight loss. That is a major one. The difference with weight loss and say for example nail biting or drug use is that weight loss is always around a balance. It always has to be around eating enough to be healthy and happy and yet not overeating. In some ways stopping other abusive habits such as we said smoking and drugs, those you actually can leave completely the rest of your life without but with weight loss you need to balance your food, balance your exercise, balance your water intake and find a way where you are happy, healthy and comfortable and never on a diet. Always it’s about balance.
That’s the piece most people that come to me for weight loss have had many attempts at losing weight or sometimes lost a great deal of weight and then getting it back. It was always about being on this truth regimen of not eating anything good, not eating anything fun, exercising till they fell down. In some way or another they overdid it and abused themselves in a way because they limited anything that they were allowed to do and being in this box so as to lose weight. Finding a way to eat what you’d like in appropriate amounts, helping you to move forward in that way.
Knowing that if your goal is to lose weight and to feel good in our physical body then maybe it’s more important than that ice-cream or that box of candy that you would have consumed in the past. Weight loss and smoking cessation seem to be the two largest.
Genevieve: Are there areas for instance insomnia or menopause? Any other life stages or points?
Peggy: Very definitely. Anything which involves an energy change, anything that involves bodily changes can absolutely be helped with hypnosis because we talk to the subconscious. I’d like to point out that this subconscious runs all of your body mechanisms. Thank goodness we don’t have to spend our time worrying about our heartbeat or how many breaths I’ll take in this minute or whether this muscle will move this way or that type of thing, whether my hormones will flow the way they’re supposed to because the subconscious runs all of that for us.
Many times the subconscious is … always the subconscious is working at doing the very best it can for us. It wants us happy and healthy. The messages it gets come from our conscious brain. If we send the message back that menopause is terrible and I’m going to have sweats, I’m going to be miserable and I’m going to be cranky then the subconscious says let’s make her miserable, cranky and fat and not sleep.
As we begin to talk to the subconscious about these things simply a change in the hormonal system, a change in the energy system, a change in life. That it’s comfortable, safe and wonderful in many ways that the subconscious begins to understand and send those messages back to you. I’m having hot flash. The energy must be moving right up through my body. Looking at it that way is so much easier.
Dr. Lisa: You also practice Reiki.
Peggy: I do.
Dr. Lisa: Is there a parallel with hypnosis and Reiki as far as energy or …
Peggy: Yes, in many ways. As a matter of fact I came from my traditional medical background and took a Reiki class and said this is for me. Then moved into actually taking all the levels of Reiki. My daughter and I opened a Reiki practice which is Reiki Partners and then realized we were doing meditation. We were helping people with ideas and changes. Although Reiki is considered to be healing energy changes by the practitioner channeling, bringing in universal energy to that client and bringing them into balance, allowing them to heal on their own.
Hypnosis actually does the same thing. It helps the person to come into some sort of balance and then realize where they can make the changes and move. The two are used very much together.
Genevieve: My mother found Reiki to be very helpful during chemotherapy and radiation for cancer. Doing it complementary to the chemotherapy.
Peggy: Complementary to … That’s absolutely right because it helps to move out what needs to be moved out and bring in what feels better and what balances you. In any health crisis or health journey it can be used and also hypnosis to actually talk to the specific self and to help with the immunity and help the immune cells to gather together and do their best and make them understand how to fight perhaps the cancer or how to move forward in a way of healing. To build up bone muscles and bone marrow and to help the muscles to relax during treatments that type of thing to help with relaxation.
Dr. Lisa: Are there any specific suggestions you could offer our listeners who are struggling with trying to be more independent of their previously perhaps dysfunctional patterns.
Peggy: At the risk of repeating myself certainly beginning to talk to yourself in a positive way. I always say like they say in AA, fake it till you make it. It’s about saying positive things to yourself, not such outlandish things that you don’t have any connection to them. In every way, ever day I’m better and better. That’s something I send people home with almost every time. Just beginning to pull in the feelings of positive thoughts and of speaking well to yourself and of yourself. Your body responds to what your mind tells it.
I often say that the body is a robot. It works in a way that your mind tells it what to do and then it does it. If you tell yourself you’re healing, if you tell yourself you’re healing, if you tell yourself you’re going to sleep well, if you tell yourself your body is going to relax, the body will say, that’s what I’m supposed to do. It will begin to do it as opposed to telling yourself all the negative things that just seem to hurt more and drag you down more.
Genevieve: Peggy, as a final gift to our listeners who out there, as Lisa said, may be struggling with their addictions or their bad habits, could you offer us a stress reduction hypnotic induction with the caveat that anyone driving or operating heavy machinery should stop right now?
Peggy: You never do hypnosis while driving or using heavy duty machinery of any type or electric knives or anything along those lines. One last note before I start, all hypnosis is self hypnosis. It’s always what you allow. I’m simply the guide. Just allow yourself discover into the surface beneath you. Letting your shoulders relax and your arms relax. Your chest relaxes now and on down through your hips and into your legs. I’d like you to notice that perhaps as you’re resting here your eyelids are closed and that they feel heavy and droopy. You just settle in.
The whole purpose of hypnosis and hypnosis therapy is to allow yourself to relax. Let the conscious mind just settle in to the background and bring the subconscious mind to the forefront. As you relax that happens automatically. Let yourself settle down. I’m going to help you take some nice slow deep breaths now. Breathing in on the count of four; one, two, three, four, hold that breath. Now exhale on the count of eight; two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Again inhale, one, two, three, four. Hold and exhale, two three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One more at your own pace.
Now just let yourself settle back. Relaxing more and more. Perhaps feeling better and better each moment as you allow your whole body, mind and spirit to settle down. Relaxing more and more. Now we access your subconscious brain and if you were only relaxing even slightly now your subconscious is 10 to 20 times more susceptible to positive healing, self love suggestions than it was before we started. If you’re allowing yourself to go much deeper you could be 100 or even 1,000 times more susceptible to the positive suggestions, the healing, the self love suggestions that I’m giving you now.
Settle down and relax. Look into yourself that you are healthy, you are happy and you are learning to relax. Body, mind and spirit working together, settling down, becoming more and more restful. Saying positive things to yourself everyday in every way I’m better and better. When I see the color of the sky I allow myself to relax. I am in control of my choices. I live my life to the fullest. Allowing yourself to relax more and more, letting these positive suggestions settle in.
Now after that short hypnosis we’re going to bring you back. I’ll bring you back to the room, back to the car, back to the place, making sure that you’re safe on the count of three; one, coming back now. Two, feeling very good about yourself and three you’re wide awake, alert and clear, able to go on with the rest of your day feeling really good about you.
Dr. Lisa: Peggy we know that our listeners who participated in the induction are feeling nice and relaxed now and ready to take on the challenges of becoming independent from perhaps past patterns that no longer work for them. We thank you for coming in and speaking with us today. We wish you all the best with Reiki Partners and with your hypnotherapy practice which is in Kennebunk Port …
Peggy: Kennebunk.
Dr. Lisa: Kennebunk. People can learn more information about your practice where?
Peggy: On www.reikipartnersmaine that’s M A I N E dot com.
Dr. Lisa: Thanks so much Peggy.
Peggy: Thank you. It’s a pleasure.
Speaker 1: A chronic headache. Sleepless nights, a feeling of something being not quite right. Treat the symptoms with traditional medications, feel better for a little while and continue with your busy days. Have you ever stopped to consider the what that’s at the core of a health issue? Most times it goes much deeper than you think and you don’t treat root cause; the aches, the sleeplessness and not quite right come back. They don’t have to. You can take a step towards a healthier, more centered life.
Schedule an appointment with Dr. Lisa Belisle and learn how a practice that combines traditional medicine with eastern healing practices can put you on the right path to better living. For more information call the Body Architect in Portland at 2077742196 or visit doctorlisa.org today. Healthy living is a journey. Take the first step.
This segment of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is brought to you by the following generous sponsors; Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage in Yarmouth, Maine. Honesty and integrity can take you home. With RE/MAX Heritage it’s your move. Learn more at rheritage.com. Tom Sheppard of Sheppard Financial with offices in Yarmouth, Maine the Sheppard Financial team is there to help you evolve with your money. For more information on Sheppard Financial’s refreshing perspective on investing, please email Tom at sheppardfinancialmaine.com.
Dr. Lisa: As part of today’s’ independence show where we discuss ways of breaking free from out past patterns that maybe are not so healthy for us, we are speaking with Dr. Elizabeth Kubik, a clinical psychologist from the Portland area. We welcome you to our show. Thanks for coming in.
Dr. Elizabeth: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Dr. Lisa: You deal with a lot of different issues. You deal with anxiety, post partum depression, infertility, stress management, womens’ wellness. It strikes me that there’s probably similar scenes that run throughout when it comes to patterns, people with unhealthy patterns in their lives. Tell me about that.
Dr. Elizabeth: A lot of people develop unhealthy patterns related to the distress tolerance. We tend to do what works for us well in the short run. Sometimes what works for us well in the short run isn’t so helpful for us in the long run. For instance drinking, it’s a great way to relieve anxiety in the short run, in the long run probably causes more problems if you’re overdrinking or relying that as your way to cope with distress.
I tend to think of habits as relating to the stress times and also as relating to short term thinking. We tend to do what works well for us in the short term. The short term reinforce is much more powerful than a long term delayed reinforce.
Dr. Lisa: We were speaking with a hypnotherapist in our last segment. She said something very similar. She said that the short term thing is that people … that’s what people reach for. We didn’t talk with her a lot about relationships and what is it about relationships that we keep reaching towards to make us feel better even if in the long term they’re not the best thing for us.
Dr. Elizabeth: Some people learn maybe through their childhood different relationship patterns. They might learn to be a rescuer in a relationship. Say they grew up in a family with an alcoholic parent or someone in the family who is an alcoholic. They might have grown up taking on responsibility for that person in the family or they might have felt that they needed to control certain things in the family. They might have felt that things would fall apart without them taking care of situations. That’s a classic example of someone learning codependence in a relationship.
That’s not an uncommon phenomenon for children of alcoholics. That could be one example I’m guessing. You can see this type of thing also not just in … that could carry on into a spousal relationship. You could see a mother-child relationship where maybe the mom is trying to control their child and overbearing and not willing to let their child have independence which can cause problems. I don’t know if I’ve answered the question well.
Dr. Lisa: You have. Define for me … what is codependence? What does that mean?
Dr. Elizabeth: Codependence … some people might say codependence is an addiction to bad relationships or unhealthy relationships. I think there’s a variety of definitions out there. More research that I’m not too familiar with has come out in the last 10 years based on families or individuals who live in families with alcoholism showing that this is a phenomena for people who grew up in dysfunctional families is a particular … it can be a phenomena for people who grew up in those families where they tend to end up in relationships where they are codependent and looking to take care of someone else even if it’s not healthy for them or even if it’s an abusive relationship or an emotionally destructive relationship.
They will stay in the relationship even if it’s not a great relationship for them.
Dr. Lisa: It feels familiar.
Dr. Elizabeth: It could be because it feels familiar because for them it satisfies that need to try to control another person. It satisfies that need to try to save someone else. That’s what they grew up watching, maybe that’s what feels in some funny way good to them to be able to do that.
Dr. Lisa: You described this rescuer type. What does that look like?
Dr. Elizabeth: Again if we go back to a child with … someone who grew up in an alcoholic family, if their family was chaotic and they were constantly trying to save their family from being exposed maybe to the community that this family was dysfunctional and that there were arguments or maybe financial distress, that person learns to cover these things up and keep this stuff to themselves. They also learn that that works for them. That yes, they can be in this situation and take control of it then they’re the superhero controlling everything and making everything okay.
That in some way works for them at least in the short run as we go again back to that short term, long term distinction. For them in the short run it feels pretty good. Does that answer?
Dr. Lisa: If you’ve been living 40 years as a rescuer, pleaser in a codependent relationship and all over sudden it’s not working, how do you know?
Dr. Elizabeth: It’s often hard for the individual to have insight into their own behavior often times. The person with the problem whether it’s a habit problem like nail biting or drinking or if it’s relationship codependence, often time that person is the last person to have insight into their own behavior where everyone around them can see it more clearly. One way is other people could tell you. I think there’s a problem here. You may not be ready to hear that. We have a theory of change called The Stages of Change Theory.
There are five stages of change; Pre-contemplative, contemplative, preparation, action and maintenance. If someone is in the pre-contemplative stage of change, they might not be ready to hear that they have a problem. They lack insight into their own problem behavior such that if someone came to them and said I think this is the problem they would say no, this relationship is working or if they had an alcohol problem, no my drinking is not a problem. I don’t drink more than my friends. It’s all okay.
Despite the fact that again it might be obvious to everyone around them that this is interfering their life, that maybe the relationship is chaotic, they’re getting to work late, they’re not able to hang out with their friends, it’s taking a toll on them. In the contemplative stage someone has more insight into their behavior. They’re contemplating change. They might ambivalent, they might be thinking about the pros and cons. They’re not necessarily committed to change or even committed to preparing to change but they’re maybe starting to recognize that there could be some problems here.
They might have a hard time even thinking about letting go of the behaviors at that point because it’s scary especially if it’s relationship; someone they care about. It would be hard to even think about what it would mean to try to change that. The preparation stage someone is recognizing that they have a problem. Maybe they’ve made an appointment to seek help or maybe they’re starting to talk to friends and saying I have a problem. I think that I want to change or stop. I think my relationship isn’t working. I don’t know if there’s a way I can change it or I don’t know if I need to get out of it. I need to figure this out. That’s the preparation stage.
Where they figure out the pros and cons and they’re ready to start moving forward but they haven’t actually taken action. The action stage is when someone is actively taking action. If they’re going a treatment route maybe they’re in treatment starting to make the changes, maybe starting to be in couples therapy and assertively communicate or set limits in their relationship. If not in treatment they might still be doing that same thing. They might been reading and making the changes on their own.
The maintenance stage is about maintaining the gains that they’ve done. We can all think about times where we’ve made a really big change in our lives and we’re so excited but we forget the maintenance part which is very important. That’s all about staying with the behavior change and not relapsing into our previous habits. Just like if we start our running program and we’re running all the time and it’s so great and then something comes up in our life and within two months we’ve forgotten about our running program. Maintenance is about staying focused on how to keep that behavior going, being …. Some of it comes down to mindfulness in this action and maintenance stage.
Being mindful of what you’re committing to and staying aware of the behaviors that you want to be choosing to do each day with respect to relationship or with respect to any other habit like alcohol use or something like that.
Speaker 1: We’ll return to our interview after acknowledging the following generous sponsors. Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine, makers of Dr. John’s granola cereal. Find them on the web at orthopedicspecialistsme.com.
Dr. Lisa: Difference with relationship is there is the element of attraction. Talk to us about how attraction … that you can be attracted to the wrong person over and over again. Attraction seems something that just comes out of the blue. Doesn’t feel like you’re making a choice.
Dr. Elizabeth: That’s an interesting one. I have a bias in that I am a behaviorist and I tend to see things in terms of reinforcements, consequences and behaviors. In my behavioral view I would break that down into behaviors. It is not necessarily attraction. It’s maybe the behaviors that we choose to engage in, in the relationship that in some way is clinical because on some level there is a chemistry but beyond the chemistry we might then look at again what reinforcements do we get and what do we get out of that relationship?
The attraction might be about again going back to our learning history and that’s behavioral concept too that this can be learned that we learn that this is my model, this is my norm, this is what a relationship is, this is what’s romantic and exciting.
Dr. Lisa: For instance we all have friends who all are attracted to men who never call them back. For some reason every time they have a new boyfriend it’s the same kind of boyfriend and you’re sitting there saying if he doesn’t call you back you need to do something else but they don’t. What would be attractive about that to that person?
Dr. Elizabeth: Again it could be that for them they have low self esteem and for them this is how they see themselves. They don’t necessarily see themselves as worthy of getting a phone call. This is the best that they can do. That can go along with the codependence. One of the features of being a codependent is having low self esteem, having that fear of abandonment. Despite being in a relationship where you’re not … that’s not reciprocal, you’re staying in the relationship. That can go to your sense of self.
Dr. Lisa: Let’s talk a little bit about anxiety because our listeners might not think of their anxiety as a behavior that could be changed. Again like attraction it feels out of their control. What would you say to someone who has a pattern of anxiety and wants to break free of it?
Dr. Elizabeth: I would tend to talk to them about what situations trigger the anxiety. That’s where I would start. What are the situations where you’re feeling anxious? What are you doing in response? So you really can get behaviors. What are you doing when you feel anxious? What are you doing that works? What are you doing that doesn’t work? We start to focus on what you’re doing that doesn’t work. A classic example of things that don’t work in anxiety are avoidance. If I have panic attacks in the supermarket I could manage my anxiety by not going to the supermarket at all. I totally avoid it.
That works really well. That again comes down to that short term, long term distinction and distress tolerance. In the short run it works great for me to stay out of the supermarket because I don’t experience anxiety. If I do go into the supermarket maybe I have this idea that if my anxiety gets to a certain point I leave … and again that avoids behavior I’m escaping the supermarket and I feel this huge rest of relief if I leave the supermarket when I’m feeling on the verge of having a panic attack.
I successfully control my anxiety in the short run. In the long run that avoidance will cause problems because I’m not doing anything in the long run to solve the problem. If anything I’m making it worse because in my head I can’t go to the supermarket. That’s my self-concept now … is that I really can’t go to the supermarket. I haven’t gone in six months. When I do go I feel anxious I have to leave. I am not giving myself the chance to develop the idea that I can stay in the supermarket. Again that comes down to the stress tolerance.
Then once we identify what the avoidance behaviors are we can teach people how to tolerate their distress … what we call the stay in the situation, approach your anxiety. Technically in behavior therapy they might call that exposure based treatment.
Dr. Lisa: You brought in the idea of mindfulness before. That is the whole concept of mindfulness … is staying in the situation and being present as hard as it can be.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes. Mindfulness is an important part of anxiety and fortunately in the last 10 years the researchers have embraced the literature on mindfulness, incorporated that into the treatment programs which has been a great addition to a lot of behavior therapy treatments. We have what we call in vivo exposure which is going into the situation and learning how to stay with your anxiety in the situation. Then we have what we call imaginal exposure which is imagining yourself in the situation. That involves mindfulness work and in your mind allowing yourself to sit with an idea or concept or feeling that could be distressing.
Beyond doing the work specifically relating to an anxiety trigger, just learning mindfulness in general is helpful for people because they learn how to slow down, recognize what their emotions are and be more proactive about taking care of themselves when they notice … once they turn inward they can notice that they’re anxious maybe before they hadn’t noticed because they weren’t as attentive to themselves.
Dr. Lisa: I know from experience from my clinical practices substance abuse is very challenging to deal with as a clinician. It can be very hard, it can be rewarding because you can get to the other side of it but you chose to dive right into this very difficult field. Why?
Dr. Elizabeth: Into substance abuse, well, I got a job in doing research in substance use which is what steered me in that direction. At the same time I really enjoyed that work. If I think back in my years of clinical work and now it’s been many years, probably 20 years, that time was one of my favorite times because those clients appreciated the help and if they were in that preparation or action stage of treatment it was rewarding to work with them and help them learn about new ways to live their lives.
Granted, it’s frustrating if you’re having someone come in who is more in a pre-contemplative stage because there’s not a lot you can do at that point to help them. There are some techniques called motivational interviewing designed to help elicit motivation and help someone move forward in their stages of change. That is helpful too. I do like the substance abuse work although I don’t actively do much of it any more.
Dr. Lisa: Let’s say someone out there listening is in the contemplative stage, almost to the preparedness stage; do you have any baby steps for them that you can tell us over the radio?
Dr. Elizabeth: You have someone in the contemplative stage. If they are in the contemplative stage they have insight into their problem whereas in the pre-contemplative stage they’d be defensive. At that point talking to other people, getting advice, thinking through the pros and cons, thinking about that short term, long term distinction, I often have my patients go through pros and cons of staying with the behavior and the pros and cons of changing behavior. Two separate pros and cons list.
One is pros and cons of drinking; one is pros and cons of not drinking. They come out different interestingly enough. Then you take that pros and cons list and you for each item under each category think about is this a short term benefit or a long term benefit and try to help someone draw out their thinking to long term. Then try to encourage them to make their decision based in the long term benefits.
Dr. Lisa: Actually I found that to be useful when it comes to relationships and my patients because they’ll come in and they’ll say I was with this man for such a long time, I knew I had to leave him and here’s the reason why. I’ll have them list all the reasons why and go through that process. It’s actually helpful for maintenance because people forget. They forget and they go, “I really love this guy. I don’t know why I’m not with him anymore.” I pull out the list and I go right here. This is a list of why you’re not with this person. I don’t want to say women are the same way. I find that that’s very helpful.
Dr. Elizabeth: That maintenance phase is about staying with the commitment to maintain the behavior change. Going back to reasons can be motivating.
Dr. Lisa: What’s the reward of behavior change? To tell people what they could look forward to if they decide to move to the action phase.
Dr. Elizabeth: Decide to move to the action phase … it sounds so linear. Well, the reward is living a full and vital life. Maybe having relationships that are more fulfilling, enjoying the moment more. I think often times we have in our head … when we talk to people for instance about their anxiety, people come in and they have this idea, when I get control of my anxiety then I would be able to go to college or then I’ll be able to get my job or then I’ll be able to go out more and have more friends.
It doesn’t work that way. In the action phase you are able to say I’m ready to make these changes whether or not I have anxiety. You can take in a moment and be enjoying your life more rather than putting your life on hold waiting for this anxiety to go away.
Dr. Lisa: How do people find out more about you or your practice or the type of work that you do?
Dr. Elizabeth: Well, I am listed on the internet if you Google Elizabeth Kubik and its spelt K U B I K, PhD. I was joking earlier with the recording person that I’m not in the 21st century yet. I don’t yet have a webpage. Googling and you can find a listing for me. My office is in Portland.
Dr. Lisa: We appreciate the time that you’ve spent with us today talking about behavior change and the means of obtaining independence. Thank you for coming in and talking with us. We’ve been talking with Dr. Elizabeth Kubik, clinical psychologist who practices here in the Portland area. Happy Independence Day.
Dr. Elizabeth: Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed with you all about anxiety, codependency and habit change.
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast show number 42, Independence. For the first time on July 1st, 2012 on WLOB Radio 1310 am Portland, Maine. In today’s show we spent time with Peggy woodcock from Reiki Partners and psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Kubik. For more information on our guests or on our show, go to doctorlisa.org. Read our related bountiful and bountifuldashblog.com. Like us on Facebook or sign up for our E-news. We appreciate your taking the time to spend time with us every week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast.
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Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors; Maine Magazine, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage, Robin Hodgkins of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine, Booth, UNE the University of New England and Tom Sheppard of Sheppard Financial. The dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded in Downtown, Portland at the offices of Maine Magazine on 75 Market Street.
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