The Therapy We Deserve: Dr. Loren Weiner on Healing at the Root

Transcript auto-generated from the episode audio; formatting has been cleaned up, but wording is verbatim.

Hello, I'm Cynthia Marks and I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis Foundation established by my late husband, Doctor Bernard Bail. Welcome to And Now Love. Thank you for joining us. And we have Doctor Loren Weiner with us, my favorite psychologist. She's terrific and knows all of this work, like the back of her hand and comes to us from the bottom of her heart. Always, always. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Today we're going to talk about therapy and what it is. And how do we find the therapy that works for us. What is this all about? So.

So what is therapy? Right. Well, you're going to get therapy with my bias. Because obviously the the type of therapy that drew me to it is something that is a more transformative type of therapy. You know, so it means that most people go to therapy because something bothers them. Something isn't working. And sometimes people also go because there's a crisis, there's a trauma. There is something that happens that shakes you in your life. So, you know, we get a variety of reasons people come. We're not coming because we feel great about everything.

That would be lovely. Truthfully? Typically not. But yes, there are some people that perhaps the upset I'm going to call it the upset is not enormous. But maybe they've had a friend who just felt therapy helped. Therapy, you know, gave them a new perspective on something, or they learned something new about themselves. And then the friends get interested or our family member, you know, so that does happen. And and truly, even if we're in fabulous shape, there's always something more we can learn about ourselves. That is my big pitch. Really, I think once you start to get a sense that there is an unconscious and begin to see that the unconscious holds so much wisdom, knowledge about yourself, about everyone in the world, it's pretty hard to not see that you gain so much every time you have a dream and you get that dream.

Understood. Because not all therapy deals with the unconscious. That's right. So that's why I say you're you're going to get the bigger piece has my bias in it, because that's the kind of therapy that I think fundamentally offers the most possibility for change and will. And that's what we're here for. There's there's bias all over this place. Right. So it also depends. But what is each person coming for. Right. Why are they coming to you. And how can you help them. I mean right, that's the first thing you're assessing when somebody comes to you.

Is this a problem that therapy can help. So you want to, you know, make sure that that makes sense and make sure that the person is invested in working because therapy isn't something that's sort of you sit there and someone does something to you. You know what? You really want is the person saying, you know, I'm here. Here's why I'm here. And and I'm, I'm invested in this. I want to change this. Now, we did talk about change last time and or time before. And I think what becomes clear is even with change, there is still what we call a resistance to it.

So people will come to you and they want to change. And, you know, you're going to have some areas where they might fight you a little on something or where the unconscious says, oh no, you're not to look at that. Or somebody denies something is as bad as it is. Those are all expected, right? So, you know, that's all part of it. But the biggest piece is that you're sort of looking to say, all right, this person is coming to me. They have something they want to work on, and they seem invested in working on it. If you get those pieces and and this feels like an area where I can, you know, I have expertise and I can treat this person, you get that whole formula going, then you can be off to the races.

But do people come thinking I'm just going to go see Doctor Weiner and she's going to fix me. Absolutely. First of all, there are a lot of modalities of therapy. Right. So you have psychoanalytic. You have cognitive behavioral and all sorts of variety of things in between. Some people are really much more interested in somebody perhaps giving a more directive. Here's your problem. Here's what you do to fix this problem. In my mind, that feels too limiting to me because knowing the unconscious, I know that if you're having a difficulty, chances are you're not having it in one area.

Your complaint may be about one area. I keep fighting with my sister. I can't hold the job. But if we start really exploring those areas because they're all part of you, your problem is not going to be limited to just one area, right? So we're going to see things emerge thematically. So my feeling is if we get too focused on tell me what to do in this specific instance, tell me what to do when I feel this way. You lose the enormous richness of a whole person, right? And so my goal is really to understand the whole person again, not just the dream though.

That is a huge piece, and I want that, but I want to hear the whole life. I want to hear how everything fits together. This idea of coming in for a specific thing. I, for example, like you were saying, you know, I don't understand why I keep arguing with my sister. We've been doing this now for six months. We never did that before. I mean, in a way, to have that struggle might even be a gift because it's given you an opportunity to try and undo something that is difficult or sad or uncomfortable. And it could then shed light on a whole piece of yourself that you can start to address and and change.

I think so. I mean, any, any problem really has the potential to be a gift, right? It's going to it's going to put a spotlight on something that isn't working. Something's not going right or something you need to understand that you don't. So, you know, I think insurance companies kind of have set up a system and created an environment where people think change happens in a limited number of sessions. I think that that is just sort of foundationally not true. To be fair, it depends. What kind of change are we talking about? What are you really looking for?

And what often becomes clear is that if you're really going to have a shot at changing something, it just requires a bigger change than people imagined. You have to. You look and you start to see, oh, wait, there are places where you don't know yourself. You don't really understand yourself. You don't understand your motivations. You don't understand why you feel a certain way about a certain person, or why you can't see something or somebody else clearly. You know that you get tangled up in trouble too often with people and it keeps happening, or something new pops up.

But what it does is it puts a spotlight on. And then you say, oh, wait a minute, you know what? This relationship may never have been working the way you wished. Right. It's sort of come to a head in some way, but then we can start to explore it and see, oh, but you've had all kinds of expectations that may or may not be realistic, factual. You may be bringing too much of your childhood experience to something, to a work environment where you think your boss is always out to get you to a friendship, where you always feel excluded, or you feel like I'm the last person they invite to the party.

I'm, you know, and we can trace that back, you know, as a simple example, right? Oh, but I always felt I was the last person picked for the team. And I always felt, you know, and I was the quietest of my siblings. Right. And, you know, as you work backwards and I know a lot of people say, oh, well, you know, you're just going to drag this out, go back to the past and you open up all of these things. I don't I'm not really looking for that. If that doesn't feel okay to you as you're going, then this isn't the therapy for you. You're right. And that type of transformational I think process where you really get to explore your deepest self, it has to be something you want.

But and I think a lot of people come to that though, that shift saying, you know, Bernard used to say this all the time that that patients would say, don't you dare talk about my family. My family's great. My upbringing was perfect. And if they have a little loosening of the boundaries, they'll see through the course of their dreams that maybe it wasn't really that way. And once you start to open that door a little bit, you in a way, through this type of therapy, I think can sort of give yourself a hug and say you're okay and your family isn't bad, but why not?

Why not explore this huge piece of you and see what part is yours and what part isn't yours, and how this environment, without putting good or bad titles on it, helped you become who you are. Yes, people have what I would say is a very protective stance around the family. To most people it varies. But yeah, I would say that's more the norm than not is, you know, I mean, unless somebody is really coming in and saying, look, my family was very abusive or my family was just absent or, you know, you get that also. But a lot of times I think people sort of generally would say, you know, my family was okay or my family, you know, some people really oh, my family, it was great.

Okay, maybe. And just when somebody says, oh, my family was awful, maybe. Right. So my job is to sort of just listen, okay, well let me hear more about it. And, and you want to follow the story and you want to see and what yes, often becomes clear is perhaps people have to protect the family. They don't want to say anything bad. They're not always so convinced that even even though they didn't feel great growing up, they may not know why. They may not know where to put the problem. They may not know that what they experienced was out of the ordinary.

There's a lot of that that people you know, for whatever reason, didn't make the comparison to their friend groups and their parents, you know, or the friend groups were similar enough and the parenting was similar enough that we went, oh, this is just as it is, right? Doesn't dad always yell at the kids? And doesn't everybody get a spanking? And all of these things? But then you may have a stance where that has to be very protected. The parents are not to be discussed in any depth now, okay? You have to meet people where they are when they come to you.

So you just want to listen and you just see and and if somebody will share a dream, fine. And and hopefully over time, what you're building is an alliance. You want the person to feel comfortable enough talking to you. Because really therapy is a conversation. It is just a long conversation and not a friend conversation. Right? I want to make that distinction because there are a lot of people do come and they either expect, you know, everything and have all the answers and, you know, maybe even aren't telling them, but you have them in you, right?

Or they expect this is a friendship, right? And so they want to hear everything about your life. And, you know, if you're not telling them, then why not? Do you not like them? So how do you deal with that? Well, you you have to be very patient and listen and see if you can understand why the person is having those feelings. That's it. You know, you're you're constantly listening and people will what we call project onto you, but they will put on to you all sorts of expectations. They expect you to be like other people they've known, maybe like the mother, maybe like the father, maybe like the sibling or the best friend or the mean teacher.

They had anything you can imagine. People bring in because they themselves are filled with it and operating that way. And that's what we do in the world anyway. That's what we're all doing. We're trying to glean from the people around us that things that make us feel uncomfortably comfortable. That's right. We do this with everybody. It's called transference. And it basically means I may to more or a less extent, see you through the lens of my previous experiences. Okay. So if I had really punitive parents, chances are I'm in the world waiting for somebody to treat me in a negative way, criticize me, be mean to me.

The idea that I'm just accepted and it's easy and loving probably isn't something I come to naturally. Alien. You're just waiting for somebody to tell you you've done something wrong, right? That's right. You know? And then. And then what is your defense against that? Right. So then you may protect yourself in various ways, or you may and you may also seek that out. You might unknowingly sign up, get yourself hired by the meanest boss in the world, and then it just confirms it, right? Or you may end up with a nice boss, but you don't experience it that way.

Because no matter what is said in some way, you go, oh well, they said something nice, but I know I can't trust it. They must be waiting to just imagine, you know, so many variations, right? Because everybody had a slightly different life. We all have big things in common, you know. There aren't that many different ways, but but the little, you know, nuances were different enough for everybody that they're going to experience things in that way. So that is all part of it. And to me, it doesn't matter what modality of therapy you're using. This is how people work.

So even if you do not believe in the unconscious, it doesn't matter. It exists. You know, and I think for those of us that work this way and work in this, you just it's it's so clear whether anybody else sees it or knows it's going on or they deal with it in the treatment, therapy or not, it doesn't mean it isn't there. It's in all of our relationships. So I think given that, why would you not want a therapy that gets to meet you on that level, given it's happening? If that's happening and I never go back and ask you about your past or if I do, it's very surface.

I don't get into the detail of it. I'm going to miss why you might respond to me a certain way, but that's critical, right? I need to know if you're expecting that. I ask you questions that are designed to trip you up or, you know, I just ask something open ended and don't give you any help, right. Or direction. If you had, you know, an absent mother, you may feel that to be very unfair and and two absent. You may never say that to me. I mean, you know, again. But if I know the history more, then I can better intuit, you know, what might be happening in a session.

And then I can look at the dream, and then I have all of this information to see, like when you describe a character in your dream, if we stick with the example of an absent mother who was perhaps really depressed, stayed in her room, did the minimum, but but had a really hard time emotionally connecting to the children. Chances are, at some point in therapy you are going to feel I am that way. You couldn't. Not right? If you're not, then we're not having this go deep enough, right? You know, because that is in there and it is going to have to get reenacted.

It's going to have to get understood. It has to get interpreted so that what happens is you learn about your internal world and you can make much bigger changes if you start to see how you really work according to your conscious and unconscious experiences. So to get to that place where your patient is now talking to you as if you're the absentee mom, they've all already shared with you a dream that showed you that tendency, and then it presents itself in the real world, or which comes first or it doesn't matter, could be any which way. It could be any which way.

Because if you, whatever your experience was right, you have bathed in it. Do you feel that way on the first session? Do you feel that way already when you've called on the phone? Is that your worry? If I don't return a first call quickly enough, I mean, I I'll give this example because I think it starts immediately, right? If I don't return a call in what one imagines, you know, should I call back in five minutes, ten minutes? Two hours? What if it isn't fast enough? You may not be comfortable saying, oh, do I know she'll respond, right? Or you may pick the therapist that waits 24 hours to call you back because you go, okay, that's what that I get.

Of course, it takes that long to get back to me. That's what I expect. So I just give these examples because people have to know this is active always with all of us, but it's certainly active in a therapy. So if you are starting a therapy and somebody isn't at least asking questions about what your life was like wanting to go deeper, you're going to end up hitting some surface things. And I can tell you, of course, one could tell you do this in your life, solve this problem this way. In my mind, that isn't therapy, that's counseling. Perhaps that is guidance that might be talking to a wise friend, but that isn't therapy.

So in my mind, if you are looking for a more transformational therapy, then you want somebody who's going to really let you begin to see who you are in the deepest parts over time, you know? And that takes trust. A lot of trust. It takes your feeling that somebody has your best interest in mind, that somebody is willing to walk with you through a lot of difficult feelings that might come up. You have to tolerate patients loving you, hating you at times, thinking you're being mean and punitive, thinking you're amazing and can do no wrong. Which people would say, oh, but that must feel good.

Well, but it isn't reality either. So what you are doing then is trying to get at all of the ways in which trash has gotten into everything, right? So if you've had abandoning parents or punitive parents or you've had, you know, very loving, but very ineffective parents, you know, who just sort of laid back like, oh, we love you, but we trust that, like, you know, how to raise yourself, right? You know, very different looking. But chances are then there's going to be a push in the therapy that I just let the patient treat him or herself, because that's how it went, right?

So or they may be working so hard because they had to work that hard to be the adult, right? So they can't sit back and relax and trust that I'm conducting a therapy. All of this seems like it would take so much work or so much effort to get beyond that kind of snap response that we all have. Like you just said, I'm, you know, the kid, the grown up who had parents who just said, love you, you know, go figure it out. And that's what you knew. And then you come to someone like you and you just automatically do that. The process of figuring out how to undo that and say, wait a minute, I'm a person who can actually ask questions and get some help.

I'm a person who would be better off if I had a team of people that I love and love me and, and and show up for me. That's a giant thing to come to terms with if you never had it. But that's right, and that's right. That is learning something very big about yourself. What you want is to help a person begin to discover these things as you work through whatever is on the person's mind in each session. If you have a dream, then we also get that added piece that is going to say, all right, whatever you want to tell me in that dream that day so that your mind can grow, right?

So your mind is looking to grow. It's not going to waste time. It's going to bring a dream. And then we're going to get to examine it. You know, we get to let you just see. All right. Well, what comes to mind about this dream or however you want to? Somebody wants to ask the question, but I want to give you enough space so that you can begin to just talk. Do what we call free associate, just talk and see what comes to mind about the dream. Before knowing about the importance of dreams. I think a lot of us, many of us are just curious about that, the dream as a tool.

But we think we don't dream all the time. Some of us think we we never dream, or our dreams are just boring and minuscule and meaningless and come to find out, the dreams that you bring forth, all of them are pretty fabulous in terms of offering up information about you and what's going on in your unconscious. And every dream has the potential to gift you a whole new bit of you that you haven't been paying attention to. I mean, you could be dreaming about. I just chose to wear red socks and they were in the second drawer instead of the top drawer, and that could be as valuable as the dream where those giant zebras are chasing you down after you fell off a cliff and got run over by a car.

Yes. I mean, what you're talking about is sort of just the enormous depth of the unconscious and the ways in which it brings you messages. Right. So and let me say this, it's not just that we hear the dream, okay? My socks were not in the drawer I normally expect. And then we can get in to, you know, and I'll see what comes to your mind about the dream. I don't want to just start asking you with this piece, in this piece in this way, what I want is to give your mind space to just see what comes up. And does it take a while for people to get in that mode?

I think, for example, that dream that I just supposedly made up, I bring it to you and you start saying, tell me about the color red or whatever it might be. And I'm like, this is just a goofy dream. It's not, why are you wasting my time with this? That must happen. I want to tell you about the big dream I had three days ago. And you want to focus on this? How? How do people. I guess just through experience, people begin to see that all of this stuff is just really full of info. It's filled. So, but a few things let me go back. I mean, one, if somebody really has a dream that they're interested in, you know, chances are I'm if you want to tell me about that big dream, tell me about that big dream I want to hear right now, does that mean there may be something that is harder to talk about?

That's actually in the dream emotionally, with the red sock dream, perhaps. But you know, those feelings aren't going to go away. They'll come up in another dream. So some of what you're doing, again, is meeting the person where the person is. Now, if you just think all dreams are silly and they have no meaning, chances are you're going to come see me like once or twice and then say, listen, lady, thanks. You know not my thing. Absolutely. Go, go find what your thing is. Or you may come and say, I don't know why you're so interested in this, but I'll tell you.

And over the course hopefully of interpreting, saying, all right, here's what I'm hearing. You tell me. I'm hearing, you know, this and this, and then you want to see what the person responds. Sometimes people will say, oh my gosh, I just got chills. That makes sense to me. Or I, I have to think about this because I know it doesn't make sense or, you know, and and that maybe I have to either refine it or they're not yet in a place where those feelings that are contained in the dream and in the unconscious feel acceptable. Yet I think most people who stick with it come to see that even if they didn't start out having any idea about it, which is most people, that actually they begin to love their dreams and they begin to sort of speak the language of their own dreams, which is what you want.

And people get into it, you know, they go, okay, I had this dream. I think this is really important. And here's what happened and here's what I'm wondering, and I wonder about this piece. And, you know, and always, you know, you don't want it to become a sort of intellectual endeavor, right? Where they've just learned how to do this so well that they get to avoid the process by being too good at the process. But but what you're hoping is that people begin to really get to know their own unconscious and then what they start to see is, oh, wait a minute.

I keep thinking, because I haven't talked to my father in 20 years, because he was so abusive that I have no connection to him. But isn't this interesting? He's turning up again in my dream, or this neighbor. But the neighbor has the same name as my dad keeps turning up in the dream and the person begins to say, oh my gosh, so clearly this is so on my mind. And I thought I divorced myself from this years ago. I thought it had no impact or I had, you know, put that away. And so what the person is really getting is to see, oh, well that's not so.

Yeah, right. But so exciting and fascinating to think that you've lived the law of this thing. Whatever this thing is, forever. Come to find out, you didn't have to do it that way to your benefit. You don't have to do it that way, right? Right. Or that you actually now get to go, oh, well, I am interested in, in talking about my dad because, you know, I just, I thought I sort of had exhausted everything. I don't have that much information. He left early. He was abusive. You know, all these things, but. Oh, but that person, that patient may be having a new baby and all of a sudden parenting issues.

And how did your parents do it right, you know, are huge. And what you want to be able to do is explore and clean out whatever imprint or identification meaning, way of being like that parent you are carrying around inside of you because you don't want that, even though you thought you tucked it away in a drawer. You don't want that intruding on the new relationship with your baby, but it well, that's how we work, you know? And that has nothing to do with your conscious intent or being a good person or a good parent or not. It's that unconsciously, we can't help but repeat what we experienced.

To that we've talked before about how we take some of these things and kind of lock them away, like in a closet, let's say, just so that we can exist. We feel the closets of our little house, and we lock all those doors so that we can remain comfortable in our little house. But then things happen in our lives that say, you locked this bit of yourself away in the closet, but it's still in your house, right? So you eventually. You want to open all the doors. Yeah, right. You know, and the way you're describing it, I will say, is often a kind of dream people will have where maybe what they discover is, oh, you know, I was walking down the hall and I saw a door I never saw before in my house.

Right. Or they will say I was walking at night through the house and, something popped out at, you know, terrified me. Right. It came maybe an intruder. And, you know, something jumped out of a closet at me. And that is really sort of akin to that, that there are all sorts of things we had to lock away for our own coping. And wouldn't a conscious go to be, well, I'm better off with the door locked. I don't once I addressed that thing, I if I open the door and I let this thing out, that changed the way I am or is scary or whatever it is, why I ever locked it away.

It like makes it all touch me again. And that's right. And I become that and I don't. But you already are that. Yes. So that's sort of the fallacy of denial, right? So even when we deny an imprint and people have heard me talk about this now a few times, which is when we in utero, really, but certainly within the first few months of life, are given this ball of toxic material that comes from our mothers. And, and later we get one from our father, too, but that comes from our mothers that are all of her unprocessed, negative feelings about herself, all of her low self-esteem issues, let's say, and beyond.

Right. All of the ways in which she was stopped in her life and abused and not given whatever respect she was supposed to have and didn't get the life she wanted. All of those problems get put in a ball and they're given to us, all of us. It doesn't matter whether you're a billionaire or a pauper. You got one. A man or. A woman, a man or a woman, anybody. So this is what human beings are busy doing. We get this, okay? And then we do that. We deny it, we lock it away and say, this was so painful. I'm not going to touch it. Now, the problem with that is that we can't really lock it away so that it doesn't impact us.

We can deny that we know it exists, but that doesn't mean it isn't sort of sending out messages all the time that control how we get to live our life. So if you come to me, I am listening for that, right? And hopefully at some point you dream about it and it becomes clear and we sort of, you know, we may get a top layer one and then a little later we get a lower, you know, right. And we work our way through them to see what are all of the prohibitions you got in your life that keep you from having the life you feel you want consciously? I want I want to be happy.

I want, you know, a nice family. I want to make $1 million, whatever it is. Right. We want to figure out, okay, well, why why isn't that happening? And it's all unbeknownst consciously. Most of it is generally. I mean, we. That's right. You said most of us say dreams means my family. Great. You know. Right. What are you talking about? That's right. So we're looking, you know, and people have a lot of defenses. Meaning feelings are painful. They are hard. Not just an imprint, which is very hard, but any, you know, any of our negative emotions are hard.

All of the sadness. People don't want to touch it again. But if it's limiting you, you better go back and touch it. You know, people always come in and they, you know, they just tell me. I just want tools. Give me a tool. Teach me how to deal with this anxiety. Give me the tool. Well, the best tool I can give you is to help you know yourself. Because what we want to see is. Why are you anxious? Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people can give you some technique to help in the moment. Press the anxiety down. But that doesn't do anything to understand it, change it, or keep it from coming back.

So let's first figure out what in the heck it is. Is it you being you're incredibly anxious, mother or aunt? Is it you, so desperately keeping all of the the upset feelings in every closet, under every bed in the house? Don't come out and get me. Right. But you're anxious because anything could get out at any moment, right? So for me and for the people that come to see me, what they want is not just do some technique that gets rid of the feeling in the moment. Mine is you want a tool, okay, let's get you a tool. It's called. Let me help you really know your internal world and why you're anxious.

That's the best tool I think there is. Now. I can't give that to you in one session. And I think social media insurance companies want things to be these quick fixes. But first of all, nobody ever had, you know, emotional pain develop in one day. That's not how it comes and that's not how it goes away. And a lot of times the the sense of well-being that comes from sort of knowing your story emotionally here is here is what happened to me emotionally in my life, even if every simple I'm mean call it symptom, even if that doesn't mean, oh, you know, now I wake up and I'm always rolling in a, you know, flower field and everything is amazing.

That in my mind is not the goal of therapy, but it's to help you know yourself, you know, and you may still have some tough days, but you know why. And what that usually gives people is a sense of well-being. So it isn't to say we're not human in here and going to have challenges. I like people to know that that that isn't really the goal. Now, that being said, when you come in, I may ask you, you know, what are you imagining or what would you like to get out of therapy? You may just tell me that, I would bet that oftentimes what they imagine and what they end up with are not quite the same thing.

Or some version of it. Right? You know, most of the time it's, oh, you will you didn't realize what you were asking for was then connected to this enormous iceberg under water. And we have to go through the territory of of getting all of that. Oh, that's such a good way of describing it. Like we were talking about earlier. You're the person who now all of a sudden has all these arguments with your sister, and here it is. It's present, but it's up here and then all this other stuff that is connected to that. Right. That perhaps is the stuff that actually brought you in.

And it's this little gift that you can see that is going to let you explore, right. And think about the insurance companies in the popularity of therapy and social media, and how much is being talked about now is terrific in that I feel, and maybe this is just in my little world, that there's less stigma now around therapy than say, there have been at other times. Is that just my own little world? No, I think that's true. And that is a good observation. Yes. On the one hand, there's a lot more of it. And what I hope is that there's all kinds of helpful therapy.

But what I hope is that for people who are kind of trying to make a little investment in taking care of themselves, and they try a particular therapy that they're very cognizant of, whether or not they feel like they're making headway, and if they're not feeling like they're making headway, okay, let me let me explore a little deeper. I still I'm not quite feeling like I'm getting anywhere or or I love that this person told me, you know, help me figure out how to take deep breaths and get myself through the anxiety on the surface of a given moment.

And that was great. But why am I so anxious? I mean, I hope that these kinds of things, these tools, might help people find a way to go further. Yes. You know, so you've got that piece. Very good. The other piece I think we have coming up, though, is there are now a lot of experts all over the internet. When I see a lot of stuff come up that I think, oh my gosh, I'm so afraid that a lot of people are hearing this and think, this is what therapists do, or this is what is normal for therapy. So, you know, again, buyer beware. If you can get a referral through somebody who had a good experience with someone or, you know, because there are a lot of these, the other big piece that's coming up is I people just saying, look, I'm going to talk to a computer.

Help me figure out how not to feel. Anxious. Yes. And you know, for me, one of the biggest pieces that I come across and and where people tend to tend to have problems in their families. And I'm going back to families because this is where we all start in one way or another. Whether you have a family, don't have a family, right? But even that is still your start. Going back to that where we run into trouble is where we are not human enough. And I think it's very interesting. So where people were not able to love enough, where they weren't empathic, where they weren't compassionate, couldn't relate to other people in the family system in a meaningful, deep way where people felt seen, heard, not just ordered around or expected to behave because nobody wants to deal with you.

And don't be a problem or, you know, whatever it is or you're infantilized don't you know, given everything, but the underlying message is, whatever you do, don't leave me. You know, write all of these various things. The biggest problem is people not being able to really and truly connect to their own feelings, to know their own feelings and use them to then conduct their life in the best way possible. So people are very split off from their actual feelings. Again, that doesn't mean people aren't overflowing with feeling you may. I'm screaming and yelling and crying and I look like I'm so filled with it, but I don't really understand my own emotional story.

Why I'm that way. And what I can't do is use any of those feelings to make my life go the way I want it to. All of that is a really big piece of what you get to explore in therapy. So to go to an entity like I, no matter how great it is, it's fundamentally not a human being that can feel. And so if you've already had so much of that, you really don't want more of that part of the problems. Now, of course, I assume this will not stay this way forever, but we don't need more algorithms. Just feeding you. You know, you're in an echo chamber, right?

Yes, yes you're right. Yes. You're this, you know. Validating. Valid, you know. Right. Even as you said, you see more mental health stuff. Well some people may maybe other people may not on on their portion of the internet because they never click on those accounts. And so the algorithm doesn't send you that. So, you know, there are all kinds of interesting pitfalls coming up in terms of therapy and who you pick and how you get there. But in my mind, if you're not getting a deeper sense of your emotional story, the idea that the unconscious holds the truth of your life and that you have access to that, we are usually looking to see where did you not get the love you really needed?

I mean, if I'm going to boil it down right, and now love, let's just get to it that that anywhere there's an imprint, anywhere there was not loving behavior in a family or by caregivers. We have a problem where no love is pathology sits. And that's a really important piece. So we have to come to love. And I think if therapies aren't going deep and getting to that, those problem don't get a chance to really be addressed and understood. And then, you know, you may know a lot about your story, but you may not have gotten enough heart change to feel like a different person or to handle your life better.

And my big dilemma with that is that if we're not addressing that, we are then repeating all the ineffective, damaging ways we were treated out there in the world. We end up in situations like we're in now where we go, oh, okay, and we are on the brink potentially of, you know, more war right now. In my mind, the last thing human beings should be doing is having a war. They don't stop more wars. So that doesn't work. You know, we have yet to have the last war. And that turmoil is in each of us until we learn how to start. Yeah. You have to love.

You cannot fight wars. It it puts trauma into the entire world. You you are you know it sounds all nice. We are now the masters over another country. They can feel like the slaves and the lowly people. We are victoriously. One that is, you know, not true, right? That is another figment of everybody's imagination, fundamentally. And so, yes, it may look like we want it may look like we stopped something. What we probably did was put huge trauma into all of the women and children and men. Right? Everybody, even the victors, are going to carry that because we're all connected unconsciously.

So we can't kill off groups of us and expect that the rest of us are actually okay. Or better off. Or better off. So we have to start figuring out how to now get a new paradigm. You better start to figure out inside, where was I not loved? What's happening? How do I get my full complement of feelings and and really see? Am I able to actually love not just say it, not just talk about it, but actually do it? Be a loving human being out in the world. Not a martyr, but a loving human being. And if you are a loving human being in your mind, the option is not, I better bomb those people.

I better keep that group of people from having access to medical care. And those people should not have food, you know, heaven forbid we give some food to a hungry child. Oh no, we're not doing that. Well, that's not loving. So that tells me, right, that human beings as, as a group are have to make a U-turn because we have to get more love. Yes. And we're at the moment just going further and further down that path. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think luckily it's it's not that everybody is bom bom bom, but people have to step back and you have to take a bigger view and say, okay, what where do we all really want to go?

And I think a lot of people just have never experienced love and they don't even understand. You say it and it's like, yeah, that's nice lady, you know what I mean? And and it sounds hippie dippy and oh, you know, whatever. But that's where this therapy piece is so important, because if people can start to see that they have called you know, oh, I was loved fun. I got beaten every Wednesday night after my dad went to the bar, but oh yeah, I was loved. And he only did that because he loved me. There's a lot of that, right? They did X, Y, and Z because they love me.

But when we explore it and you really get to know it. All right, well, you know what? It doesn't sound loving. Yeah, it wasn't loving. But that's also a really hard thing to kind of give away is probably not the correct way of putting it. But what you have thought was your world all this time, what you excused and what you decided to call love when you realize what you were doing or what you were up against and why you did it, it's scary to now open those doors. Yes, and even though it's likely a fabulous transformation, or if that's the only thing.

That will save you. It and but yet we're like, I don't know. I don't know that. I don't know what that is. We are terrified as a group. Human beings are terrified. We're just as terrified to do that. You know, we are scared to open all these doors, but we have to. And that's a great thing about the dreams, because it kind of shows you bit by bit. Okay. I see, you know, you sort of made a little progress here. You, you maybe recognize this thing about your dad that was happening when you were growing up. You open that window a little bit and then maybe you slam it shut in the next dream, or seven dreams later and you have these dreams that are sort of protecting that bit of your father.

And there's this back and forth and back and forth that I think becomes so relevant once you start working with your dreams. That is almost unachievable if you aren't. It is amazing in that it gives you a window in. Right. And, you know, might you come up with some of these things in 100 years of talking? Maybe. But it gets you there much more quickly, right? And you get to build that muscle. So, you know, obviously some of the art of listening to dreams is also knowing where is your patient. And you may see certain things in the dream. And often I will see.

And I say, okay, you know what? I am interpreting this piece. Let me have the person start here and I know we're going to get to this. But they had a dream that was like they went to the buffet and took every single thing and put it on the tray, and I go, oh, you know what? I think you'll do better if you eat a little bit today and maybe a little bit tomorrow and a little bit the next day. So, you know, there is some of that. You do do it. But fundamental you're trying your best to give them the truth that the person is bringing to you in each dream.

Because the dream doesn't waste the unconscious, doesn't waste time. Each dream has a meaning, and it brings you a truth about your life that you need to grow and go forward. And you just where else do you get something that amazing? Now, that doesn't mean you're not going to try to shake me and get me off the trail. In the dream, it doesn't mean you might not give me a dream that is a complete denial. And then you go, I don't know what the problem is. It sure looks like at this family reunion in my dream. Everybody's having a great time, right?

Until we look. You forgot to tell me that under that picnic table, a snake was crawling. And then there's a little tell and. Okay. Right. So the picture is. Oh, all is not maybe as beautiful as it seems. And then you get to open that up and then what you're talking about is you get to reassess everything and you get to question it all again. Is everything as I imagined it was. And there's a part of us always. Or do we grow out of it that is trying to, in a way, sabotage that well, being like, don't, don't go there. So showing you, for example, that buffet table.

See everything's good now, Doctor Weiner and then, oh wait, there was a snake under the table. So, so is that your unconscious saying keep those doors closed? Well, it may be, it may be saying whatever you do, don't, don't go looking under any picnic tables because there are snakes. It's too dangerous. Or it may be saying, look at this beautiful scene and out slithers something. That is what we would all normally think of as scary, right? Or and it's saying, oh, you know, you imagined or you have been carrying around an idea that the family was great.

You're saying notice it was filled with snakes. People in my family acted like snakes. I give this as a possible sure right piece of information emerging, but I wouldn't know until I talk to you about it. Right? It depends on the individual. That's right. I can't look at a dream, in a in a vacuum. Right. It comes from the person. You make the. Dream. There's no book with instructions. No, I mean, there are certain there are certain symbols that we see seem to hang together. I can in my mind, if I hear it, I can hypothesize it might mean this, but then I have to prove it.

I have to listen to the rest of what you're saying. As you know, get your thoughts about everything and see. Do I think what I'm hearing hangs together with the symbols you're giving to me? And then I have to tell you the interpretation, and then you get to feel it, hopefully hear it, at least think about it and hopefully feel it and see right. Do I get a hit on that? Do it? Does that touch an emotional part somewhere? And that's such a key. Such a key when you say that, because I don't think it's anything that one can really imagine happening, if you haven't begun to sort of look at your dreams and have invested some time in the process, it's I feel like all of us go in with the idea of the dream being a opening into our unconscious with like, oh, I don't really get that.

But those of us who are, you know, sort of interested or curious and take that step, you talk about your dreams, you go back and forth and it's like, no, I don't I don't get it or it and it could go on for a while and your dreams change and then all of a sudden things click or you, like you said earlier, you get chills or you feel this kind of resignation and it's that it then makes you know, at least this is what I've experienced, that there is something greater than my conscious being. There is an unconscious, there is this world that I need to explore.

If you're lucky, you do get an experience like that where it hits you and you feel it and you kind of go, oh, okay, there is more to this. Sometimes that takes a while because people aren't supposed to feel, but what you're watching the whole time, even if the person isn't necessarily getting that hit, though, that is very helpful. We want that is then you have to watch the dreams and see do they emotionally open? Does what we call does the treatment deepen? And I am looking for that both in the conscious relationship, in the transference and also in the dreams.

What are the dreams showing me? Are you fighting me off in the dreams? Are you not wanting to open, you know, doors? Are you blowing things up or are you starting to open something? Did you turn a light on in a in a room? Did you find an abandoned house and suddenly climbed through the window and realized that there was something in there and you're interested? You know, that might be the kind of dream that gives a hint that something's happening. Most of the time, people understand that if it really isn't feeling good to them, they're not staying right.

So if people are coming back to me, even if they can't quite put their finger on, well, what is it exactly with the dreams? But it's something, right? You know, and and so I'm going to keep coming back because I'm getting something out of this. And it's great or interesting about humans that there are likely moments with all of your patients where they're angry with you, or they feel like you could care less about them. That's what they're thinking. But they keep coming back. Yes. And hopefully if you have a good therapeutic alliance. Right. And and the conditions for treatment are there, meaning you know, the person can come often enough, the person can come when the person needs to.

If there's a crisis, the person has access to you. You know, the conditions for treatment have to be there and the alliance has to be there. You have to trust somewhere, even if you really are angry with me, because that last interpretation felt mean. And how dare I say something like that in what it meaning. I'm not going out of my way to say mean things. It is felt to be that way because it is a sensitive area and it the person may protect against it. And if, I mean, that's an easy way to discredit what I've said, right? But yes, you want enough of an alliance there that you feel fundamentally I am working towards your good, you know, to to get you better.

If you can feel enough of that, then you come back and look. There are times when treatments people get too upset with you and they can't. You may have made a mistake that happens, or you know, or said something in a way that, you know, we're human. It may not have been the most sensitive. Usually that doesn't have people leave. Most of the time people leave either because it wasn't a good fit to begin with. That's possible, right? You know, you just weren't a match or the internal saboteur. The part that actually says, you know what, don't open all these doors, don't go back there.

Just keep the status quo. It's too dangerous. Don't do it. You're doing that fine. And you're. Doing fine enough that peace may win out. And then, you know something will come up and they want to end their treatment and fine, you know, and and sometimes that comes after a period of time and that's okay. They've gotten a certain amount. They know some of the internal world and unless there's a reason to most people know, I tell them when they leave, you know, you're always welcome to come back, you know, come back, come for a session. If something's really confounding you, you know, or come for a couple months and you can work on something.

And then if you, you know, don't want to stay, don't stay. Everybody should have the choice. I know people don't feel they have the choice a lot of times in their lives because they have an imprint and they have all kinds of things that make life feel like there are not good choices. But I do at least try to let people know, you know, coming to see me, I'm not going to drag you in off the street. That's your choice. Come to your appointment or don't. Up to you. Only come if you feel you're getting something. If people can understand that there can be so much more to therapy than just fixing a symptom.

Sometimes you just want your symptom fixed. Fine, okay? And a lot of us are just desperate for that. And if you can get that okay, you know. But can you really get that good question. You know, and but sometimes people do experience that. And they say, look, even if I get symptom relief for like a year and, you know, in two years, if it pops up again, I have to come back, I will, and that's fine. If it really interests you to go out. You know what? Yeah, the symptom bothers me. But why? What is it from and why? And you are looking for a different kind of transformation.

And you have access to that. Meaning you can have a treatment, you can really start to see all of the enormous ways in which we are guided by things. We have no idea about. And I think if you get to know those, you have this really amazing opportunity, which is you get to change who you are fundamentally, you know, and yeah, you have to have someone you trust because you're going to sit through some scary times because if you're used to being, you know, this kind of person, but that was because you had an imprint and you had a family like this, and you had a husband like that, and you had all these experiences.

We don't know what you're going to look like. I don't know what you're going to look like when you first come in. What's she gonna look like when she works through all of these things and peels off this and doesn't carry that trash, and lets herself really feel what she wanted to feel? Who is she? Well, I don't know. You may know unconsciously somewhere in there, but that scares people a lot of times, you know, because what? What if I'm. What if I'm lost? What if I'm a nobody? What if I'm not a person? What if I'm an awful person? Under all of this, chances are when you clean out all the trash, nobody's an awful person.

None of that. And you're not lost or found. Yes. So, I mean, what a great gift. And and I wish we all understood our dreams and wore them as who we are the way you do. I mean, just listening to you talk about dreams. They just. They just part of who you are. Well, I'm lucky I get to spend eight hours a day immersed in people's dreams every day. And you grew up with it. You have to have your own treatment to do this work because how could I be clear on you if I'm not clear on me? Yeah. Impossible. Impossible. You can't use that. You wouldn't have the skills.

I don't ask any of my patients to do anything I haven't submitted myself to previously. Full examination is the best examination I could get of my own internal world. The ugly, the all, the jealousy, the hate, the lying, the cheating, the whatever it is, the fear. You know, you try to get to know that world as best you can so that it is cleaned up enough to let you then feel for yourself in your own life. But really, what are your patients going through? What do they need? Thank you. Thank you. You're amazing. Oh, well, you're very kind. Thank you.

Well, it is true, but I want to just ask you a couple of questions there. Sort of on topic, off topic, so on so many people, when you're talking about their dreams, they're like, I never remember my dreams where I had six dreams. And then I stopped dreaming. Does that non dreaming part of us mean something that is that important to. Are we not dreaming because there's a, we're making a step and we're taking a little time to kind of wade into the water. Maybe. You know, it's a hard question to answer without talking to the person. And I say that because you might stop dreaming, because you're saying, I don't want to talk about this anymore.

Now, more than likely, what that means is my internal objects, the parts of my parents that I have taken in and use as part of my own personality have said, enough exploring over there. You you just settle down. We're not going to get the whole truth, the emotional truth of how the family was really put together and what pieces of are your parents trash you're carrying and how you're not able to be yourself, and why you can't have your life the way you want? We're not going to explore that anymore. That's shut down. So you may stop dreaming. You may have made a big discovery, and the internal saboteur got scared and said, okay, that's enough, right?

So that's not shutting it down completely. It maybe you stop for, you know, a couple nights, right? Or you, you know, a version of that on a continuum is. Oh well I could, I could just tell you it was, you know, the color peach kept coming all night, but I. That's all I could hold on to there. Elusive. Right. So, you know, these are ways of saying I am defending against certain very uncomfortable feelings that are sitting in my unconscious. I am defending I protecting myself against certain knowledge about how I feel or certain things that happened emotionally in my history.

And so I'm going to put the brakes on for a minute. People may also do that by having I had ten dreams last night. Now they won't tell me the dream about the piece they need to get to, but they'll tell me some other dream that gives us information, but it may not give us the main piece. Right? So that dream is defensive. It is protective. Now, you know, we we just protect ourselves. So you have to work through that. And I can only analyze that and work through it with you. When I hear you tell me your thoughts. Well, I ask that question because in my conversations with with people, I sense a lot of frustration around that.

Like, okay, you know, you can suggest that I pay attention to my dreams, etc., etc. but then I stop dreaming. Well, now, if you're in a treatment and all that's happening, that may be what I'm talking about. If you don't get your dreams on a regular basis, yes, there may be, you know, a fear that right, that you're worried that there might be things in it or the unconscious is sort of, you know, saying, don't go there. Also, a lot of people don't start remembering their dreams until they're asked, interestingly enough, you know, I mean, often people come to me, I don't really dream.

And then very quickly session to like, oh, who knew? I dreamt, okay, because somebody is now wants to listen. And so the dreams come because they're always there and available anyway. And well, and I found that was true for me. I didn't remember many of my dreams or I just quickly dismissed them. I had no idea that there was any value at all. When I started saying to myself before I would close my eyes at night, wait, why don't you think about remembering a dream or universe? Help me deliver this dream in the morning. So in a way that I can remember it, and after a few nights of that, there they all were.

And even now, if I want to remember a dream, I can just say that to myself. And most likely in the morning it'll be there. Yeah, that's pretty cool. It's amazing. Right? I mean, I think that, you know, that's the other piece of this. Yes, we get to change and that's great. And you know, but in my mind you open up this connection to your unconscious. And that also opens up, I think, your connection to spirit, you know, and so you really want connection to spirit because that is pure love. So, you know, we want you know, and whether you I point above it inside of you, you know, all over you really want that?

We want as much love coming in for human beings as possible. And and it's to that when you start to ask certain questions of yourself, I think like even just as simple as show me the dream, it's as if your, your unconscious is saying, well, all right, here, here it's all it's abundant. It's been here for you the whole time. Yeah. And that's what we're really wanting to get people to, you know, people say like, I want to be in this state of gratitude and all this. Yes. A lot of times you consciously may want it, but we have to clean out a lot of trash.

That's in the way, because it's blocking you unconsciously and you don't know it. So all of your work consciously doesn't get you as far as you want, because the unconscious piece hasn't been attended to. So that's the other piece we're doing. So I've noticed a little bit lately that there seems to be a service where you can kind of text in to somewhere. Your issue and get a response, texted back like, I'm super stressed because of A, B and C, and then you get a text response back. So for people like me or that, you know, I just want to fall on the floor and go, that is not therapy.

I don't like anything about that system. You have no idea because you're not really in communication with the person texting. What is going on? Where are they? What is happening? It's almost it could very well be dangerous. I think potentially it really could be. And also, my goodness, the importance of a therapeutic relationship is so enormous. Meaning the therapeutic alliance, you know, your trust that the person working with the deepest part of your mind knows what they're doing, is a professional, has boundaries, will not intrude on you in an inappropriate way.

There are so many pieces to that as a professional that when I hear that somebody is just going to have a quick text and you can text us and we text you back something, what are you even texting back? What are you texting back? And you're charging $2.50 or something for every time? I have no idea, but I just can't imagine. The person doesn't know you, doesn't really know anything about you. Look, even patients, because everybody wants to text now, you know? But most of the time it's well, we have to have a conversation about this. This isn't you know, I don't I'm not giving you a yes or no way, this or that most of the time, you know, unless it's do you have an appointment available or something.

Even all of these we are always thinking about them and sort of how are people using these modalities to express something to ward off, something to deny something to, you know, protect themselves, to not get close enough. All of these actions that look simple and every day you're hopefully the professional therapist is paying attention to all of them, making sense of them and trying to understand them in ways that then let you learn something deeper about yourself and how you function. So these are, you know, just this, oh, I text somebody and somebody texts me back.

Seems, yes, potentially very dangerous to me. I think we're so many of us are so desperate for some insight or some help. Now, and we don't understand really what that looks like. Are there ways that we can know what is working? Will we start to have a feeling about something? It's hard to say. Well, we start to have a feeling about something when so many of us have lost track of our feelings. And I think that's why we're in the predicament we're in, in the world. You know, it's why people are saying, oh, we would really like I or texting to replace human beings.

Well, then, all right, so you'd like something that basically doesn't have feelings. Okay. Well, that seems ill advised. If you're a human being given as a human being, the goal is to be able to use your feelings. I think that's why we have them, right. You know, we have them to give us information that is accurate. So many of us have either cut them off because we've been so hurt, or they've been twisted and, you know, we've bent ourselves, and twisted ourselves to accommodate other people's feelings. So we lose the clearest access to our own.

But the goal is really to get all of that back. And so if you are going to something that doesn't really allow for that, that seems very ill advised for human beings. Yes. I mean, I think ultimately if we keep traveling down that path, we're going to do ourselves in. We may. But the idea really, to me, is that once you're able to access and work from your feelings, then all of your decisions will be good. I mean, your decisions, I mean, we're all going to make mistakes here and there, but but you, without knowing your feelings, without coming from a place of love, you cannot consistently make good choices.

Yes, you want to have some way of anchoring yourself and your feelings. Do that, right? Otherwise, you know, as I've said, everything becomes an intellectual endeavor. The problem with that is, for most things, I can make a list of ten good things and ten bad things. Well, that didn't solve my problem, right? Do I? Do I take this job or not? Ten good, ten bad. Okay, what? Hopefully you get to do is go inside and go, oh, but you know what? When I think about this job, you know what this feels x, y and z, right? And then obviously, if we can look at your dreams and if they are, we're lucky and they're confirmatory or they say, you know what?

Think about this piece, right? May not mean don't take the job, it just may mean do a little more work here so that, you know, you go into the job in a, in a more free state. Yeah. Without this thing pounding down on you. Right. Thank you again. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for joining us. Come back and tell everybody about us by.