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Restoration Beyond the Couch
The Beyond the Couch with Dr. Lee Long podcast is intended solely for general informational purposes and does not represent the practice of medicine, therapeutic and psychiatric services, nursing, or other professional health care services. It also does not constitute the provision of medical, therapeutic or psychiatric advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is established. The information on this podcast and any materials linked from it are used at the user's own risk. The content provided through this podcast should not be considered a replacement for professional medical, therapeutic, or psychiatric advice, diagnosis, or treatment. It is important that users do not ignore or postpone seeking medical, therapeutic, or psychiatric advice for any health or mental health condition they might have, and should always consult with their health care professionals regarding such conditions.
Restoration Beyond the Couch
Cultivating Mindfulness in a Digital World
In this episode of Restoration Beyond the Couch, Dr. Lee Long sits down with returning guest Dr. Debra Atkisson to explore the role of dopamine in the brain and its impact on daily life. They discuss how technology and constant stimulation affect our dopamine levels and share practical strategies for cultivating mindfulness in a fast-paced digital world. Tune in for valuable insights on finding balance, improving focus, and supporting mental well-being.
Order Dr. Atkisson's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Storm-Insights-Psychiatrist/dp/B0DQVYS7TP
Welcome to Restoration Beyond the Couch. I'm Dr Lee Long, and today I'm joined once again by Dr Deborah Ackeson, a board-certified psychiatrist and expert in mental health. In this episode, we're diving into the fascinating world of dopamine how it works in the brain and its impact on everyday life, from motivation and pleasure to focus and addiction. We'll explore the role dopamine plays in our mental and emotional well-being. Whether you're looking to optimize your brain health or simply want to understand yourself better, this conversation is packed with valuable insights. Your path to mental wellness starts here. Welcome, Dr A.
Speaker 2:Well, hi, it's great to be here talking with you.
Speaker 1:It's so great to have you back. So today we're going to go through some information that you and I have spoken to some different audiences and crowds prior, and that is the impact of dopamine and social media and pornography that that has on the brain. So welcome for that fun, light topic.
Speaker 2:Yes, you know. Unfortunately, this is a topic that I think more people should be talking about more openly because it has become an enormous problem in our society. We were just chatting about this that with the advent of social media, which can be used for so much good, like your show is and like a lot of other places where we get information there's also a side to social media where people are having a lot of information that's very negative and dangerous come out and it's causing significant trauma, especially to our younger adults and teenagers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's sit on that for a minute, when we think about the significant trauma that it's causing them. What are you seeing in your practice? What are you seeing in your practice? What are you seeing in your?
Speaker 2:experiences. So the first thing I'm going to say is I see teens and adults who get engaged in this, and even older adults, like in their in their marital relationships. They start becoming more isolated from other people. They're not as connected. I'm seeing an impact. This is a great warning sign. When you see someone whose interactions with others have become more limited, we know that there's a problem of some kind. We don't always know what it is.
Speaker 3:And so.
Speaker 2:I see that I see people become very guilty and very shameful about the behavior they're engaged in, but unfortunately on their own they're not able to break the cycle. So they live with this secret that they have that they're engaged in this addictive process of pornography which is impacting relationships, it's impacting how they feel about themselves and it's keeping them from doing anything to improve their situation. So they're sort of trapped in it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah it's. It does seem like there's, there is a place of entrapment for a lot of this. Right, there's a there's a hijacking of our brains or it's a hijacking of our behaviors. Would you take us on a little tour of how, like how the mind works with dopamine, so that we can maybe bring our listeners up to speed?
Speaker 2:on some of this, oh for sure. So dopamine, and I believe there's an excellent book that's been written about it, called Dopamine Nation. Who is the author of that book, anna?
Speaker 1:Lemke, Dr Lemke.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:She has done a phenomenal job laying that out there.
Speaker 2:Yes, that is a great book, so if anyone wants to take a deeper dive into that, please check that book out. What I would say about dopamine, though, is it is such an essential chemical for us for so many reasons, and it's involved in many things. So if you begin by just thinking about, we feel emotionally that feeling of happiness, excitement, all the way to even movement functions. Dopamine is involved in the ability to move, for instance. There's some neurological disorders where people's dopamine is very out of whack, such as Parkinson's syndrome. People are probably familiar with that, so it impacts our brain. There are neural pathways I like to think of them as highways. Some of them are super highways that are running all across our brain into different sections that carry dopamine.
Speaker 2:As humans, we want our dopamine levels elevated, because it makes us feel great, and dopamine is the chemical, for instance, that goes through the roof. When someone uses a drug like cocaine, it will really push the dopamine levels high. What people don't understand about dopamine is that, as we artificially push those levels higher and higher, then becomes an addictive process. This happens in people who get into intensive video gaming, for instance. You've heard about those people who won't even stop to eat because they are in this process of pushing the dopamine levels higher and higher and they can't break the cycle themselves. Many addictions do this Porn does. This Porn makes your dopamine levels higher and higher and, as you've discussed before, when people start engaging in it, they have to keep pursuing it over and over.
Speaker 1:Right and the content gets more and more and more intense. You know you mentioned how the intensive gaming and how people will not stop to eat. I have even known and heard of individuals who will put on an adult diaper so that they're they don't even have to stop to use the restroom.
Speaker 2:Oh, my word.
Speaker 1:And you think about this. We are designed, we're wired, we're designed for survival in a world of scarcity, but we don't live in a world of scarcity anymore. And so you talking about these dopamine hits that we're looking for, it's like part of me looks at this world and thinks we're kind of set up to fail. Right, if we're looking at it in the negative, we're sort of set up to fail because you know how do we communicate? Many of our meetings are on zoom. Thank, thank God and thank you for being here today that we're not on zoom, you know, but how many? But the?
Speaker 1:But the idea of that, the idea of of a, of a virtual meeting, is actually quite helpful. So here we are, using this similar technology. That is both helpful, but at the same time, it's like how do we know when it's helpful and when it's harmful? Right, because social media, like you said, sometimes it's used for really positive things. You know we can get messages out to a large crowd to be encouraging, to be, um, you know, informative, but at the same time, there's other messages that are being put out there that are very, very destructive. I mean cyber bullying, right, all that. So it's like where do we draw the line, cause I don't. I certainly don't want people to walk away from our discussion feeling like, oh my gosh, I need to go, move to a farm and not have a cell phone and, you know, not engage in anything on the Internet because it's all bad and evil. And I know you're not saying that, but I just I'm curious, what's your take on you?
Speaker 2:know it's interesting. You bring that up because the word that comes to mind for me as to what we all have to be more mindful about is living with intention, and so I believe that the things that are great about social media we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think what we do is that we are intentional about what we choose to put into our brains, just like what we would choose to eat to put into our bodies, and that we try to engage with media that's informative and helpful and positive and inspiring. I mean, you're on this with me. I have a Facebook group called Mental Health Solutions Community. It's for people to share information about mental health so they can get data out there that can be beneficial to people. We have rules about how we let that group go. I mean things such as that your podcast. I have been amazed at the content that you've already curated with this podcast about several different topics that can be very beneficial to people.
Speaker 2:I think we have to think about what we choose to use, and then I think, of course, there's areas of social media that are just for fun. Right, you want to keep up with each other's family and friends, those sorts of things. There's some TikToks. I mean other's family and friends, those sorts of things. There's some tick talks, I mean there's I'll openly admit it, he drops two to three minute tick talks. This, uh, ophthalmologist, dr glock and fleckham, where he does parodies of the um, different medical specialties. And since I work as a coach with different physicians, uh, I see a grain of truth in all of those and they make me laugh.
Speaker 1:Okay, I've got to hear his name again, so it's.
Speaker 2:Dr Glockenfleck. It has to do with he's an ophthalmologist, Okay, but is that his real name? No, it's not his real name. That's his. That's what he. That's his stage name. That's his TikTok name. Okay, I love it.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I want to come back to is the what, what dopamine does, and and and and the impact on our brains and bodies. You know you brought up the fact of movement Right and how Parkinson's is one of those places, that one of those diseases that has the the impact of dopamine. Does Parkinson's take dopamine away Like? Does it impact the dopaminergic?
Speaker 2:take dopamine away Like, does it impact the dopaminergic. So what happens, very sadly, is there's centers in the brain that have to do with movement and dopamine production and dopamine dopamine production decreases and you do not have as much dopamine as you had before. So the drugs that are used to treat dopamine bring dopamine levels up for the purpose of movement.
Speaker 1:And the sad thing that I've heard it's the it's L-Dopa correct. Is that's what they're using? Is that there's it? It, uh, causes very different styles of addiction to to pop up in these people's lives.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad you brought that up because, um, if anyone has a member in their lives, a family member, who has this, it might be helpful for them to understand this about this. You can take people who have their entire life been very rational, reasonable folks, who have great self-control, no addictive tendencies, and when they start taking the medicine which they have to take to be able to function at all or to move at all when they have Parkinson's disease, they will sometimes get into almost manic-like spending sprees. A lot of spending online is something that happens. For instance, their abilities to make decisions can sometimes become impaired. I'm certainly not saying people with Parkinson's are not competent. That's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying it can impact their behaviors as a consequence, sometimes, of the medicines they're taking.
Speaker 1:So, when you think about all of the like the world that we're in and you think about all of the dopamine saturation that we experience, that it's these things are coming at us so fast and furious, do you believe that there is a part to the way that? Let me say, do you believe that there's a part to how we show up in society that is connected to some of this, because I really appreciate what you're saying about the, the, uh, the Parkinson's patients and how it just gradually for some and drastically for others, shifts their personality. But I'm curious is, if you have a kid, a little kid, who starts on an iPad, let's say, watching videos, do you believe that that is slowly changing, potentially, the trajectory of their personhood, of their personality and who they are?
Speaker 2:100%. I'm so glad you brought that up because if they are getting involved and I think about some of the stories I've heard recently I was telling you about a fellow who, at nine, was sitting on an iPad. He made the comment that his parents were struggling with a number of issues at that time, so he frequently was placed on an iPad, and this is a young man in his 20s and he might be a knock. He was innocuously looking at something one day and, boom, here came a porn site that just popped up. He didn't know what it was, but of course he went down that rabbit hole and just started looking at it and he talked about the impact on him.
Speaker 2:What I see happen to kids who have excessive time with screens of any sort whether they're getting into negative sites like porn, whether they're getting into other sites with lots of aggression and violence they begin to shift in a way that they don't pick up on interactions with other people. They become less interested in having interactions with other people, even to the point that the reality testing becomes a little skewed. And that's what I want to bring back to us talking about porn in terms of young adults, children and young adults looking at these images that are not really real. I mean, there's a lot of photoshopping, there's a lot of staging.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of unusual and bizarre things that are placed in there that are really outside the realm of a typical, typical sexual relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what's so interesting, what's so sad, is that you know, like you said, they're very scripted and very directed and there's camera angles and shots of things, even with as as you and I've discussed before with different audiences is that, even with a very adventurous sex life, you are not going to ever see some of the angles and videos of what's on pornography.
Speaker 2:That's exactly correct. I mean you won't. I mean unless you have someone, when you're engaging in a sexual relationship, who's filming and cropping and moving things you're not going to. I mean you'll be watching it on a screen but you're not going to see it during the interaction. And I think that leads a lot of men and women to have very unrealistic ideas about what a human body should be looking like or how it should be functioning, and it's led to ideas about beauty standards, for instance, that are just not realistic.
Speaker 1:And we could press that, not just in pornography. I mean, how many people send a photo, or I should say, post a photo online and they put it through a filter, and so everything is put through a filter. And I talk to a lot of people who are going through dating and, you know, searching for a partner, and they're dating online and they look and they think, okay, one of their biggest questions is is this picture filtered Right? And so not only is it skewing it sexually, it's skewing it aesthetically.
Speaker 2:Absolutely skewing it sexually. It's skewing it um aesthetically absolutely well, have you? Have you noted all the crop up in terms of being able to have ai headshots done?
Speaker 2:I mean, it's amazing right it's amazing and it's really hard to tell sometimes whether those are real or not. Have you you ever, for professional reasons, have you ever met someone you were going to engage with that you've maybe been engaging with on a professional site like LinkedIn or whatever, having discussions about mutual topics, and you all were going to meet at a meeting, so you were looking for that person based on what you were seeing. Yes, and it took a moment to realize. Oh, I think that's who that is.
Speaker 1:Have you ever had that experience? Yes, actually recently, and it's a little undoing.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:To think, wow, you're representing yourself one way and again it's like you know this individual was. They were fine, they were lovely, and my thought is, oh, I wish we all felt like we could be authentic.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So dopamine is a big player in this arena, but so is oxytocin, right.
Speaker 2:Oh yes.
Speaker 1:Anything you want to talk to us about with oxytocin?
Speaker 2:Oxytocin is an extremely important chemical for relationships and bonding. It even has a physical impact on another chemical so that when women give birth they bond to their babies like glue. I think I had laughingly said in one of the presentations that we did. You know, has everyone ever noticed that no matter what a baby looks like, that mother thinks that it is the most beautiful person who ever existed, and I believe I use the phrase. There are those babies that sometimes only a mother could initially love.
Speaker 2:I believe all humans are of great worth, no matter their appearance.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:But mothers will look at those children like they are the most beautiful baby ever. Right, and let's be honest about this. I personally love babies. I love babies, but most of them don't look especially beautiful the first day or two of birth. But when you look at a mother's eyes when she receives that baby, it's so powerful to watch, because that expression, the intensity of that bonding and love is there.
Speaker 2:Oxytocin does that. And so when one thing that happens a lot in relationships men and women are impacted by oxytocin, but men not to the degree that women are, and I've told I cannot tell you how many young adult women and adolescent girls I've had sit in my office who were completely shattered and heartbroken because they had fallen in love with a fellow and then they had intercourse with them. The active, a sexual encounter with someone will elevate oxytocin, and it does especially so for females. They bond like glue, and so with men they have that feeling as well and it's a high, but it's not the same exactly as it is for females. That being said, it impacts both, and so when you're engaging with pornography, the relationship isn't with a person Because, again, the reason for that bonding is that oxytocin surge is to bond the relationship.
Speaker 2:It's one reason why, frankly, in marital relationships it's important. A lot of married couples they get to the point where they're not engaging as much sexually I'm sure you've seen this multiple times and it's important for them to engage sexually. It's like the glue that helps hold the relationship together. It's important not just physically, but it's important for a lot, or a video, and that's what they're engaging with it begins to shift how they relate to other people in general.
Speaker 2:They're bonding to something that's not three dimensional and not real and it really can impact their brain in a negative way.
Speaker 1:What I've seen is that, speaking of impacting their brain in a negative way, is we've talked about this term a soul tie, and how difficult that is to unwind. That Because the expression of oxytocin is released in the brain at orgasm.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And when labor is kicked in with the mother, that's when the oxytocin is released. And how beautiful that we're designed for the mother to have the big surge of oxytocin that is imparted to that child, so that the baby and the mother have that bonding time. What a beautiful design. Yes, and you see that this greater design is all about relationship and all about connecting, and these other themes are all about disconnecting.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Because when you are experiencing let's say, you're gaming online and you're doing all of these things and you're conquering all these levels and you're looking at social media and you're being enticed or or enjoying all of these different photos or or even on in pornography, when you're seeing all of this sexual activity, it's like that is increasing the dopamine, and then when you have that physical release of an orgasm, you're now connecting to something that isn't real.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And when you think about that, it's actually further disconnecting you from you, because you're not discovering what it means to be a part of something greater than you, meaning in a relationship.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:And I often look at the theme that I see that that shows up in my office over and over and over again is the sense of intrapersonal, or self awareness. I'm constantly outside of me looking at these images, conquering these levels that are outside of me, looking at this pornography that is again outside of me. It's not teaching me anything about me. So when I try to go into an interpersonal which means self plus others I don't know what I'm bringing.
Speaker 1:And when I don't have a self to bring to an interpersonal interaction, I bring chaos, either internally or externally to you and this is what I see over and over and over again sitting in my office is that there is this lack of sense of self-awareness that therefore contributes to a whole lot of chaos, and that chaos varies. It's on a spectrum, it's different. That chaos may mean I feel really insecure because I don't look like the porn model. I don't look like the porn model. So I've got to, you know, make sure that I'm constantly moving around in my clothes to make sure that they're setting me up to look, look right as I air quote that but I'm bringing something that is really not going to give the other person the ability to connect to me, because there's really not a me there to connect to.
Speaker 2:You know, how can we expect another person to connect with us when we're not connected to ourselves?
Speaker 1:That's exactly it.
Speaker 2:And so I think that level of self-connection, that you have done a lot of work in this area with the intrapersonal relationship. We need to know who we are, we need to know what our values are, we need to know what's important to us. When I'm working with people and I'm coaching them, I always ask them if they have their own personal mission statement for who they are and when they don't. That's something we work on because it's something that I want them to think about and reflect upon and it's not being selfish. I've often had someone say you mean, working on yourself? Isn't that selfish?
Speaker 2:Absolutely not, because the more grounded you are the more in touch with who you are, the more you have to bring to all of your relationships with their romantic partners, work partners, people you're taking care of, your children, your family. You have that to bring. You know. We've talked about these types of things and I think one thing as we discuss this is I think it's important for us to think about the hope that people can have, and this is where I think getting information out using positive media media information, like you use your podcast is a way to help people understand this. We have the ability now to disseminate information that people can use in such a good way. So when you talk about the intra-psychic, you know part of who you are, the intra-personal part of who you are. What would you advise people yourself to begin to work on that process, because I think there may be someone listening today that says I'm not sure how I get started with this.
Speaker 1:I think that's brilliant. You know, the first thing that I tell anybody who sits down in my office is where are you in that and in that being whatever it is we're discussing? So if it's, you know, gosh, I'm doom scrolling on Twitter every night looking at all the political goings on and it stresses me out Great. Where are you in that? What are you looking for, what are you experiencing? In other words, it's bringing you to a place of mindfulness, and mindfulness is just most simply stated. Mindfulness is just an awareness, an awareness of what is what's around you and your experience of it. And as they walk through that sense of mindfulness, what they have found and it's what's really neat is when someone is sitting there and saying, you know, I don't know, well, it's because my kids are. Oh, it's because my partner, oh, it's because and I'm like Whoa, come back to you.
Speaker 1:And, like you said, there's a lot of times there's often, often, especially, people of faith traditions. I thought that that was selfish and wrong to focus on me, and I, and I, like you, will help them see and hopefully help them see that if I don't know me, how can I bring me to we? So am I? Am I quite useful. I hate to make it this, this direct, but am I quite useful if I don't bring me to a situation? Then what am I? What do I? What am I offering?
Speaker 2:Right, that's exactly spot on, lee. It really is. I'm going to comment about the mindfulness portion because that, I think, is a foundation for working on your interpersonal self. Yeah, I believe everyone and we talked about intention earlier and what are things people can do so everyone can decide to take a few minutes a day to look at themselves from a mindfulness perspective. You're exactly right, mindfulness is a very simple it's being aware of who you are, how you feel, where you are in the moment, in the present.
Speaker 2:That's right and people have to slow down and take five to ten minutes a day to practice. This I often recommend to people when I'm working with them. One of the things I'm going to ask you to do is spend ten minutes a day on you, just ten minutes where you're doing a mindfulness practice and we talk about what that could be. And so there's different breathing techniques. I box breathing is one that's talked about techniques. I box breathing is one that's talked about. I like to do counted breathing, where people count to a certain number, then they inhale and exhale to regulate their breathing. That's another way to do that. We talk about visual imagery really thinking about where you are in that moment. And then the other thing I'm going to say about mindfulness, because you mentioned faith traditions. That I think is really fascinating to me.
Speaker 2:Prayer is a way to be mindful. Whatever your faith tradition is, prayer is a very helpful way to be mindful how we work. We were actually set up in a way so that we are being mindful and we're having a mindfulness practice through prayer or spiritual disciplines such as meditation. There's a book that was written in like the 13th century, I believe, called the Cloud of Unknowing. It was by a monk who is not identified. If you read that, he's talking about mindfulness, and so this is something in all of our faith traditions that has been present forever, but we haven't labeled it, and so that's another way people can bring mindfulness in to their daily practice. There's different ways to do it.
Speaker 1:I love that and thank you for giving such practical ideas of how to be mindful. I think that's so helpful. I think, too, when we as parents, if we have teenagers who are, they look, let's just face it, teenagers feel disconnected because they are developmentally, are going through very similar, a very similar developmental stage to what toddlers go through.
Speaker 2:That is right.
Speaker 1:Right, it's, it's that independence, it's seeking that sense of independence. Toddlers are doing it on a on a more gross scale or a rougher scale, I guess I would say, where they're looking for bodily independence. They just want to tie their own shoes, they want to pour their own shoes, they want to pour their own milk, they want to, you know, get their own snack. Where teenagers are looking for it more on an intra personal sense of I want to be my own person and I think about like how then can we as parents or or even as authority figures, or or or mentors, how can we guide these teenagers through? And I think a lot of it is teaching the teenager to be mindful.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad you're bringing this up. There's actually some brain changes that happen during the teen years. There's a term for it. We call it pruning Right. Some of the neurons that are no longer needed are not there and they're pruned away, and then others develop and myelinate more. The brain is not fully myelinated or developed.
Speaker 2:so you're in your mid-20s and so insurance companies knew about that I think you're right about that, and so I think that, with teenagers, if we can begin to teach them some very basic skills of self-regulation, which involves mindfulness Mindfulness is what you start with Then they can learn some self-regulation skills, ways to deal with those emotions, such as anger, frustration, sadness, and I think what I would encourage any parent or any adult who works with teens today to be thinking about. I would encourage any parent or any adult who works with teens today to be thinking about these things that we sort of take for granted because we've been doing them for a while, in terms of taking a breath, or hitting the pause button internally and not immediately responding. Or when you write that email, read the email first before you hit the button. Or when you do a social media post post, don't just put it out there yet till you take a minute to reflect on it and how it's going to be perceived.
Speaker 2:These are all things that teens are not aware of right and it's what fuels a lot of the sometimes what can feel like chaos going on with them and their relationships. We can actually teach them these things by discussing them directly with them when we did the conversation and the presentation with young adults related to pornography. We had some great questions and they really wanted to hear our thoughts about how to deal with certain things. That's right.
Speaker 2:And these are not things we would have opened a conversation with them about. They ask us the question. That's right. I would encourage all adults to realize we have a lot to pass on to the younger generation and we can help them.
Speaker 1:Boy Ken, yes, yes, and it's taking the risk to reach out or to open the discussion with them. And I'm so glad you're pointing that out. And I go back to and sorry to beat the tar out of this, but I go back to the whole idea as a parent, as an authority figure, as a mentor. If we don't know us, if we don't know ourselves, if we're not aware of what these questions are doing to us, or what had the impact of social media, pornography, you know, gaming, those types, these other, these younger folks, we're probably not, we're probably going to go toward them with chaos.
Speaker 2:You could not be more right, and I'm so glad you hit the pause on that and emphasize that before we start working with them we have to know who we are, how we cope, how we manage and be aware of maybe what we've done in our lives that hasn't been healthy, or what we're even doing today. I mean, I'll be the first to say it's easy for me when I start reading about certain medical things, I'll go to one and I'll go to another and I will spend more time doing that than I had intended. So I mean, one check I do for myself is check my phone to see how much time have I been doing on these sorts of things. That's one thing that piece of a device will give to you.
Speaker 2:It will give you information about that and you need to check it and look at it and be aware.
Speaker 1:I love that. One of the things that I do is that when I feel stressed, I noticed that I picked my phone up and I start looking at things, like I may look at Twitter, I may look at whatever, and I'm realizing when I pick up my phone, where am I? What am I experiencing right now? Okay, I'm experiencing some stress, so I'm gonna put that down. I'm going to think through what am I stressed about? How can I impact that differently?
Speaker 1:This may take me a minute, like just a series of questions that take about a minute to go through. It's just where am I? What am I experiencing? Is there anything? Is there an agency or a sense of power that I have over this topic, or whatever? It is Like if, if, if. I'm looking at it and I'm saying, okay, I'm stressed because it's it's raining and I know that I wanted to go to a baseball game this afternoon. It's like, well, okay, it's raining, can I do anything about that? No, can I do anything If the game is canceled? No, but I can think of alternative things that I could do. That's fun, great, I don't. I'm not going to find that on Twitter or X, whatever it's called. Now, you know what I'm saying, and so it's like, okay, don't avoid that, don't avoid that feeling, move through that, own it and come up with a solution that fits you.
Speaker 2:And that is such an important point we, as people, want to avoid the full emotional range of feelings that we're meant to have.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:There's something very rewarding about taking a moment if you're frustrated or you're sad, and asking yourself that question why am I feeling the way I am right now, in this moment, and realizing why you can actually learn something about yourself and you can learn something that is important to you. I mean, I'll just tell you, this past week, two years ago, an extremely close friend of mine died this past week and I had found myself this week thinking of her. She just kept coming to mind. I think about her frequently, but she kept wonderful, human. She kept coming to mind.
Speaker 2:And then, on the day that she had died, I noted I don't have this marked on my calendar, I just noted that day I was grumpy and irritable and I stopped and I thought why are you feeling this way? And in that moment I thought oh yes, this is the day that she left us two years ago. It's a bit of an anniversary reaction and I'll tell you what I did. I paused, I took a breath and I thought to myself and what would my dear friend, who is also a therapist, what would she want me to be doing at this moment? She would want me to think about something that we talked about or that we did. That was funny, and so in that moment I recounted a very positive memory of her as a way of paying tribute to that relationship. So you know, when you think about the intrapersonal, I had an interpersonal relationship with someone who brought me positive things intrapersonally.
Speaker 1:Right. Thank you for sharing that because you're wow, what an example. Because that's the beauty that we're designed for in connection is that we have an experience interpersonally, meaning between self and another person, and how that impacts us, changes us. How that impacts us, changes us and, in this case, changes us or changes you for the positive. It was such a beautiful impact and you think about how you walk through that now that she's no longer here with us on this earth, and it's bringing, bringing her back up into it's. It's bringing the intrapersonal, the interpersonal into the intrapersonal, which sounds backwards, meaning bringing the others back up into the self, meaning you reminded yourself what were some of the beautiful things that you shared together Funny stories, funny things, things that she would have enjoyed, that y'all would have enjoyed.
Speaker 2:Things that you learn and grow from in the relationship, through discussions, through activities. I mean that's where relationship is so important.
Speaker 1:Right Social media technology, especially pornography, video gaming. Anything that takes you and isolates you from the world isolates you, not separates you. Isolates you from the world, does damage to our sense of self.
Speaker 2:It does and it's insidious. We don't realize it's happening. It's like a thief who steals a little bit from us each day over time. That's, if we're putting those negative types of influences inside of us, we are bringing those inside of us. On the flip side, when we allow ourselves some time, it has to be balanced, just like we allow ourselves balanced time or we should be to get adequate exercise in to make sure we're eating adequately, we're sleeping adequately, all those basic things you know we grew up hearing they're actually real.
Speaker 2:We do need to do those things to be able to function well and stay healthy. But also from our psychological and emotional and relationship health and, I believe, our spiritual health, we need to think about what we allow ourselves to ingest, because whatever we're having a relationship with, or whoever we're having a relationship with, it's going to have a feedback on us and impact us internally. So it impacts that intrapersonal relationship.
Speaker 1:Boy, that is so well said and I always think about you know you are who you hang around with, like right. Your mama always said that right, you are who you hang around with, and I think there's a lot of truth to that, to your point and at this point in life, at this point in our culture, it's you are what you spend the majority of your time with. It may not be who you hang out with, it may be what you fill your time with.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I think people lose sight of that. They lose sight of the fact that if they're spending a lot of time engaged in things that are not positively reinforcing them and helping them move forward, such as pornography, such as a lot of screen time in negative forums there's a lot of other negative forms out there that are influencing people horribly. I hear about it regularly when I see patients, and so I think, when we think about those things, I believe that we need to put the pause button on and say is this something that I've got to keep TV away from my kids? Now I have to keep the iPad away.
Speaker 1:I can't let them do any kind of screen time. How would you, how would you speak to that?
Speaker 2:So I think, as a parent, it's very important with younger children especially, you need to monitor what they do. You need to go on to your computer, their computer, their phones. You need to have some parental controls for the pre-adolescent children, 100%, because they don't have the ability as pre-adolescents to make decisions or to understand what they should be seeing or what they should not be seeing, and they can be so horribly impacted and traumatized literally traumatized. You know, we hear that phrase. You can't unsee that. Well, for a young brain, you really can't unsee that and you don't understand how it's impacted you and you may not even talk about it With adolescents. This is where you begin to talk with them and try to help them learn how to make choices. You still need to have an awareness of what they're doing, but it's important to educate them.
Speaker 2:I'm going to bring up something that's kind of negative, but I'm going to bring it up. There's significant legal consequences for adolescents to be looking at porn or photoshopping things in a pornographic way and sending them over the phone or having them on social media, because they can actually have legal consequences for that and it certainly can impact them in many ways. It can cause them to be expelled from school. It can call. It can impact their future in a way they don't realize. We as adults sometimes think oh, if you do it before age 18, it's not going to be an issue. That's not true anymore. And so, as you begin to and one thing I'll tell you about teens and I know you know this too, because you're the same way they like being treated by us adults, as if they can think, because the reality is they can.
Speaker 2:They just may not have all the information or all the experience yet to really know how to form decisions. And that's where we come in. That's right. We come in to help give them that information and then help talk it through with them, answer their questions. So what does this mean? As a parent? It means guess what? You probably need to be mindful and intentional about having scheduled time with your teens where you're able to have these discussions. There are some people I see that I will say okay, you've got some significant things going on. I'd like you all to schedule the timer for 15 minutes a night, to start with after you eat dinner. Why do I choose that time? Dopamine levels also elevate when we eat, so we're in a better mood after we've had dinner and we don't want anyone having these conversations being hangry.
Speaker 2:We just don't. So that's a good time. I want you to set the timer where you will sit down one-on-one. That's going to be mom and daughter time, or father and son time, or mother and son time. I tell people to switch it up where you're going to be sitting down and talking about topics and discussing them, and if you want to exceed 15 minutes, that's fine. I'm just saying that's the minimal amount of time I want you to give this to begin with this process.
Speaker 1:Right, and what's fascinating is that 15 minutes for a lot of people, I'm sure, feels like an eternity in the beginning.
Speaker 2:I hear that all the time and then do you know what I hear? After they've been doing it, they're able to reflect on that. I've had parents say to me privately, away from the children, I didn't know how I was going to do that at first and I had given them talking points. I said well, here's a talking point. Begin with asking what is a really good thing about your day to day. Make sure you start with that.
Speaker 2:What is something that's happened today that you didn't know how to handle or that bothered you? I said usually, if you do those things, and then you as a parent, I want you to be prepared to share one positive thing about your day. You don't really need to bring your things you had to problem solve into your teenager, but bring in something positive that you noticed that day or you engaged with that day, in case you need something to talk about to begin the conversation. And so and they would say to me now I can sit down for 30 to 45 minutes and we talk much more easily I said isn't that interesting how that happens?
Speaker 1:I love that. I think that's brilliant. One of the things that I want to go back to is you know you can't unsee that. That is so true, and the dialectical here is you can't unsee that and we know that our skin regenerates about once a month. We learned, I would say decently recent, that our brain regenerates. We didn't think it did, but our brain regenerates once every three to five years. I always say four years, and I'd love for you to touch on neuroplasticity because-.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that concept and one thing I want to say about that although you're right, you can't unsee something and you can't not remember a trauma we, because of what we've learned with neuroplasticity and how the brain can regenerate and even shift brain, brain channels, we have learned ways to work with people to help them reprocess those traumas start offering, on a larger scale basis, art accelerated resolution therapy, because it helps and aids the brain reprocess what they've seen or the trauma they've experienced, so that it's not having that debilitating emotional and psychological impact anymore.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Which is a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is a wonderful thing. I am both trained in EMDR and ART and I will say this is just my own personal preference. But what I have seen with ART has been unbelievably phenomenal. People who have lost close loved ones, children who have walked through and come to the other side, where they are able to reconnect to the world again and it's the neuroplasticity of that is just such a blessing to give these people back a semblance of life.
Speaker 1:No, it doesn't take the trauma away to your point. No, those things cannot be unseen. The scar is always there. But life can continue. People say, oh, I'm going to move on, you're asking me to move on from this loved one and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, we're not asking you to move on, we're asking you to move with because they are no longer in the midst of death. They are no longer in the midst of that pain and that horrific thing. Let's move with life to keep living in a beautiful, glorious way that, yes, we still acknowledge that very horrific, horrible thing occurred. But, to your point, the plasticity of being able to move with life and be able to leave that in the background, what a gift.
Speaker 2:I believe this type of therapy takes an active, open, hurting wound that is keeping people from functioning, and turns it into a healed scar.
Speaker 1:That's right. It's like a suture. That's a great way to say that. Yeah, thank you so much for being with us.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1:It's my pleasure.
Speaker 2:We are both in the trenches together, working in this world to try to help people live better in a healthier way, so they can live their best lives.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I don't want to fail to mention, you have a wonderful book. Tell us about it.
Speaker 2:I have a book that is an easy read. It's a short book. It's called Master your Storm Insights of a Psychiatrist and Coach. It is deliberately set up to have bite-sized chapters that you read, with takeaways and coaching style questions to help you work on what the issues you need to be working on.
Speaker 1:And I will tell you it's brilliant and everyone should pick one up. Wherever you get books, amazon, wherever you buy your books, pick one up, go through it, master your storm.
Speaker 2:Because we all have one at some time we do.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Dr A.
Speaker 2:Thank you, lee, I appreciate being here.
Speaker 3:If you found value in our discussion and wish to uncover more about the fascinating world of mental wellness, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Stay tuned for our upcoming episodes, where Dr Long will continue to delve into empowering therapies and strategies for mental wellness. Your journey to understanding and embracing mental health is just beginning and we're excited to have you with us every step of the way. Until next time, keep exploring, keep growing and remember to celebrate restored freedom as you uncover it.
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