00:00:00.15 nextlevelguypodcast how bad it was when I first started. It was just a pure white space and I had this light on my face and it was just sitting there going... 00:00:03.56 Emma McAdam, LMFT That's 00:00:05.81 nextlevelguypodcast Yes, I'm okay, honestly. 00:00:07.55 Emma McAdam, LMFT awesome. awesome 00:00:10.30 nextlevelguypodcast but Well, thank you so much for coming on. I've written you a wee introduction, and it's today's guest is on a mission to make mental health tools radically accessible with over 2 million YouTube subscribers and a background spanning wilderness therapy to juvenile corrections. 00:00:26.73 nextlevelguypodcast Emma McCannum, creator of Therapy in a Nutshell, has become a trusted voice in teaching people how to move from just surviving to genuine healing. Would you agree with that? How would you define the great that's in Fratmi? 00:00:41.54 Emma McAdam, LMFT Say that again. 00:00:42.81 nextlevelguypodcast How would you define yourself? like When you introduce yourself to someone, how how do you explain the great that is Emma?............... 00:00:50.20 Emma McAdam, LMFT ha Oh man, yeah, I don't know if I'm i'm great in any way. i'm a I'm a therapist who hangs out in my office and writes ah videos that somehow like millions of people watch and I'm constantly surprised that this happens, but I know there's like a you know dramatic need for mental health education, you know? And I've just i've seen how impactful it can be, so I love like making it easier to understand. That's how I i would describe it, is like, somehow this happened to me and I'm on YouTube now. 00:01:21.66 nextlevelguypodcast but I mean, it's it's very well-deserved praise because you have this way of like giving raw, honest advice that cuts through the cookie cutter what we want to hear, and you give it as we need to hear it. 00:01:33.54 nextlevelguypodcast Like we were talking about before we started, i was literally venting about a colleague that I'd fallen out with at work. And was listening to one of your episodes where you talked about how that's a sign that you're people pleasing, that you're tying your value into other people's opinions of you. 00:01:51.76 nextlevelguypodcast And at that moment, I went, OK, and I could then use your teaching from that episode in real time to fix that problem. It's phenomenal, the work that you do. 00:02:02.41 nextlevelguypodcast But what was your first introduction to therapy, um you know emotional control, these sorts of things? 00:02:09.72 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. um So I was a pretty like unhappy teenager. And um in college, I took a job at a camp. It was like a church camp. 00:02:20.82 Emma McAdam, LMFT And I loved it. And I loved working with teenagers, but I wasn't so like peppy and happy all the time. I'm not one of those like rah-rah kids. So the next summer, took a job working for a wilderness therapy program. So these parents who have these kids who are struggling and the parents are struggling and they'll send their kids out. 00:02:37.21 Emma McAdam, LMFT to the the deserts of Utah for six to 12 weeks, as you do. 00:02:39.87 nextlevelguypodcast As you do. 00:02:44.53 Emma McAdam, LMFT And I would hang out with them for eight days at a time. And um like I saw these kids go through these huge transformations with the combination of therapy and then the work we did as staff and in the group and in that environment. 00:03:00.10 Emma McAdam, LMFT And it was just so fun to see them make progress, but it also was an opportunity for me to really gain a lot of insight into myself and do a lot of, lot of my own work. 00:03:10.60 Emma McAdam, LMFT So that's how I started wilderness therapy in 2005. 00:03:11.68 nextlevelguypodcast into 00:03:14.49 Emma McAdam, LMFT five 00:03:16.42 nextlevelguypodcast All of that, because you see these programs and you think, is that really, you know, but then you think of what you learn about yourself when you go on a camping trip with your uncle and all that sort of stuff. 00:03:18.00 Emma McAdam, LMFT yeah 00:03:27.43 nextlevelguypodcast But what did you find when you would see that kind of therapy based on the healing modalities that you see a doctor prescribing, here's some tablets, disappear for six weeks, you know. 00:03:40.18 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:03:40.28 nextlevelguypodcast how yeah How did you find that balance between the two, the attitudes towards it? 00:03:45.07 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. Oh, I don't know. i mean, i think from from my perspective, I think medication can be a great tool. And unfortunately, it's just one tool. So if we want to make a really great life and we want to be able to like solve more problems. We need more tools to handle them than medication. So medication, you know, think it's a really valuable tool. 00:04:07.63 Emma McAdam, LMFT um But we've got to learn the life skills. We've got to learn what to do with our emotions when they come up. We've got to learn um how to work with our feelings and our physical reactions, our physiological responses to situations as as well as our relationships. So, um you know, I think some people are really anti-medication. Some people are like oh, medication is the only thing I've tried. And it's like, that's that's fine. 00:04:31.58 Emma McAdam, LMFT what are you going to like What else can you add to your tool belt? That's what I'm always asking. 00:04:36.90 nextlevelguypodcast but I mean, because you've said that emotions are, they're not enemies, they're messengers. You know, they're they're there to tell us things. 00:04:41.96 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:04:43.50 nextlevelguypodcast I mean, I once ah asked ChatGBT what was the meaning of jealousy. And it was it explained about how there was a positive meaning behind it. how But we would in today's society, if I said you were emotional, we see that as a slight. how how do we like How should we see emotions, feelings, mental health to to not give it this bad stigma that you see couples arguing, shouting you're emotional at each other? 00:05:10.34 Emma McAdam, LMFT who who So here's how I think about emotions. I think about emotions as being informative. I think of emotions as being similar to a smoke alarm. So a smoke alarm is loud. 00:05:24.02 Emma McAdam, LMFT It's ah uncomfortable. 00:05:24.28 nextlevelguypodcast Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:05:25.47 Emma McAdam, LMFT It causes like a physiological, like I want to get this turned off or I want to leave this situation where the smoke alarm is going off. And it's also inaccurate frequently. So I've had my smoke alarm go off a lot more times telling me there might be a fire than there was actually fire. Like I actually have never had a fire in my house, but I've had a lot of smoke alarms go off, whether I'm cooking bacon or taking a hot shower. Right. 00:05:50.11 Emma McAdam, LMFT And so um I think our emotions are... like one, they're super vital. They're really important and they're loud and they're informative, but, and we don't, that's why we don't get rid of smoke alarms, right? We we want them in our lives. We want to have smoke alarms in our lives. We just want to make our smoke alarms a little bit more accurate. 00:06:08.83 Emma McAdam, LMFT We don't want a smoke alarm that's going off all the time when there's no fire. And we don't want a smoke alarm that never goes off when there's a fire. So I think learning to understand like how our smoke alarm works, how our emotions work, gives us an opportunity to learn how to like listen to our emotions and be informed by them without um reacting to them, suppressing them, um obeying them, 00:06:34.83 Emma McAdam, LMFT or being controlled by them, or just like trying to avoid them at all costs, because we we we need emotions to live a a vital life. And i think I think sometimes people get stuck in a habit of trying to not have emotions. Like they see not having emotions as the goal. Like, oh, my life goal is to not have anxiety, or my life goal is to not feel sad. 00:06:57.79 Emma McAdam, LMFT And I think there's very clear evidence that that makes people pretty miserable, like in general. 00:07:04.12 nextlevelguypodcast Definitely. mean, you see that with lot of men, don't you? It's the, we're told to be brave, silent, don't ask for help. 00:07:07.21 Emma McAdam, LMFT who 00:07:09.83 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:07:11.82 nextlevelguypodcast And you see them fighting with themselves. Like they'd rather go punch a wall than explain how they're feeling. And I think that's, 00:07:18.20 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:07:19.24 nextlevelguypodcast Are we slowly getting rid of that stigma? Are we getting to point where men can approach that? 00:07:22.58 Emma McAdam, LMFT I hope so. 00:07:25.29 nextlevelguypodcast Because I remember the big one of the biggest insights I had on here was, i think it was number two, where the guest said to me, you can change your story at any point. You just tell yourself something different. 00:07:36.86 nextlevelguypodcast And I was like, whoa. Because at that point, I had believed I was everything I thought. 00:07:39.30 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:07:41.32 nextlevelguypodcast I was everything I believed about myself. And as I started leaning more into self-improvement, I learned more about you can change, you know, and then neuroplasticity and all these sorts of things. 00:07:52.52 nextlevelguypodcast is it Is it dangerous that we we teach men that it's a bad thing to be emotional? 00:07:59.67 Emma McAdam, LMFT and 00:08:00.05 nextlevelguypodcast How, you know... 00:08:00.51 Emma McAdam, LMFT I think it's... So I think we have to look at this as a tool, right? So we we look at like these skills people have as a tool. And if you look at certain situations, being able to suppress your emotions and push them away, that's an excellent tool. 00:08:15.32 Emma McAdam, LMFT So let's say if you're an EMT and you drive up to a crash scene and you need to pick bodies up and put them into the ambulance and get them to the hospital, it's not a great time to be like, huh, 00:08:25.88 Emma McAdam, LMFT I wonder how this is deeply related to my feelings of inadequacy, right? Like you're not going to sit there and cry. 00:08:30.67 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:08:32.54 Emma McAdam, LMFT You're going to suppress those emotions, get those people taken care of. And that's it like that skill of like, hey, hold that down for a minute is actually a helpful tool. And I think men have been told that for a long time. Unfortunately, the problem is that that skill has been overgeneralized to like that's the only skill men are taught. 00:08:50.73 Emma McAdam, LMFT Don't cry. Don't be a girl. Don't show your feelings. Don't be weak. Don't be vulnerable. And so it's like, oh, okay, I'm just going to use that skill in every situation. Like, oh, like I, you know, something, my my father dies. Okay, don't cry. Don't be weak. Don't have feelings. Right. And it's not an effective skill. 00:09:11.17 Emma McAdam, LMFT It's also not an effective skill in the long run. Like if you're an ambulance driver, an EMT, It's like you need to add other skills to your toolkit so that after the situation has de-escalated, then you've got another skill where you're like, okay, now I've got all this cortisol stored up in my body. 00:09:28.83 Emma McAdam, LMFT Now I'm going to like take care of my body. And I've got all this sadness or fear stored up in my mind. I'm going to process through those feelings. And then I'm going to be okay to show up to work the next day. 00:09:39.69 Emma McAdam, LMFT So there's like the short-term skill is like, oh, let's suppress our feelings. Great. Works great if you're a warrior. Works great if you're a hunter. Works great if you're making crucial decisions in the moment. If you're an EMT or if there's like some crisis to be solved. 00:09:52.68 Emma McAdam, LMFT But then you also need to add in the other skills too. So I'm not going to jump in and just be like, yeah, men shouldn't be told like you should never cry. It's like, oh, Like you can use that skill sometimes. 00:10:03.35 Emma McAdam, LMFT Just don't have it be your only skill. 00:10:03.79 nextlevelguypodcast Hmm. 00:10:05.30 Emma McAdam, LMFT So he's like, if you have a toolbox, you don't want just a hammer in your toolbox. You want a screwdriver and a saw and a wrench and a vice grip and a clamp and all these different tools. 00:10:15.79 Emma McAdam, LMFT So i I just see it as like, okay, men don't need to throw out everything they've been told about being strong and resilient. Like I i love those skills too. And let's add in, 00:10:26.81 Emma McAdam, LMFT like feeling your feelings and the ability to express your feelings or to identify your feelings or to process your feelings or to communicate with another person how their actions are bothering you or take responsibility for how your actions are bothering someone else. Like these are just a bunch of different tools. 00:10:46.70 Emma McAdam, LMFT And I see them as like, oh, just no one taught you. Like literally no one taught you how to do these skills. So you stick with your hammer and you just treat every problem like it's a nail. 00:10:57.18 nextlevelguypodcast Sounds like every guy I know. and yep and Myself included. It's like, I could get an Allen key, but nah. Let's just stick with a screwdriver. Let's see how that works. 00:11:06.56 Emma McAdam, LMFT yeah let's just Yeah, let's just hit it harder, right? 00:11:06.99 nextlevelguypodcast but 00:11:09.79 Emma McAdam, LMFT Let's just try more. yeah 00:11:11.69 nextlevelguypodcast If in doubt, brute strength always works. you know 00:11:14.55 Emma McAdam, LMFT Right. Yeah, just grit it. And it works. It works in the short term a lot of times. But what we find is it doesn't work in the long run. 00:11:23.79 nextlevelguypodcast Because that's the thing. we As kids, you see people, like the kids will stand up, they'll talk to each other, they'll have these like really dynamic, dynamic dramatic kind of conversations. And then as an adult, you're like, whoa, no, no, I don't want to hear about you good crying at work. 00:11:38.06 nextlevelguypodcast I don't want to hear you about this and that, you know, like, I'm going to call you this, I'm going to call you that, and going to have a beer and we'll forget about it. 00:11:40.85 Emma McAdam, LMFT Mm-hmm. 00:11:45.30 nextlevelguypodcast Do you see people now moving away from drink, drugs, promiscuous sex, you know, like um all the bad habits that we were doing and now people are being a bit more open because we've got a bit more sort of therapy in the mainstream? 00:12:01.84 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah, I do. I definitely see that there's definitely a mainstream movement toward being more aware mental health, talking more about mental health, decreasing the stigma. I think there's, I even heard about a study showing that people like it on the dating apps. 00:12:13.47 Emma McAdam, LMFT If someone like a guy says, oh, I've been to therapy, they see that now as like a very positive thing. 00:12:16.78 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:12:18.83 Emma McAdam, LMFT They're like, oh, good, man. A guy who's who's like got some insight or is working on himself or takes accountability or trying to learn. Like, I think people are seeing that as a positive where people, maybe 20 years ago. Well, in the US, s I think it's maybe perhaps different. You tell me. 00:12:33.20 Emma McAdam, LMFT Is it different in Britain? 00:12:36.11 nextlevelguypodcast It's definitely getting there. We're a bit more kind of, you see girls now expecting an emotional layer to you. 00:12:38.53 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:12:44.08 nextlevelguypodcast I don't know how many how many they find with that, but es um they usually make a comment on your sexuality if you discuss emotional feelings. 00:12:44.23 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:12:48.32 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:12:53.88 nextlevelguypodcast Let's put it that way. Yeah. 00:12:55.34 Emma McAdam, LMFT and bla Like, it a positive comment or a negative comment? 00:12:59.97 nextlevelguypodcast Usually negative, you know, it's like, oh, shut up. 00:13:01.87 Emma McAdam, LMFT Mm. 00:13:02.84 nextlevelguypodcast and we carry And they carry on because nobody wants to, because if you open it up, you're then expected to you open up. And I think we we fear that dark thing inside us, that comment, that bad thing we did, whatever it is, you can see people go, whoa, whoa, whoa. we're not We're not taking a chance that this might mean I have to take part in it. 00:13:24.66 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:13:25.73 Emma McAdam, LMFT Mm-hmm. 00:13:26.91 nextlevelguypodcast how How do you find that then with people who come to you? Do you see a similarity? Do they have a breaking point? Is the pain become too much before they come to you? Or are they starting to come to you now to help? 00:13:37.91 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. know 00:13:41.75 Emma McAdam, LMFT So I certainly see more and more people seeking like mental health advice as a way to optimize instead of just as a way to um like, oh, my whole life fell apart and I've hit rock bottom and I have nothing else and my wife's leaving me and I just got fired at work and I'm doing all these drugs. Now I'm going to do therapy. Like I certainly see more people using therapy and mental health supports as a way to optimize, especially I think some of the most proficient CEOs and managers. 00:14:08.68 Emma McAdam, LMFT I think some of the the smartest business people are accessing therapy and coaching as a way to see themselves more clearly, to identify like skills that they lack and then to learn those skills. Like, I think there's people who see mental health as like, oh, you either are fine or you're a wreck. Like you either have it or you don't. 00:14:29.61 Emma McAdam, LMFT And then there's the rest of people. Like this is what i my goal is, is to show people that mental health is a skill. like emotional regulation is a skill and it's a skill you can learn just like you can learn math or just like you can learn how to run a business or manage a budget. 00:14:39.47 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:14:45.53 Emma McAdam, LMFT It's like, these are practical skills and it's not woo woo. And it's not just sitting in a room crying and talking about your feelings. It's like, no, no, no. Like let's learn this process. And once you learn this process, that's going to make your life better. 00:14:58.70 Emma McAdam, LMFT So I see like, I see some of the most successful people engaging in a lot of coaching and therapy as a way to just optimize to perform better. 00:15:07.53 nextlevelguypodcast So if we start from the main problem area, which is usually ourselves, you wouldn't allow a friend to speak to you the way that we do normally. You know, like we'll say, oh, you're an idiot, you're a simpleton, you do this, you do that. 00:15:19.34 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yep. 00:15:21.66 nextlevelguypodcast You know, or we use language like would, could, should, you know, you beat yourself up to the ninth degree. How does our thinking patterns, how does the language, the internal monologue that we have, 00:15:28.88 Emma McAdam, LMFT yep 00:15:34.33 nextlevelguypodcast affect us how does it shape us in what we do and how we behave 00:15:40.41 Emma McAdam, LMFT Oh man, absolutely. Yeah, our self-talk and how we how we talk to ourselves impacts us immensely. And not only does it impact our emotions, so like if I yell at myself, or I think one the things I see is really common is self-punishment. 00:15:52.41 Emma McAdam, LMFT So yeah, you like you make a mistake or something goes goes wrong, you're such an idiot, you're an effing idiot, whatever. And when we talk to ourselves that way, that makes us feel more scared, more risk-averse, we're less willing to try, like to reach out to others, 00:16:09.03 Emma McAdam, LMFT Like, let's say we got in a fight with our partner. If we chew ourselves out, we're much less likely to solve the problem that led to the situation. We're much less likely to have a good conversation. And like, like i consider this vulnerability is like, oh, have a little bit of courage and say, huh, I wonder... 00:16:25.45 Emma McAdam, LMFT like in what way I could make the situation better. i have no idea. So I wonder if I asked my partner, hey, you got really mad at me. i wonder what I could do differently next time. 00:16:36.82 Emma McAdam, LMFT um Or how would you, how would you prefer I handle this? And then maybe their ideas are terrible, but just the willingness to ask that question. If you just label yourself as an idiot, it's going to prevent you from asking that question. 00:16:48.29 Emma McAdam, LMFT ah Because you're like, well, what's the point? 00:16:48.40 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:16:49.61 Emma McAdam, LMFT Why try? Why bother? I might as well just resign myself to wallowing in my feelings. And that leads to this kind of learned hopelessness. But it also changes our physiology. Like our physiology shifts like down a gear into like, oh, might as well give up. 00:17:05.64 Emma McAdam, LMFT and we have less energy, less... like So what what you'll see physiologically when you chew yourself out and you label yourself and you berate yourself is a lot of times people shift out of the activation mode into the um overwhelm mode. I've got like a little poster back here. It's got a glare on it. I'm going to grab it really quick. I like talking about the nervous system. Just a second. 00:17:33.16 Emma McAdam, LMFT Um... get my headphones back in. 00:17:40.92 Emma McAdam, LMFT So but like when we're in a window of tolerance, we have a growth mindset. It's so shiny, isn't it? When we have a growth mindset, we have this belief like I can handle this. 00:17:47.08 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:17:51.42 Emma McAdam, LMFT And in our window of tolerance, we think things like I'm safe, I'm capable, I'm confident. If we make a mistake, we might think, oh, I can figure this out. Or I wonder who could help me learn how to solve this problem. This is our window of tolerance. 00:18:06.69 Emma McAdam, LMFT When we're a little stressed out, we go into this activated stressed out mode, the fight, flight, freeze response. ah where our nervous system activates and we'll have a stress response where our heart rate goes up, our breathing rate goes up, our cortisol levels go up, and that helps us take action to solve problems. 00:18:24.04 Emma McAdam, LMFT But when we berate ourselves and punish ourselves, we usually slip into this what's called nervous system hypoarousal. And so our thoughts are like, I'm hopeless or I feel hopeless or the situation is hopeless. 00:18:34.57 Emma McAdam, LMFT We think, why bother? We feel sad, we feel depressed, we feel shame, but our body physiologically changes. we get us a slower heart rate, we get slower breathing, our digestion slows down, we might feel heavy, numb, unmotivated, tired, um we often slump, and then we isolate relationally. 00:18:55.33 Emma McAdam, LMFT So when we berate ourselves, our nervous system physiologically changes, and you can actually see it in your heart rate, like if you track your heart rate. 00:19:03.98 nextlevelguypodcast I think we could all um ah remember a time that we've done that where you could actually feel you know like your muscles tense yeah like you're saying in the heart you're breathing oh i was just I could be in the moment of thinking about the last time I did it because they say you wouldn't allow a friend to speak to you like that so why why do you allow yourself to speak to that 00:19:10.51 Emma McAdam, LMFT who 00:19:21.99 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:19:25.51 nextlevelguypodcast And I remember somebody saying to me, you and but a cognitive behavioral therapy I had years ago, um and they said, you're not your thoughts. 00:19:32.55 Emma McAdam, LMFT but 00:19:34.78 nextlevelguypodcast That's just a voice that comes with a bias. and 00:19:38.06 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:19:38.14 nextlevelguypodcast It gives you suggestions about things that you've told it you want to think about. good or bad. And I like the idea of is it parts therapy where you pretend you're sitting at the head of a table and it's not you scared. 00:19:47.68 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:19:51.34 nextlevelguypodcast It's a part of you that's scared. It's a part of you that's angry. ah but And you're the overall person in control. 00:19:54.73 Emma McAdam, LMFT Mm-hmm. 00:19:56.70 nextlevelguypodcast And you can say, no, no I feel that fear, but we're going to do this instead. And you disassociate from that in the good sense. But when we are in the anger, the upset, the exhaustion, whatever it is, and we are in the autopilot response, you know trigger response, 00:20:18.17 nextlevelguypodcast How do we snap out that? How do we rise above that to catch it and go, actually, Emma said to do this. how How do we stop going straight into the behavior that's going to get us in trouble? 00:20:31.62 Emma McAdam, LMFT Here's two things I would say. the The first thing I would say is you've got to write down what your stories are. 00:20:42.32 Emma McAdam, LMFT So if your story is I'm unlovable or I'm a screw up or Or if your story is the world is so unfair. Everyone's going to be so unfair to me, right? If that's your default story, when things go bad, like you get criticized at work, which one do you think? 00:20:56.81 Emma McAdam, LMFT Oh, I'm a complete failure. Oh, the world is so unfair, right? Like which story do you buy into? 00:21:00.74 nextlevelguypodcast Well, 00:21:02.24 Emma McAdam, LMFT You've got to gain some insight and identify what your stories are around that. Then you take that and you say, my story is, and instead of saying I am a failure, you say, or I am unlovable. You say, story is, 00:21:14.25 Emma McAdam, LMFT story is I'm unlovable. My story is. This is just a story, right? And you write this down and you tape it to your wall. And then when you catch yourself, because this the the first step is always insight, right? You've got to notice that you're so you're creating this ah story. 00:21:33.74 Emma McAdam, LMFT the the The next step is to say, this story, i we only hang on to things that do something for us. Like we only keep repeating things that feel good in some way or reinforce us in some way. So for example, you know, eating 10 Snickers a day or eating however many, whatever, Snickers a day is not good for you, but we eat too much sugar because it feels good, right? It does something for us, right? 00:22:00.97 Emma McAdam, LMFT So that's why we engage in these negative behaviors. i eat I eat some candy, right? Like it's not like eating candy is a bad thing. I don't want to like go on this eating disorder thing, but yeah. So everything we repeatedly do is reinforcing us in some way. So how does that story, I'm such a loser. 00:22:15.70 Emma McAdam, LMFT Nobody loves me. How does that story actually, how do you like that? Why do you like believing that? What good does it do for you? Any guesses? 00:22:24.24 nextlevelguypodcast Is that like through the self-sabotage that's there? It gives you a reason why you don't need to put effort in because it's it's the outside world. 00:22:32.04 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:22:34.75 nextlevelguypodcast It's not you and what you can do. 00:22:36.37 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:22:36.51 nextlevelguypodcast It's not you controlling the controllables. It's someone else's fault. 00:22:39.25 Emma McAdam, LMFT That's right. Yeah. 00:22:39.99 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:22:40.86 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yep. Yep. So I was talking to my cousin the other day. His wife is separated from him. was like, bud, what's going on? Like, what's happening? He's like, well, i'm I'm just a narcissist. And I'm like, i you're a narcissist? I mean, I know the internet is really hot on this whole idea of narcissism right now. He's like, yeah, I took the survey and I'm like eight out of eight on it. 00:23:00.25 Emma McAdam, LMFT Like, he's like, I'm just such a narcissist. And I'm like, So does like does that label is that label helpful in any way? Well, probably means nothing will ever work in my marriage. 00:23:13.65 Emma McAdam, LMFT And I was like, so how's that label? like like how How convenient is that for you? 00:23:19.04 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:23:19.15 Emma McAdam, LMFT like how How convenient is that for you? And it's like, he was using that label as a reason why he didn't need to do the work. right He didn't need to sit down and like make an apology. 00:23:33.72 Emma McAdam, LMFT He's not a narcissist, by the way. The internet's labeling everyone as he's not like a true narcissist. There are some people who legitimately really, really struggle with some of those traits, but it's like for him, the label was um very convenient, very convincing, socially constructed idea that people who are narcissists can't change. 00:23:39.91 nextlevelguypodcast but 00:23:55.59 Emma McAdam, LMFT So therefore he doesn't need to. It wasn't, it excused him from putting in effort and, and yeah, 00:24:01.35 nextlevelguypodcast no 00:24:03.79 nextlevelguypodcast Well, I suppose it's like when you Google your your symptoms, you know, it tells you your headache is a brain tumour. You start believing it and it gives you a story, a justification of why it's the world. 00:24:10.25 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:24:15.48 nextlevelguypodcast And I think, I can't remember which episode you said it on your podcast where you said, focus on controlling and the controllables, focus on the things that you can control and forget the rest. 00:24:22.09 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:24:24.42 nextlevelguypodcast You know, it's why are you going to try to change somebody's opinion of you or ah how they're seen or how they're treated? treat do what you can do to fix it and I love that bit where you talk about do it into tiny break action into tiny reps build it and do it and again and again and neuroplasticity is such an amazing thing but we think no no that's way I was that's the way my dad was that's the way was my grandpa is how can you explain a bit about neuroplasticity and what it means in terms of how we can actually change but how we need to do it to make changes 00:24:31.38 Emma McAdam, LMFT Mm-hmm. 00:24:34.70 Emma McAdam, LMFT Mm-hmm. 00:24:59.86 Emma McAdam, LMFT Sure, absolutely. i mean, so researchers and and scientists used to think that after the age of 25, our brains were pretty much locked in stone, that the traits and abilities that we developed by, you know, 00:25:13.84 Emma McAdam, LMFT actually late teens, was pretty much who we were going to be forever. And now now research is showing that our brains are plastic and moldable and shapeable throughout the course of our entire lives. 00:25:25.70 Emma McAdam, LMFT And there's certain periods of our life where they're extra plastic, they're extra shapeable. And that includes... um times when we're in love, when we're pregnant, when we have these pregnancy hormones actually make our brains really plastic, middle age, like midlife crisis, that's your brain like being like, oh, let's, yeah, like, let's rewire, let's figure out what my life is about and what I want my life to be about. 00:25:37.20 nextlevelguypodcast Yes. 00:25:42.33 nextlevelguypodcast yes 00:25:48.02 Emma McAdam, LMFT And we change our personality changes, people become more secure, more committed, or they change their careers, right? Like you see these windows. And then again, when our when our hormones change in our later life, right? After menopause, our our brains are plastic again and reinventing our our um mentality this is a guy show so when you're testosterone have you ever seen these guys who are like rough and tough and crusty and then in their 70s they soften and they love playing with little babies again yeah yeah the hormonal changes allow the brain to to learn new things and try new things or 00:26:15.52 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah, I... 00:26:22.11 Emma McAdam, LMFT say sorry or say I love you, right? So our brains are wired to change throughout our whole lives. And I think a lot of times when we feel like, well, I'm depressed, I've been depressed my whole life, I'm probably, that's who I am. 00:26:35.31 Emma McAdam, LMFT And we build out these stories and these labels around ourselves. What I really like to to ask people is, okay, There are literally 500 different approaches to treating depression. Well, that's just 500 therapy types, not counting the lifestyle interventions. There's another 500 lifestyle interventions that can help with depression. 00:26:55.83 Emma McAdam, LMFT And I'm talking about um improving your nutrition, improving your sleep, ah changing your social habits, trying to various supplements and medications, trying various forms of therapy, trying light therapy, and all of these different treatments. I have another poster with all these, like there's 500 treatments for depression. 00:27:17.20 Emma McAdam, LMFT Each of these little things adds up over time. And if we are having negative health habits, we're going to feel completely overwhelmed and our nervous system is going to shut down and say, why bother? But if we take these incremental little changes and we add them up, we're going to start getting 10 minutes more energy per day. 00:27:34.64 Emma McAdam, LMFT 20 minutes more energy per day and then with that 20 minutes maybe you have 20 minutes where you can do a little bit more work like you could maybe go for a walk and then all of a sudden your body's feeling better now you've got 30 more minutes of energy every day you start using that to like do some self like work on yourself talk and improve how you talk to yourself and what happens is we see that it's basically like a pendulum your nervous system like once you have enough resources and skills it kind of flips that switch and your nervous system is actually like, you know what? 00:28:04.98 Emma McAdam, LMFT There is something I can do about this. There is something that's going to help me. And I've just seen this over and over and over again. I've seen it so much. I'm absolutely convinced that the vast, vast majority of people are capable of creating this change, but they don't know how. They don't know the skills or they don't have the environment to implement these tiny changes that add up. 00:28:27.30 Emma McAdam, LMFT So, and I, and I, i well, and I think it takes us back to this self-talk, right? 00:28:27.52 nextlevelguypodcast love that. 00:28:31.23 Emma McAdam, LMFT So if we go back to this example, of like someone's at work, they get negative feedback, they get told that whatever it is sucks that they're doing. And um they think, oh, I'm just such a failure. Why bother? Or they get broke. Someone breaks up with them. Oh, no, one's going ever love me. 00:28:45.17 Emma McAdam, LMFT If we change that thinking to, huh. I wonder what I can learn from this. I wonder if there's one tiny thing I could change. I wonder what I could try. And we break it down into these tiny steps. All of a sudden their nervous system like, cool, let's try that. And your nervous system goes back into activation where it's like, okay, let's like be active here instead of collapsed, instead of overwhelmed. 00:29:07.38 Emma McAdam, LMFT And those tiny changes like add up like crazy. So that's like that that neuroplasticity fits so closely with the self-talk because what we do instead of saying, hey, I'm completely unlovable, we say, huh, I wonder if there's one communication skill that would help me solve relationship problems better. 00:29:26.70 Emma McAdam, LMFT or if we get um really upset at work and we blow up, instead of saying, I'm just such a loser, I can't control my emotions, you say, huh, I wonder if there's one skill I could learn to work through my anger better. 00:29:41.34 Emma McAdam, LMFT And you learn that one skill, and then you have another blow up later, and you're like, I wonder what's the next skill? And you learn like two or three skills. 00:29:46.44 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:29:47.42 Emma McAdam, LMFT So I personally, first off, I'm convinced neuroplasticity is a thing. Like our brains are built together to learn and adapt to our situations. And if we give them the environment where they can learn these skills, we can change. And then we take the negative self-talk and we turn it into a growth mindset. 00:30:05.03 Emma McAdam, LMFT And we say, okay, if I feel like I can't make any friends, no one likes me. Then we say, well, what's a skill for making friends? And we figure it out. we We watch some YouTube videos. We ask a therapist or a coach or a friend, hey, what's one thing I could do that would make you feel better around me? 00:30:19.98 Emma McAdam, LMFT You know? 00:30:21.09 nextlevelguypodcast I love that. I love the positivity, but I also love that because you'll have seen it in so many people who've come to you with the end of the world. 00:30:26.34 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:30:27.57 nextlevelguypodcast And you probably had a lot of people just now going, 00:30:32.36 nextlevelguypodcast or okay, I can change. It is possible. You know, you would have given them a sense of hope that where their starting point isn't, but you know, isn't their future. 00:30:36.93 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:30:40.29 nextlevelguypodcast It doesn't need to be where they end. But is there a point that you could give people a challenge that doesn't matter if they're coming to you with anger, jealousy, whatever it is, they could use this one challenge to start. You know, is it just go catch yourself by saying would, could, should and replace it with other words? Is it... 00:31:01.61 nextlevelguypodcast go for a walk when you feel down and keep your eyes looking up so you can't go into your memories. because I think is yeah if your eyes dip below, you go into your memory bank. So if they say, look to the horizon so you can't access that part your brain. 00:31:16.04 nextlevelguypodcast I might have made that up. I can't remember. I read it somewhere. But what's... 00:31:18.86 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah, maybe. our our eye movements do impact our brain, but i'm I'm not exactly sure on that one. 00:31:23.49 nextlevelguypodcast says 00:31:23.81 Emma McAdam, LMFT So it probably is. i just don't know. 00:31:25.97 nextlevelguypodcast I know it's like app and left for this, for creative and right and bottom for something that I'm sure it's, if your eyes drop down, you can access your, your cognitive, your memory, something or other, but what's an action that we could do when we are to build in these tiny reps? 00:31:26.45 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:31:28.79 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:31:37.87 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:31:46.39 Emma McAdam, LMFT Okay, I mean that's a really big question and there's a lot of options. There's a ton of options, like I could pull out my poster with all the options. But um i I think what I try to do is I try to present to my clients the fact that there are a lot of options and then I have them pick the absolute easiest one first. 00:31:54.43 nextlevelguypodcast and 00:32:06.32 Emma McAdam, LMFT So I'll give you an example of 10 of the things that help with emotion regulation And then if someone was like, oh yeah, that's like the biggest pain point for me, or that's the easiest thing for me, then they would select that one thing. 00:32:21.67 Emma McAdam, LMFT And so first I'm going to talk with some about some lifestyle stuff. So light therapy, using a therapy box, they're about 50 bucks. Use it 10 minutes a day. Research has shown they're more effective than SSRIs. 70 to 80% of people, their depression symptoms improve with 10 minutes a day of light therapy. 00:32:38.91 Emma McAdam, LMFT The only side effects are if you have manic ah depressive disorder or um bipolar disorder, manic symptoms, sorry. manic symptoms as part of bipolar disorder. So light therapy, an important way to boost your mood or sunlight exposure. 00:32:52.54 Emma McAdam, LMFT It's like a super simple, like this is my favorite intervention because it's so simple. 00:32:57.80 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:32:57.92 Emma McAdam, LMFT um Improving your sleep. There was a study that showed that 87% of people with depressive, like major depressive disorder and insomnia, when they treated their insomnia, 87% of them, their depression symptoms went away. 00:33:16.20 Emma McAdam, LMFT So like, how do we improve our sleep? Well, that's another like drop down menu with like, there's 10 or 20 things that are really effective with improving our sleep. And then we pick the easiest one of those and we start with the easiest one of those. 00:33:30.49 nextlevelguypodcast I think you've got a whole podcast on that, don't you, about sleep sleep hygiene and you're just like... 00:33:32.90 Emma McAdam, LMFT ah fuck Oh man, I've made, i've I've got a playlist on this. 00:33:37.18 nextlevelguypodcast I mean, it's... 00:33:39.88 Emma McAdam, LMFT um But that's like, sleep is one of the biggest lifestyle factors that impacts emotional stability. What were you going to say? Sorry, I interrupted. 00:33:46.35 nextlevelguypodcast but so I was going to say, is that something that you see because we we see these magazines that give these cookie cutter, you know, here's a fix that's going to change every single person's life. And it's quite personal. 00:33:57.27 nextlevelguypodcast We have to approach it from their starting point, not what you think they should do. 00:33:57.79 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:34:02.27 nextlevelguypodcast You have to kind of teach them the steps to find the journey themselves. 00:34:05.35 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. Well, and this is why I think therapy is so powerful because like, you're like, Hey, what could anyone do with one, one action? and I'm like, if you were sitting in my office, I could tell you right in two sessions, I could say, let's start with this five minute habit, but there's a hundred five minute habits that are powerful and impactful. 00:34:25.55 Emma McAdam, LMFT So if you're just like doing it DIY version, you've got to kind of figure it out on your own, which one is the intervention that's going to be most helpful for you right now. 00:34:25.72 nextlevelguypodcast there. 00:34:33.67 Emma McAdam, LMFT um But that's why therapists are helpful. They're like, oh, here's the one to start with. Like, let's start with this. I can just see in your life. Here's the one to start with. we'll We'll start doing a little bit of exercise or like physical exercise, or we'll do some of this self-talk stuff, or we'll do some gratitude practice, and um or we'll just do thought tracking, or we'll identify our stories, right? Like there's so many of these interventions that if If it was me, i would pick one of these top 10 most impactful lifestyle changes. And then I could also give you like probably a top five like therapy interventions that are helpful. 00:35:10.04 Emma McAdam, LMFT But I can't tell anyone what's the one thing that's going to work for them. There isn't a hack. There is no hack, by the way. 00:35:14.87 nextlevelguypodcast now well that's the thing isn't it where we always look for the golden goose there the little thing that ten you know this you see that on you every YouTube video this one thing changed my life and gave me a 10,000 pound rise and the body of a Greek god and a marriage and you know you're like yeah of of course it did 00:35:20.83 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:35:28.73 Emma McAdam, LMFT yeah 00:35:32.51 Emma McAdam, LMFT Right. Yeah. Of course, right? Yeah. and And I think that's where people get it wrong with mental health. They want to simplify it. They think, oh, if I have depression, it must be simple. It must mean I have a chemical imbalance. 00:35:46.05 Emma McAdam, LMFT Or it must mean it's caused by trauma. 00:35:46.04 nextlevelguypodcast Thank you. 00:35:47.53 Emma McAdam, LMFT Something like that. right they'll They'll come up with this really simple explanation. And I would say, well, depression is the cumulative adding up of these protective responses that we do. 00:35:58.58 Emma McAdam, LMFT So that might be suppressing our feelings or blaming other people or blaming ourselves or like when I'm tired, I just eat 20 Snickers and these things add up over time. 00:36:09.51 Emma McAdam, LMFT And then we realize, oh, why am I so depressed? Why am I so unhappy? Why am I so lonely? And it's like, oh, this is the accumulation of a thousand choices over the last three years. 00:36:20.07 Emma McAdam, LMFT So let's work on a couple of those. And we'll start che like reversing that trend. 00:36:27.70 nextlevelguypodcast I really like that. I like how you've given people these sort starting points, you know, that i it's is a personal journey and you'll meet them wherever they are. So what's the difference between feeling and processing an emotion versus suppressing and ruminating and kind of, you know, try to push it away. 00:36:36.47 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:36:47.24 nextlevelguypodcast How do we know we're we're working on these things healthily? 00:36:47.92 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:36:51.23 nextlevelguypodcast And what's a kind of rough timeframe to really see change? 00:36:55.56 Emma McAdam, LMFT Mm-hmm. Ooh, that's two good questions. um I'll answer the second one first, and I think I can't answer the time frame. I think people who've done a lot of work and they're really good at emotion processing, they've built up emotion processing muscles so that they process big emotions much more quickly. Yeah. 00:37:16.39 Emma McAdam, LMFT So for example, i Irene Leone wrote a book about somatic therapy and how she has you know spent 10 years learning how to listen to her body's physiological sensations. 00:37:27.86 Emma McAdam, LMFT And then her husband died and she she felt grief. She allowed herself to feel it and she moved on. And it wasn't like crushing for her. It was like, okay, I know exactly what to do with these feelings and I'm okay. 00:37:42.19 Emma McAdam, LMFT So for her, like processing that grief was a pretty straightforward process because every time it came up and it probably came up for years, but every time it came up, she was like, oh, cool. Here's grief. Hi, grief. I know what to do with you. Come on in. Let me give you a hug. I'm listening to you. 00:37:56.54 Emma McAdam, LMFT Feel you in my body? Oh, okay, you're moving on? All right, I'll go back to doing what I was doing, right? 00:38:02.08 nextlevelguypodcast Mm-hmm. 00:38:02.14 Emma McAdam, LMFT So that's like an example of someone who's like, they've built up enough emotion processing muscles that it it happens relatively quickly. I can give another example. um Thomas McConkie is a guy who does a lot of meditation work that I like. 00:38:15.15 Emma McAdam, LMFT He's a Mormon and a Buddhist, two of my favorite people. like He's great. Then he fought with his dad for 20 years. And every time he was around his dad, he felt angry and defensive and like his dad needed to change. 00:38:27.22 Emma McAdam, LMFT He started doing this work where instead of avoiding his family because he thought his family was the problem, and maybe they were, he was really ah running from the feelings he had when he was around them. 00:38:39.17 Emma McAdam, LMFT So he started doing this work where every Sunday he'd go to dinner with his dad. And he'd sit there. And these feelings would come up and instead of desperately escaping his feelings, he would allow himself to sit with them and be curious about them. 00:38:55.32 Emma McAdam, LMFT Like, huh, I wonder what this hatred feels like inside. Hmm, this is interesting. I'm feeling my shoulders tense. And he would just observe it without judging it, sit with it. And he did this every week. 00:39:08.90 Emma McAdam, LMFT for a year. And after a year or so, he started to notice that these feelings would come up and he would acknowledge them, say, cool, you're here, great, I'm curious about you, good job. 00:39:21.92 Emma McAdam, LMFT And then they would just kind of move on. So these feelings of hatred or frustration or anger, now instead of lasting for 20 years straight, or four or five days after Sunday dinner with his dad, they would last a minute or two and then they'd move along. 00:39:37.83 Emma McAdam, LMFT Like that's an example of like emotion processing where he got so good at making space for and acknowledging these feelings, emotions, the thoughts and the physical sensations that now he hangs out with his dad and his dad is the same person he always was. 00:39:55.44 Emma McAdam, LMFT And he's just not so, it just doesn't stick around. he still feels it, even intensely sometimes, but it just doesn't drag him down anymore. 00:40:01.14 nextlevelguypodcast and 00:40:05.46 nextlevelguypodcast I love that that he kind of learned because I think there was an episode in here where we talked about you're going to feel the fear anyway, but so name it. you know Just go, ah thanks, Eugene. 00:40:14.65 Emma McAdam, LMFT Cool. 00:40:16.20 nextlevelguypodcast i know I know we should be shitting ourselves just now. We're about to do X, Y, perform, jump off this, whatever it is. But yeah, I know you're trying to keep me safe, but not now. 00:40:23.26 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:40:25.62 nextlevelguypodcast And then you go and do it anyway. And by giving it a name, you kind of push it. you know You'd say, understand your message, but go fuck yourself. you know Just get it. 00:40:34.13 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah, yeah. 00:40:35.50 nextlevelguypodcast It's the... 00:40:35.87 Emma McAdam, LMFT And that's kind of, so and that takes us back to the first question, which is what do we do to process these feelings? What does it look like? And I described it a little bit, but what you just said is is the very first step. 00:40:46.41 Emma McAdam, LMFT Can you give it a name? Hello, fear. Hello, jealousy. Hello, sadness. I notice you're here today. Okay, you're here. And our our default response is going to be to try and make it go away, whether by yelling at someone or by like trying to distract ourselves or to push it down. 00:41:04.90 Emma McAdam, LMFT And instead of that, the second step is like, okay, we're going to allow. We're going allow feelings to show up and be like, hey, fear. Yeah, like, okay. Like i I recently did um some exposure therapy with myself with rock climbing and taking a lot bigger falls than I like taking. 00:41:19.75 Emma McAdam, LMFT and' like every time I wanted to avoid I was like, okay, I'm going to feel scared. Let's go. Bring it on. Bring it on, fear. Let's do this. And just practicing feeling that fear. 00:41:31.06 Emma McAdam, LMFT I made myself do 10 falls every single time I went to the gym. And after about a month, it didn't bother me so much. But even if it did, i had a system for letting the fear be there. 00:41:44.62 Emma McAdam, LMFT Hey, okay. and and And I see this as a three-part system. So we take this curious stance with our thoughts, our emotions, and our physical sensations. 00:41:57.29 Emma McAdam, LMFT So a lot of people get worked up like, oh, if they feel like they might cry, they're going to scrunch their face really hard and move their lips a lot. i don't know if you watch people cry. they're like like they're not like I'm not talking about the quivering lip. I'm talking about people who are trying not to cry. They're like, 00:42:11.37 nextlevelguypodcast You can see them fade out. 00:42:11.61 Emma McAdam, LMFT doing a lot of swallowing, squishing and squeezing to not cry. 00:42:12.25 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:42:17.85 Emma McAdam, LMFT um But there's other physiological things going on like, oh, my stomach feels upset. And we want that to go away. Gotta to go away, gotta go away, gotta breathe slow and force it down. And instead, if we take this accepting, allowing approach, it's like, 00:42:32.24 Emma McAdam, LMFT okay, can I sit with an upset stomach for a minute? Can I notice it? And the crazy thing is if you so if you practice sitting with your physical sensations, if you practice sitting with the sensations of panic or the physical sensations of anger, you practice sitting with those for 10 minutes a day, like by the end of a month, 00:42:53.95 Emma McAdam, LMFT those sensations are going to come and go much more quickly than if, if we try to like resist them and tug a war with them. 00:43:03.14 nextlevelguypodcast I remember, was it Headspace, the app, where the they get a guided 10 minutes and it was like, ah imagine you're sitting watching a motorway and your thoughts are coming in as cars and then they're going away. You don't need to interact with them. You can just watch them and go, that's a pretty you thought. 00:43:20.13 nextlevelguypodcast And it's like you're saying, just give it that 10 minutes. And it's probably life changing for a lot of men just now thinking, 00:43:23.18 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yep. 00:43:26.73 nextlevelguypodcast well, I can change this. But, you know, they've always told themselves they're angry, they're negative, they're whatever it is. Because you see people who name, who give themselves labels. 00:43:33.70 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:43:37.10 nextlevelguypodcast But if we've done a bad thing, if we've been cheater, done something than illegal, whatever it is, we tell ourselves we're bad people, what's the danger in labeling ourselves like that? 00:43:37.23 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:43:48.01 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:43:50.17 nextlevelguypodcast How do we break out that toxic shame thing that that we make that our identity? Because i mean I've dealt with intrusive thoughts, I've been on SSRIs before, and I've believed all the shite that I've told myself. 00:43:58.05 Emma McAdam, LMFT yeah Yeah. 00:44:02.62 nextlevelguypodcast how How do we change that identity? 00:44:03.03 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:44:06.28 Emma McAdam, LMFT Hmm. It's a good question. So i have two takes on this. and And one is the fundamental question you're asking is how do we respond when we mess up? 00:44:23.96 Emma McAdam, LMFT Like, what are we going to do with that? 00:44:24.13 nextlevelguypodcast Yes. yeah 00:44:26.59 Emma McAdam, LMFT how do we How do we respond when we disappoint ourselves, when we disappoint others, when we act in a way that goes against our deepest sense of what is right? What do we do with that? 00:44:37.55 Emma McAdam, LMFT And the minute we make a mistake or we mess up, because we all do, we have a choice point. we we have we we can deny that we've made a mistake or if we know we've made a mistake we can still try to shift responsibility and there's a lot of ways we avoid responsibility um this includes blaming others blaming ourselves well i'm just a fuck up like that's That's it. 00:45:07.72 Emma McAdam, LMFT Right. Like, I'm just I'm just a bad person. I'm just a terrible human being. No one can love me. And um there's other ways we do this, like, oh it's the system. It's the government. It's my parents. It's and those are all ways of of externalizing any accountability. 00:45:26.18 Emma McAdam, LMFT It's like, oh, I did this because my boss is such a jerk. i stole because my I stole because the economy doesn't allow me to make a good living, right? There's all these reasons and reasons and reasons, including the self-labeling. Oh, I'm just such a um just such a loser, right? I'm just such a bad person. 00:45:42.91 Emma McAdam, LMFT and And then the alternative at that choice point, the alternative of that choice point is to say, I made a mistake and Now, what can I do to make it right? 00:45:56.43 Emma McAdam, LMFT Or what can I do to make good come from this mistake? And sometimes that looks like, um like, like admitting your mistake, taking accountability. Hey, you tell the person I messed up, how have I hurt you? 00:46:13.20 Emma McAdam, LMFT And um sometimes it looks like um just trying to learn from that experience. Okay, I, you know, I screwed up in this way. What can I learn to make it better next time? Even if I don't perfectly perform next time, like how can I fix that? 00:46:30.34 Emma McAdam, LMFT And that's that these are like really important choice points. the The choice point I did not mention is slightly higher up on this this flowchart. And I have a flowchart. 00:46:40.53 Emma McAdam, LMFT Can you tell? I love my charts like so much. 00:46:41.86 nextlevelguypodcast you I was expecting a PowerPoint. I was expecting a whiteboard. 00:46:46.93 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah, no, I've got a flow chart and I can share it like if you want the the links, but it's what what we're talking about here is shame. So if someone's made a mistake or something bad has happened to them, there's a choice point up here. It's like, did I actually do something wrong? 00:47:02.10 Emma McAdam, LMFT And kids who've been abused, they often blame themselves instead of their parents. It's a survival technique or women who've been ah sexually abused or or men who've been sexually abused. They think, well, I was complicit. You know, they're little kids. I was, I went along with it. I didn't fight back. I didn't scream and yell. 00:47:16.80 Emma McAdam, LMFT And um they blame themselves for the abuse that happened to them, or they blame themselves for their abusive boss, or they blame themselves for situations they can't really control. 00:47:28.67 nextlevelguypodcast Is that to make sense of it in your head your own head, to understand it at that level? 00:47:28.97 Emma McAdam, LMFT So the very... Yeah. Yeah. 00:47:32.91 nextlevelguypodcast Okay. 00:47:33.86 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. our Our brain is a meaning-making machine, and it's always going to take two pieces of fact and wonder, like, how are these connected? Like, oh, something bad happened to me? Here I am as a person. What did I do to make this happen? Well, I should have known better. 00:47:47.18 Emma McAdam, LMFT Or, well, I, you know, I should have, it must be me that's bad. Or my mom just yelled at me and told me this, that, and the other. It's like, well, it must be because i'm ah I'm a loser or I'm a bad kid, right? Our brain is, um it makes words. Our brain is constantly just cranking out um meanings. 00:48:04.94 Emma McAdam, LMFT And you'll see this all the time. Like if if you text someone and they don't text you back, if this is an important person you're texting, your brain is going to start cranking out meanings. Maybe they're mad at me. 00:48:15.38 Emma McAdam, LMFT Maybe I'm being annoying. Maybe like, and you just start cranking this out. And those meanings that you're inventing, they're all about you and not the other person. So if your beliefs are the world is an unfair place, then you're thinking, why are they so irresponsible? 00:48:31.53 Emma McAdam, LMFT Why won't they text me back? They're so ah inconsiderate. And if your meaning making machine says I'm a bad person, ah they must hate me. I must be so annoying. right Your brain is just going to crank out these meanings. 00:48:43.89 Emma McAdam, LMFT So if we go back to this like shame cycle, the very first step is to ask, did I actually do something wrong? And a lot of times with trauma and abuse, the answer is no. So a woman who was raped, did she actually do something wrong? 00:48:57.43 Emma McAdam, LMFT No, the person who could have prevented the rape was the rapist, not her, right? Or a man, a lot of men are sexually abused, right? A lot of men blame themselves and it's much more difficult to, um for them to, 00:49:11.34 Emma McAdam, LMFT to Honestly, assign accountability to the abuser. So the very first step on this, how do we deal with difficult situations and shame is to say, well, did I was it actually me or was actually an the abuser's fault? 00:49:26.65 Emma McAdam, LMFT If the answer is yes, I actually harmed someone with my actions, then we have another choice point. Am I going to take accountability or am I going to hide? Am I going to run? Am I going to blame? Am I going to push that accountability onto someone else? 00:49:37.70 Emma McAdam, LMFT And the the most truthful, helpful thing we can do is be very honest about accountability. Take full accountability, 100% accountability for everything I'm 100% responsible for. 00:49:48.90 Emma McAdam, LMFT And then say, what can I learn from this? what can i learn from this how can i How can I create connection and reconciliation with the people that I've harmed? How can I choose to act differently or teach others or or learn and grow from this? 00:50:03.83 Emma McAdam, LMFT And um yeah, i'll if you want, we can share this the flow chart in the video that's associated with this because it's a big question, but I think it's the most important question because I think we have all these little micro failings and we don't realize that our subconscious response is to beat ourselves up. 00:50:07.94 nextlevelguypodcast but 00:50:21.29 Emma McAdam, LMFT or our subconscious response is to blame ourselves or to blame others. And that just keeps us from actually truly being able to connect and heal. 00:50:28.69 nextlevelguypodcast Because it is a question I get quite a bit of, like you know but as people are finding out about Me Too or um you know like or they've been in fights when they were younger or they've done this or they've done that. 00:50:34.33 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:50:40.21 nextlevelguypodcast and it's that moment of, I'm a bad person. I'm this, I'm that. And you can see them sort of a head drop. They're living that identity. 00:50:46.79 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:50:48.71 nextlevelguypodcast And it's like, how what do we do? Because we can see positive emotions. positive feelings, what you know the what these mean. 00:50:54.37 Emma McAdam, LMFT Hmm. 00:50:57.21 nextlevelguypodcast But when we're feeling jealous comparing ourselves, when we're feeling self-hatred, suicidal, what how do we take the message from that but is that what we're doing is that why it comes in waves it's try to say listen to me i'm telling you this and we're trying to push it away or do we do action is that better than ruminating what what's a good way dealing when you're in this cycle of beating yourself up end the world yeah 00:51:26.46 Emma McAdam, LMFT Like rumination. her Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, of course, the the fastest, most direct path is to work with a therapist. 00:51:37.54 Emma McAdam, LMFT Because a therapist is going to help you. But I mean, let's DIY it too. Let's DIY it too. Because that's what we do, right? So many people can't access therapy. Um, you've got identify your self-talk. 00:51:51.39 Emma McAdam, LMFT You've got to say, okay, this is my brain making words and you're stuck in this cycle of rumination. Yeah. You want to change a thought? Move a muscle. Yeah. Especially for men. Right. Um, go for a walk. 00:52:04.14 Emma McAdam, LMFT Uh, if you are beating, that's okay. 00:52:06.59 nextlevelguypodcast I always thought that was suppressing it, though, that if you did that. i Sorry to interrupt, but you know like I thought if you went and did something else, you were trying to say, i don't want to think about you, and it would come back stronger. 00:52:11.14 Emma McAdam, LMFT thats okay 00:52:16.21 nextlevelguypodcast Does that not... 00:52:18.74 Emma McAdam, LMFT It's a good question. i think we have to zigzag our way out of depressive rumination because everything we think when we're really depressed is not going to be logical or helpful. 00:52:30.32 Emma McAdam, LMFT So sometimes we have to get feeling better before we can start thinking better or thinking clearly if we're doing this on our own. 00:52:38.09 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:52:39.36 Emma McAdam, LMFT I think with a therapist, a therapist would not be like, hey, let's ignore that thought and let's just go for a walk. A therapist would be like, let's identify that thought, let's write it down, let's see if we can figure out where it comes from, let's see if we can figure out why it's a lie, this thought, like i'm just such I'm just so bad, I'm just so bad, I'm so worthless, nobody loves me, everything's awful, I've screwed up so much, there's no hope for me. 00:52:58.51 Emma McAdam, LMFT like If you're doing that on your own, we have to do something to kind of escape that space for a minute and then when you're feeling just a teeny bit better, a teeny bit more energy, Well, there's lots of ways to do this, right? And this is why therapy is so valuable because a therapist can tailor that intervention. 00:53:14.30 Emma McAdam, LMFT um Sometimes you get feeling better and then you process those feelings. So if you're in a super duper low slump, Go work out. Go do something that feels good. Go be around people. 00:53:27.38 Emma McAdam, LMFT And then when you're feeling better, do some writing about it or talking about it. And if you don't have a person to talk to, talk into your voice memos. Talk into your phone. 00:53:38.26 Emma McAdam, LMFT So... But like when we're really depressed, you cannot just like snap out of it. like you Like everything you think when you're depressed is going to keep fueling that depression. So sometimes I think we have to kind of zigzag our way out of it. 00:53:50.17 Emma McAdam, LMFT Now in therapy, what we do is we'd be okay, let's take those thoughts. Let's pick them apart. Let's replace them with something healthier. 00:53:59.95 Emma McAdam, LMFT But that's pretty hard to do on your own when you're really in a depressive state. 00:54:04.43 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:54:06.86 Emma McAdam, LMFT Now, if you're if you're trying to DIY this, I would say, okay, you're ruminating. You're thinking you're a piece of piece of crap. And you go you you try and find something that's gonna elevate your mood. So for me, it's going for a walk. That always makes me feel better. 00:54:22.43 Emma McAdam, LMFT Go for a walk. kate the second The next step is, let's let's process this. So I'm gonna write, I'm gonna encourage people to write about it. Anything you can do to make it physical instead of up in your head is gonna help you see it more clearly. 00:54:34.80 Emma McAdam, LMFT Write it out long form on a piece of scratch pad. It's better if this is physical, like paper and pen, but you can do it in your in your phone or in your computer too. And then you're gonna ask yourself the question, okay what's the negative self-talk here? 00:54:47.78 Emma McAdam, LMFT um you're gonna ask yourself the question is this helping me or harming me and you could identify maybe one area like oh i'm such a loser or a catastrophizing thought like oh this is never gonna work out my life's gonna be like this forever that's like the hopelessness story it's hopeless that's your story And let's say we're going to pick one area of thinking that you're going to work on. 00:55:09.81 Emma McAdam, LMFT You say, okay, I'm hopeless. I am hopeless. That's my story. you're going to say, well, how's this story benefiting me? It excuses me from trying. Okay. What's the opposite of that? 00:55:21.40 Emma McAdam, LMFT Okay. I'm going to try one thing. the The depressed mind is going to say, well, it doesn't matter. You try changing one thing. It's not going to do any good. What's the point? there's you're You're so screwed up that just changing one thing is not going to do any good. Okay, you have to say thank you depression, appreciate your feedback, but no. 00:55:38.03 Emma McAdam, LMFT Like I'm going still try one thing. You say, okay, what would be a more helpful version of this thought? um I'm never going to figure anything out. You replace that with something that ends in yet. 00:55:50.31 Emma McAdam, LMFT I haven't figured this out yet. Nothing I do makes a difference. Okay, I'm gonna try something different. I'm gonna learn a different skill or a different way to think about this. 00:56:01.13 Emma McAdam, LMFT and and And then maybe, yeah, talk to yourself as you would a friend, right? Okay, hey buddy, you got this. We're gonna try again. Let's learn so a different way to respond to that situation. 00:56:12.47 Emma McAdam, LMFT And then you you you try to build a little teeny system to implement that. So if it's thinking a new thought, every time you think I'm i'm hopeless, The new thought is, okay, I can learn a new skill to make my life better. 00:56:27.34 Emma McAdam, LMFT I can learn a new skill that's going to improve my job prospects or my relationships or how I respond to emotions. So I can learn new things. Let's say that's your new thought or, hey, people love me or like whatever it is, right? You you you build a replacement thought and then you put reminders around you like here's the story it's hopeless here's the replacement thought i can keep trying and good things come into my life and you put that somewhere physical and tangible like maybe it it pops up as a reminder on your phone four times a day something like that 00:56:59.18 nextlevelguypodcast ah love you have I don't think you appreciate just how life-changing that'll be for a lot of people who can't go and find a therapist or are wait on a waiting list. but How can we help you help us when we are seeing a therapist? How do we find a good one? 00:57:14.90 nextlevelguypodcast How do we explain how you're feeling rather than going, i feel bad? 00:57:15.46 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:57:19.25 nextlevelguypodcast How do we pick our triggers? 00:57:19.98 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:57:21.77 nextlevelguypodcast How do we explain the severity? How do we use the the words that you want to hear to know the scale, the the main issues? Is there any kind of thing that we can do to be a good therapy student or professional? 00:57:31.13 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 00:57:35.22 Emma McAdam, LMFT The number one thing I would say is every time I've had a client come in who brings a notebook, they do better. Like if you consider this as like, this is a process I'm going to learn and I have to study and work at this, you're going to get better. Like that mindset of like, if I try, i will get feeling better. Like it's absolutely guaranteed that you're going to make new progress and learn new skills. 00:57:57.00 Emma McAdam, LMFT Bring a notebook so that you can write down throughout your week, what's going on and what you're noticing and looking for trends And then when you're in therapy, a lot of the stuff the therapist says might feel a little overwhelming or confusing. So it's helpful to write down what you're learning in therapy so you can remember it throughout the week. 00:58:14.37 Emma McAdam, LMFT That's like the number one thing I would say. Now in the US and other places, I mean, I know there's like public health system in England. So um it's a little bit different where you have a little bit less choice, right? 00:58:24.63 Emma McAdam, LMFT As far as finding a therapist or is that? Yeah. 00:58:27.17 nextlevelguypodcast It can take about six months to see somebody just as a first referral. 00:58:27.28 Emma McAdam, LMFT So, I mean, 00:58:30.24 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. Yeah, so I mean for people who do have an option with therapy, it's like well, you can, you can, There are websites, for example, Psychology Today. in the it's in It's all over the world. 00:58:45.80 Emma McAdam, LMFT but You can use that to kind of look up therapists and try and filter them by the specialty you want. You can filter them by whether they cover your insurance and things like that. um If you want to find a therapist, like I think it's important to find a therapist who you want to look for a therapist who you feel safe with. 00:59:02.76 Emma McAdam, LMFT You feel like... You know, you can trust them. You feel relatively comfortable with them, but not too comfortable. You don't want a therapist who's just going to like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you poor thing. You're a good person. It's okay. 00:59:14.17 Emma McAdam, LMFT And you don't want a therapist who's just going to make you feel good every session, but leave you with no skills to manage anything during the week. So you want a therapist who you feel safe with, but they're going to challenge you. And then you're like, what? 00:59:25.15 Emma McAdam, LMFT You believe that? Like, that's not a helpful thought. are they're going be that's like, you got to stop doing that, right? You want a therapist who's going to push you and challenge you, not just make you feel good in the session. So I would say sometimes i i would say expect that therapy is not going to feel good all the time if you want to see progress. 00:59:44.06 nextlevelguypodcast I love that. And is it a kind of letting the the patient discover their own journey, like the video game map, you know lighting up the dark parts of the map, kind of showing us away? 00:59:53.78 Emma McAdam, LMFT Mm-hmm. 00:59:55.28 nextlevelguypodcast Is that your mission to kind of let us, give us the prompts to let us find our own discovery? 01:00:01.86 Emma McAdam, LMFT So you're going to find if you like people who've, who've done therapy and they've tried multiple therapists, they're going to see that every therapist is a little different and you can like as a, as a therapy consumer, you can tailor your experience a little bit by telling your therapist what you want. 01:00:01.81 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 01:00:16.66 Emma McAdam, LMFT Now, I, as a therapist currently am leaning much more toward being more directive and doing more education to help people like make change and progress happen faster. But there are therapists who are just gonna be like, yeah, sure, tell me about your feelings. And then every week we just kind of talk about what's going on and we suggest a few little things where other therapists might be more directive. Like, oh, you go in and like there's specific problems that you can solve it in a more directive way. So some therapists are gonna come in and be like, here's what you should do, here's what you should do, here's what you should do. 01:00:46.07 Emma McAdam, LMFT And other therapists are gonna be more like, hey, so how's that working for you? Oh, it's not working? Okay, would you like to try something different? do you have any ideas on what might look different? Like, if you were to change this problem yourself, what would you change? 01:00:58.41 Emma McAdam, LMFT So there's therapists who are gonna be much more client directed, And their therapists are going to be really passive and they're just going to let the the client run the show. And then there's going to be therapists who are going to be like, okay, you want parenting advice? We have an eight week program and we're going to walk you through this parenting program in eight weeks. Or i mean CBT therapists are going to be much more directive and have a process and a plan to walk you through. 01:01:23.01 Emma McAdam, LMFT And other types of therapists are going to be a little bit more like, let's just listen and talk and work through things. And I'm not primarily a CBT therapist. like i try and I try and do both. 01:01:33.76 Emma McAdam, LMFT And I try and very much listen to what my client wants and help them get the skills and the support they need in the most most efficient way so that they can grow faster. 01:01:45.51 Emma McAdam, LMFT And I think if you tell your therapist, so for example, I like it when my therapist, I haven't in therapy for a while, but when my therapist would just kind of listen to me and gently guide me and validate, but then push me. 01:01:56.91 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 01:01:57.10 Emma McAdam, LMFT My husband wanted my therapist, our therapist, we were in marriage therapy last year um for a while and it it helped a lot. um He wanted the therapist to be like, hey, Ryan, here's what you're doing that's causing this problem. 01:02:13.17 Emma McAdam, LMFT Here's what you should do differently and here's a system to implement it. Will you do that? And he'd be like, oh, okay, sure. So my recommendation to him was tell the therapist you want her to be more direct. So he did. He said, hey, I want you to tell me what to do more. 01:02:26.25 Emma McAdam, LMFT And she was like, oh, okay. and then And then he got a better experience in therapy than he was getting before. 01:02:34.68 nextlevelguypodcast It kind of shows you see the difference between guys and girls. Girls want to... 01:02:37.76 Emma McAdam, LMFT Sure. 01:02:38.84 nextlevelguypodcast The emotional side, they want to learn and grow. 01:02:41.49 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 01:02:41.54 nextlevelguypodcast While guys want to be just told. They want to just know what to do. I can't believe we're past our time already because i think we're just scratching the surface. 01:02:45.76 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 01:02:50.14 nextlevelguypodcast There's so much i still want to chat to you about. and I find your stuff honestly amazing. 01:02:53.35 Emma McAdam, LMFT Sure. 01:02:55.54 nextlevelguypodcast You're life-changing. You're so helpful. You're inspiring. Your podcast is amazing. I genuinely listen to it every every day. 01:03:01.35 Emma McAdam, LMFT text. 01:03:03.03 nextlevelguypodcast And There's so much I can take from it, and I feel like I'm just on this journey, so i'd love to have you back on. and But what do you want people to remember about this, about neuroplasticity, mental health, that we can change? what you know What would you want them to take from this chat? 01:03:22.14 Emma McAdam, LMFT here Here's what I would just say. So when I worked in residential treatment, we had these ah youth in a residential treatment. They lived there, the staff would come in, and many of them came in with very severe forms of mental illness. So one of my clients, she had drug addiction, she had an eating disorder, she was suicidal, she had an anxiety disorder. 01:03:42.50 Emma McAdam, LMFT Another of my clients had like OCD and school problems, and family problems. and And they came into this residential treatment center and we did rigorous testing with them when they arrived. Like what are their depression scores? What are their anxiety scores? All those things. 01:03:58.02 Emma McAdam, LMFT We did rigorous testing with them like every six months or every three months. then they left, we do rigorous testing and then a year out and two years out. And what we found is that over the course of about a year to 14 months of treatment, um, 01:04:14.20 Emma McAdam, LMFT ah like It was like 93% of them no longer met the criteria for the disorder they came in with. So if they came in with depression or anxiety disorder or OCD was ruining their life, by the end of a year of treatment, it's a lot of treatment, 01:04:32.02 Emma McAdam, LMFT that 93% of them no longer met the criteria for those disorders. Like these disorders are treatable with enough resources. now um And then we measured them a year out and two years out and it was like 60 or 70% of them were still doing very well a year and two years out. 01:04:47.31 Emma McAdam, LMFT And um the types of interventions we were doing, there were a lot of interventions every day. It was um getting good sleep, getting support with their school, getting family therapy, like getting individual therapy, having a supportive community, processing their emotions with the staff each day and learning what to do with anxiety or with relationships or communication. 01:05:06.33 Emma McAdam, LMFT but so So this might seem impossible to the person who's out there. They might think, well, I can't afford residential treatment. I can't afford to have a staff help walk me through my my emotions every single day. 01:05:18.65 Emma McAdam, LMFT But what I would say is each of these skills are something you can learn. Like you can learn how to have better nutrition. Not done yet. You can learn how to, that's my two-year-old outside. 01:05:31.68 Emma McAdam, LMFT You can learn how to process your emotions. You can learn to work through anxiety. And if you implement these on a micro level, like you have an immense potential to decrease your mental your symptoms of mental illness. 01:05:46.42 Emma McAdam, LMFT And I saw the same thing like with my online courses. So I teach these skills in my online courses. And we've had 20,000 people take my How to Process Your Emotions course. 01:05:56.92 Emma McAdam, LMFT And that course, um People, we we did like in income intake and outtake studies and 98.6% of people who took that course said it helped them improve their mental health. 01:06:09.62 Emma McAdam, LMFT And all that tells me is these are skills that can be learned. That's my takeaway. These are skills that can be learned. you Like it's not like some woo-woo magical thing that you just can't figure out. It's like, no, here's skill number one. Here's skill number two. Let's learn it. 01:06:23.47 Emma McAdam, LMFT Like it's practical. So that's what I would want people to know. It's like if if you... If you want to learn how to improve your mental health, you can do it. 01:06:34.41 nextlevelguypodcast I love but And you've got a wealth of stuff on your YouTube, your podcast. 01:06:38.77 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 01:06:38.90 nextlevelguypodcast It's probably 90 therapy sessions for free there. You know, there's so much. i think it's over 200 episodes of stuff on each dialed in stuff. 01:06:48.55 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah. 01:06:49.55 nextlevelguypodcast but But could you just go and quickly about your um your website, the courses that you offer, your social media? How can we join you and connect with you? 01:06:57.89 Emma McAdam, LMFT Sure. 01:07:00.72 Emma McAdam, LMFT Yeah, so I have a YouTube channel, it's called Therapy in a Nutshell. And that course I just mentioned that 98% of people like saw improvement in their mental health, that's actually free on YouTube, like the whole course. like I give it away. 01:07:12.94 Emma McAdam, LMFT You can also access it as part of my membership, which is therapyinanutshell.com. But that course, if you if you search on YouTube, um Therapy in a Nutshell, How to Process Your Emotions, 01:07:23.74 Emma McAdam, LMFT Like all 31 videos are right there for free. So um those are probably the two best places to find me. i have some other free courses on my website about like how to regulate your nervous system, how to deal with panic attacks. 01:07:35.02 Emma McAdam, LMFT And then at therapyinandnutshell.com, you can also sign up for our membership. We do like, you can have access to all the 10 of my courses and live group calls every week and stuff like that. 01:07:45.41 nextlevelguypodcast Well,