Phyllis Leavitt: Confronting Violence & Divisiveness in America

Show Transcript

Confronting an Epidemic of Abuse & Neglect in America

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: America continues to deal with a tide of unprecedented violence and divisiveness that in many ways is tearing at the soul of our country. And so today, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast psychotherapist and author Phyllis Leavitt, who believes America needs a good therapy session or two? Stay with us.

[00:00:21] Phyllis is the author of a new book, America In Therapy and believes some of the basic principles of good therapy can help heal the divisiveness that is besetting our country today. Phyllis graduated from Antioch University with a master's degree in Psychology and Counseling in 1989. Initially, she co-directed a sexual abuse treatment program, and then she launched a full-time private practice treating children, families, couples, and individual adults.

[00:00:52] After 30 years, Phyllis has mostly retired, if you can call writing books, retiring. In addition to American therapy, she's published two additional books, A Light in the Darkness and Into the Fire. You can learn more by checking her website phyllis Leavitt.com. And by the way, that's P H Y L I S L E A V I V I T T.COM. So Phyllis, thanks so much for being with us today. 

[00:01:22] Phyllis Leavitt: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:24] I'm glad to be here.

[00:01:25] Bob Gatty: It is a pleasure. Now, tell us a little bit about America in Therapy and why you wrote it, Phyllis. 

[00:01:33] Phyllis Leavitt: Yeah, it was an emergent book out of my own experience, both personally and as a psychotherapist. Dealing with my own childhood traumas in therapy when it came on the scene in the 1980s for my generation at least.

[00:01:51] It really, the work that I did in as a client in psychotherapy really changed my life. And it was at a time when my children were little and I had decided to go back to graduate school. And so I went and got my degree in psychology and counseling and worked with many people, as well as you mentioned, I worked in a sexual abuse treatment program before I started my private practice. And basically what happened for me was that there were a, series of ahas and the first one was I had some abuse in my childhood. And I think for many people the outcome of that as you feel very alone and you feel a mystery to yourself.

[00:02:35] Especially if there's no one there to explain why you feel the way you do, why you react the way you do, why you feel about yourself the way you do. And so I grew up feeling like a mystery to myself. And once I entered the world of psychology and got my degree and began working with people it was so clear to me that I'm not alone.

[00:02:55] We are not alone. But there's a very isolating factor to mistreatment by other human beings. And, then I began to think about, okay, it's not just abuse that happens in one's home. It's societal abuse. It's people who are left with war, with poverty, with discrimination, who have nowhere to turn.

[00:03:16] And for many people, no rescue, even no way to get out of it. And originally my idea was to write a book about how P T S D, undiagnosed and untreated P T S D is probably around the world, there's millions of people suffering from that who have no access to rescue or repair. And what does that mean for us as a society?

[00:03:41] What does it mean for America? What does it mean for the world to have people who are suffering in this way with no access to help? And then the other big aha, which really sparked me actually sitting down and writing the book was that From my own experience, but, and from so many years working with so many people who have had trauma in their childhoods.

[00:04:05] And it's really quite rampant in the United States. I don't know if we're all familiar with that, but there's what I call an epidemic of abuse and neglect in, this country and probably around the world that. The dynamics of abusive families and neglectful families became so clear to me over time, and I began to see the parallel between what happens in a family that's dysfunctional and not operating on healthy family dynamics and what happens in larger groups, in organizations, in businesses, in communities, in houses of worship, and from in our government.

[00:04:44] That, there are many of the dynamics of dysfunctional and abusive families are repeated on these larger levels and that we can really through the lens of family systems theory and family therapy have a different idea of what's going on, what's affecting all of us and, most importantly, or equally importantly that we know certain ways to break the cycle of abuse and violence that work with individuals and families.

[00:05:14] And why couldn't we apply those to our nation when we're suffering from so much violence and neglect and abuse and discrimination. So that's the birth of my book. 

[00:05:25] Bob Gatty: So you really do believe the entire populace of the United States needs a good therapy sessions? 

[00:05:32] Phyllis Leavitt: I, wouldn't say it that way. I'll say 

[00:05:34] Bob Gatty: you wouldn't, how would you say it?

[00:05:36] Phyllis Leavitt: No, I think I, I don't think every single person needs therapy at all. First of all, I think that's impossible to achieve. Of course. No, really the premise of my book is not that, the premise of my book is that our country, as a country we have invested so much money, so many man hours, so much expertise in so many fields in technology and medicine and science and communication.

[00:06:03] In, in farming, and you name it we are very intelligent human beings. We're very creative. We have a great desire to explore new realms and uncharted territory. And I think the one area where we have not invested our time and our money and our expertise is our mental health.

[00:06:23] And by that what I mean is I don't. I don't mean some continuum of diagnoses that are very extreme. Our human relations. The technology, the what we know, I call the technology of great human relations. What brings people together? What helps people cooperate? What helps people work out their differences without violence?

[00:06:49] What helps people feel like they belong, that they have value that they're. That they're wanted. These are, that's what great human relations do. And that's the one area I think in our country that we have not invested. And that systematically gets ignored for many reasons that we can talk about.

[00:07:10] Bob Gatty: Yeah I'd like to do that. One thing that I saw in the notes you sent me was that you say a national and global mental health crisis that is not being addressed exists, and that we are on a collision course with our own extinction. That's a pretty remarkable statement.

[00:07:34] Phyllis Leavitt: I don't think I'm alone in feeling that, but I do think that, I think we're on a collision course with our, let, I'll say it this way, with our possible extinction, and I don't think that's preposterous.

[00:07:46] I, part of the reason why I say that is because if you take a family that is run by an abusive person, That person cannot hurt other people unless they have control of them. The, model that happens when an abuser runs a family is that they're not looking out for the welfare of the family members.

[00:08:08] They're totally invested in whatever their own interest is, whether it's power and control, whether it's actually venting their rage on the bodies and the beings of the people around them. Or sexually violating them or exploiting them or ostracizing them, you name it. And on the worst continuum of the dynamics of abuse in a family, you have overt violence all the way to murder.

[00:08:38] If we're looking at the family of America through the lens of family systems, which is what I'm doing in my book, because I believe that it applies, then, that's what we're seeing on the continuum of the worst family dynamics. We're seeing tremendous acting out. from one person on another, one group of people, on other groups of people and, suicide I didn't mention, but that's also one of the extreme ends of the continuum of abuse if it's not addressed. And that in our country we have, I don't know how many mass murders there are today. When I wrote my book and did the last edits on the research that I did, which. It was a month or two ago, more than that, but there had been more mass murders in the United States than there were days in the year. Yeah. And this is horrifying. And when you have then, and these are people committing these crimes that don't have a huge sphere of influence or power. But when if you take that same model and you look at people who do have huge spheres of influence and power and they have weapons of mass destruction in their hands, then it's a terrifying situation that we face.

[00:09:59] Bob Gatty: Why is it that you think that we're facing this kind of crisis, I think you could call it in this country today? Why is that? 

[00:10:07] Phyllis Leavitt: Why the crisis of escalating violence? Yes. I think there are many answers to that question, so I don't pretend or imagine that I have them all.

[00:10:19] But I think that if looking through the lens that I say of family systems helps answer some of the big ones, and that is that I'll, go back. I, keep going back and I do this in my book. I go back between the microcosm and the macrocosm, the individual family dynamics that I'm familiar with and the dynamics that I see playing out on a larger scale in an individual family.

[00:10:46] If, you had a parent, and this would be an abusive, dysfunctional, disturbed parent, who starved one child and fed another, who sent one to college and made the other one go to work in a factory when they were 10, you would say that they were criminal. They would be reported to social services.

[00:11:04] They might be put in jail for that behavior, but as a country, that's exactly what we do. We starve some people and we feed others. And the gap is growing as reported everywhere between the rich and the poor. The diminishing middle class, there are more people living. I don't know the statistics, so I won't pretend that I don't have them in front of me.

[00:11:29] But there is a huge income discrepancy. There are people who work full-time and cannot pay their rent. And this is not providing for the family members of America. And we tolerate that in a way that we wouldn't tolerate if it was us. If it was our neighbor starving their child, we'd call the police.

[00:11:51] But somehow the gap between what we expect and we. know is right in our own homes and in our own families. The gap between that and what we would consider criminal if it wasn't done and our tolerance of, millions of people being discriminated against and deprived and assaulted, I call that a sign of mental ill health.

[00:12:18] That that, we tolerate for other people, what we wouldn't tolerate for ourselves. Okay. Does that make sense? 

[00:12:25] Bob Gatty: Yeah, sure it does. Now, do you believe there's a direct correlation between destructive family dynamics and many of the actions that some of, some of the most powerful institutions and leaders in this country?

[00:12:39] And I'm just wondering if anyone particular comes to mind. 

[00:12:42] Phyllis Leavitt: I absolutely do believe that there's a correlation. Okay. And the way I would say it is, this is circular. I don't know where one begins and the other ends, but it, when you, because I do believe that there's a, there's an erosion in some of the dynamics of individual families across the board because I've heard stories that you wouldn't believe from people like you and me or I dunno if I can include you in that, but for sure you can.

[00:13:13] People, who are getting up and going to work and their dog who tell me stories of witnessing murders as a child of being raped when they were three of of being turned over to family members who they knew were rapists. Just horrifying stories of ongoing abuse. Children who were told, had a client who was an adopted and she was constantly told, I'm gonna send you back to the orphanage.

[00:13:43] And and these are horrible stories that leave lasting terrible scars on people's emotional and mental wellbeing. So I call that the bottom up, that we definitely need help on the, on that level, on the family level, and to the extent that institutions of power don't provide for families, don't look out for families, don't pay them well, don't provide education or healthcare. Or safety in their neighborhoods or treatment for addiction or all of the things that would actually help us access the best that people have to offer. And the safe and, help them become the safest members of our society.

[00:14:29] To the extent that large organizations and, institutions of government don't advocate for that, and we know to a large extent they don't advocate for that, that resources are withheld. People are deprived, people are blamed for being poor. Then you have this influence from the top down. Influencing what's already a difficult family situation from the bottom up.

[00:14:54] And so again, I say it's circular. I, don't think there's one place where it begins and another where it ends, but they feed each other and the whole idea is to interrupt that cycle of neglect and abuse, and that's what really good psychotherapy aims to do. Not perfectly, and especially when people are willing, there are tools and, ways of seeing and understanding people's psyches that can be healing and interrupt that cycle. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. 

[00:15:24] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Phyllis, we have these shootings that keep taking place in the schools and shopping centers and, wherever people gather. We just had one the other day and, I'm just wondering why it is that this country won't invest money in what clearly seems to be a serious need. One that goes to the heart of why a lot of these shootings take place and yet, as you say, the resources are withheld. They're not provided. Why do you think that is? 

[00:16:03] Phyllis Leavitt: There's a lot to say about that, but I think the overarching important principle to understand from the world of psychology is that no abuser, no person who holds inordinate power over other people wants to give it up. That's part of the abusive cycle is that because you can't hurt people or rape them or exploit them or take their money or their resources or their homes unless you have power over them that they can't rebel against, that they have no power to, to confront. And so there's a serious problem and I talk about this in some detail in toward the end of my book when I'm talking about more about solutions. With our power, our investment in power over others is still the name of the game.

[00:16:55] Who wins here? Who gets the most, who looks the best, and I think we have to change our relationship to power, which really means and, an abuser, whether it's an abusive person or an abusive governmental institution, or an neglectful and abusive Corporation that doesn't treat its employees well.

[00:17:20] If they don't wanna give up the power and the profit, and obviously profit is a part of it, and that's part of what feeds power and is a result of power, then change doesn't happen. And you have people who become more and more symptomatic because they can't get out of the cycle of being harmed by other human beings.

[00:17:41] And the shooters are, I would call the shooters, I would call them the tip of a big iceberg. And People who are happy, people who are loved, people who feel like they belong, that they're wanted, that they're valued, and who have learned. And I always stress this one who have learned to tolerate their own distress.

[00:18:04] I. And stay at the table and settle conflict without violence. People have learned these things who have role models for these things, which are all some of the principles of good psychotherapy. Some of them. They don't go shoot up a school. Yeah, they don't. And see, yeah, go 

[00:18:24] Bob Gatty: ahead. I was just gonna say, I'm just wondering, and I, maybe this isn't a fair question to ask, but I'm just wondering if certain political leaders who tend to be abusive in a lot of ways if, that plays into that. I'm thinking of Donald Trump, obviously. If, all of that plays into this and does it make things worse? 

[00:18:49] Phyllis Leavitt: I definitely think it does make it worse. Yeah. There I think because. As human beings, we're first of, we're dependent and we're impressionable, right?

[00:19:02] So to some extent we're all dependent on our government to and some people more than others, right? As little children, we're dependent on the role models of our, the adults who take care of us. And we're very impressionable and we learn from them how conflict is resolved or addressed. And if you live in an abusive household and conflict isn't resolved and it's addressed with violence or alienation or shame or any kinds of horrible tortures things that I've heard clients say then, that's your role model for behavior. And unfortunately and I talk about this quite a bit, and I talk about this in, in I, feel like I explain it pretty well in my book.

[00:19:50] That there are patterns that emerge from abusive families. If we're just looking at the family system, there are patterns of behavior that emerge. They don't apply to every single human being. They're always exceptions, and we are all individuals for sure. But the patterns that I see overall are if there's an, if a person lives in an abusive family and they can't get away and they can't get help and they don't have treatment somewhere along the line, they tend to follow two different roads.

[00:20:24] And one of 'em. The, psycho the, therapy name for it is learned helplessness. But I think we know what that means. You learned to be helpless. You were helpless, you couldn't fight back effectively. And for many people, if they tried to fight back, they were hurt more. So you learn to be helpless actually as a way to cope with assault, with stress, with injustice with difficulty.

[00:20:49] And people carry this out into their adulthood. And I, tell stories in my book of outrageous things that people have experienced from the outcome of learned helplessness. And and we wonder sometimes if there's a story that a mother stood by or an adult stood by while a child was beaten and the child died, and everybody's why didn't they do something?

[00:21:15] And actually there is a psychological explanation for why they didn't do something. They freeze in the face of abuse and that's what they learned to do and it was their survival mechanism and it kicks in even in adulthood when they might actually physically be able to intervene. So that's, one.

[00:21:34] So one is learned helplessness and the other is called identification with the aggressor. And those are the people who emerge from abusive households and situations who have identified with the coping mechanisms and the beliefs and the structures of the abuser. And they tend to be aggressive and dominating and on the continuum of abuse of themselves.

[00:21:59] And what happens is, and I'm sure any therapist can tell you this, that couples often end up being made up of one who is dominating and one who is submissive. On a continuum from not relatively harmless to people who have learned to be helpless, who live with overtly violent partners and don't leave and why I feel this is so dangerous for our country. It's certainly dangerous for individuals. It's dangerous for our children. If you have adults who are in positions of power who are also modeling abusive shaming, blaming dynamics toward whole segments of the population or their political opponents or whoever it is that they decide to attack to be more powerful than, then This is the role model not only coming from individual households, but this is the role model all over social media that our young people are seeing, that it's okay to call people names or put down opponents wives, or castigate a whole segment of our population because of their race or their gender or their religion. So it's it's a cycle that only accelerates that we are in danger of creating more and more people who are submissive and dominating. And then what do we have in our society?

[00:23:31] We have more of what we have now, more of what we have now. 

[00:23:35] Bob Gatty: What's your solution? What do you think the can be done to interrupt this cycle of violence and restore peace and safety in our country? 

[00:23:47] Phyllis Leavitt: I think it's many pronged and I don't think that necessarily psychology has all the answers. I think there are people who have great contributions to make from the field of science and ecology and the environment and medicine and social sciences and but I wanna offer the ones that I believe the world of psychology has, because I think that they're critical.

[00:24:10] I think that we can't do without them. So again, I think it's many pronged, but I, start with education. People have to know what's happening to them. I, had a client who had been physically abused by her parent for her entire childhood, and she was suffering massive anxiety attacks. And she was still receiving verbal abuse from this parent as an adult, and she had no idea that she was being abused.

[00:24:48] She really believed all the messages that she was ugly and stupid and undeserving and a bad person. She totally believed it was her fault until she came to therapy. Why? Because it was so indoctrinated into her that I'm beating you because you, and that is what abusive people do. They justify the abuse by attributing some negative quality to the people that they hurt.

[00:25:18] You're stupid. You talk back. You are not doing well in school. You didn't clean your room. You wore too short of a skirt, whatever it is. And we know that many people in our country are being blamed for being withheld from being called lazy or thugs or whatever. Or that they're inferior because of their race or religion or their gender.

[00:25:43] Their gender identity. And that's so when I say education, we have to educate one another that these are the dynamics of abuse. No one deserves to be abused. There is no justification for hurting other human beings. And a lot of people don't know that because the justifications for abuse and withholding and neglect of other human beings have been portrayed as ideological issues rather than mental health issues.

[00:26:13] And that's, something really big that we have to address and make common knowledge. And after that, but anyway, let me let you chime in there cuz you know, I, no 

[00:26:23] Bob Gatty: I want you to just continue with what you're. What's the point that you want to make.

[00:26:28] Phyllis Leavitt: That's the starting place is education. When I went to therapy for the first time, I went to the library and I got out a book on psychology . I don't remember the book now, I wish I did, but it, the first thing that was in the book was, a list of the 10 things that can happen to a child that cause emotional and mental problems later on.

[00:26:51] And it was like news to me. I've never heard anything like that. We just we, live in a country where we're, first of all, we're supposed to look good and, hide what we think are our deficiencies or our problems, but also there's not a common knowledge that if you're beaten as a kid, there's gonna be an effect on your emotional, social, mental wellbeing and functioning.

[00:27:17] That's true. I was a bad kid and I better try to be good. Yeah. 

[00:27:23] Bob Gatty: Phyllis, you wanna share a little bit about why you were in therapy? 

[00:27:26] Phyllis Leavitt: I I'll share a little bit. Okay. Okay. I don't have a problem talking about it. I just don't know how much of your space you wanna take up with it, but I really, oh, a little bit.

[00:27:37] I, yeah, I had some, sexual abuse in my childhood. Okay. And it was one of those people who blocked it all out. And so I just grew up with this.

[00:27:50] I think what happened to me is I just shut down.

[00:27:52] Okay. And I just grew up feeling like I had a cloud around me that made me different and other and odd and basically flawed. I felt like I was a flawed human being and unlovable and I grew up in a very intellectual family. And so I put all my energy into my intellect and reading and studying and going to school.

[00:28:16] And and that was actually a good thing. I'm glad I did that. But at a certain point in my life, after I had gotten married and had children, it just really all came apart. And I, like many people who have not had help for what happened to them, I didn't make a good choice in the marriage that I had.

[00:28:38] And it caused a lot of further trauma for me, which was what led to the breaking point. But let me just say here, a breaking point is not a bad thing. And I, feel like that's what we need to see what's going on in America as it's a breaking point. We can't go on this way if we expect to be safe in our homes and not be in danger of engaging in wars around the world that could wipe us all out.

[00:29:04] I really think that 

[00:29:06] Bob Gatty: Phyllis, is there some step that you think the federal government or the state governments people in power could take to address some of the stuff? 

[00:29:19] Phyllis Leavitt: To, to address abuse in homes or ...

[00:29:22] Bob Gatty: to address, yeah. The, abusive situation in many homes. The Trauma that results in people deciding that they need to go shoot up a school.

[00:29:37] Yeah. There's many. Yeah. What are some of the things that can be done? 

[00:29:42] Phyllis Leavitt: I think for one thing I think we could redirect, and again this is gonna sound a little Pollyanna-ish. This is something that the populist has to want and enact through the leaders that we elect, but we have millions of dollars that are going into defense, that are creating weapons that kill millions, thousands, and millions of innocent people.

[00:30:07] I call war premeditated murder because that's what it is. Look at the people who are dying in the wars now. Hospitals are being bombed, churches are bombed, apartment buildings are being bombed. Who lives in them? Not armies. Exactly. Families innocent. Exactly. It's just, it's insane. That to me is like the severe end of mental illness.

[00:30:36] I'm sorry, I forgot your question. 

[00:30:38] Bob Gatty: I don't remember it either. But what you just said is what's happening in Ukraine with Russia attacking Ukraine and bombing all these apartment buildings and, Residential areas and so on and so forth. And it just goes to show the evilness, I think, of the Putin of, Vladimir Putin.

[00:31:01] And, it I don't know if that has anything to do with what we're talking about, but. Sure. Seems like it to me. 

[00:31:09] Phyllis Leavitt: Yeah. Unfortunately I think in my book, I try to take things apart. And they really all overlap, but we have to take them apart in order to understand the elements.

[00:31:21] But they all overlap because one thing that I, didn't say when I was talking about learned helplessness and identifying with the aggressor is, That they're both victims, right? The one who is helpless is a victim. The one who identifies with the aggressor in an abusive family is also a victim acting out their victimization in a different way.

[00:31:45] So if we really want to stop the cycle of violence, we have to know this. This is part of what education brings. So, the school shooter is not a bad person. That person who was born an innocent baby and something happened to them, something severe happened to them, that they would feel that much pain and that much rage or that much something that they would be impelled to go kill people they don't even know.

[00:32:15] And we have to know that because if we're not willing to address that, then we keep blaming our victims. And that's part of what we see in the prison system, that the majority of people incarcerated now in the United States have been abused as children and didn't get help. Somewhere this cycle has to stop.

[00:32:36] We can't keep incarcerating people and thinking that's the solution. We have to help them before they get to that place. So, I'm saying that I think our resources need to be directed toward families, toward communities toward, helping children. Toward helping parents. And one of the, one of the things that I think comes out of looking at the, prison system is that there are so many people that could just be helped rather than locked up. There are people that are in jail for marijuana offenses.

[00:33:10] All over the country. Just nothing of the discrimination that goes on for black people and people of color who are just indiscriminately put in jail for long sentences over short small infractions of the law. 

[00:33:26] Bob Gatty: The prison system in this country is really horrible. I've had actually two guests on just recently, both of whom were federal inmates for one reason or another.

[00:33:39] And, their stories of, what they had to go through, what they had to endure just remarkable. Remarkable. And, then to, think that they end up having to pay for half of the stuff that takes place in the prisons themselves when they're, it's just horrible. 

[00:34:02] Phyllis Leavitt: It's just horrible.

[00:34:04] I just heard a long talk by a man who and his lawyer, a man who was falsely imprisoned black man for 30 years for a crime that they knew he didn't commit. Yeah. And he had a wonderful lawyer that finally got him released and he talked about young black men being sentenced to 70 years in prison for a $200 robbery.

[00:34:27] And, he called it the prison industrial complex. 

[00:34:31] Bob Gatty: Pretty much the case. Yeah. A lot of people making money off the prison system. That's for sure. 

[00:34:38] Phyllis Leavitt: And these are some of the reasons and why these systems don't get reformed. Yeah. And we have to look at that as a country and say, this is wrong.

[00:34:49] And what's the cost to all of us? What's the cost of a human life? 30 years in prison for crime he didn't commit. Yeah. 

[00:34:57] Bob Gatty: A minute ago you mentioned something about suicide. And, I'm wondering if this epidemic of teenage suicides that We see reported in the news? If, that's all part of what you're talking about, it must be, 

[00:35:16] Phyllis Leavitt: I definitely think it is a part of that.

[00:35:18] I think there's many influences. I think there's a, growing sense, first of all, the pandemic had a lot to do with some of the depression that's going on with teenagers because for teenagers not to be able to go to school and not have their peer group is traumatic. And I was working with a teacher during the pandemic and she was working online with her high school students and she said the depression and the despair and the suicidal ideation among her students was so high that she was like doing helping counsel them besides teaching. And I think the pandemic had a lot to do with it, but I think it's one factor in what's on social media. It's so drama driven and sensationalization of violence and and violent rhetoric, violent behavior. 

[00:36:17] What's all over the news? Every murder is the top of the page. Yeah. So I think, but I think there's a growing sense of, what is out there for me. What does this world, what does it have for me? And I think that it creates as, social media can anyway, but you know how to, what's the image I wanna have for the world?

[00:36:41] And when people are living behind an image and feeling like there's a very different reality underneath, it creates depression and despair. Cuz there's a feeling like I can't really be who I am. 

[00:36:52] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Phyllis Is your book ready now? Or it not to be published? 

[00:36:58] Phyllis Leavitt: It is written, but it's not published yet. 

[00:37:00] Bob Gatty: So when will it be published?

[00:37:02] Phyllis Leavitt: I do not know. I'm just about to submit it to publishers this month. I'm hoping for a great response and I will certainly let you know as soon as it's available. 

[00:37:12] Bob Gatty: Do that I'll make sure that we get that word out. In the meantime. Your other two books are available, of course. And they can be found online?

[00:37:27] Phyllis Leavitt: Yeah. They're, on Amazon. Yeah, for sure. 

[00:37:29] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about 'em. 

[00:37:31] Phyllis Leavitt: They're very different. The first two books are really a very the, especially the first one starts out extremely autobiographical, and that one is, the name of that 

[00:37:43] one is a Light in the Darkness. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that was the other side of my emerging from the, I would call the trance of unhealed trauma.

[00:37:54] Okay. So it's very autobiographical. And then the rest of that book and the following book are really about the spiritual journey that I took as a result of that. That was also a part of my healing as, somewhat distinct from the psychological part. But I would say without going into a whole spiel that they're related and I think they're related for many people because I think healing helps put you in touch with your essential self.

[00:38:22] And some people call that spiritual or have other names for it. But those books are devoted to that part of my journey, and this book has really, come straight out of my experience as a psychotherapist. 

[00:38:35] Bob Gatty: Okay. All right. We'll be looking forward to seeing that. Now what do you feel individuals themselves can do to try to make a difference here? 

[00:38:49] Phyllis Leavitt: Yeah. I think there's two big things that we all can do. You don't have to be a therapist to help change this environment. You really don't, and everybody doesn't have to go to therapy. But if you feel that you have some deep wounding, that going to therapy would help you heal, and you have the means and the availability to do it.

[00:39:10] I highly suggest that because whatever a person does, whether it's psychotherapy or some other healing journey that a person takes what, It might be your creativity. It might be your relationship with nature, or it might be working in some other healing venue. Whatever we do to heal our own wounds helps us not repeat them with other people.

[00:39:34] So I can't stress that enough. That's one of the biggest and most beautiful outcomes of the best inner work that a person can do, is that we don't have to repeat what was done to us or what we suffered or what we did for that matter, right? Sometimes what we're suffering from is things we've done that we don't feel proud of.

[00:39:52] So that's the big, that's one big one. And the other one is that I really believe that every person has a contribution, whether it's loving their children better, taking care of a garden, volunteering in a school, being a great teacher, a doctor working with the environment, working with the highest levels of what's going on in the world, or the smallest levels of what's happening in your home.

[00:40:18] We can all be more loving. We can all be more kind. We can all be more generous. We can all be more patient with other people. We can all understand that we don't actually know what drives the person who's raging. That we don't know what drives the person who's helpless and we can have compassion and try to spread some good education about our psychology.

[00:40:41] And, I didn't get into in this podcast, what are some of the elements of good psychotherapy that can definitely be implemented in our country if we wanted to. 

[00:40:52] Bob Gatty: We have a minute if you want, if you would like to do that. 

[00:40:55] Phyllis Leavitt: Sure. I'll, say them really quickly. Sure. You know what, brings people to therapy is pain.

[00:41:03] Something isn't working, otherwise they wouldn't come. Okay. And my hope is that the pain in our country could bring us to the place where we're really looking to implement some of the best of what psychology and psychotherapy has to offer. So the whole frame around that is that we're looking for repair of our human relations.

[00:41:27] We're not looking to decide who's right and who's wrong. That's what leaves us where we are now, this war between who thinks they're right and with who they think is wrong. Who thinks they are right and who they think is wrong. That's what's putting us where we are. So the whole premise of good counseling, good psychotherapy and psychology is to heal the relationship, not have one person walk out high on righteousness and the other one walk out with their tail between their legs.

[00:41:57] So that's the first thing. And the first element when two, when two people, let's just say sit down to do some therapy together, they leave their weapons at the door. And by obviously people don't bring guns to therapy. But what I mean by that is all their weapons, they, 

[00:42:16] Bob Gatty: I would hope not. I wouldn't wanna be a therapist. Somebody showed up with a 

[00:42:22] Phyllis Leavitt: Right. It's never happened. I hope it doesn't happen. It never happened to me. I hope it doesn't happen to anyone, but by that is we learn to exercise restraint. We learn to tolerate our own distress. So if our partner says something that makes us angry or hurts our feelings, Or we just totally vehemently disagree with.

[00:42:41] We don't act out, we don't shout, we don't call names, we don't slam doors. We listen. Trying to hear where they're coming from because that's what we all want. We all wanna be heard. And if we can't give that to one another, how can we expect to receive it? Exactly. And this is this is a no duh.

[00:43:02] Why aren't we seeing this in Congress? 

[00:43:05] Bob Gatty: Good question. 

[00:43:06] Phyllis Leavitt: So, that's the first one is restraint. We learn to tolerate our own distress and we listen deeply, even if we disagree. The next one, which is huge The things I'm talking about are huge in our personal lives, and they be even huger for us as a country, but they're not impossible.

[00:43:26] So the second one is taking responsibility for yourself. Reflecting on your own part in whatever the dynamic is. So if my part, let's just say my part was being helpless and I allowed you to scream at me, and now I'm in therapy and I want the therapist to get you to stop screaming at me. My part is not blame. My part is what left me so helpless. Can I work to heal that wound so that I'm a more appropriately empowered adult in this relationship and vice versa, if you're the screamer or I'm the screamer, then what has set me up to believe that I am entitled to act out on the person I say I love?

[00:44:08] How can I not listen to the consequences of that when they're talking to me? It's a combination of working with the dynamics between people and their individual wounds that feed those dynamics. So self-reflection, what's my part in this? Again, not as blame and shame, but what's my responsibility that I could actually do something about to change this pattern we're working out that isn't working for us.

[00:44:34] So the next one is, and this is also a huge one, I was just talking to somebody yesterday who said, this is the hardest thing for me to do, and that is making amends, reparation, saying, you know what? I looked at my part. And I had something to do with that fight we had because I was blah, blah, blah.

[00:44:54] And I'm sorry, I wish I hadn't talked to you that way. Please tell me what it is that I didn't hear. This is so hard for most people. We're, so invested in being right. We're so invested in winning the argument. And I think many of us were brought up that way. There's right and wrong and you just stick by what you think is right and you don't listen. Yeah. Yeah. So these are huge. There's there's just a couple more, and I call them the six elements of repair. And I don't know if I've told you all six, but there's restraint, reflection, responsibility, reparation, reconciliation. And that means we try to come back together to some agreement.

[00:45:39] We, even if we don't get everything we want, but what one thing I would say is when people listen deeply, and especially if they can open to the pain that fuels the other person's misbehavior, often the conflict is already resolved. There's not even a resolution that needs to happen because we understand each other better and we're, reconnected.

[00:46:02] And that's the last element that the commitment of repairing human relations is that we want to reconnect, we want to belong to one another. We want to feel safe and aligned and, care and feel cared for. And. I don't think these, even these six elements and there's a lot more to say of what I talk about, Sure. Even these six elements, if we adopted those as national policy for the behavior of our government officials, whoa. What an amazing role model. What an amazing shift we would have in what our country is doing right now. Okay. 

[00:46:43] Bob Gatty: I don't know about you guys, but I feel like I've been through a therapy session here.

[00:46:48] Phyllis Leavitt: I hope it was a good 

[00:46:50] Bob Gatty: one. It was an excellent one. I was feeling a lot better. 

[00:46:54] Phyllis Leavitt: Good. 

[00:46:55] Bob Gatty: Okay, now I'll go apologize to my wife for slamming the refrigerator door the other day. 

[00:47:01] Phyllis Leavitt: All right. I like it 

[00:47:03] Bob Gatty: when I got mad because I don't even remember why. 

[00:47:07] Phyllis Leavitt: Because it's never the why. 

[00:47:10] Bob Gatty: Yeah, I know, right?

[00:47:12] I know. 

[00:47:13] Phyllis Leavitt: Beautiful. Beautiful. But see, that's it. That's, to me, that's how we make change. We start with ourselves. Yeah. 

[00:47:21] Bob Gatty: All right. Phyllis, thank you so much for being with us on the Lean to the Left Podcast. It was a fascinating discussion, and I hope you guys enjoyed it.

[00:47:32] And Phyllis, let us know when your book is ready to be published and we'll make sure we he help you get the word out. Thank you. Matter of fact, if you'd like to come back and when it's done and out and, talk about it in more depth, we're happy to do that. 

[00:47:49] Phyllis Leavitt: I would love to do that.

[00:47:51] I really would. Cause there's so many, I have so much more to say. Okay. Love to do that and I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you, Phyllis.