So many of my problems with the modern day,
therapy movements, many of which are cultish or cultic.
And even by saying that,
I encourage you to look up
the International Cultic Studies Association
and see the characteristics of a cult
and decide for yourself.
And I even wrote a blog once called
in my Anitheorepic cult.
I have been in the EMDR world for almost 20 years
and it's culty, it's cultish in a lot of ways.
So I've benefited from it,
and I'm the first to recognize that.
But I also know a cult when I see one.
Welcome to the Repatterning Podcast,
where we believe your mind body system is your domain
and that choosing the beliefs, habits,
and patterns that best support you is your birthright.
I'm your host, Arden Leigh,
creator of the Repatoning Project,
an eight week course in learning to free yourself
from the patterns of your past
and program your mind for your dreams of the future.
Join me for these extraordinary conversations
as we unpack the keys to creating our reality.
(upbeat music)
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Repatterning Podcast.
I'm your host, Arden Leigh.
And today I am so excited to be joined
by our guest, Dr. Jamie Marich.
I wanna tell you a little bit about her
before we dive into the conversation.
Dr. Jamie has authored well over a dozen books
at this point on topics such as trauma, EMDR therapy,
expressive arts, mindfulness, and yoga.
She has a private practice in Akrona, Hi-O,
and some of her most popular book titles include
EMDR Made Simple, Trauma and the 12 Steps,
which I actually have my copy of right here,
as well as Dissociation Made Simple,
which I also have my copy of right here.
And her latest book is a spiritual memoir titled,
You Lied To Me About God, What a Great Title.
And she's also the founder of the Institute
for Creative Mindfulness, as well as the developer
of a modality called Dancing Mindfulness.
And she is also currently enrolled
in the Interfaith Chaplaincy Program
at the Chaplaincy Institute on the path
to becoming ordained as an Interfaith minister.
And she is also one of, I think at this point,
really just a handful, or a few dozen,
plural clinicians who is out about her dissociative identities,
and her lived experience with dissociation,
which is part of what makes her such a compelling author
on the subject of dissociation.
So Dr. Jamie, thank you so much
for being on the show today.
I am so honored to have you here.
It's my great pleasure.
I'm a fan of so much of what you do,
and I'm excited to hear what kind of topics
you've brought up for discussion.
Awesome.
I'm so excited because, and just for anyone listening,
you enjoy Dr. Jamie's in my talk today.
I want you to let you know, on my YouTube channel,
from before I started the Re-Patterning podcast,
there's another interview that I have with Dr. Jamie
where we talk a lot about dissociation and about trauma
and patterns of addiction.
And so I wanna encourage you, if you enjoy that,
go watch that one too.
I don't wanna repeat the same conversation
that we had last time.
So I'm so excited especially to dive into Dr. Jamie,
you've been sharing a little bit about how in this past year,
you've had some major shifts around what you feel is your role
in the field of therapy and mental health.
That's the juicy conversation I'm aching to get into today.
Oh, I am loving to have that conversation.
So yeah, I'm curious.
I think what you've seen and observed with some of the nieces
I've written and announcements I've made,
'cause just for context, especially in the mode of therapy,
we call EMDR therapy.
I movement desensitization or reprocessing,
which is really phenomenal treatment for PTSD
and trauma related issues.
I have quite a platform.
I'm a major trainer in the area.
I've written three books specifically on EMDR
and I've built a very successful training company in it
and really in the wake of a lot of our success,
I'm walking away from it.
That's part of what's happening.
I'm turning it over to someone else
'cause it's just not where I wanna be,
spending my energy even though I still very much
believe in EMDR therapy and what it can do as a healing modality.
I'm just in a period of making a lot of shifts
for my own health and wellness and my life.
And in the process, it's been a deconstruction,
a calling out of this is what has not worked for me.
And I wanna be clear, I'm not saying
it's about professional therapy
'cause I still very much believe in what therapy can do
but it's how the field and the structures and the systems
like what they've done to therapy
that I am feeling increasingly more disgusted with.
And yeah, so that's the context
but I'm curious how you've observed
and what you wanna talk about and all that.
- Oh my gosh, well I'd love to start by asking you
just what are some of the things
that you've observed in the field
that have not been working for you?
I can definitely share some of what I've observed
as an outsider but I want your insider perspective first.
- Well, look always how you started introducing me.
I think there's more than a dozen of us now
but I am definitely one of a small minority
who are so out and public about having been treated
for the specific diagnosis we've been treated with dissociative.
For us, it was another why specified dissociative disorder
yet the path of treatment that I chose
was to embrace this notion of honoring all my parts
and having more of a functional plurality
or multiplicity as we call it
that to me dissociative identities
is not something we have to be curative.
It's something we need to learn how to live with
and work with in a healthy, adaptive way.
So what's interesting is at the time I formally came out in 2018,
I didn't think it was that big of a deal in the larger field
where I knew it would be a big deal is in the EMDR community
because even amongst EMDR therapists,
I had heard dissociation talked about
with like such dirty word type of language.
It's the worst thing a person can do.
We have to make sure we keep people from doing it
and I sat back passively even having been diagnosed 14 years
listening to what a lot of professionals said
about those sick people with dissociative disorders
or other conditions.
And a lot of my major coming out was after I had done
a lot of the work to be okay with the consequences of what might happen.
But I came out and it did its thing in EMDR world
and I didn't realize it was seen as such a trailblazing thing
in the larger therapeutic professions too.
I mean, I'm definitely not the first person who has come out
as being a professional with a major mental health diagnosis.
We had Katie Keach on the show too, by the way.
So good.
Good.
Katie's is someone who we've had a lot of mutual shared dialogue
around this.
But I think what kind of quote unquote impressed people
was someone of my stature, someone of the bibliography I have
and the work I've done to come out and not just be like,
"Hey, I have this and it's a thing of my past."
Because I do think some people come out
about their mental health and addiction struggles in that way.
Like it happened, I'm over it, I'm good now.
And so much of my coming out has been, yes,
it's no longer paralyzing my life.
And especially when life gets rough,
it can still be a factor in my life.
I'm not one who ever pretends that we're ever fully healed
from something, even though we can largely have
resolution on something.
And that it's okay to live in this place of my parts
are still a part of me.
And I've learned to tend to them in a way
where they actually helped me live a more adaptive
and responsive life right now.
So I think that is what a lot of people see in me
as they're either scared of me for being that open
or critical or they've respected it.
And I think going to your question
about the larger problem in the field is it still pisses me off
that the field is not paying adequate attention
to lived experience voices.
And I think those of us who are professionals
who are out about lived experience,
I'm gonna go as far as to say we have the most to share
'cause we are coming at this from both worlds,
having the professional training and education
but also being able to say, "Hey, I've lived this too."
There are times in the fields helping professions
where I think I see some change happening
and I'm still just seeing a lot of pushback,
like one of the continuing education organizations
that I have recently abandoned giving money to
because continuing at organizations are what we as trainers
have to pay to be able to offer their certain approvals
and designations on our courses.
And they are just getting more and more staunch
that anything you train has to have so many peer reviewed
citations from empirical literature.
And I wanna be clear, I'm not against research
or empirical literature.
What I am against is us privileging that
as a knowledge source.
Religious scholar, I follow,
whose name will come to me here in a second
called it "scientism" that were not,
Houston Smith, were not anti-science
but it's putting science up on this pedestal
against let's say the ways of spirit or lived experience.
And what I want, and what a lot of people want,
I feel too, is this place where we can honor
all forms of inquiry as valid.
And the way I see the fields of psychology
especially in the other helping professions now,
we're not doing that.
And that's a problem.
May I have some ideas on I think why it's gotten that way?
But that's one of the things I'm speaking on.
- Yeah, I especially loved your response
to when someone says, oh, but something is or is not evidence-based.
- Who's evidence?
- That's my first question.
(laughing)
- This came up in the discussion for me recently too,
where I had a person who I did not know,
in my comments in a public post online,
talking about how what I was doing was unethical,
it was dangerous, because of the course that I teach, et cetera.
And this was someone who had never come across my work before.
He had decided this in the last 20 minutes
between when I commented on the thread
and when they responded back to me.
And I said, what is your basis for it?
I was like, I know the scope of what I'm doing.
I know what my certifications are and are not.
And I'm transparent about what I do and what I teach.
And he goes, I don't care, you're not a licensed professional.
And so I started being like, well, what institutions
are we looking at here?
And the first thing I brought up was how complex PTSD
is still not even in the DSM.
And the fact that back in in 1994, it was voted on,
it was called desnose disorder of extremes
to us not otherwise specified, and a committee voted on it.
19 people out of 21 voted to put it into the DSM
and just amazingly enough, somehow,
somewhere along the way it just didn't end up there.
So I look at that and I say, well, how good
are your standards for evidence if this is what we're dealing with?
This conversation is happening, especially
in a lot of decolonizing therapy spaces.
And I'm happy for this that we're looking at
what does being a licensed professional even mean?
Like let's go there because I come at this of two worlds.
Again, I'm not against science, I'm against scientism.
And I feel that's especially important to say in a country
where so much science, especially at the medical level,
is being ignored.
Good point.
The position that I take is therapy and healing
is not a hard science.
That science, at least in a naturalistic and peric-away,
can be a part of it.
But if we really believe that people are holistic beings,
body, mind, spirit, we can't just look
at the science of the body.
And is mind a science or is it an art?
You know my work, I tend to approach it more as an art form.
So on one hand, licensing, professional licensing
is in place.
And any licensing board will tell you
this to protect the public.
That that's the existence of a licensing board.
And some have commented, well, it gives the public a sense
of protection.
It's kind of like, why do we go to the security gates
at the airport?
It helps people maybe feel safer, whether or not
it's doing anything or not.
And it's tricky because I do believe
there are some healing practices that
are the scope of license professionals who've been trained.
I went through that hard work of getting my masters
and getting licensed.
And it was a lot I had to go through.
And here's the other truth, Bob, I'm going to drop.
Oh, I don't know if I should say this publicly,
but spirit's bringing it through.
So we're going to--
so many license professionals out there
have not done their own work.
Oh, 100%.
And there are a lot of people who technically have a license.
I would not refer people to.
I would not go to.
And there are people who work in other healing modalities
that as long as they know their scope, which it sounds like you
do, I think can be better fits for doing healing work
with people.
Professional Western psychotherapy does not
have the market cornered on healing.
And I want more therapists to recognize that,
and to realize that shamans and other healing practitioners
and spiritual directors, spiritual care providers
and practitioners are people we can work within concert.
And I will say in my role as a license professional
in EMDR expert, I've run into times and cases
where I know I have done all I could with my skills.
And I do refer my person for collaborative care
with a well studied, well trained shaman,
or some other kind of healing arts practitioner
and we work together.
Or it might be therapy is not where you are most needing.
Healing, that's not the best fit in your journey right now,
but maybe there is another healing practice that is.
So you could probably tell, I hope this is coming through.
I am in all of the above type of person.
I think we get into any dangerous territory.
When we say this is the thing that's going to heal your PTSD
or cure your PTSD.
Or this is the death of a way, a certain form of therapy works.
So that's that's that's so box.
Yeah.
I love what you brought up also about, for example, shamanism
and other indigenous healing modalities.
Because I think it's such a sort of like myopic Western
colonialist kind of arrogance to assume like,
oh, we have the way we have this field that's really maybe
only been developed in its current form in the last 100 years
or so where it's like, you know, you're looking at,
well, how did folks get by in other cultures?
How mental illness or spiritual sickness dealt with in other,
like you think you're the first one?
You know, you're going to go and like stick a flag in it and be like,
ah, we have, you know, and it's just like when you get to that,
that myopia of, oh, you must be a licensed professional.
You know, again, who is licensed, right?
And what is, you know, what's being studied?
And again, I think you're correct in that, like sometimes,
yes, absolutely, you know, you want someone, it's like,
especially if you're going to do like a brain surgeon, right?
And you bring up like the fact that like science
in this country right now is maybe not being paid attention
to enough in many medical spheres that, you know,
especially with what we have going on in our government
and the department of, you know, health and all that,
all that kerfleffle.
But at the same time, yeah, healing is so much more,
and has been for me so much more of an art.
And I would actually love to hear more about your work
in the expressive arts as well.
And, you know, what you teach or help folks to do to use their creativity
and, you know, their expressive side in order to further that journey of healing.
Well, I would argue that expressive arts is the original treatment.
It's the original healing modality.
And even the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association,
who in my opinion, my opinion have kind of gone the way
of trying to overstandardize things now too.
But they have had a long term history of recognizing
that there are the expressive arts therapy
it was not invented by any one person,
that it is fundamentally indigenous in nature
and that what we call modern expressive arts therapy
came together from a variety of influences and spheres.
And so how professional expressive arts therapy honors
what is called both multimodality and intermodality.
So that means we're not like just writing or just drawing
or just playing music or just dancing,
but we're open to working with all of them.
So it goes back to my very, all of the above personality.
So a lot of people have heard of separate art therapy, dance therapy,
et cetera, yet the expressive arts focus is,
let's look at how they all weave together.
Because that's certainly what the first peoples of the planet did.
And we all have, I've said this in one of my other books,
A Birthright to Express.
We're all wired for expression.
And so much of what trauma or oppression or stress
over time can do to us is tell us that we don't have a right
to express our truth or that it's not safe
to express our truth or our voice.
And the various practices and processes
of expressive arts work, which can be done.
And so I will also give Iyata credit for this
because I really liked this when I first studying expressive arts.
They will credential both mental health therapists
and expressive arts.
And they also have a credential for consultants and educators.
So people who may do the work you do
or people who are classroom educators,
my teacher was a spiritual director
and had expressive arts training.
So I've long resonated with this idea
that the expressive arts belong to everyone.
And what we're really doing in this healing modality
we call expressive arts is just helping people tap into that.
And it can work alongside other modalities,
like repotting or EMDR therapy
or any other modality you may use or practice.
What I love about the expressive arts as well
or really using any creative outlet
for healing or for personal change, for personal transformation
is if we're looking at metrics, which are like,
oh, if you don't have a license, this is unethical, et cetera.
Well, no one is ever going to get hurt by writing a song.
No one ever got hurt by painting a picture.
So I love that it's also something that anyone can do
that is our natural, as you said, birthright,
our creative right to express ourselves.
And this can contribute to our healing.
And there's probably almost no way for it to actually go wrong
unless, now I'm thinking of like,
I'm being very autistic exceptionalist here.
The only way that I can think of is if you're stuck in a pattern
and you learn a pattern of like, oh, when I'm in pain
and I express my pain through a song, then I get approval.
So I need to create more pain in order to create more.
That would be the one pitfall, but aside from that,
it's something that anyone can do on their own time.
And I think the only other, I mean, another pitfall
I'd want to make people aware of as we can all,
and this might likely, a pattern, be in that tendency
to push ourselves, which a lot of artists will do.
Like, I have to keep outputting, outputting, outputting,
more, more, more, more, where you may be a lot of writers
do this, then neglecting other parts of your health.
Or that internal meter may be saying, you're a little too far
into this right now, you got to take a break.
You can come back to it later.
So that would be just another caution I'd give.
Yeah, that's a great one to pushing ourselves into burnout
or developing a pattern where we base our worth
on our output for sure.
Yeah, what sort of, let's look at the positive things
that could come from, say, someone engaging
in an arts practice like that.
For those who are listening out there,
and I'm going to go ahead and also assume
that there are probably many of our listeners
who maybe don't have access to therapy,
or can't afford to do one-on-one work
with a practitioner right now.
What kind of thing would you maybe suggest to them
that they could explore in terms of creating artistic work
in a sense that would help with their healing path?
Well, what a wonderful question, because it's
tying into my current project.
I'm working on my next presently called Memoir,
Writing a Spiritual Practice.
And a lot of it came out of the fact
that, of course, I wrote a memoir.
Yet I found that to be, I don't even have words
for how helpful it was.
Now, to be clear, I had 20 years of therapy
and other healing practices before writing it.
Yet it almost had this quality of like,
I was writing my final exam.
Even though I don't think like I'm ever done evolving
as a human, when it was out and shared with the world,
I had such this sense of its over now.
And I'm not going to let this define me,
even as I still talk about it.
And there was something about getting into the memories.
And I wrote a lot of songs, who I was writing the memoir,
that helped me tap into a new level of spiritual practice.
And so I started teaching a course called Memoir,
Writing a Spiritual Practice, and actually
for my seminary internship, I'm writing the book
and interviewing Memoirists who are not media stars,
because that's not who I'm interested in talking to for this.
I want to talk to Memoirists who have self-published
or who have worked with small presses,
or who really did this with the intention of healing
and spiritual practice.
So I think of what a Maori woman, Hany Moray,
who is a friend and who I met in New Zealand
said when I met her and she was giving a talk
on her memoir process about her grief experience.
She said, my paper didn't judge me, my pen didn't judge me.
And I just love that.
And yes, that's what a lot of people get with journaling.
And there can be some precautions around journaling, too,
because I think sometimes we do push and take it too far
and can stay in these same patterns or scripts.
Yet I think if you journal or write with an intention,
like I'm asking a lot of Memoirists, now,
what was your intention in approaching your memoir?
And I'm hearing things like to try to make meaning out of my life,
to try to organize something that has been very scattered.
And when you can write with that intention, as opposed to--
Yeah, you may have these rage chapters and rage things
you have to express, because I'm not about stifling expression,
but can you turn it around for some greater intention
to either repattern, to make meaning, to realize
this is part of my story.
I even have this story yet.
I am not my whole story.
My story doesn't end here.
And writing can take a lot of folks to that place,
specifically memoir writing.
And I always want to say memoir doesn't have to be a book.
It can be a series of essays.
It can be a series of poems.
It can be a collection of songs.
I think of how many albums out there really have memoir quality.
So yeah, that's what I'm working on right now.
Man, I resonate so much with what you said
about when you finally put it out there,
you felt like it's done.
Despite years and years of therapy and healing work,
that I felt that way around the EP that I wrote called,
Who Can You Trust?
And I didn't really have--
I think I had an unconscious intention, not really a conscious one.
I didn't really quite understand how narrative magic worked back then.
But I knew on some level that I was going
to put all of the betrayals, all the trauma,
all the relational abuse, et cetera, that had happened to me into this sort of--
I knew that the title was going to be called, Who Can You Trust?
Because it was about learning discernment, ultimately.
And I remember it came out in early 2018.
So it was right as the Me Too movement was like
cresting into the mainstream was when it was in mixing.
And I remember when it came out, and we put a music video out,
maybe two months after the album itself was released.
And I remember seeing the reviews come back
because I had hired a publicist and everything.
And it was like, oh, you know, Arden Lee tackles
the Me Too movement with this.
And I was like, man, why is everyone making my music all about sexual assault?
And then I was like, oh, wait a minute, no, that was me.
I did that.
I literally wrote the press release.
And in that moment, I was like, oh, I'm done
because I'm tired of talking about it.
What is now the blank slate in front of me
that I get to create from?
And I think also what you said about the fact
that when we're doing that, I feel anyway as an artist
that I have an obligation to--
if I'm going to complain about something,
I better be doing it to solve it.
So if I'm putting all of that--
Yeah, you know.
I feel like it's almost like my obligation,
if I'm putting something out in the world,
I better show people that there is a way out of that.
And so oftentimes, it's like the last track of the album
will be the one that takes everything and kind of like,
twist it around and puts it out there.
And it's like, all right, well, here's what I've learned.
And here's what I'm doing from it.
So yeah, I just wanted to share that everything
that you said just resonated so, so deeply with me.
I'm so grateful.
I'm writing that quote.
Yeah, and I love it so much.
Oh my gosh, I'm honored.
I'm so honored by that.
I will likely shout you out in the new book with that idea.
It's fantastic.
Oh, amazing.
Oh, you just made my day.
I'm such a fan girl, you know?
Because I have-- yeah, your books were just like, man,
at a time when I needed to know about those subjects,
so very badly, like your books were there in a way
that I was like, oh, thank God this exists as a resource.
Well, thank you for saying that.
But I want to turn that into a message for your listeners,
which is, yeah, this goes back to kind
of the theme of our conversation about being more of a rebel
in my professional field, that I write publishers
the mainstream literary industry would
could say that I write for a niche audience,
that I don't write with a lot of mass or commercial appeal.
And I'm OK with that, because I don't
want to put out anything that doesn't feel like me,
that I don't believe in, that I don't think there is a market
for that people want to hear from.
And so when I get feedback like that,
it's more than just a compliment.
It's like, you know, I was right.
There was something in this for somebody.
And I would just say to any of you who maybe have art scarring
around nobody's going to like this,
or nobody's going to feel helped from this,
or nobody's going to be impacted by this.
If your intuition is telling you, this may help
even just one other person, follow that thread
and create that thing, express that thing, that you're
being led to, create or express.
Also, I would, you know, to riff off of your own quote,
I would also say, who's commercial appeal?
Right.
You know?
Like, yeah.
I was visiting a bookstore recently,
a very lovely, spumb business bookstore
that I'm just so glad places like that still exist.
And I had a connection in the owner,
and she knew about my work.
And I was looking at the book she had on her shelf
about trauma and spirituality.
And my short assessment to her is the people who read my stuff
are usually the people who roll their eyes at these people.
And I'm OK with that.
I'm really OK with that.
Yeah.
[LAUGHS]
Yeah, absolutely.
And so-- well, and what really gets me is like just so many
of the people who are in charge of the institutions
these days.
And it seems like if they are not aggressively antagonizing
the communities that they claim to be treating, which, you know,
you and I know that that's been going on with a lot of the,
you know, the so-called experts on dissociative disorders
and, you know, and also disorders in their quotes as well.
And so, you know, so I look at some of the things
that are chosen or held up as the standard.
And I'm like, I don't trust the source where this is coming from.
You know?
I don't trust even the intentions of the source
where this is coming from.
And I think so much of what you're hitting on there
is the word intention.
I mean, I can't automatically know the intention
of why every writer puts something out.
I also don't think intention is all good or all bad,
because I want to be clear that even though I have said a lot
about a lot of the institutional thinkers in my field,
I don't disparage that work.
I do think it has open doors in places,
especially institutionally where doors of need to be opened.
I'm not saying everybody writes or thinks
or leads with bad intention.
But all I know is I know when intention resonates with me.
Like I had a raky master once who,
and I don't know your thoughts on this,
but it really stuck with me.
She said, I personally don't agree with good energy
and bad energy.
I agree with does this energy resonate with me?
Mm.
And I feel that way very much about intention
that if somebody's intention for doing something
or saying something or teaching something
feels like it aligns with either my intention
or what I need to receive, that's where I tend
to really connect with someone's work.
It's not saying I completely shut off everyone else,
because I do think, again, I'm an all of the above thinker,
but that's my thoughts on it.
Yeah.
I loved also your thoughts recently.
There was a piece in the cut recently
with us talking about.
I was like, oh, I got to get into this one with Dr. Jamie today.
So I'll just say for our listeners,
because I know Dr. Jamie knows what I'm talking about.
There was a few months ago, there was kind of a hit piece
in the cut about a modality called internal family systems.
And I think Dr. Jamie and I are pretty aligned
in our feelings about internal family systems,
where I personally, I like it as a model.
I also do not think it's necessarily like the,
it's not beyond critique, and it's not like the be all and all.
But I like it as a model.
And I know there's been people in my own life
with dissociative disorders who had real difficulty accepting
what was going on because of shame and stigma,
and because of the way that mental illness has been literally
weaponized sometimes in our society against people.
And really had a hard time embracing that this was a possibility,
actually not even a possibility,
but like a necessity to deal with,
they were going to be on a path to healing.
And Dick Schwartz, his book, "No Bad Parts,"
which is about the IFS model,
absolutely created a gateway for this person to like begin
to accept their own plurality, that these were not like,
that these were, these parts are assets,
like these parts are part of us, they're valid,
they have their needs are valid,
their feelings are valid, et cetera.
So I'm so grateful to his work for that.
At the same time, it's also a model
that I think has developed like a bit of like a cult of personality
around it or like a cult of modality perhaps to be better said.
And there are a lot of people who with anything,
it's like anything is a tool.
And so if you have a hammer, which is like a neutral tool,
you could use a hammer to build a house,
but you could also use it to knock someone's kneecaps out.
And there have been, so it seems, you know,
some facilitators that have been using IFS in a way
that has not actually been helpful to their patients,
you know, that maybe is more about, you know, their own egos.
But I would love to, for you, Dr. Damien,
to talk about your thoughts on the way that that model has been viewed
in that sort of, again, the scientism of Western thought
and whether something is, you know, quote unquote evidence-based.
- Yeah, so that piece I wrote, it's called therapy is not a science
and it's a response specifically to that take down piece
in the cut about IFS, which I thought was unfair,
even though I'm a critic of IFS in a lot of ways,
because how shall I say this fairly?
'Cause I, Dick Schwartz, I will give him credit.
He has been open to have dialogue with me
about some of my criticisms of IFS in a way
that's not been pandering and so I respect him in a lot of ways.
I think, oh, we're going here.
So many of my problems with the modern day,
therapy movements, many of which are cultish or cultic,
and even by saying that, I encourage you to look up
the International Cultic Studies Association,
the International Cultic Studies Association
and see the characteristics of a cult and decide for yourself.
And I even wrote a blog once called in my therapy cult
and yeah, I have been in the EMDR world for almost 20 years
and it's culty, it's cultish in a lot of ways.
So I've benefited from it.
I'm the first to recognize that,
but I also know a cult when I see one.
I know cult thinking when I see one.
And I do think in some circumstances,
a lot of the founders of these modern modalities
who are really just repurposing a lot of ancient wisdom
that's probably my biggest beef with IFS.
And you know, something Schwarz has said repeatedly
is I just listened to my clients.
I just listened to my clients.
I love that attitude.
And who's to say we can't listen to our clients too
on helping build a model that's going to work for them?
And why is he as a male academic getting credit
for this thing that so many dissociative women
have done themselves for years?
And indigenous.
- Oh, fierce.
- So that's a big part of my criticism.
And, 'cause it is both and, I don't believe in like,
totalities in most cases, I give him an IFS credit
'cause it has popularized in the mental health field
this idea that we all have parts.
It has taken a lot of parts thinking out of the closet.
And so I'm grateful for that.
I'm definitely grateful for that.
But the piece in the cut, I think,
started with this idea of this is the damage IFS can cause.
And I don't see the portrayal so much as the modality
rather the treatment center and the clinician
that we're doing it.
- Yes.
- And that goes to an earlier part I was making
about licensing therapists.
That's not necessarily a sign that you're working
with a good practitioner just 'cause somebody
can afford all this training and pass the tests and whatnot.
And then the piece really took this turn of,
like, it's not sufficiently empirically reviewed science.
And this is what the APA says.
And with a lot of modalities, I think there is an evidence base.
It may not be the level of measureability
that's something like cognitive behavioral therapy has
'cause that is more of a cookie cutter scientific approach
to the mind.
And I said this to a friend of mine who does IFS
in discussing the unfairness of the piece
that at a certain point when we talk about healing modalities,
yeah, you can look at the quality of the science.
But you also have to look at the quality
of quite frankly customer satisfaction,
are people who are not subject to being researched
by academic institutions?
Are they reporting that this is working
and helpful for them?
And this is this element of voice to the people.
What are the people saying through their lived experience
about what is helpful?
And I will go as far to say if you look at my healing journey
and my healing trajectory,
it would have been impossible to measure
because there was no one thing that did it for me.
And so much of modern attempts at research
and psychotherapy are all about what's the intervention?
What's the dose of the intervention?
And all these other variables are just out of the way.
Dr. San Chang, who is an IFS therapist,
I've not followed their work for a while,
but something they said years ago
that really struck with me.
I cited it in dissociation made simple
is that evidence-based therapy is a colonial project
because so much of who's getting researched
in especially university-driven studies
are not black, brown, and indigenous people,
are not queer people unless the research
is more specifically tailored that way.
And people with complex trauma and dissociative disorders,
although there is a body of research to be sure,
it often does not strike me when I read it
as the kind of therapy participants or clients
I would need in my settings.
Yeah, rather the types of clients
who would go to more university-sponsored hospitals
or institutions.
So--
Yeah.
When Gordon here--
[LAUGHTER]
Well, I say that about the ACE test all the time, right?
The adverse childhood experience test,
which if anyone's not familiar with that,
it's a set of 10 questions and it asks you,
did any of these things happen to you during your childhood?
And if you marked yes, then you tally those up or whatever.
And that was based on a survey of Kaiser Permanente patients.
So we're looking at mostly white middle class suburban families
who had access to that kind of health care.
So there's nothing in there about, like, did your mom have
to sit you down and--
Right.
And all of that was done in the late '90s.
And think of how much has happened since then,
especially with political climate issues.
And yeah, that's well known as a deficit of the ACE study,
yet it still gets cited as a great big thing.
We should all be paying attention to.
Yeah.
Like, you can honor it for what it did historically
in that it advanced the conversation.
Yes, there's so much more to it than that.
Yeah.
And I still teach it as a means of just saying,
hey, look at these correlations.
This shows that trauma that happens during these years
has effects that go into adulthood, which
is what I got out of the ACE test.
But it's like, yeah, there's no question there
for like, did you have an active shooter drill
when you were a kindergartener, which is like everyone
in America at this point who's growing up as a kid now?
Or like, did your mom sit you down and have
that, you know, if you, honey, if you talk to a police officer,
you know, remember your black, so you can't talk the way
that the white kids can, you know, and those.
And those are very often a religious environment
where you were ripped to shreds for loving how you love
or identifying with genders that aren't so black and white.
Yep.
Yeah, absolutely.
All of that.
So yeah, so again, like who's evidence, right?
Who's who's who's sample size is it based on?
The variance, who's sample size, who's life?
Yeah, yeah.
So speaking of spirituality, I'm so curious also
to hear about what you've been learning
at the Interfaith Chaplaincy Institute, because I read,
you know, I brushed up on your substack this week
before signing on to this interview.
And you said something in one of your essays
that you said what you were learning there,
you were currently finding even more exciting
than anything that you could imagine
studying in psychology or trauma therapy.
So so spill the tea, I want to know what,
what's exciting you about that study?
Well, I read a, I took a really good class
at Chaplaincy Institute called integral psychology
with this marvelous professor, Yergen Schwing.
And he is both weirdly enough a Kaiser Permanente chaplain
and a student of yoga.
And specifically a student of the Indian,
the deeper Indian traditions of yoga.
And in this class in a girl psychology,
we did good study around where Western psychology
misses a big chunk of it by not looking at Eastern psychology.
And where Eastern psychology can,
like the two don't have to be mutually exclusive.
We can sit down at the table together.
And in a book we read for that course by a person
in Grant Courtwright, he dropped this amazing truth bomb,
which is Freud was a, who is considered the father
of the talking cure in modern psychotherapy.
He was a stone cold atheist.
And how much of the legacy of our field
has come from that sense of scientism
and that spirit is not relevant here.
And you did have other thinkers and leaders
who were flawed as well, like Carl Jung,
but at least he went further with collective unconsciousness
and he did have a real spiritual depth, Victor Franklhat.
So I'm not saying the field in our leaders
have been completely void of that.
Yet I do think the more we've tried to legitimize
ourselves as a science, we can lose this spiritual piece.
And not just, well, ask a client what their religious beliefs are
and what they mean to them and kind of checking off
your boxes on your assessment, yet really considering
that spiritual health for many can be equated with mental health
and repaturning horrible messaging, learn through church
can be what we need to do that can involve
both spiritual and mental health interventions.
So that's an example where things just really very much
came together for me.
And yeah, I can be both.
I am both in so many ways of my sexual woman.
I'm in all of the above thinker as I hope I've established.
And it's interesting, because growing up in the church
as I did, which were very high demand and not affirming
and taught me lies about God as the title of my book suggests,
I'm really jazzed about spirituality and God,
not necessarily institutional religion at this point.
And wanting to help people who want to reconnect with that
in a way that is shame free.
Because not only do we have a right to that spiritual healing,
it can help our mental healing as well.
So I love being in seminary.
I'm glad I have followed the thread.
I think it's making me a better therapist.
Yet I know that the knowledge I bring in as a therapist
in this particular seminary is not shot down either.
So we can all play together, folks.
- I love that.
I'm so glad that you're also just, you know,
just as someone who really likes you and likes your work,
I'm so glad to hear that you're somewhere where,
like you can be your full self
and it feels like just hearing you speak about it,
there's that like breathability,
the room for all kinds of multiple perspectives.
And I imagine that spirituality must be something
that for you is also incredibly personal
as someone with dissociative identities.
Because I'm a little curious about, you know,
what you think about dick shwarts is kind of more recent
within the last couple months coming out
and talking about how parts are spirits, you know,
because if we don't have a relationship,
and my belief is that we all are spirits
and we are spirits that are in bodies, right?
And some of us have multiple consciousnesses
that are attached to one body.
So I guess my question is like,
how would one, like how can you ignore the spiritual aspects
when we are all spirits of different sort of permutations?
- And I think in engaging in that conversation,
kind of like whose evidence I would ask a client
at their people participant, what does spirit mean to you?
What does spirituality mean to you?
Because it can mean different things to different folks.
Now I will say and dick, if you're by chance hearing this,
I'd be happy to further have this conversation.
- All right, well,
I have a special episode.
- I have a test is a deeply spiritual modality
that is just palatable enough as spirituality
for Western psychology.
Sometimes I think dick wants to go further
and maybe in this new line of thinking he is
with some of those spirituality.
And I don't know though if I necessarily agree
in every system, a person would see
or conceptualize their part as a spirit.
I think it could.
I know like in my system, I have,
I've talked about this in my work
like my four major parts that are on board with me
and I have this other part that very much feels like
the Linda's bubble around her in Wizard of Oz
or Wicked that it's the protective sheet.
Not how it's shown in the movie is like a cover
or like a facade, but my bubble has always felt like
this is this like ether of protection
that some people may see as a combination
of ancestors and guides.
And so I do think there's a definite part in my system
that I would certainly see as a spirit.
I'm not sure how I think about the others
other than they definitely have their own spirit
in a small sense.
Like my four year old part's little spirit is bright and bubbly
and she's the one who still keeps the sense of joy in me
when the world is falling down around.
So I think it's interesting to think about
but it goes back to an idea and dissociation made simple
when we talk about parts, people have every right
to language their parts and conceptualize their system
and how they see them, however they choose.
- Yes, yes, absolutely.
I wanna bring on our producer Tomi
as we're starting to wrap up at the end of every episode.
Tomi comes on to ask a bit of a deep-cut question.
So Tomi, what question do you have prepared
for Dr. Jamie today?
- Yeah, so I actually had a little bit of outside help
on this because my therapist is a fan of your work.
And given that you're well known enough
that my therapist was like, wait, really?
Like this was the first time she was excited
about a podcast that I mentioned.
- It's flattering.
- So she was curious like how you maintain self-disclosure
as such a well-known therapist?
- It's a beautiful question.
'Cause I'm passionate about guiding people
through making their decisions around self-disclosure.
I can sultanate ID courses on it.
I personally will only share something that I feel
I've worked on enough with my, it means,
like there's, I always say there's a lot I share,
there's a lot I don't share.
And the things I tend to share
and disclose publicly, like everything I've showed
on this podcast today are things that like my
kind of internal sense was like, yeah, you can say it.
You can deal with whatever blowback may come
or you can, you've talked about this enough publicly
that it's okay.
My early recovery mentor, this was in the days
before social media, she would always say something like,
don't share with the client something that you'd be embarrassed
to have out in a newspaper.
And the same thing, I wouldn't share in a newspaper
something that I wouldn't feel comfortable
having a conversation with my client about.
'Cause that's what a lot of people come to me with
if I come out about my political beliefs
or my mental health diagnosis, what if a client sees it?
And my immediate thing is that's a good question.
Are you prepared to have that conversation with your client
or your therapy participant?
And if the answer is yes, and you think it is going to help you
feel a greater degree of authentic, then go ahead and do it.
I've also written quite a bit into association,
it's simple too.
Doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing.
You could do it over time.
I dipped my toe in.
I would kind of feel out in professional spaces.
Do these folks feel cool enough for me
to use the word dissociation as it applies to me?
And as I did it enough, I built that strength muscle.
But when you're doing it with clients,
it's also knowing, don't make this about you.
It's if you and something you might share
can really advance your relationship
or has a definite therapeutic or healing benefit
disclosed in moderation.
But the key guide point is when you're doing it
with people you work with, it's never about you.
May any self-disclosure be something
that's in the service of your participant?
With that level of self-disclosure both publicly
and interpersonally, how would you say
that's affected your relationship with your clients?
So I'm in a privileged position at this point
in that any client I work with, any consultee I work with now
wants someone who has that level of transparency publicly.
At an earlier point in my career,
when I saw a greater frequency of clients
with people who may or may not be cool
with having such a public therapist,
'cause even when people may approach me for therapy right now,
at this point, it's not just a blind referral.
Most people have heard of me.
And so I do a little back and forth about,
what would it mean to you to have a therapist or a consultant
who's more of a public figure?
Does it feel like that would be a help or a deal breaker?
So that's a conversation I'm willing to have to.
Thank you.
Shout out to Kelsey for helping supply me with questions
and a little bit of a rundown on your previous work.
My words.
I love that too because at the end of the day,
I know for me as a facilitator,
I think honestly, my greatest strength is that I'm like,
I'm just on this journey too, which means I'm still learning
and I'm still questioning myself.
And to pretend that I'm on some sort of pedestal,
I have all the answers and you're gonna learn,
it just feels disingenuous.
The best groups that I think I run personally
feel like a peer study.
They feel like we're all in this together.
I'm sharing the knowledge that I have with you,
but I'm interested in learning just as much as I can from you.
And I think that's such a great attitude to have.
I wanna thank you so much, Dr. Jamie,
for appearing with us today.
What is some of the next work that folks can look forward to
from you?
What should we keep an eye out for as this podcast episode comes out?
Sure.
So, I'm gonna mention I am currently working on my book memoir
writing as spiritual practice, so probably will not be out
until 2027, but that's the next book to look out for.
Thank you for shouting out my sub-stack,
because that is a platform I am trying to build a little more
for my independent writing.
We go by the Unicorn system on sub-stack.
And I do have it set up where all of my major pieces
are no paywall, 'cause I want everybody be able
to read them and share them.
But if you do wanna subscribe and support my work
financially there you can, and I do give you some early previews
into drafts of things I'm working on.
So that's what I'm working on writing rise right now.
I'm in this process this year of,
I do have a lot on my plate with stepping away
from more of the training part, especially the EMDR,
I'm still gonna train, I'm still gonna teach,
I'd love to teach.
Yet getting away more from institutional training
is something I am unraveling right now.
Yet I hope to have even more time and space
to write the things I wanna write.
- Awesome, well thank you so much for being with us today.
And I'm gonna encourage everyone who's listening to this.
Dr. Jamie has so many amazing books you guys.
So definitely among her work there is going to be,
I would wager a title that speaks to you
that's going to help you with your own journey.
And as we are thinking about taking our own healing
and repotterning processes even more into our own hands
so that we can empower ourselves for our own transformation.
I encourage you to explore especially the expressive arts
as Dr. Jamie and I have talked about today
because it can be so very healing and integrating.
Dr. Jamie thank you for sharing your experience with us today.
It's been a pleasure having you
and we'll see you all on the next episode.
Go forth and repotterne.
Thank you for listening to the Repotterning podcast.
If you're curious about the Repotterning project,
the eight week course in mental mastery
and creative freedom that inspires these conversations
you can check out more details at the repotterningproject.com.
We run a cohort twice a year
or you can download the self-study version of the course
and get started today.
We also offer a four week course
on narrative magic and archetype titled
"Mitzen Magic Changing Your Life Through Story"
also twice a year.
If you'd like to join our community,
the Repotterning Parlor on Discord
you can sign up for $5 a month at patreon.com/therepotterningpodcast.
Thanks to everyone who makes the Re-Patterning podcast possible.
Firstly, our award winning producer,
Tomi Trembath of the Keymaster Collective Network of Podcasts.
She also produces transcending comics,
vision in the void and giant-sized violence.
Thanks also to Animation Studio Mortis and Madriacs
who created the video for our introduction,
as well as to Andrew Means
who composed and produced our theme music.
And also thanks to Al Alvarez,
who took the photos of yours truly that you see
on the cover of each episode if you're watching the video version.
And finally, thanks to you, our listeners,
who give meaning to this work.
Our greatest wish is that whatever you've heard today
inspires you to live freely
and begin creating your reality from the inside out.
Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you again soon.
[MUSIC]