252: Trauma & Relationships with Dr. Janina Fisher
Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch! This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.
In this episode, Shane talks with Dr. Janina Fisher about trauma & relationships. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots, and watch it on YouTube – follow and leave a 5-star review.
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The Couples Therapist Couch 252: Trauma & Relationships with Dr. Janina Fisher
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In this episode, Shane talks with Dr. Janina Fisher about trauma & relationships. Janina is an Author, Clinical Psychologist, and Educator on the forefront in the field of trauma. Hear the history of trauma research & trauma therapy, how working with trauma compares to other types of therapy, how to help couples focus on the reactions in their bodies, what the healing process looks like from trauma, and why we have a phobia of interrupting. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:
- How has the conversation around trauma changed since the 90s?
- How does trauma work differ when treating individuals vs. couples?
- Giving away the ability to self-soothe
- Does trauma recovery have to hurt so much?
- What is the healing process as Dr. Fisher sees it?
To learn more about Dr. Janina Fisher, visit:
Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:
Show Notes
-
252: Trauma & Relationships with Dr. Janina Fisher
- This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit HelloAlma.com/ATPP to learn more
- [0:38] Welcome to The Couples Therapist Couch
- [1:18] Introducing Dr. Janina Fisher on the show!
- [4:23] How has the conversation around trauma changed since the 90s?
- [6:38] What do we know about trauma now?
- [10:04] You can't make the past go away
- [13:54] How does trauma work differ when treating individuals vs. couples?
- [16:53] How does Dr. Fisher support her clients through vulnerability?
- [20:03] Giving away the ability to self-soothe
- [21:36] This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit HelloAlma.com/ATPP to learn more
- [22:29] Dr. Fisher's collaboration with Terry Real
- [25:11] Dr. Fisher's focus on the body when communicating
- [29:01] The discipline to not get lost in the story
- [31:47] What is the healing process as Dr. Fisher sees it?
- [34:48] Does trauma recovery have to hurt so much?
- [35:29] Does Dr. Fisher address the inner child with her clients?
- [37:41] The key to couples therapy according to Dr. Fisher: combatting the phobia of interrupting
- [39:32] Check out JaninaFisher.com and her book
- This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit HelloAlma.com/ATPP to learn more
What is The Couples Therapist Couch?
This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Many of the episodes are interviews with leaders in the field of Relationships. The show is meant to help Therapists and Coaches learn how to help people to deepen their connection, but in the process it explores what is most needed for each of us to love, heal, and grow. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.
Learn more about the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/
Find out more about the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new
Transcript
Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
00:00
When we're in relationship, we look to the partner to empathize with our little selves, with our pain, with our insecurity, and then we're mad at them when they don't.
00:17
to The Couples Therapist Couch, the podcast for couples therapists, marriage counselors, and relationship coaches to explore the practice of couples therapy. And now, your host, Shane Birkel.
00:33
Hey everybody, welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel and this is the podcast that's all about the practice of couples therapy. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and the goal of this podcast is to help you learn how to more effectively work with couples and possibly even learn how to have a better relationship. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates.
01:02
Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit HelloAlma.com/ATPP or click on the link in the show notes to learn more. This week, I'm excited to share with you an interview that I did with Dr. Janina Fisher all the way back in 2020. I have really good editors these days and I just wanted them to go over this particular recording and edit it and make it as good as possible. So
01:31
I went to a trauma conference not that long ago and it reminded me of Janina Fisher because she is one of the foremost experts and educators when it comes to trauma and the way that it impacts relationships. And that's something that all of us, the more we become conscious of that, the more we can improve our life, right? We're all impacted by things that happen to us throughout our life.
01:55
and our history and the things that we experienced during our childhood really shaped the way that we see the world and the way that we show up in our relationships. So without further introduction, here is the interview with Dr. Janina Fisher. Hey everyone, welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel and today I'm speaking with Dr. Janina Fisher. Hey Janina, welcome to the show. Hi Shane, hello. I'm so excited to have you. For the listeners who may not know,
02:25
Dr. Fisher is an author, clinical psychologist, and educator on the forefront in the field of trauma. So I'm very grateful to have you here. Why don't you start by telling everyone a little bit more about yourself? I've been enormously blessed because I happened to encounter Judy Herman and Bessel van der Kolk, who are the pioneers in the trauma field. Goodness, in the late 80s.
02:52
and to get to know Bessel before he, either he or I chose trauma as our specialties. Judy Herman, I heard speak in 1989 and I was hooked and I had the opportunity to be trained by Judy Herman and then to work as a collaborator and colleague with Bessel van der Kolk. And just as this trauma field
03:22
was like a train leaving the station and beginning its journey to become the sophisticated field that it is. But you know, it's interesting that the effect of trauma on couples was kind of an afterthought. You know, back in the early 90s, we didn't think much about the impact of trauma on
03:50
long-term relationships. We worried about people in abusive relationships, but we didn't think much about the trials and tribulations of being a couple when one or both have been traumatized. And so it's exciting to be part of a field that's now recognizing, trauma has a huge impact on couples and families. Yeah, absolutely. It's amazing to hear you talk about this field as
04:19
it was just emerging kind of in the late 80s, early 90s, how far we've come in such a short amount of time. Can you say a little bit more about what you've seen over the course of time with the development? Oh, you know, it's amazing. Back in 1989 and in the early 90s, we had this belief, which is really a belief that comes from Freud, that if we just got people to talk about what happened to them.
04:49
that it would all resolve. And then we found that it didn't. And I remember Judy Herman talking in 1989 about the fact that inviting traumatized people to share what had happened to them was actually making many of them worse. In the first decade of the trauma field, we were focused on helping people tell their stories. And then,
05:20
Bessel Lander Kolk had this crazy idea, the body keeps the score. And I remember people actually coming up to me, cause I was in Boston and saying, stay away from that crazy man. has this theory. And then he set out to prove that he wasn't crazy, that it was true. And the field
05:47
began to totally revolutionize from being about the narrative retelling to a field focused on how do we change the way trauma is imprinted on the body, on the nervous system, on our emotional lives. And it's now become such a sophisticated field because we really work with the body and the mind.
06:17
we really work with the feeling memories rather than the events. Wow, that's what an incredible journey to to be a part of. I'm curious, what are some of those things that we do know now about trauma and the treatment of trauma that are really helpful for people or you know, that have changed over time? Well, what we know now
06:45
is that the mind and the body remember more of the non-verbal elements of overwhelming experiences. And we think that that was adaptive because back in the days of the cavemen and women, know, thinking takes time. So if you have to think each time you leave the cave,
07:11
Oh, what's going to be awaiting me today? Should I be looking out for mountain lions? Should I be looking out for predators of other sorts? That takes time. If you walk to the mouth of the cave and your body tenses and your heart starts racing, you're immediately reminded to be very careful when you go out there. So we think that this was an
07:40
evolutionary development that improves survival, but it has a terrible cost for human beings because after a traumatic experience, we're sensitized to everything that has any even slight resemblance to the situation or the details of what happened.
08:11
So, you know, I'm thinking of former clients, a woman who was triggered every Sunday afternoon. And when I asked her what was special about Sunday afternoon when you were growing up, she said, oh, my father was a big Pittsburgh Steelers fan, but we spent the day, every day we spent Sunday in a state of fear.
08:40
Because if the Steelers lost, we were all going to get beaten, including my mother. Oh my gosh. And so every Sunday she would feel suicidally depressed, or everything her husband did or said would set her off. And she didn't know why until she made that connection. She wasn't remembering the events. Her body was remembering Sunday is not a safe day.
09:10
Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. Or a man I was seeing who got very, thought he had seasonal affective disorder because as soon as the California weather got cool and cloudy, which is kind of the worst that it gets, he would start to become very, very depressed. And then when I asked him, what was special about cool and cloudy weather when you were growing up?
09:39
He said, oh, well in Michigan where I grew up, cool and cloudy weather meant snow, rain, and it meant we were trapped in the house with mom. Mom was his abuser. So 30 years later, it's just a little cool and cloudy outside, but he feels overwhelmingly depressed. And he assumes that it has to do
10:09
with something in this current environment. So you know, that has a huge effect on couples because they think it's each other. Right. It's these body memories. Yes, that's, that's such a good point. Our brains sort of experience the stress and then we try to, they make up stuff about the present situation about why I'm feeling this way. Exactly. Exactly. We look for whatever.
10:37
is the best explanation for what we're feeling. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I think as couples therapists, it can be very difficult sometimes to, I think it's such an important part of the work to help people make that connection because it's no longer about who's right or wrong or who's a bad person or who's doing what to whom. It's about, look, of course you're, of course you feel this way when you're in this situation.
11:06
normalizing that and making it feel like the more we can understand this about each other, the better we can handle these situations. Right. And what I try to do, because I think initially it's very hard for embattled couples to have empathy for each other. So what I do is I say, you know, the problem is not either of you. It's the trauma. It's the past.
11:35
Right. So I try to get them to ally as allies in the fight against the traumatic past. That's great. You guys didn't ask for what happened to you. You don't ask to be triggered years and years and years later. Your common enemy is the trauma. Yeah. And because that's something that I found, it's interesting, something
12:04
I share in common with Stan Patkin, with Terry Real. One of the first things we do is to challenge whatever the story du jour is that the couple's bringing in. Taking them out of that story rather than trying to get them to behave better within the story. Yes, that's great. Right. It gives them a whole different framework for having a
12:33
having the conversation because having the same old conversation is always going to make them feel stuck probably. Absolutely. And having the same old conversation in the presence of the couples therapist is agonizing for the couple and agonizing for the couples therapist. Right. Oh yeah. Absolutely. One thing that happens a lot of times is that people are like, well, this isn't about my past. don't want it. I don't need to talk about that. Or I've already worked through that or something.
13:02
Why is it that people do that? And I say to them, you may have worked through it, you may have dealt with it, but it's still in your body. you've had, you know, I literally say this, say, unless you've had a brain injury or brain surgery, you can't make the past go away. And there's nothing like marriage to trigger those feeling memories. Right.
13:33
Absolutely. And so, well, this is great. I'm so grateful that you were moving into talking about couples. Do you do some of the same kind of, or I don't know if you do, but would you recommend that we can do some of the same kind of trauma work that you might do with an individual in couples therapy, or would that look different? I think with couples, it looks a little different. I mean, depending on the couple.
14:01
Because, well, in my way of thinking, the first thing I have to do with an individual or a couple is to disrupt the pattern that they've developed, whether it's the story, whether it's a particular habitual automatic reaction. I first have to disrupt the old pattern and get them curious. I have to teach them to understand
14:31
trauma affects us. I actually never ask about what happened. So I'm really trying to get couples because most people, most human beings, don't want to think about what happened. So I find it's actually easier that I don't care if they tell me what happened. It's fine if they do, but I don't need them to talk about what happened.
14:58
I just need them to be aware of how it's affecting them moment to moment. That's a much easier sell. And again, it doesn't help to help to get somebody to be vulnerable when the partner is not ready to be empathic. And that's often a problem, right? Where, because ideally you'd want one partner
15:28
to be able to share their pain and the other partner to be supportive and empathic. But after years of battle, that's a big leap. It takes time to be able to empathize with each other and be there for each other. So when you're working with an individual, for example, part of what you might be doing is moving them into that vulnerability eventually.
15:55
But if we're working with couples, we have to be very mindful of whether their partner is going to be supportive or compassionate or empathic with them if we do that. Right. And you know, I also, I'm kind of an outlier in a way in the field because I don't think the emphasis on vulnerability is helpful to people.
16:23
Because trauma is about being made to be vulnerable against your will. And so I believe that it actually helps our trauma survivors if we don't hold that as a goal. Because even if I'm not verbalizing it, if in my mind I'm thinking, come on, you got to go deeper, they're going to feel that pressure. I can't hold that agenda because that's too much like what they've already been through.
16:53
Oh, this is great. So tell me more about how you are thinking about your work with people. know, obviously we're sort of scratching the surface here, but I'm thinking about like emotionally focused therapy, for example, which is sort of guiding people into a deeper connection with their own emotions that they're feeling and helping them to not just feel them, but express them in a way that's more personal to them.
17:23
Or, you know, I think they would probably use words like vulnerability, you know, moving them into the vulnerability, something like that. But say a little bit more about how if you think your work, the way you work is a little bit different than that or. Yeah, it's interesting because Sue Johnson and I did a workshop together in Canada a couple of years ago. And so I learned much more about how she works with trauma as a result, because she actually
17:53
is careful not to take trauma clients too much into the vulnerability. So she's much more likely to help the traumatized partner say, I'm sorry, it's too painful for me to talk about this right now. So which is still sharing emotion, but it's not emotionally focused in the way that we usually think.
18:22
So she calls it assessing risk. So you really make interventions much, much smaller. You make sharing your inner world much easier for the traumatized folks. And I see how she does it in this very masterful way. She's not asking for vulnerability.
18:51
she's asking for honesty, right? Which is different. And, she's focusing on empathy for self because, know, I think this is human. We've all, we've all lived this story as human beings. When we're in relationship, we look to the partner to empathize with our little selves, with our pain, with our
19:20
insecurity and then we're mad at them when they don't. As opposed to starting with empathizing with ourselves like yeah this is tough right? Right. Instead I want my partner to say yeah it's tough honey and that's really the to me the crux of the challenge in a relationship.
19:47
It's much easier to be self-soothing if you're the only person in the room. If there's somebody else in the room, you want the other person to do the soothing. Yes, yeah. Right? Right. And I think a lot of times it ends up feeling like I'm waiting for my partner to be understanding with me before I can feel okay, which is sort of giving away some of my ability to self-soothe. Right.
20:15
And I, you know, I actually, I, I empathize with people who hate that term because, because I think I don't like it either, but I'm self soothing, but I, but I use it because there, don't have a better term. It's really healing our little wounded selves. That's right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think it's about, uh, it's, it can be very empowering.
20:44
you know, that I'm not waiting for my, cause, cause I think oftentimes, you know, my, my partner could walk in and she's having a really bad day. I could take it very personally just because it's her, her, she's having some sort of trauma reaction to what happened to her that day. And, um, it would be very easy for me to take it personally, but I think, you know, part of what's so important for couples is just because she's having a bad day doesn't mean that I need to be defensive or critical or
21:14
You know, I just need to breathe and take care of myself first. Right. And probably the secret to a happy marriage is one person's having a bad day and the other can still have a good day. Yeah. We have to take turns. Building a private practice can be challenging. Filing all of the right paperwork is time consuming and tedious. And even after you're done, it can take months to get credentialed and start seeing clients.
21:44
That's why Alma makes it easy and financially rewarding to accept insurance. When you join Alma, you can get credentialed within 45 days and access enhanced reimbursement rates with major payers. They also handle all of the paperwork from eligibility checks to claim submissions and guarantee payment within two weeks of each appointment. Plus, when you join Alma, you'll get access to time-saving tools for intakes, scheduling, treatment plans, progress notes, and more in their included platform.
22:13
Alma helps you spend less time on administrative work and more time offering great care to your clients. Visit helloalma.com backslash a TPP or click the link in the show notes to learn more. So you and I were talking before we started recording and I was excited to hear you're going to be doing some workshops with Terry real. And I'm curious, what are the,
22:42
some of the similarities or differences in the way that you work with trauma, or if you wanted to say a little bit more about that. I'll be able to say more once Terry and I do our first workshop. But from what I can see of his work, and you know more because you've been trained by him, you know, both of us really disrupt and challenge those entrenched patterns.
23:12
that the couple presents with. And then Terry really asks them to confront their own vulnerability and to share it with each other. Is that a good description? Yeah, think, yeah, depending on the situation, yeah. Both of us are challenging, but I think in different ways. And I think it will be fun because
23:40
You know, there's this similar idea that you can't convince people to change something. You've got to disrupt the, I mean, I think that's actually an old idea in the family therapy field. Whereas what I do, so Terry's much more emotion focused and much more focused on confronting what the events that happened. I'm much more focused
24:10
on the body. So I teach couples to stop to get out of the story and just focus on how their bodies are reactive to each other. So you know, so I might say to partner A, as you get ready to tell partner B about these feelings you're having, what do you notice in your body?
24:38
Are you relaxed? Are you open? Are you tense? You know, is your jaw tight? And partner B, as you're preparing to listen to what partner A is gonna say, what's your body doing? Is it tensing? Is it bracing? Because so often we never get past partner A having a feeling he or she wants to express and
25:06
partner be starting to defend before the words have even come out. Right. So when I get them to focus on the body and I don't ask them to relax, I just say, just notice. Right. And, you know, this is kind of a little bit of Harville Hendricks mixed with a little bit of the body keeps the score. I asked the speaker, I say, as you're speaking, notice your body.
25:35
Because if you're tense, those words are going to sound different. So just notice. the noticing usually gets that partner to relax the body a little bit. Partner B, notice, are you open? Can you hear the words before your reaction? just listen and track your body rather than getting caught up.
26:04
in thinking about the words. And so often when we get rid of the words, and sometimes I just say, let's eliminate all the words and just notice as you're sitting here together, what's happening in your bodies. And I ask each one to describe. you know, what's how I'm thinking of a couple actually right now. And she would describe, I feel tense.
26:33
I feel this wall and then I would turn to her husband and when you hear those words, what happens in your body? And he would say, my wall goes up too. And then I would turn to the wife and when he describes his wall coming up, what happens in your body? And she would say, my wall just got thicker, okay.
27:00
husband what happens in your body when you hear your wife say her wall gets thicker and What would happen we just go back and forth like that no other words other than describing their bodies and then one or the other of them would Feel some sadness come up Often it was the husband and he would say
27:29
I'm starting to feel some sadness coming up, know, I'm feeling some, lump in my throat. I would ask the wife, what happens in your body when you hear him describe those sensations of sadness? And often she'd say, my wall gets thicker, but if he was able to stay with the sadness in a few minutes, she would begin to feel her sadness. And then they would start to feel more.
27:57
As soon as they talked even about the weather, they'd be fighting again. But if they just focused on their body responses to each other, they actually got to the sadness of being so much at odds and the wanting to be closer. Yeah. What a wonderful way of getting them away from the content. Yeah. It sounds like you really, really need to slow them down when you're doing that.
28:27
And you have to be, you know, a little bit, I think, like Yamago, you have to really adhere to the model. you've got to stay with it because it's so easy as a therapist. If she says, my wall just got thicker because I don't trust his crocodile tears. If she says that, we're screwed.
28:54
I've got to really hold them tightly in this frame, just body sensation, not interpretation, right? We're getting past all the interpretation down to the very basic. What's happening in the body? Cause all the rest of it comes from that. Yeah, that's great. And I think as therapists, uh, it sounds like, uh, well, the way you're talking about it, we have to be very directive.
29:23
you know, because it is so easy, particularly with couples, I think, for us to get off track on the story, you know, start going along with some part of the story they want to talk about. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, so it takes a lot of discipline and ability. It might feel a little bit confrontational. Even as you're being very compassionate and loving, you're saying,
29:51
look, we're not going to talk about that right now. I want you to stay with these feelings that you're having. And you know how I do that. I say, pause, I do this pause for a moment guys. You can do this for free at home. As long as you're paying me the big bucks, we're going to do it differently here. That's great. And I remember I had a couple in which the husband was a psychiatrist and he really fought me on that.
30:21
He's, well, the purpose of therapy is for the patient to be able to share his or her feelings. And I'd say, yeah, feelings are great. But right now you guys are sharing opinions. Right. Well, I'm feeling she's cold and distant. And I have to say, well.
30:50
That's an opinion, right? How is that cold, distant, you know, perception making you feel? Well, I don't like it. That's what happens with couples. It's, you know, that's where, where emotion focused therapy is so helpful because this idea that, that we got to get to something below the words. Right. So crucial. Yeah.
31:18
So the is a safer place to go than the emotions for most couples. Yeah, that makes sense, right. It's very much about just being aware of what's going on for you. Right. Instead of having to interpret it or something. Exactly. Well, so I'm curious if you could say a few words about, you you were talking earlier about this, you know,
31:46
And I don't know if you'd agree, I would say we all experience some sort of trauma as, you know, growing up in our families, every human being. And so this plays out in our current relationships, in our present day life. What is the healing process as you understand it? you know, you're describing helping people be aware of what they're feeling, of what's going on in their body, and then what's gonna, what is the goal for you? Or how do people begin to feel lasting change after going through this process?
32:16
Well, this is what I wrote about in my book, Healing the Fragmented Cells of Trauma Survivors. I believe that the healing comes through our ability to empathize with and attach to our wounded child selves. I actually don't agree that most
32:44
Children experience trauma. I think the vast majority of children experience hurt. They experience rejection. They experience what feels like abandonment. And then there's traumatic abandonment. But that's another story. Traumatic abandonment is your mother leaves the house and doesn't come back for four days. There's nothing to eat in the refrigerator.
33:14
So I think we have to, I mean, I'm part of a generation who fought to have trauma recognized as more than hurt. So for me, it's very important that we differentiate abuse from dysfunctional hurtful parenting. Yeah. I appreciate the way you're putting that. But whether we've had dysfunctional hurtful parenting,
33:43
or whether we've had traumatic abuse, we still have wounded little selves that need healing. belief is that when we heal those little selves inside, we're able to achieve what Dan Siegel calls earned secure attachment. We have the ability to feel safe in relationship like people who've had real
34:13
healthy, secure attachment as young children. But we've earned it, often the hard way, through therapy, through healthy relationships, through parenting our own children, and through healing our little wounded children inside. And I think, that's a much gentler way, I've always had trouble since the early 90s with this idea that
34:42
trauma recovery had to hurt so much. I just thought it's unfair. It seems really dumb that somebody who suffered has to suffer again in order to heal. So I've always been on a quest to find gentler ways of healing. That's great. And so I feel like I was able to find that and write about it, which was not easy.
35:12
in my book. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm going to put a link to the book in the show notes. So people should definitely check that out for sure. When you're talking about, maybe you didn't use this term, but the inner child parts of ourself. Do you work with that in your therapy work with people? Absolutely. I've integrated a number of different models.
35:40
I integrate internal family systems with a hypnotic ego state techniques and techniques from sensory motorcycle therapy. But it's a parts approach based on the idea that we all have parts, but trauma causes those parts to become more rigid and more disruptive to our lives.
36:11
Great. But certainly I remember thinking years ago, I remember thinking this idea of being a fully integrated person, who is that integrated? Right. Right. And I think such a big part of it is that compassion or empathy for ourselves that we aren't going to be perfect. We're never going to be fully integrated and that's okay.
36:41
Exactly. Exactly. I always tell people a grown up without child parts is an incredibly boring person. Don't worry about growing up all your young parts. Just think about healing them so they're not suffering and causing you to suffer. Yeah, that's great. Well, I'm excited to, uh,
37:07
I'll be at the network or symposium. So I'll, I'm going to have to go to your presentation with Terry real. And I'm excited because he, cause he does, he does a lot of the inner child work in the couples therapy that he does. So I'm really interested to see some of the similarities or differences and things like that. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. I know it'd be great. I'm going to win. It's going to be our test drive. So it's going to be new to us as well as to you.
37:37
Great. Yeah. So any, any last thoughts as we begin to wrap up here about all the things we've talked about today? I, you know, I always think that's the key and even couples therapists who are, who are generally comfortable with being active that to me, the key is not letting people exercise the same muscles that aren't working, tell the same story.
38:07
that is causing more pain in our, we're so trained to be good listeners. And I think it's very hard to be comfortable interrupting people, not letting them keep replaying the same songs over and over. And I think Terry is very good at not letting that happen. Stan Tatkin is very good at not letting that happen.
38:36
But I find the biggest challenge for my students and colleagues is the, what I call the phobia of interrupting. Yes. Is like learning to be unafraid to interrupt people when they're hurting themselves or their significant others. Oh yeah. I think that's such a good point that you make. And I think that can be such a challenge for us as therapists. And I think that
39:04
having practice with it so that we do feel like we can do it in a compassionate way and a loving way with the clients we work with and realize that even if it feels like we're interrupting that we're doing it because we're being helpful to them. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Janina. I'm so grateful to have you on the show here and I'm going to put your book in the show notes. Some of the other things we talked about your website.
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anywhere else that people can find you? My website I would say is probably the major place they can find me. And also by Googling. Great. Because nowadays, know, everything you do is online. My grandchildren, when they want to know where I am, they check Google or my website. That's great. Yeah. And I noticed there are a few, at least a few videos
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of you on online that were really helpful. If you talking about your work. Yeah. On YouTube. Great. Great. Thank much. This was such a pleasure. Yeah. Thank you again. Hopefully we can catch up again at some point in the future. I'll come up to you at the network or symposium and say hello. Absolutely. Do that. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates.
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Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit HelloAlma.com/ATPP or click on the link in the show notes to learn more. And thank you again, everybody. This is Shane Birkel and this is The Couples Therapist Couch podcast. It's all about the practice of couples therapy. I hope you have a great week and we'll see you next time. Bye everybody.