254: Boundaries & Neurobiology with Juliane Taylor Shore

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 Juliane Taylor Shore about boundaries & neurobiology. 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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• Show Notes
• The Couples Therapist Couch Summary
• Transcript

The Couples Therapist Couch 254: Boundaries & Neurobiology with Juliane Taylor Shore

This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit HelloAlma.com/ATPP to learn more

Get the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/

Join the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new 

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In this episode, Shane talks with Juliane Taylor Shore about boundaries & neurobiology. Juliane is an Educator, Therapist, and Writer inspiring people to shift their relationships with self, others, and the world. She’s the Author of “Setting Boundaries That Stick: How Neurobiology Can Help You Rewire Your Brain to Feel Safe, Connected, and Empowered.” Hear how our salience network works, how our emotions & history influence our actions, how to witness yourself doing therapy, why you’re a gift to the clients you work with, and how we can work with our brains to learn how to witness our minds. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

• How a poet helped name the STAIR method
• What is the salience neural network?
• Can you train your salience neural network to support your therapeutic practice?
• How mindful awareness transforms into valuable intuition
• Juliane leads Shane through an experiential witnessing of him doing therapy

To learn more about Juliane Taylor Shore, her book, and her workshops, visit:

JulianeTaylorShore.com

JulianeTaylorShore.com/Book

You can also listen to Juliane on Episode 199 of The Couples Therapist Couch

 Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below: 

Show Notes

• 254: Boundaries & Neurobiology with Juliane Taylor Shore

• This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit HelloAlma.com/ATPP to learn more
• [0:38] Welcome to The Couples Therapist Couch 
• [1:20] Welcome Juliane Taylor Shore to the show!
• [4:25] Juliane is terrible at naming things, so her poet friend came to the rescue
• [9:37] What is the salience neural network?
• [12:53] How this relates to limited mindset
• [15:21] Can you train your salience neural network to support your therapy practice?
• [20:05] This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit HelloAlma.com/ATPP to learn more
• [21:03] How your emotional state filters into your work
• [25:10] The interpersonal biology lens - witness yourself while you're doing therapy
• [28:19] Advice for new therapists or those with a difficult emotional history
• [33:46] Juliane's personal therapy experience
• [34:45] What kind of work is Juliane doing with therapists and clients
• [37:32] Juliane leads Shane through an experiential witnessing of him doing therapy 
• 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
You can witness yourself while you are doing therapy.

00:09
Welcome 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.

00:26
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.

00:55
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. Hey everyone, welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel and today I'm speaking with Juliane Taylor Shore, therapist, teacher and author of the book, Setting Boundaries That Stick, how neurobiology can help rewire your brain to feel safe, connected and empowered. Hey Jules, welcome to the show.

01:24
Hey, Shane. Thanks for having me on. It's so great to be here. Yeah, absolutely. It's so good to see you again. I mean, you and I have been friends for years at this point. Years. I don't even know how many. I just want to mention to everybody, you were on episode number 199. So if they enjoy our conversation today, they can also go back and check out episode 199. I think that was right around the time your book came out, probably. Probably, yeah. But tell me a little bit about what's been going on since then.

01:53
Oh my gosh. well, yes. So book stuff is going great. And I'm running tons of workshops for couples and individuals on Boundary Work, which is fun. And I love I love their small, like six to eight people come. So we can actually do depth work over a 20 hour week. Oh, wow. come on then. It's so fun.

02:22
I love it and that people come having read the book. so not everybody, but a lot of the people have come having read the book. So we kind of are all on the same page and have shared language around it and drop right into really deep work around boundaries, which is awesome. So much fun. And then I am also working to help therapists training in integrative therapy.

02:52
So just to be like super clear what I mean by that. think about, I think about therapists is practicing in a few different like general ways. You've got your model folks. like folks who love one model, they do IFS and that is their model and they love IFS. And when you go to them, IFS is the main thing that happens in the room the whole session.

03:22
That's like a model focus person. And then there's most of us out there, which I would call more like eclectic. We've probably trained in a bunch of different models and are trying to figure out how to weave them together, but without much of a framework for that. And then there's our integrative therapist. That's what I am. And there we have a method, a framework that does show you how to fit the different models together.

03:51
I've been an integrative therapist for a lot of years based in neurobiology and have been training people here in Austin, gosh, for over 15 years in more informal ways and how to think like an integrative therapist. And in the last, I guess, four years made it way more formal and actually named a thing. Well, I did not name the

04:20
To be clear, I am terrible at naming stuff. No one should ask me what to name anything. I come up with convoluted names that nobody can remember. So I know this about me and I sat down with a friend of mine who was a poet and a writer. Her name is Tiffany Rose. Her poetry is amazing. And we sat at her kitchen table for many hours and I explained how I think about therapy to her and how

04:49
I think about integrative work and that I'm trying to teach this framework. And I taught her the framework, basically the overall arc of the thing at her kitchen table. And she came up with the name and it resonated so much with me. said, well, I think it should be an acronym because it is true. You're doing something pretty complex. And so putting just one name on it doesn't feel right. What if you call it the stair method?

05:17
because you use a staircase to climb to different vistas of seeing, which is part of what you're doing. And stair could stand for self-trust, which is what you're trying to help all your clients build, and integrated resilience, which is what you're telling me you're using the neurobiology to support brains in becoming more resilient and more integrated. So what if you called it the stair method?

05:45
self-trust and integrated resilience. Thank you. That's awesome. That's awesome. Awesome. Cause she sat and just listened to me riff on it and like how it is a staircase. Cause I do this activation and regulation balance, which is some of how brains change is we need both activation and regulation to be simultaneously present. And so I think of, well, here's the pieces that add the activation. Here's the pieces.

06:14
that add the regulation if you can keep your eye on both simultaneously. so between us ripping about it and how I've been thinking about it and teaching about it, it became the stair method. Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. We walk up our stairs to add activation and we hold onto our rails to add regulation and you can organize your toolbox on the staircase. Yeah. I'm training that in a public way through a company

06:42
that I partner with Therapy Wisdom. So their platform is level one and two available. So I've been teaching those live and now they're recorded so people can take them. I was really concerned about accessibility when I was thinking about putting this work out there. so partnering with Therapy Wisdom has been really helpful in terms of

07:07
getting it out there for a lower cost, having it available, even if you can't make that regular live training, what if you can't travel somewhere? What if you need to take it at night after you're done with your practice and putting the kids to bed? So making it recorded as an option of a way to take the training. So anyway, I've been really focused on that and helping therapists really think about how the way their presence in the room.

07:36
regulation and wellbeing to themselves while they're working and the space that we're holding and thinking about how to help clients bring up a lot of hard stuff, but in ways that's not overwhelming. Yeah. I imagine one of the things that's about using therapy wisdom is that it can get it out to a lot more, get it in front of the eyes of a lot more therapists who might be interested in trainings like that. Yeah.

08:04
And I was going to say, of the things I really appreciate, I went to your workshop at the NetWorker Symposium a few years ago, which was amazing. And one of things I really appreciated was how you were talking about relationships, but you were bringing in the neurobiology, you were bringing in the trauma work stuff, you're bringing in the boundary stuff. so it makes sense to me that you would be teaching about how

08:33
that integrative type of approach, kind of like being able to bring in a lot of those different things. Yeah. And that, you know, what I noticed is that when we therapists out there, I resonate with the wisdom that I keep seeing in the field is that all of us go, Oh, cool. We found a really fun thing to train in and it's good. It's really good. And we take in that information and then we bring it back into the room.

09:02
and realize, ooh, one thing, one way of working may not be enough. This wide variety of clients, maybe they need more things. And then we go to another training and we take in really good information from that, right? And we don't have a way to train our salience neural network when we're taking all these trainings.

09:29
And integrative therapy training is a way of training your salience neural network. So wait, wait, wait, what's, what's that? Totally. So the salience neural network is the way it's not located in one part of the brain. It's a vast system, a web, if you will, there's no actual web or net in your brain. Y'all it's, it, that's more like a metaphorical way of talking about it. It happens.

09:58
in lots of different parts of the brain, lots of different areas of the brain, all working together to help you notice what to pay attention to, because we need to solve a really hard problem. In the very bottom of your brain, in a part called medulla oblongata, which is a fancy, fancy brain word, but all you need to know is that it's the bottom of your brain stem, you take in 11 million bits of information per second.

10:27
Wow. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. The top part of your brain, way up at the front, the prefrontal cortex area, all of that frontal cortex has a processing speed of somewhere between five and 60 bits of information per second.

10:48
depending on how close you are to flow state. So the more you're in flow state, the faster that's working. Most of us are not in flow state all the time. So somewhere between five and 60 bits of a second. How do you know which to filter out and which up? Don't worry, you have a subconscious network for that. It's called your salience neural network. And we call it that because it tries to guess what is the salient data.

11:17
for you right now. So if you all have ever gone shopping for a car and you start thinking about, I've never driven a Subaru before, but I think I might like one. And then all of sudden you realize that there are Subarus everywhere. That is your salience neural network doing its job. And so how your salience neural network knows what to pay attention to.

11:45
is based on two pieces of data, basically. So what have you been spending your time paying attention to lately is one of its jobs. And then what does it know is emotionally relevant based on your history right now. So it mixes those two bits of information together and goes, got it. So emotional potency associated to what's happening now.

12:12
plus whatever Shane's paid attention to lately, right? And you mix that together and then all the data that's related to those things will come up, which is why, okay, have you ever taken a training and then the next week you go into session and everything looks like it's possible. You've training and network, general network. You've had the whole weekend paying attention to a thing.

12:39
And now you came back into your office and all the other tools don't even occur to you because your salience neural network is only passing up information about the thing you paid attention to recently. Yeah. I'm also thinking about like limiting beliefs. Like if you, you know, if you grew up being told you were a failure and then you're, you're as in the present, you're going through your life and you're interpreting everything in the world as though.

13:05
Oh, this is just more evidence that I'm a failure. Evidence of the failure. And that's a really potent emotional piece than the salience neural network will help you see data that reverifies that story. Totally. our clients are with this. We're with this. Right. And so I love integrative therapy and mine's not the only method out there, but mine's a neurologically based version of integrative therapy.

13:34
I like it because it helps our salience neural network understand that it's not just the training we went too lately to pay attention to. What I'm trying to help people do is can you train your salience neural network to let you know when is a brain moving closer to change? Which tools do you have in your toolbox with all the different models out there you've already trained in?

13:58
which ones of those tools would be helpful right now. And so if you organize your toolbox in a brain-based way, all of your different models are present for you in the room. And it doesn't matter which one you trained in last, because your salience neural network is now using a different set of data to show you which tools would be helpful. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, I went to this training one time. This was probably 10 years ago at this point. And it was this

14:26
woman, she was like 80 years old and she was amazing, you know, an amazing therapist, like super wise. And the training was called, uh, like choice points in couples therapy. And I feel like that's what you're, you know, at any given moment, there's an opportunity. It's like, what's that? Those books, you choose your own adventure. It's sort of like, okay, we have these choice points all the time at, you know,

14:52
at any given moment when we're working with someone, either an individual or a couple, where we could go in this direction or we could go in this direction. And what I hear you saying is part of the understanding the salience neural network is sort of understanding, being more conscious of that and being more aware of what's going to be the most helpful thing that I can bring to the moment when I'm working with these people. Right. Here's what I think. Can I tweak our language just a little bit?

15:21
Is that okay? Yeah. If we don't even have to pay attention to it because you don't get to control your salient neural network anyway. But what you can do is over time, train it. When I'm in this job, I would like you to pay attention to this, please. And it will do it for you. I see. I mean, intuitive awareness of like, Ooh, I'm an integrative therapist. So I've trained in lots of different therapies, lots of different couples, therapies and trauma therapies, both.

15:52
And ooh, this tool from Ellen Bader's work could mix with this tool from IFIO training, could mix with this tool from CBT couples therapy, could move mixed with this tool from my ACT training and it puts it all together like that for me. Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. all relevant to this choice point. Cause I think you're right on when you're talking about your choice points and couples therapy. Yeah.

16:20
There's all these moments where, ooh, we could do a thing. And so when I think about integrative therapy, I think about, can you train your brain to find the choice points? And then can you train the brain to know, ooh, what are my different options inside of that choice point? At such speed, your whole toolbox of all the different models you've trained in is available at your fingertips.

16:49
Yeah, that's great. this is all part of what you do in your training. That's right. The STIR method is actually, I have an awareness of this issue of the way the brain is filtering information. Yeah. The STIR method training program is a multi-level, like you can do it one at a time. You could dip into level one and never take another training. That's fine. But if you went all the way through,

17:15
It's three levels plus 60 hours of deliberate practice with guides. So it's quite thorough, but the whole idea is can you train your network to start doing your job for you in your treatment planning actively during experiential therapy? Wow. Yeah. Because it turns out you can, by the way, that's crazy. Successfully doing this. It's so fun. And you know so much more about the brain, but

17:45
I feel like I've heard that we're actually in control much less than we think we are. When we think that we know what we're doing and when we're working in therapy as the therapist, but so much more of that is unconscious. It's just sort of like, there's something that's, I think that's very beneficial. The more we're just tuned into being present, the more we're just sort of...

18:10
following our intuition about what would be most helpful at this moment. The more people get into their mind and their thinking brain, the more they might just be trying to use a model, especially if they're not that experienced. It becomes much more like, I'm trying to apply this model to whatever's going on in front of me, which may or may not be helpful. It's not very present.

18:40
Right? And if you train in one model and you love that, that you are training your salience neural network. Yeah. Because like, let's say I'm an IFS, I am an IFS therapist. Like I'm level three trained in IFS. So I interweave parts work into a lot of my work, but that's not actually my only parts model. I'm trained in four different parts models. So I weave those together, but even if I were only an IFS therapist,

19:05
Oh, my salience neural network has learned. Oh, when I do this job, what you want me to do is scan what they said for parts possibility and introduce parts language. Got it. That tool is in your box and I'm going to help you see it. And it feels really intuitive and flowy when you're in the room. So, the models are doing a great job of training your salience neural network for that model. Yeah.

19:32
If you're one of the therapists like me, like so many of us out there that want many different tools from all these different beautiful models that are there, we want to find a way to weave them together. If you choose not to train your salience neural network, then it will do its basic job, which is to tell you what you know about most recently and to tell you what's emotionally relevant to you. That's how you will find your tools. Isn't that wild?

20:02
Yeah. 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. 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.

20:31
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. Alma helps you spend less time on administrative work and more time offering great care to your clients. Visit helloalma.com backslash A T P P or click the link in the show notes to learn more. If I'm

21:00
in this universe acting as a therapist. That's the role I'm taking on in this relationship if I'm working with a client. Totally. You're saying yes to that role of leadership in that moment. you're saying the emotion, part of my decision making is based on my own emotional That is what I am telling you. Yeah. So what does that mean exactly? That's part of how your salience neural network works. So let's say you're in front of a couple.

21:30
and you're a couple's therapist and you're in the room, your own emotional stuff about how you felt about the last time a couple looked like that in front of you or how that member of that couple reminds you of this thing that happened when you were bullied in high school or this moment about that happened right in front of you feels like.

21:59
emotionally charged in this way that was just like the book you series you loved as a fifth grader. And also like whether that is going to start driving you in the room. Had a stressful conversation with my wife the night before and I sleep very well. You know, exactly right. Exactly right. So whatever emotional state you're in and what's relevant in your own autobiographical history as subjectively guessed by you.

22:29
subconsciously will start filtering into your work. Of course it has to. Here's the thing is that your brain is wearing history colored glasses 100 % of the time. And you and I cannot change that. And I don't care what therapy training you go into. You can never change that. You can change emotional learnings that you gained early on through

22:57
particular kinds of experiences in or out of the therapy room, both. So you can change the color of the lenses. You can train your salience neural network to look at this work in a particular way to help you filter up that stuff. But you never get to take off those glasses. You never get to disconnect yourself.

23:25
from what feels emotionally relevant to you in this moment. That's not a thing. Emotions are helping us understand what does this moment mean to me inside this context and the role I'm in. according to everything I've ever known, plus what is my goal right now? What's my hope? Plus,

23:54
How am I doing in this moment? Are there internal and external resources available to me? And all that data makes this together in one quarter of one second. And you have a feeling drives some of your decision-making process. And we don't get to choose whether or not that feeling influences us. We do have some choice, some influence, not control, some influence.

24:24
over whether or not we can put a pause between feeling and doing, whether or not we can put a pause between thinking and believing the thought we just had. We don't get to stop it. Yeah. Well, and I'm thinking about how important the sort of self as a therapist work or simply just putting it, putting it as your own personal

24:54
work as a human being, how important that is for how you show up in the room. Yeah, one of my mentors, Bonnie Badenoch, who is a lovely therapist, by the way, if y'all don't know her work, go check her out, wrote this book. She's really big in the interpersonal neurobiology world. She wrote this book called Being a Brain-Savvy Therapist Workbook, which is one of my favorite therapy

25:23
tools I've ever run across by the way. But in it, she talks about all these tenants of being an interpersonal neurobiology led therapist. And when one of our things in the list pretty far down, there was like eight tenants and seven or eight, number seven or eight was the mental health of the therapist matters. And I remember I was teaching students and in

25:51
through an interpersonal neurobiology lens, which is a lot of my training. I was teaching students and I had a conversation with Moni and I was asking her about that particular item on her list because so many students would bring up like nervousness about, I healed enough to do therapy? And we were talking about the importance of self-awareness and that if you can watch yourself while you're doing your work.

26:21
If you can witness your own mind and your own body and your own experience while you are doing therapy, you'll have much more ability to pause between feeling and doing. So I'm talking with her about all this and is this an okay way to talk about it so that the therapists I work with don't feel scared that mental health is going to like ruin their work, but do hold awareness.

26:47
that how you're doing in the moment influences your work. So pay attention, right? And she's saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great way to talk about it. Exactly. We just need to witness ourselves in the room. We're chatting about this. And she goes, wait, I put that really far down on the list? I said, yeah, it's like seven or eight, whatever. At the time I knew exactly where it was, because I taught this list a lot. And she goes, huh, I should have put that one as number one.

27:17
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, be able to like if you if the people listening took nothing away from our conversation, other than this one thing, it would be a gift of the half hour or 40 minutes or whatever you're spending with us. You can witness yourself while you are doing therapy. That is a possible thing. I know it's possible.

27:46
not just because I do it, because I'm witnessing people learning how and training and being able to do it. Yeah. And hundreds, literally hundreds of people y'all. So there's, can all do this. If you can witness yourself while you are doing therapy, the freedom that you will have in how you're moving into the room will increase exponentially. I just want to say something for

28:15
people who feel like they have a lot of stuff or people who feel like they're maybe a new therapist or people who feel like, maybe I'm too damaged to be a good therapist because I haven't done enough work or something. I would just say that having the humility to be honest and authentic about who you are is one of the most important things, no matter whether, all of us have a lot of work to do, but no matter how much-

28:44
How much you feel like you have to do. Yeah. Like that's all part of the journey. And there are people who you can be incredibly helpful for if you just even have a little bit of conscious, like the conscious, I would call what you're talking about, like consciousness, a little bit of ability to authentically become conscious of what's happening in the room, what's happening within yourself and not judging it.

29:12
but being aware of it and having the humility to be honest about the truth for yourself. And that to me, I think is the most important thing. Oh yeah. And I love that you're talking about it like this. And something I want to add in here is if you're listening and you have those anxious feelings or worried feelings, part of the message I want to have for you is that who you are,

29:43
However you came to be who you are is a gift to the people you work with. And your humanity is part of this work. And growing an awareness or like a mindfulness basically of, I can be aware of what's happening inside. I can be mindful about what's happening inside and wonder about would that serve people if I brought it into the room right now? Or.

30:11
Ooh, maybe it serves them if it's in the background more right now. Being aware of that is part of bringing your gifts into the room. Well, even going through what you're describing is a huge form of growth. You know, just being willing to experience those moments in therapy and continue working through them. Yeah. Yeah. Cause there may be moments where

30:39
All of that activation that's in my body, I was with a couple yesterday and there was this moment of activation that came up in me while I was working with someone and this person was having a lot of skepticism about their own ability to commit to a practice that we were working on. And there'd been a lot of evidence in the past, I don't commit to it.

31:11
And we were talking about what does this person need in order to say yes to this. And I had an activation come up in the room and I'm aware of the activation. And part of the activation told me a story about a couple I worked with forever ago. It was like 10 years back. And I ended up, of course, with confidentiality in mind.

31:40
bringing a story of this person into the room because we had done this practice where this person committed for three months to have their skeptical parts witness what happened when the practice just kept going. And I told the story and this client, they end up saying, oh yeah, well, if we can do it like that and the skepticism's okay and I don't have to get rid of it, then yeah, I could do this.

32:10
Mm hmm. Look, activation of like, warning. What could help? Oh, wait, this this other person found this way through. Could my past client bring their genius through through me into the room? So it wasn't even my idea. It was my client came up with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's how if we can have awareness of it, we can let the service and serve work with.

32:38
Yeah, that's great. Right, right. Yeah. And that's a much more empowering way of talking about it. Yeah. Your activation is not bad. Your activation is lovely. And I want to be clear that if we have mindful awareness, some relationship with it, who it turns into intuition. turns into all sorts of good moves potentially. Right.

33:07
And if we kind of ignore it or try to push it away or wish it weren't true that we have all this activation in the room, it's probably going to accidentally run our therapy work. Yeah. Whoops. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like there are people who are better or worse at doing therapy. It's like everybody brings them, can, can bring themselves fully to that.

33:37
Uh, experience. Yeah. I think back to my own, what's coming up for me as we talk about this is my own therapy journey and how I've worked with different folks through the years and how each one of the therapists that I've worked with from people who have been in the business 25 years, 30 years to my very first therapist, who I was his first client ever. I was in a low cost clinic.

34:06
I paid $5 a session. He was a trainee. was his very, very first client. And him just being his human self offered just as much as somebody who'd been in the church 20 years. And each one, and I think about how different they are and how each one had gifts for me in my healing. I did totally different kinds of work and they were totally different kinds of people. Yeah, absolutely. That's great.

34:36
I mean, I know we have to wrap it up soon. I know we could keep talking forever. Oh my gosh. I can keep talking forever, Shane. So you're doing a lot of the therapist training with the clients you work with. Are you primarily that kind of boundary work that you mentioned at the beginning or? Yeah, do. Well, so in my individual work, I do intensives mostly. So people come either individually or couples. I do both equally.

35:04
and like 50 50 or so split up working with one on ones versus couples. And yeah, I do. I do the stair method. I'm an integrative therapist. And so in my couples work, I'm integrating all my individual training and all my couples training or some of my individual work. I don't know. Y'all are couples therapists, but you probably see one on one people too. Doesn't your couples work influence your individual work?

35:33
Oh, 100 % for me. Right. So all these different trainings I've had and all the couples stuff, it comes together. And so I think about like, Ooh, how can we, how can we as couples therapist learn from all of these leaders in the field and then mix our own intuition and gene with it and humanity with it to create, you know, shame therapy.

36:03
Yeah. Or Jules therapy or... cool thing is like, you know, in 10 years from now, if, you know, there's a new latest thing that's amazing, you know, it can be incorporated into what you're doing. What you're already doing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So the way, the way I'm training is not actually meant to say one model is better than another. I actually don't think that. Yeah. I mean, I think there are great tools.

36:32
in lots and lots of the different stuff we have. Yeah. And can we say yes to all of it? Let's not be in competition. Let's collaborate. Yeah, I've actually been amazed. Sometimes I'll go to a training, you know, a brief, you know, couple hours, few hours training on something that I was never that I had never had any training in before. And I'm like, wait a second. This is exactly like so and so. This is exactly like the other thing. This is in order.

36:59
you know, maybe they have a couple, you know, different, a little bit different terminology or right. They have one tool you haven't heard before. Yeah, exactly. Looks exactly like everything else. Yeah. But I'm like, whoa. And in some ways I'm like, wait a second, why do we have to act like these things are so different? In other ways, I'm like, maybe this is kind of reassuring because it speaks to just how universal the human experience is in some ways where

37:26
you no matter what angle you come from it, you're kind of getting to some of the core themes, you know, all the time. Yeah. You know what I'm thinking as we land, I wonder if it would be helpful for therapists who are listening if I actually experientially led you through a kind witnessing of yourself while you're doing therapy work. Would that be interesting?

37:52
Yeah, like you mean like, right now, do it right now. Yeah, right now. Everybody listening. If you are driving while you're listening, you may want to do this. Not don't close your eyes. You might want to this part later. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds good. Okay. So here's what I want everyone to do is just to notice. Ooh, how hard is it for me?

38:20
to be kind, gentle, loving towards myself. If it's really challenging for you, I wonder if you could pick a session that went particularly well. If you have a pretty easy time with being compassionate towards you, could you pick a session that got more sticky, a hard session?

38:48
So what I want you to do is think of a therapy session where you were there doing your couple's work.

38:57
And then I want you to go stand near the doorway of that room so that you can see the therapist and the couple.

39:10
and freeze that scene so that time stops.

39:17
And then I wonder if you could just notice the possibility that that therapist is doing the very best job they know how to do in that moment.

39:34
And of course, they're struggling. Or of course, they're in joy about how their session is going. Whatever that therapist is feeling, I wonder if you could bring a little, I bet that moment makes all the sense in the world.

39:58
And then I wonder if you could notice that that therapist, like all the other therapists out there, sometimes runs into struggle moments. Of course they do. And I wonder if you could find in your heart, in your belly, in your body, in your cells anywhere, just a little tiny bit of kindness.

40:28
Just a little tiny bit of, oof, this is a hard job and oh my gosh, you are doing the best you can. And turn that energy into a color, whatever color it is for you.

40:43
and then see if it's okay to offer that color, offer that energy and send it over to the therapist in the chair.

40:57
And then just notice how you feel about the session now.

41:06
That is a practice that can start teaching you not just to witness your mind, but to witness your mind with a little bit of kindness towards yourself while you do it.

41:20
Who Shane, do you want to share with folks? How was that for you? Yeah. Well, of course, when you said, you know, if you're feeling good about yourself, you can imagine a more difficult session. So my mind went immediately to like one of the hardest sessions I've ever had. This one actually, so that perfect. Yeah. What we want to do is have the right amount of challenge. Yeah. Which was good because I wasn't feeling

41:48
really good about myself during that session. Great. And when I was imagining myself right now standing in the doorway watching that from the past, it was really meaningful for me to sort of give myself some compassion and validation for doing the best I could at that moment. And it's cool to think like I almost thought about it like when I was giving myself that color.

42:17
Yeah, what color was yours? Mine was green. Green. So you're sending green energy to that therapist from the back. love it. I was almost like maybe back when that session happened, let's say it was a year ago or something, I was actually supporting myself from this place, right? Right. Which, yeah. So anyway, it was cool. was really good to move into that compassion and validation for sure.

42:44
Oh yeah. And a lot of us, Ooh, we're tracking so much in the room. It's really hard to learn to watch yourself while you're doing therapy, but don't worry because you can start training yourself to do it by doing it after the fact and adding some loving kindness. You'll start learning how to be compassionate towards yourself actively while you're in the room. Over time. That's so cool. Yeah. And that activity I imagine somehow just impacted my subconscious mind. That's right. So now.

43:14
you go into your session later today, green energy is going to be with you in the therapist chair. Cause you just sit there. Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah. That's amazing. That's like an example of how we can work with our brains to learn how to witness our minds. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. I appreciate you walking through that. That was really helpful. Oh, good. Yeah. Good. Well, it's always amazing talking to you and um,

43:43
Last time I think it was, it's been probably a year and a half maybe. So let's make it shorter next time. Oh my gosh. I would love it. All right. Let's catch up and talk to you anytime you want me to. Okay. Great. Great. Sounds good. Yeah. Well, um, good luck with all of your training and everything you're doing and hopefully we can catch up again soon. All right. Thanks everyone for listening and thanks Shane for having me on. Yeah. Thanks Jules. I appreciate it. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma.

44:12
They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates. 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!