Episode 71: Pursuing Healthy Happiness X 2 with The Therapy Twins

0:24

Joan and Jane, also known as the therapy twins are retired therapists who want to help you overcome the stigma of mental illness and laugh your way to a healthy and happy life. You're gonna wanna hear this one and you're gonna have a few belly laughs along the way. Welcome Joan and Jane.

Melissa: 0:49

Joan and Jane, a k a, the therapy twins. Welcome to the Pursuing Uncomfortable

Joan: 0:54

Podcast. Thank you so much. Wonderful

Melissa: 0:58

to be here. I have been looking forward to this interview for so long. I can't even tell you your website. I can't get off of it. I mean, there's so much great stuff on there and I just wanna get into it all. I love that you said anything. So can we just jump right in the middle of stuff? Absolutely. And go from

Joan: 1:21

there. Here, let's do that. Absolutely.

Melissa: 1:24

Awesome. Well, do you wanna tell a little bit about yourselves as we begin? What you're doing today, what you've been doing? Oh,

Jane: 1:31

whatever stretch Today we're actually happily retired, but years ago I'm the younger twin. I followed Jane into nursing in right into psychiatric nursing. She became a nurse practitioner. I followed her later into. and she retired and I followed her into that. So we also are authors and we came out with our own mental illness because we wanted to break the stigma, not only out there, but more importantly to us. At the time, within that profession, there was quite a bit of, you know, something with the eyes. You just didn't feel as welcome. Mm-hmm. So to break that

Joan: 2:06

stigma within the profession as well,

Melissa: 2:10

I love. And on your website, what I keep going back to is the page that has books and booking and all of these quotes that you have on there. I was a victim, but after my victimhood stop, I became a bully. The family used to call Joan the Viper. I'd rather be physically assaulted, then be assaulted by your words. Oh my gosh. There's just so much. Where do you wanna start? Well,

Jane: 2:39

that's so funny. We must be in tune with this interview because this morning my ex-husband called and um, I repeated that phrase that you don't remember that you and Jane said that you would rather be assaulted with a baseball bat than listen to my words. And yeah, I guess he remembered as well. And Jane was talking about a quote, and we'll start with, you know, I hear the part where hurt people, hurt people. I heard that one before. Mm-hmm. But Jane said unless, uh, there was a quote

Joan: 3:07

that's, what was that quote? Which one? There's so many that

Jane: 3:10

said that Unless you get. Deal with it. You're gonna cut somebody. I didn't make you bleed unless you,

Joan: 3:16

um, if you don't heal your own wounds, you're gonna bleed on people that didn't cut you. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that one was a little bit, you know, in my face profound. Um, because for sure, you know, Joan words, I just remember because she was also, uh, loud, the louder twin. Let's say I should have been on Broadway. And, and, um, and so her words hurt so much, and so John and I, we both felt it, that whatever she said to us felt like knives cutting or something like that. And I came to another realization this morning as I get older is, um, well, AA says you spot it. You got it, huh? So, you know what's, you know a lot, there's a lot of information out there that everyone's reality is whatever they've thought about and could fathom and all of these kinds of things. And, and so,

Jane: 4:10

you know, with aa, you spot it. You got it.

4:12

If

Joan: 4:13

I, if I thought Joan's words were so hurtful, I have to start thinking about myself. Have I had words that are hurtled towards other, and of course I know I have, but. Involved Joan. I thought, you know what? Sometimes my voice is out quiet, but I do say something kind of bite verish. It's a little passive aggressive. So, you know, I like to own up to those kinds of things because remember, it takes two to tango. You know, we talk about that a lot, and

Melissa: 4:42

we were talking about that this morning as well. In my work as a pastor, I was fortunate at the very beginning of my first post seminary church to have been sent away for training in not sent away. I mean, I'm glad the sentence continues after, but I was sent away for training in emotional family systems, and when you said unless you heal your own wounds, you're gonna continue that hurt. That bleeding onto others who didn't have anything to do with it. And that is the basis of that work that everything is generational. It comes from our families and our upbringing, that our contexts, our basic emotional unit isn't ourselves, but the family we were born into. Yes, we inherit all of those things and healing oneself, not only heals oneself, but can heal a family. I wanna jump into that and get your all's take on

Jane: 5:43

on that. Well, we, we all been like to, um, make

Joan: 5:46

analogies with medical I,

Jane: 5:49

uh, ailments. So when you were saying that, what I

Joan: 5:51

thought of was, um,

Jane: 5:53

wow. I had such a thought it was, oh, well, I'll just go ahead. I, I'm gonna

Joan: 5:59

say one thing about it. I'd love what you completely found, you just said. If one person in the family changes, the others have to actually change cuz they're kind of in your like, utter system. And um, sometimes they change for the worse of course, but a lot of the, a lot of the times they change for the better. And, and that doesn't mean that you are the only one inspiring these changes because when one person changes, the other changes and then that sets off, uh, another chemical reaction and. The whole family can start to heal.

Jane: 6:34

Oh, I remember. Um, fat cells, you know, people. You know, you know how when twins are

Joan: 6:40

adopted and they're in two separate places, they're often, they often have big

6:44

similarities

Jane: 6:45

as well, but your fat cells are usually developed by age three and talk about a family inherit thing of what's going on. So when people say, oh, but I got this, I, uh, you

Joan: 6:56

know, I got it from my mother or my father, sometimes you got it, yes. Through

Jane: 7:00

genetics, but sometimes you got it through what were you eating

Joan: 7:04

and doing? Mm-hmm. and thinking

Jane: 7:06

about back then. Mm-hmm. So we do believe families have to be treated sometimes

Joan: 7:12

instead of just that individual person coming to see us or they used to come see us. Is that a common

Melissa: 7:19

belief in practice in the mental health, psychological profession?

Joan: 7:24

Well, I know we're taught it in school, whether or not, um, all the egos in the room, myself included, that might go into practice. Um, believe it. I, I think that at the core, we all do. Therapy is so much about exploring that person's, uh, view of how they were raised and to get other people's views on that. When you bring other, uh, sibs siblings in or parents or whatever, it's very, very interesting. So I think because we all explore that we must find in important.

Melissa: 8:00

Yeah, for sure. What do you think are some common misconceptions about mental health in.

Jane: 8:06

I think a lot of mental health co well comes from trauma and we can rewind back to when we were psychiatric nurses in the early eighties and those, uh, brilliant psychiatrists at the time were exploring

Joan: 8:20

all trauma in

Jane: 8:22

depth at almost ad nauseum. And the people that had been inpatient here had to fail three other inpatient hospitalizations and all medicine. All therapies they had to fail, then come to here, which was

Joan: 8:36

world, um,

Jane: 8:38

research and come to find out the D s M, that Bible that we use to diagnose and label people.

Joan: 8:44

Unfortunately. Um,

Jane: 8:46

in the beginning when that first came out, it actually said even schizophrenia was a human

Joan: 8:52

reaction to

Jane: 8:53

trauma. Now it doesn't have to be abuse, it could be a chemical trauma. Mm-hmm. that your mom mm-hmm. Jane was just talking about thalidomide, um, the medicine that women were given and then people were born with

Joan: 9:04

horrific. Um, birth defects. Birth defects. So I don't recall what the point was. Well, that we're always looking for a trauma behind. Yes. What's being expressed emotionally? Excuse me. Even, you know, in psychiatry, you're always looking at, um, blame the mother. Right. Was the old-fashioned thing. Um, but it didn't come from just, you know, I don't like women. I hope because, um, you know, we are the ones that gate earth, there is an exchange of dna. Now we're allowing men in this picture where the sperm has a lot of influence as well. And then, you know, what mommy and daddy said or did is gonna have an influence, so, I don't remember where our point was going either. So well first blame the mother first LA after that. We

Jane: 9:53

can blame other numbers. Sure. Of family as well or are outside when really in psychiatry, what our schooling said, that if you're not already in therapy,

Joan: 10:02

get yourself some therapy because you don't wanna go into being a practitioner

Jane: 10:07

and have your own baggage keep coming up. You wanna check that? So we had already had therapy or we're

Joan: 10:13

probably still in it. I was definitely still in it. Yeah. And I, we

Jane: 10:17

found it really, really helpful because you really want in that session to go full circle as to where did that come from. And you want that person to recognize it. Cuz 50% is already done now. You don't have to study, you already got 50%

Joan: 10:34

of your homework. That's wonderful.

Melissa: 10:37

Can we talk about trauma for a minute? Because, you know, when I hear trauma, I tend to discount my own experience. Mm-hmm. because I didn't have, I wasn't sexually assaulted, I wasn't, um, physically assaulted in other ways. I didn't have these horrific experiences that come to mind when I think of trauma. So I tend to discount anything else that might have happened in my life because I didn't have that. But I think trauma. You know that's a word that we use and misuse a lot. Yes. These. What are we talking about when we say trauma? You know,

Jane: 11:17

let's get out of the profession for a minute, but, but Jane can do that portion of it. I wanna go in the profession in one of my, um, papers, advanced papers had to do with that and how are you gonna diagnose it? So I, um, from Connecticut, but

Joan: 11:32

from New Haven, Connecticut. Where, um, there was just a lot going on between, uh,

Jane: 11:38

poverty and racism and hate and a lot of congestion and a lot. Mm-hmm. So I went to

Joan: 11:45

each hospital, whether it was a regular hospital

Jane: 11:49

or a psychiatric facility offsite, found out some things for trauma, could include sudden loss of a job. You, if you were a man and the person you were with happened to give.

Joan: 12:02

Get pregnant with your

Jane: 12:04

child. And that woman chose to have an abortion and you didn't want that. Boom, it, it qualified that man for P T S D. There were other things. Mm-hmm. um, you lived through a hu horrible storm. You became homeless. Mm-hmm. and, uh, so many people became homeless. So, um, a lot o of other things. Emotional abuse, people don't know how to even identify it, but long term, that is extremely.

Joan: 12:30

and it's not so much always exactly what happened to you because mm-hmm like 10 people can touch the same doorknob and only eight people get, get, come down with the flu, you know, and we look at why is that? And gee, the immune system might have something to do with it. Same thing with the traumas. You know, why did 10 women or children. Um, get assaulted somehow sexually and nine of them have meet the criteria for P T S D, but one of them, it kind of didn't happen fully. Why is that? So what we find is, Like the immune system. Did we nurture that body to have a very healthy immune system to try to attack all this stuff? Did we nurture that child, you know, for, you know, was it a full term baby? Was the mom healthy, et cetera. Because you know, one of the things was, we were looking at pre, during pregnancy, was there a trauma that could have caused that schizophrenia, for example. You know, so it's not so much what happens to us. It's how were we raised, how were we raised to deal with this, and did the a

Jane: 13:51

part of that

Joan: 13:52

brain only let in a little tiny dot of the trauma that was happening, or was that grain healthy enough? Or some people think this is a spontaneous thing, was healthy enough to close that door a little bit and didn't get all.

Devon: 14:09

Hi, I wanna take a quick moment and tell you about my mom. She's an amazing mom and an amazing podcast host, isn't she? She's also amazing at helping people to understand and manage anxiety and to build a strong spiritual practice. She has online courses, books, and a lot of free resources and downloads to help you live in amazing life. So please check out Light Life and love ministries.com Edge, our YouTube channel. Lily started the show notes.

Melissa: 14:37

You know, I read an article about that recently about a man that's working with refugees over in, in Western Europe and his work is taking these people off of the boats and saying, wow, you are a hero. Look at what you've done good, what you survived. You are amazing. What a heroic act you did. In the hope that framing that experience in that way changes their perception of it and thus, uh, of keeps a lot of the trauma from developing in

Jane: 15:15

them. And that's, I love that is actually really true because unfortunately as human beings, we have to be validated and oftentimes say two sisters, were both molest. One sister's validated that that's true. The other sister

Joan: 15:32

actually was living, say with their,

Jane: 15:34

uh, extended family and said, that never happened. The one that we're, we're, we're denying that something happened or it's something you witnessed isn't true, then they don't fare as well. It's really horrible. The other thing that really helped going back to the eighties where we. Is bringing that person mm-hmm. who has had trauma in their life or witnessed trauma in their life, bringing them to normal, uh, normal activities, whatever that is. But eating, uh, baseball games. Um, aa, um, a Broadway play drive, driving. Yeah. Uh, out camping, A ski trip. We did all of that with the, the people that were labeled as so mentally ill, and they got better over time. and what happened in the late eighties is they took that away. They viewed that as not necessary. You're gonna stay in the hospital, you're gonna get medication, breast

Joan: 16:29

therapy, we used to call it hallway psychiatry,

Jane: 16:32

uhhuh, And um, they don't, there, it's a revolving door nowadays. So, you know, we call it, oh, it's a mental health crisis. Is it? I mean, it used to

Joan: 16:41

work, but over a longer

Jane: 16:42

period of time and more of a community. That we call the Zebra Effect. We used to call it back not knowing anything about zebras, but we liken it to one. Zebra's gonna get it from the lion, but they don't always die. and how come what happens with that zebra? What I saw is the herd surrounded that zebra to nurture that zebra. Mm-hmm. They didn't say, pick up your bootstraps and get back out there. I know you're bleeding and every animal in the jungle's gonna get ya. But yeah, no, they didn't say that. So we view it as a weakness. Hmm. What's wrong with you? And the minute we diagnose, we're labeling. The minute you label, you separate from community, whew. I gotta take some air.

Melissa: 17:27

Wow, that is so powerful. Oh gosh. I've done some ministry in the county jail in Dunson Bible study there. And one observation I had was that every person there was told by an authority, many authorities, a lot of times, that they didn't matter, that they just weren't of value, they didn't matter. And that hat, that was something that was shared by every single person. I encount.

Joan: 17:56

Wow. You know, those, those kinds of words, um, can have such a devastating effect on, on somebody who doesn't have self-love. And who in these industrialized nations has it anymore? Um, somehow we don't teach it somehow it's cel, um, or roll. It's, um, unladylike all kinds of, And, um, on reentry, we were, um, I never read Allison Wonderland and we've recently been asked about fairy tales and this and that and, and that, that was a tough one because that I didn't understand at all. So somebody posted something on Facebook and I thought, oh my goodness. Is that one of the things they were trying to teach you? So Alice says, to a rabbit, I believe. Do you love me? And the rabbit says, I don't, or something like that. And Alice is devastated in the moral of the story as the rabbit says. Kind of like, I know, I know more than you do right now. But, um, I knew that if you didn't love yourself first, then if somebody stopped loving you, it would break you, it would make, it would make you fall into a hundred pieces. And so I knew that you didn't love yourself at that time, and so I knew you needed to go away and learn how to love yourself. I wished I really, I know I didn't to learn that as, no, I didn't learn that. No. Uh, I don't think our parents

Jane: 19:31

did. And the Wizard of Oz, Northy, it's always been new. It's always in you. I didn't know that. It's always you. Our father used to say he would lean over and our. Our house was a little

Joan: 19:44

bit, um, argumentative a little. Yeah. We were the, uh, bicker

Jane: 19:48

sins. We were the bicker sins. I'm stealing that joke

Joan: 19:50

from, from a lovely lady in Arizona. Um,

Jane: 19:53

but we were the bicker sins. And our father would lean over and say, watch how this

Joan: 19:57

argument It's all

Jane: 19:59

gonna be my fault. And I would, no, you weren't even there. And it was, it was always his fault. And I wished I had realized that, cuz then I wouldn't have needed all that therapy where I was vomiting all of my woes. And I

Joan: 20:14

was the,

Jane: 20:15

uh, bully. I was the victim. And it was like, oh wow, what an eye opener. When I realized what I was, anyway,

Melissa: 20:24

you know, this touches on a spiritual concept, if you don't mind that I go there for a bit. Not at, while, um, you know, they. The, they, you know, the, the religious authorities wanted to trap Jesus and said, what's the most important commandment? And Jesus said, you know, it's all summed up, all the laws, all the prophets, everything is summed up in love God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength. And then he added in love your neighbor as yourself. And the older I get, the more I see that you can only love your neighbor to the extent that you love yourself. Wow. Yes. Wow. And I hear that echoed in all that you're saying. Mm-hmm. and all that you're talking about. Mm-hmm. you

Joan: 21:10

know, having, um, wow. Well, you know, the difference between a smart person and a wise person, As a smart person learns from their own mistakes and a wise person learns from others. Mm-hmm. And so I'm smart and I, and I have experience anyway. I'm always learning. I like to be wise, but I don't, I can't recall anything that, uh, maybe after I'm gone, my son will say, oh, was she wise? But, uh, one of the things I, I thought of this morning, Because I often, I'm living with my twin now in our older age. We lived together in our younger days. And what I knew when we were young, I didn't have words for, oops. And the word now is she's so much more loving than I am. And you could put thoughtful, kind, all these other words in there. Oh, um, I have a good work ethic book other than that. I was like, wow. Um, and so I was thinking, uh, in my older years, cuz I did a lot of, uh, giving people the death penalty, um, with the inability or unwillingness to forgive, I, they were gonna have a life sentence or the death penalty. Yeah. And I'm like, well I don't wanna be that person cuz this prison system is archaic. Uh, when it comes to hu how humans treat humans. And so I was thinking this morning, I'm so much more hateful than Joan, or should I say have been? And I was like, of course I can't love people more. I haven't worked on my own. Oh, love for yourself. My, my look. So I have to now go back and start at that beginning a little bit. One more time. You know, having a cat was very, very, very helpful for. And having, um, a child was extremely helpful for me, uh, in terms of growth for with love. So yes. And if

Melissa: 23:19

we switch gears for a minute. Yes, please. On your

Joan: 23:21

website,

Melissa: 23:22

under speaking, it says, our favorite thing in the world is connecting with people and making them laugh many times through their tears.

Joan: 23:34

Oh, you wanna sit, elaborate on that? Oh, and that and that, and that is usually, so Jot

Jane: 23:39

p. So when we talk about how I followed Jane into everything, uh, we also had our niece, um,

Joan: 23:47

work

Jane: 23:48

for us. And at one point she came into, she banged down the door and I was with somebody and she opened the door and she said, you. There is way too much laughter coming from, you know, inside that door. What are you doing? And I never wanted to be a nurse. I had such anxiety, which come to find out was I wanted to control the future. I had such anxiety, I wanted to be a comedian. I had a, I have a cousin that used to be, um, pretty much a standup, but he never got paid for it. Our father made us laugh every. We always watched funny shows and I just loved that. And come to find out as an adult, um, if you are laughing and it's genuine and you are, you are simultaneously in physical pain or emotional pain, you are no longer in that pain because it's impossible to be with laughter. And a lot of my clients would come back and say, Now I remember why I used to come to you, Joan. Mm-hmm. Because reframing things often

Joan: 24:53

using yourself,

Jane: 24:55

um, makes people laugh. And sometimes life is so short you realize these. Mm-hmm. large issues that feel like tons of bricks is really a sand thing. A sand, what is it? A pebble. A pebble of sand.

Joan: 25:09

Right? Right. Well, sometimes when you, when you're feeling better, you can actually, and you've lived long enough, you can look back upon something and if it was tragic, but you can crack a smile over it, which means you found that silver lining, um, that's, that's actually a healing moment. So when they say laughters the best. They weren't kidding. They were Aren't kidding, are they? Because you are not laughing when you're not being forgi. When you are unforgiving, you're definitely not laughing. And Harvard has a study

Jane: 25:43

out. It boosts your immune system. It just

Joan: 25:45

improves all. Oh, improves. I'm really into antiaging.

Jane: 25:49

it improves, you know, your skin tone and elasticity. But my surgeon, I broke my foot a

Joan: 25:55

few years back, maybe

Jane: 25:57

five or. And something happened. I was in a wheelchair and then my toenail got looked like the leaning tower of peas up. And he said, oh, I'm just gonna pull that off. And I said, that's not gonna work for me. And he wasn't gonna give me the no cheese or a Nova Cage shot. He tricked me and told me a joke. And when I immersed out laughing, he pulled the nail out.

Joan: 26:21

It was a really good, I

Jane: 26:22

was shocked and he was correct that I didn't feel the pain because I bursted out laughing for the thing. It was a good joke though. Yeah, it was a funny one joke because if you didn't

Joan: 26:31

get the joke, everyone laughed. That was in the room. It was great. Yeah, that wouldn't have been, yeah.

Jane: 26:35

Okay. But

Melissa: 26:36

yeah. So I'm gonna jump off of a cliff here. Okay. And if I am completely off the reservation, tell me so. But all right. I feel like there's an interface here of trauma and spirituality and laughter. It breathing connects all of it. That to me, breathing is praying. It was in, um, when God or however you wanna call upon the holy by whatever name you use for. But when God, that's the word I use, breathed upon creation upon humanity. That's when that spirit happened. I believe fundamentally that when I draw air into my body, that that is a prayer that God is so deeply in my core, that breathing enlivens, that presence, ignites it. And there's so much out there study-wise. Trauma and breath work and the progress that's made there. And laughing is

Joan: 27:42

a form of breathing. Absolutely. And when we belly laugh, that

Melissa: 27:46

breath gets deep into us. Yeah. So is it the highest form of prayer to belly laugh?

Joan: 27:55

Oh, what a wonderful thing. You know, I had almost no sense of humor. Joan was the funny one. Even when we were. And when you're identical twins growing up where we grew up, apparently, um, when one was called something the other believed they must be the opposite. There was no room for a little funny. Okay, if I may say that, our mother called

Jane: 28:18

it, you are under a

Joan: 28:19

microscope now. and we were so, it was strange. So, you know, um, at some point in my early thirties, my son said to me, you really can't take a joke, can you, mom? Oops. Right. And, you know, I wanted, if I believed in hitting, I would, I would've slapped him right across the face for that one. But, um, back then I, out of the mouth of babes, if he said something profound when he was two or three, I listened. And when he. Say, uh, 12 or 13. I also listened to, to now, so, um, I was not, I was, I was on, um, I was hateful, like I said, and so I, I am practicing joy. I had seen that, uh, Buddha and I don't even know what religion that it pissed, fun. It's all about joy. The Dalai Lama said joy. Yeah. I know that Jesus said things that it was cognitive behavioral therapy. Hello. Um, that came from when I found out Bible. I had a, a handful of clients that had read the Bible several times and would educate me, and then at some point I thought, are you kidding me? I said, that's cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, so anyway, but love is patient, love is kind, is very simple. and I was neither patient nor kind. And breathing also can be a lesson in patience. A very simple one. If you count one 1000 in between breaths, yeah, that's, you know. And then if you know, it can cut down on some road rage. If you're at a red light and you are the sixth car. If you see when

Jane: 30:09

the light turns green, just count

Joan: 30:12

one 1000, two, 1003, 1004, 1005, 1000. It is your turn now. And that's physics. You know, that's just, that's funny cuz you want, you wanna beat the horn and get going. Yeah. It's not gonna happen. Absolutely.

Melissa: 30:27

This has been so much fun and I would love to do this like 87 more times. But, uh, maybe on a different day instead of all at once. Um, okay. But I do want to let you all have the final word. What is it you would love anyone listening to this to know?

Jane: 30:47

I would like young people to know there's time in life for everything. I wasn't, um, I didn't finish my bachelor's degree until I was 35 years old. People. there really is time in life and I also su saw the world negatively. If you could say that negative, horrible thing happened to me, but that's not the end of the story. What came out of that? You either learned something or something really good came out. It was no longer a mistake. It doesn't define you. It's joyous to be alive

Joan: 31:20

with that air in our lungs. Thank you. And lung really is the answer. And it is more powerful than hate and read it in any book you want to read it in, but it is there. It is true. Coming from an old lady, I was more hateful. Believe me, life is better when you're not. It can start with a little bit of gratitude, which is something I never learned on. I mean, I'm sure it was exposed to me. I chose not to learn, I guess, but. It goes a long way to be grateful for at least what you have, let alone what you don't have. It's good to try and instead of saying you're sorry

Jane: 32:00

to everyone, because a lot of people with trauma

Joan: 32:02

say it as a nausea. I'm sorry.

Jane: 32:05

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Cause you don't want anything to go anywhere. Say thank you. It brought up an issue. You reacted to something you, you would've. You know, pushing down, it would come out later. Remember you'd go cut those people, they didn't cut you or you'd make them bleed. Something like that. The, the, yeah. You know, the victim does go out as a bully sometimes. As victim as well. But you know, there's some deep stuff there. Say thank you to all those people that are igniting your buttons. Yes. And every nurse

Joan: 32:35

knows, and if you don't know, you will know that to kill the patients with kindness. Yeah. Also cause an awful long way. So try it with your, Yeah. And, and with yourself. Thank you ladies, thank you

Melissa: 32:51

so

Joan: 32:51

much. Thank

Jane: 32:54

you.