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Mindfulness: What We Get Wrong with Trauma and the Nervous System with Dr. Frank Anderson | POP 1206

Why is empowering clients in their healing journey the greatest shift in trauma therapy? What is the role of neuroscience in trauma recovery when it comes to rewiring the brain for healing? Why is embracing agency in therapy essential for clients and their recovery beyond the sessions?

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok discusses mindfulness and what we get wrong with trauma and the nervous system with Dr. Frank Anderson, MD. 

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Meet Dr. Frank Anderson

A photo of Dr. Frank Anderson is captured. He is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and author known for his expertise in trauma treatment and Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. A longtime collaborator with Dr. Richard Schwartz, he played a key role in integrating neuroscience and attachment theory into the IFS model. Dr. Anderson is featured on the Practice of the Practice, a therapist podcast.

Dr. Frank Anderson is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and author known for his expertise in trauma treatment and Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. A longtime collaborator with Dr. Richard Schwartz, he played a key role in integrating neuroscience and attachment theory into the IFS model.

Dr. Anderson served for years as a lead trainer with the IFS Institute and has been instrumental in bringing trauma-informed IFS practices to clinicians worldwide. He is the author of Transcending Trauma and co-author of Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual. His work focuses on helping people heal deep emotional wounds and build lasting inner connection and self-compassion.

Visit Dr. Frank Anderson’s website and connect on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

In This Podcast

  • Your nervous system is you! 
  • Social media’s impact on mental health awareness
  • Defining trauma and its variants
  • The need for agency in therapy
  • Dr. Frank Anderson’s advice to private practitioners

Your nervous system is you! 

One of the things that we get wrong in brain-based psychotherapy is viewing the nervous system as something separate from us.

It’s so reductionist when we talk about our nervous systems as if we can do something with them in that kind of way. (Dr. Drank Anderson) 

Human brains have millions upon billions of neurons that are always learning, changing, firing, and adapting. 

Making an impact on our healing and development is definitely possible. Still, it is complex, and viewing an essential part of ourselves, such as the nervous system, as something separate from who we are and how our minds work is too reductionist. 

We can’t really talk about the nervous system as if we can have this kind of direct, one-to-one, cause-and-effect on it. It’s much more global, it’s more systemic, and there are so many things in the brain that we don’t know about [yet]. We’re just scratching the surface! (Dr. Frank Anderson)

Dr. Frank Anderson wants therapists to incorporate information and knowledge on psychotherapy and the brain-nervous-system relationship into their practices. 

The more understanding we have around brain science, the more we can tailor our interventions and therapy in a way that is informed and applicable to our clients. 

Social media’s impact on mental health awareness

Dr. Anderson is both dismayed and hopeful about the use of social media in spreading awareness and knowledge about mental health care, treatment, and maintenance. 

In social media, having followers is the currency that people equate with being a professional or an expert. 

However, an armchair trauma expert may have millions of followers but may not have studied or worked in the field professionally to share what they are sharing with their audience, and they can end up doing more harm than good. 

I’m grateful for the access. The problem comes in for me when people … Because they have a lot of followers does not make them an expert, right? … Some people are synthesizers and some people are imposters. (Dr. Frank Anderson)

Dr. Anderson’s takeaway message is that people need to be thoughtful about the impact of social media and how information is circulated, who is circulating it, and if they are qualified to do so. 

Defining trauma and its variants

Some important definitions that Dr. Anderson explains include the following: 

1 – Trauma: Dr. Anderson explains that, when he considers trauma, he thinks about its; 

  • Intensity 
  • Frequency 
  • Duration 

2 – Complex PTSD or relational trauma: Trauma that exists as a result of relationships that are traumatic to various extents of intensity, frequency, and duration. 

3 – Big-T and little-T: Dr. Anderson recommends taking these definitions with a grain of salt since claiming that someone outside of the experience can define it is questionable. 

The need for agency in therapy

What I am trying to do here in my new way of thinking about trauma treatment, specifically, is to combine psychotherapy and neuroscience, and coaching. Let’s visit the past, let’s use the knowledge we have to inform therapists, and let’s really have people do things differently in the present once they have released the energy that they are carrying from their past. (Dr. Frank Anderson)

Ultimately, Dr. Anderson wants to give the decision and the ability to guide healing back to clients. He explains the necessity of helping them and teaching them, and then encouraging them to continue their journey on their own. 

They can return to therapy if they want to, but this approach means that a client doesn’t have to stay in therapy forever and become dependent on the therapist entirely for their recovery and well-being. 

With trauma, agency has been taken away from you, that’s kind of the definition of trauma, so I want clients to be in charge of their treatment plan. I want them to decide how many sessions of EMDR they need, and to get educated and reach out to a therapist to contract for five or 10 sessions … And I want the therapists to be the adjunctive coach for the client instead of the one who is making the decisions. (Dr. Frank Anderson)

Dr. Frank Anderson’s advice to private practitioners 

There are better ways for us to deliver care. We have come a long way in this field. We can thank those who have pushed this field forward, and we can use new findings to steer this field into the future for everyone’s benefit, too. 

Books mentioned in this episode:

Dr. Frank Anderson – To Be Loved: A Story of Truth, Trauma, and Transformation 

Dr. Frank Anderson, Richard Schwartz, & Martha Sweezy – Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual: Trauma-Informed Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, PTSD & Substance Abuse

Dr. Frank Anderson – Transcending Trauma: Healing Complex PTSD with Internal Family Systems

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Meet Joe Sanok

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Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners who are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

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Podcast Transcription

Joe Sanok 00:00:00  I'm so excited to introduce you to the best website designers out there. We have a brand new partnership with session sites. It is where good therapy meets brilliant design, and they get your website switched over or built in less than two weeks. They fine tune your messaging, use science backed user experience methodology, and work exclusively with mental health professionals. In fact, new clients right now are going to get three free therapy marketing strategy calls with their creative director of session sites. If you book today, you're not going to want to miss this. Head on over to sessions. Com again that session sites. Com forward slash get the website of your dreams today. Session sites. Com. This is the practice of the practice podcast with Joe Santos. session number 1206. I'm Joe, your host, and welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast. Today we have doctor Frank Anderson, who is an MD and is world renowned as a trauma treatment expert. Harvard trained psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He's the acclaimed author of Transcending Trauma, recently released memoir, To Be Loved A Story of Truth, Trauma, and Transformation, and the co-author of Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual as a global speaker on the treatment of trauma and dissociation.

Joe Sanok 00:01:37  He's passionate about teaching brain based psychotherapy and integrating current neuroscience knowledge with IFS. Frank, welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:01:47  Thank you so much for having me. It's good to be here, Joe.

Joe Sanok 00:01:50  Yeah, I love all the work that you're doing. you know, when you reflect on kind of brain based psychotherapy, what do we get wrong when it comes to brain based psychotherapy?

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:02:03  I love that question right off the bat.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:02:06  so I haven't said this out loud yet, which is kind of interesting. the thing that kind of drives me a little crazy these days is the way people on social media talk about the nervous system as if it's an entity, regulate your nervous system. You got to calm your nervous system, like, as if the nervous system is a thing that we can regulate or fix like that. And that's so reductionistic when we talk about our nervous systems as if we can do something with them in that kind of way. You know, when we look at the brain, there's like billions of neurons and billions of synapses and hundreds of chemical neurotransmitters.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:02:47  Our brain is so complex. There are so many networks that are interacting with each other. And we it's like a drop.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:02:56  In the bucket.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:02:56  For us, understanding the brain. So the the fact that we have on our brain is so limited in our understanding at this point. Can we make people feel better? Can we help them with their thoughts? Can we help them shift their emotions or release some of the sensations that they carry in their body as a result of trauma? Yes. Can we help people get out of a depression or not feel as anxious? Of course those are symptoms, but we can't really talk about the nervous system is if we can have this kind of direct 1 to 1 cause and effect on it. It's much more global, it's much more systemic. And there's so many things in the brain that we don't know about. So we're just kind of scratching the surface. Now, having that being said, I, I think there's a lot to learn the way we know about the brain and we can make some really important therapeutic decisions in our practices based on the current knowledge that we do have.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:03:59  So I'm not saying, oh, it's too complicated. Forget about it. But what I am saying is, let's take the information that we have right now, and we can apply certain therapeutic techniques in a way that can really shift and change things. Because the brain, brain science helps us understand some of our symptoms and our reactions and our moods and our behaviors. So the more understanding we have of it, the more we can tailor make our interventions in a way that's actually informed instead of like, I've been doing this for 30 years and this is what I've seen has worked. Do you know what I mean? It's kind of turned psychotherapy into a science as opposed to an art. Obviously it's both. But we've had like not a great reputation in the in the medical field because of being a soft science. I think neuroscience knowledge helps us integrate art and science in a way that brings legitimacy, and structure and a deliberateness to what we do. Long winded answer there.

Joe Sanok 00:05:11  Yeah. But Frank, that's too nuanced for a 45 minute or 45 second TikTok.

Joe Sanok 00:05:19  Exactly. The people the people don't have the attention span for all that. Yes. That's right. Well, I think the wonderful thing and the terrible thing about about, you know, Instagram, TikTok, social media is it's really exposing people to mental health issues and getting knowledge from experts directly, where you could go out there and you could film something for 45 seconds and it would be good quality. And there's also a ton of armchair experts that just like what you said. Say they may be a therapist that says, I've been doing this for 30 years. They may also be someone that just says, for 30 years I've been dealing with anxiety. So I'm an expert in my own anxiety. But when you think about how people consume information about the brain, like what bothers you, but also what gives you hope?

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:06:06  Yeah, and it is both. It's a bother and an excitement. Like there. I am very mixed about it. Like in some ways, you know, I've been one of these ivory tower people since 1992.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:06:18  So I've been in that world doing research, writing books, doing, you know, working with the top people in the trauma field. So I'm, I'm in that ivory tower category. And in some ways, that information is not accessible to the general public. Like there's a lot of important information that is not getting out there. So so I, I'm grateful to all these people on TikTok and Instagram. I'm one of them now.

Joe Sanok 00:06:47  Who.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:06:47  Who is bringing access of information to the general public. So in some ways it's wonderful and it's bringing exposure Out of the ivory tower into the general public. It's a bridge, and it's a really important bridge. You know, you use the word trauma ten years ago and people would flip out. Not me, not me. I didn't go to war. I haven't been raped right now. People really have a much better understanding of that word in a in a more general public kind of way. Less stigma, less shame based attached to it. So there's that piece that I'm grateful for, the access the problem comes in for me when people exactly like you say, because they're pop, they have a lot of followers, does not make them an expert.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:07:36  Right. And when I'm on podcast now, a lot with people, some people are synthesisers and some people are impostors, right? I'm an expert.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:07:47  Because I have.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:07:48  3 million followers. No, that's actually not how it works. Versus I want to bring some of the top people in the field Yield to you folks because I'm a bridge, right? I think you had Lewis Howes on this podcast before. If I remember correctly, he's a beautiful bridge, like, I love Lewis, and he's one of these people who doesn't say, I'm an expert, but he's got this enormous reach and he brings such valuable information to so many people. So I think you've got to be careful. And I've worked with a fair amount of influencers who do have this imposter syndrome. Oh my gosh, people expect things from me now because I'm popular, right? And so how to navigate is tricky in that world. So I'm not going to say oh it's no good. I'm going to say we have to be thoughtful about it, because getting this information to the masses is really important.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:08:44  Psychotherapy in my estimation, Joe, and this is a maybe a provocative statement. We do not. It's a limited resource for the amount of people that are ailing in the world. We are not going to solve trauma through psychotherapy, in my opinion. It's people don't have access to it. It's too expensive. Insurance companies regulate it. We've got to get access to these people in a different way. So it's a blessing and a curse.

Joe Sanok 00:09:11  Yeah. Well, and I think that also then we hear certain terms that kind of take off and almost get a meaning. That isn't what the academics think, isn't what the diagnosis criteria thinks. But then the general population thinks they know what it means. And I want to throw some of those terms at you. I've got a.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:09:27  Term. You give me your term.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:09:29  And I'm going to give you a term. Yes, exactly.

Joe Sanok 00:09:32  So I'm going to give you a couple of terms. I want you to just play with those and define them how you would what you wish.

Joe Sanok 00:09:36  Your therapist is primarily we have therapists that are listening. Yeah. And I think that one of the beautiful things is that a therapist is talking to these people that hear these terms all the time and can say, hold on, let's make sure we're talking about the same word. Let's make sure we're defining it in the same way, because the way you might be defining it could be different, and it can shift that individual to then think differently about terms like trauma. So, you know, I want to take the words like trauma. Complex trauma, complex PTSD, big T trauma, little T trauma. So all those words associated with trauma. Dissect that for us and add or take away whatever you want.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:10:09  Absolutely. So we could start with the with trauma because, you know, there's this trauma I think about when I think about trauma I think about intensity frequency and duration. Right. People have an experience. People have gone through something. And you need to look at intensity, frequency and duration to see, to think about severity.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:10:30  Different people perceive the same events in very different ways, based on their history, based on their temperament, based on a lot of factors. So you have to take each case individually and trauma is what happened to you. It's the experience that you went through. Your response is very important. So I think about what did you absorb, what did you go through and how are you responding to it? And because PTSD is a response to trauma, it's not the event itself. It's the symptoms that you display as a result of not being able to adequately process the event that you went through. So we've got to differentiate what you went through, what you're carrying versus how you're reacting or responding to it. And it's a lot about perception. You know, some kid gets one kid gets bullied on the playground and he fights back. Another kid gets bullied on the playground, and he becomes suicidal and kills himself. Do you know what I mean? So there's a lot of variability into how we perceive it and how we react and respond to it based on our temperament, based on resilience.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:11:44  So everybody's different. You know, some people overuse the word like if you're a Gen Z, you know, you sneeze and you have a trauma. I mean, this poor generation has been through a global trauma, which in a way that none of us have when they were early developing. Right. So I don't want to minimize the impact, but the younger generations tend to see everything as trauma. And the baby boomers are like, hell.

Speaker 4 00:12:08  No, not me, I don't have trauma.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:12:10  So you have even different generations responding differently based on what happens in the world, right? Complex PTSD or relational trauma is exactly that. It's it's trauma that we have as a result of relationship. So complex PTSD and relational trauma are interchangeable. So Bessel van der Kolk, who I've been working with since 1992, has really tried to get complex PTSD in the DSM, never was able to do that. Right. a lot of research says when you are relationally violated in childhood, in young adulthood, in your early life, it has a huge impact on you.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:12:52  So we're looking at relational violations, right? We look at the Ace studies, the adverse childhood experiences. That's all about relational trauma. and you're looking at, how we are affected by growing up in dysfunctional families and what impact that has, which is very different than a car accident or, you know, a global pandemic or cultural or systemic trauma. so we look at relational trauma. That's probably what most therapists see in their office. And that's probably the hardest to treat honestly, is because these are not one trauma. These are thousands and thousands of traumas because these relational violations, when you're growing up, say, with an alcoholic father or a depressed schizophrenic mother, hundreds of them happen a year. Do you know what I mean? So it's not like you recover easy or quickly from it because of the repetitive nature of relational trauma.

Joe Sanok 00:13:54  So that's making it complex.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:13:56  It's very complicated. And it is a different, different set of responses and reactions outside of what's called traditional PTSD. You know, cluster one.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:14:07  Cluster two, cluster three intrusive images, numbing avoidance hyper arousal. That's with traditional, if you will, trauma versus relational trauma has very different symptom complexes. This is where excuse me for saying this, but women with trauma histories get called borderlines. And men with trauma histories get called narcissists. Those are the types of reactions and responses to relational trauma that people experience. different different than PTSD, right? when we're talking about big T, little T, that is another thing that kind of drives me crazy a little bit. It drives me crazy because who the hell is determining the big and the little tea. That's the issue that I have with big tea. Little tea. Like somebody outside of the person experiencing it. That's big tea trauma. Because there's blood and broken bones. Oh, that's little tea. Trauma. Because you were kind of bullied on the playground. Like it's all about the experience of the individual. Let them determine whether it's a big tea, little tea for them. We can't compare traumas when we have such a wide range of reactions and responses to it, based on many different factors.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:15:29  So whoever's judging the severity of the trauma needs to look at themselves a little bit and think about asking and listening. Not telling about the intensity of the experience that the person has had.

Joe Sanok 00:15:50  I think that leads us into what did we get wrong in psychotherapy?

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:15:54  Yeah, this is where I get. Really?

Joe Sanok 00:15:57  I know it's gonna rile you up. I want to get you riled up, Frank.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:16:00  To rile me up, and. But in a good way, you know, like, really? I've been doing this work since 1992. I've been doing this a long time, and I've been in the field of trauma most of my life. I have a pretty significant trauma history myself, and that's why I wrote my memoir, To Be Loved and like my memoir that just came out in May, is about my trauma history, starting very early in my life as a baby in the crib, you know, being in therapy at six years old, a form of conversion therapy, you know, having an abusive father physically and verbally and a very passive mother.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:16:35  So I kind of have all the all the parts and the seeds of trauma, honestly. so, when we look at, when we look at our field of trauma, like, and I've been in therapy for over 34 years, Joe. So I. I'm a therapy lifer. You know, I was in therapy for six years as a kid from 6 to 12. Then I was in therapy five times a week for 11 years during my residency training program. And when my first son was born, my first son was like 2 or 3. I've been in therapy with him ever and with myself ever since because my trauma history resurfaced. So I think there's enormous value in our field. And, and, and I think therapists and I'm putting myself in that this category as one of us. We have this tendency to keep people too long in treatment. In my view, everybody's fighting insurance companies. And I'm not saying insurance companies are correct with their managed care mentality, because that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is we can get people Focusing on their origin story in the core root of their problems, which are important to visit but not important to stay stuck in.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:18:02  So I really think it's important for people to visit their histories, but visit them not slip into ten years of therapy once a week with no real change in your life. Right. So there's a way that we can regress people and get them dependent on us relationally in a way that I don't think is helpful. Some people with attachment trauma definitely need a safe object in order to feel safe to go there. That's true. And and we have a tendency to kind of keep people longer than is necessary and not giving enough agency and power back to the client, in my view. Now I'm also thinking about coaching because that's a whole nother world, right? Coaches, on the other hand, are all about move forward, move forward. Focus on the future. Focus on the future. Do these five things and you'll get better. I'm also saying that's not really the solution either. If you don't look at the origin, you're never going to just override with behavior. So I'm not a big fan of coaching, only what I'm kind of trying to do here.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:19:13  Joe. And my new way of thinking about trauma treatment specifically is combining psychotherapy, neuroscience, and coaching. Like, let's visit the past. Let's use the knowledge we have to inform therapeutic decisions. And let's really have people do things differently in the present. Once they've released the energy that they're carrying from their past. So I've got a program that I'm creating that I'm really wanting people to kind of move forward and give these decisions back to Act clients because with trauma. Agency has been taken away from you. That's kind of the definition of trauma. So I want clients to be in charge of their treatment plan. I want them to decide how many sessions of eMDR they need. I want them to get educated and reach out to a therapist and contract for 5 or 10 sessions or whatever it is, right? And I want the therapist to be the the adjunctive coach of the client, instead of the one that's making the decisions and coming up with the interpretations, because that's how clients get dependent on therapists. From my perspective.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:20:32  So I know this is kind of a radical view, and I might be pissing people off, which I'm hoping I'm not. Because I think therapists are burdened and overwhelmed by the current way.

Speaker 4 00:20:45  Things are being.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:20:46  Delivered. And my hope is that therapists Pests are freed up from kind of seeing people forever and ever and ever with no real progress, and they have really important impact in time, limited specific kinds of ways. So I want therapists to feel freed up and feel better about the work they do. And I want clients to kind of be more in charge, gain their agency of what? Of what they're going to do. And I do think from a trauma perspective, that integrated trauma treatment is really the best approach for a therapist. You know, I'm a big IFS person, but IFS isn't for everyone. I also trained in eMDR. I'm trained in sensory motor psychotherapy. I'm going to take neurofeedback training. You know, I think we as therapists need to be trained in multiple modalities because we need to pick and choose, or the client needs to pick and choose which modality we're going to use on which behavior they're trying to work on.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:21:52  For example, I want to work on my reactivity. Great. Let's focus on your reactivity. That's the focus of the work. What kind of work are we going to do and how many sessions are we going to do it? And how are you going to make changes in your life? And how do we give you accountability for that? So like as you can tell, I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I really am going to do my best that I hope will benefit therapists and benefit clients so that more people can gain access self-guided, self-directed, and reach out when they need it to be able to reach a broader range of people who are suffering from trauma, who don't have the financial means to pay out of pocket.

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Joe Sanok 00:23:06  You don't have to take my word for it. Do your own research and see for yourself. Therapy notes is the number one highest rated EHR system available today, with a 4.9 out of five stars on Trustpilot and on Google. All you have to do is click the link below or type promo code Joe on their website over at Therapy Notes. Com and receive a special two month trial. Absolutely free. Again that's therapy notes. Com and use promo code Joe on the website. If you're coming from another EHR therapy notes will also import your demographic data quick and easy at no cost, so you can get started right away. Trust me. Don't waste any more of your time and try therapy notes. Just use promo code Joe at checkout. Now, Frank, I imagine there's some internal pushback some people might have. And of course, I'm thinking about, you know, like recently, both of my back two tires of my truck, both started to have alerts that they were low air pressure. So I was supposed to drive, you know, three hours south to Kalamazoo for an event with some friends, like within two hours.

Joe Sanok 00:24:14  So I went to my favorite, like, local tire place. They found that there was like a screw that had somehow wedged itself in one of the tires, and they fixed it up and did it. Now, I think that's the mindset that most people have with therapy is I have a problem I have, or even with doctors, I have cancer, I have type one diabetes, whatever. I don't even know what options are out there. Like I don't know what eMDR even stands for. How can I know how many sessions I'm going to need? So parse that out for me as to what that collaboration with a therapist looks like with this new model.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:24:43  Absolutely, absolutely. And it's a it's a it's a legitimate concern. You know, one of the things I want to do in this new program is I want to I want to do an assessment tool. I'm creating an assessment instrument where people take a question, fill out a questionnaire, and it deals with their symptoms. It deals with their history, it deals with their family of origin and kind of give them a printout like a prescription, like, here's the kind of trauma you have.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:25:10  This is the kind of symptoms you're struggling with. This. This is the range of of you based on what you've said to me. And here are the different options for you. Like, you know, if you've been bullied on the playground, this is a way to go. This is what diagnosis you may have. And this is one path. If you've been ritually abused, ritually abused since the age of three in a dysfunctional cult family, this is the kind of diagnosis you have. And this is the kind of treatment you have, right? So the people have to be educated and they have to get an assessment because they don't know that. Right. And education.

Speaker 6 00:25:47  Is key.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:25:49  So not only is it the assessment and the prescription important, so is the education about the different, access to different types of treatment. Right. Psychotherapy is one of them. Coaching is another one of them. Yoga is a form of treatment. You know, there's a there's there's a lot of different ways journaling meditating.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:26:11  Right. So people to get educated by the different range and options and for them to pick and choose what they, what they they need in what order with support. I also feel like there needs to be a peer to peer support component to this program, right? So that maybe you can run things by a peer in a different way than you run things by a trained professional. Right? So what do you need? When when do you need to go to a therapist? When can you do it in journaling or on your own? Like to give people more agency and education around when they do need to reach out? Could you do you know massive trauma healing all on your own? That's really hard. That's really, really complicated. Does everything need to be done in the inside of a therapist's office? Maybe not. You know, maybe not. I had the experience, Joe, with my father, who was my primary abuser, you know, outside my kind of mom being very passive. And I can tell you, I did so much work in my relationship with him that I could have never done in psychotherapy, but I had to do enough work in psychotherapy to be able to show up with my dad differently.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:27:36  You know what I mean? And I want people. This is why I really want to bring the coaching component in, is I want people to utilize life much more than we do in psychotherapy. We do a lot of processing in psychotherapy, and I think we need to get people in their lives making changes. You know, it was so I've been such a conflict avoidant person much of my life. And honestly, I could talk about being conflict avoidant a lot in therapy, and it didn't make change for me. And it's not until I have enough self-esteem, I've released enough of my trauma that I'm able to show up with people that I'm in conflict with and do it differently. So I think therapists can have a huge role in helping ready people to be more active, to make change in their life. It's one of the things I'll say that neuroscience shows us, which is memory reconsolidation, form of rewiring neural neural networks at the synaptic level. Well, we need a confirming experience in order to change neural networks.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:28:50  What I mean by that is this if you feel unloved in order to change those neural networks in the brain, the ones that hold the trauma around being unloved, you need to have experiences of being loved. Okay. But it's it's part of the healing journey, not the only healing journey. There also needs to be a witnessing, a sharing the experience, having a corrective experience in your present day life. And then then you can release and let go of what you're carrying. So I really want to combine the best of coaching, the best of psychotherapy, and the best of neuroscience to maybe make this a little bit more accessible and a little bit more efficient for both sides of the story.

Joe Sanok 00:29:41  I always love asking guests, you know, like, what does this look like in your own life? So you have all this knowledge. You've been in therapy for years. Like what? What's your practical? Either. Daily. Weekly. Monthly. Annual habits. Things that you do that enacts the stuff you're talking about?

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:29:59  Absolutely.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:30:01  I'm a big fan now. I work a lot. I'm a super busy guy, and I do a ton of stuff. But the way that I access my internal world is by going out for a run in nature with music. That is the way I can access my internal world. That's the way I can do some of my most profound healing. Do I also still have a therapist? Yep. I see her once, once a month and I will continue to see her.

Speaker 7 00:30:31  Once a month for as long as her and I will both.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:30:34  Do that. But I.

Speaker 7 00:30:36  Go deep.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:30:37  I do some a deep piece of work with her and then I. I do the journaling myself. I do meditating myself, Mostly through my meditative experience of running. Honestly, it's like I do bilateral stimulation by running. I think I'm doing eMDR, honestly, so I do. I do my work with my therapist, and I do my work in my life like I'm in the process right now. Honestly, there's been because of my relationship with my dad, right? Primarily a kind of a pretty narcissistic person.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:31:08  I've attracted a bunch of narcissists in my life, you know, surprise, like shocking. And I am really working to show up in these relationships differently. I'm speaking up. I'm having agency, I am I'm not a I'm not accommodating or passive anymore like I used to be, you know, and it's kind of the consciousness and the deliberateness of visiting my history, not reliving my history. You know, when people. I don't even like to use this word, Joe, when people are triggered, that's a sign that something unresolved is inside of you. That is your opportunity. That is your wake up call, that there's work you are carrying, something that you need to release that doesn't belong to you. And so every time we get triggered, it's an opportunity to change what you've gone through, to release what you've gone through and to do it differently in the present day, because people get triggered about some sliver in the present, but it's mostly about their history, and that's because they're still carrying it.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:32:15  They have to release it so that they can show up with their narcissists and their present day life in a different way. So, you know, I some people out there, if you're new to this field or you haven't been working in trauma or you're really burnt out and overwhelmed, I want to let people know I've been doing this for a long time, and I'm excited about maybe changing this paradigm a little bit so that it's a win win for all of us. And I'm doing a lot more work on my own. In my present day life. Visiting my history and showing up differently in my life than I've ever done before, because I was one of those people, was very dependent and relying on my therapists over the years to kind of help me make decisions instead of, you know, gently nudge me to take the risks and then to help me sort it out after the fact.

Joe Sanok 00:33:11  Well, the last question I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:33:18  every practitioner. Yeah I was going to I would say that there's a better way for us to deliver care. I want people to know there's a better way for us to deliver care. We've come a long way in this field. I'm grateful for the model makers that have moved our field forward. And I think the next generation of healers are going to integrate things, put it together, Other and bring the delivery of care to people in a very different way. Probably even including technology.

Joe Sanok 00:33:50  So that people may know that's okay. We've covered a lot on AI and it's integration and things like that. No, I think that's wonderful. We have a bunch of episodes on that. Frank. If people want to follow your work, if they want to, just read your books or do anything, you know, following Frank, where can they follow Frank?

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:34:07  Best way to follow me is probably through my website, which is Frank anderson.com, and you can sign up for my newsletter there. I'm also very active on Instagram.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:34:21  Frank Underscore Anderson, MD. I'm on TikTok now. I'm on Facebook. I'm on YouTube so my website can connect you to all my social media channels and my courses and workshops and webinars that I do. So yeah.

Joe Sanok 00:34:37  So awesome. Frank, thank you so much for being on the practice of the Practice podcast.

Dr. Frank Anderson 00:34:41  Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Joe Sanok 00:34:49  You know, as we do shows like this, it's just, you know, it's so interesting to now have interviewed over 1100 people on this show and to just see these common threads of coming back to ourselves, you know, even just that idea of, you know, encouraging clients to take, take the reins to, to be in the driver's seat of their own therapy and to really invite us to come alongside, you know, even when we do consulting with people to, to grow their, their practices. I often say, you've invited me into your business. there's no wrong in regards to what you're doing. You know, in improv, we say there's no right or wrong in a scene.

Joe Sanok 00:35:28  There's just easy and hard, that, you know, I can do things for my scene partner in improv to make it harder for them or easier. And in some scenes, it's funny to make it harder for them. And other scenes, it's funnier to me, you know, a good therapist and you know, a good consultant will come alongside you and help you understand and learn and grow and then say, I want you to fly on your own without without me being here all the time. you know, frequently when someone comes to me for one on one consulting and we work through an issue and put out a fire, I then say, here's my thought process and how I worked through this. Not just answering your question to make you dependent on me as a consultant for your practice, but instead to say, you know, yes, we put this fire out, but let's let's work up river and figure out what's causing this. And so that you can learn to think in the way I think.

Joe Sanok 00:36:15  instead of just being dependent on me as your, you know, lifelong consultant. and so I think that's so important to see all these different interviews, you know, often are pointing at the same sort of thing. and to me, that's why it's important to be in community with people. It's important to be around other people that are headed in the same direction. that's where our memberships come in. we have memberships, different tracks for every single phase. you can read about those at practice. The practice. Com forward slash membership. You know, we also couldn't do this show without amazing sponsors like Therapy notes. Therapy notes is the best electronic health records out there. They will help you switch over from your current EHR. they also give you two months for free or just money off if you use promo code Joe at checkout. they are phenomenal. They help with automated billing. it's going to make it easier to outsource your billing. So many reasons to switch to therapy. Now it's just head on over to therapy notes.com.

Joe Sanok 00:37:09  Read about it and at checkout, just use promo code. Joe. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I'll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band. Silence is sexy for that intro music, and this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.
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