Episode 1 - Welcome to the Dr. Todd Podcast

Welcome to the first episode of the Dr. Todd podcast. In this episode, I talk about what it takes to make meaningful change in your life and why self-knowledge is simply not enough. You will learn the focus of this podcast series and how to overcome the challenges and traumas of your past so that you can live the live you were meant to live.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi everybody, my name is Dr. Todd. Welcome to the very first episode of the Dr. Todd Podcast. Now, I just want to say right from the beginning that these are going to be kind of casual conversations. I don't have everything prescripted. I don't have every, you know, bullet points made or anything like that. I'm just going to be coming in front of the camera with a general sense of what I want to discuss. And hopefully a little bit more of a less polished organic conversation will be helpful to you. You know, the one of the reasons why I decided to do this podcast is that I see, you know, as a therapist and as somebody who has who has had to overcome a lot of personal obstacles and emotional trauma myself, I've seen a lot of things in the marketplace, a lot of books, a lot of podcasts, a lot of courses, a lot of online tools that are intended to help people overcome some challenges in their life and to live the kind of life that they deserve, right? The life that was meant for them. Unfortunately, um, I just haven't found that there were very many that were particularly helpful in creating transformation, in creating some change. A lot of great information, a lot of great stuff. I don't want to take away from any of that. There's some value in understanding trauma. But unfortunately, that clarity is only one half of the equation of changing your life, right? You know, you can almost measure how stuck somebody is and how unhappy somebody is in their life by the number of podcasts they watch and the number of self-help books on their shelf, right? And uh, and and I don't mean that in any kind of derogatory way, because anybody who is suffering, anyone who's experiencing some negative emotions that is affecting how they feel about themselves and feeling unworthy and broken and bad, sick and wrong, and that they can't do anything right or that they're unlovable, all of these kinds of things. There's a real craving for some validation, some information that will help alleviate some of that internal uh internal angst and internal pain. And I get it, I've been there for a long, long time, for most of my adult life and actually most of my childhood, in fact. Unfortunately, self-knowledge and just validating what you're experiencing is not enough to really create transformation, right? It's not enough to just know where you're at and how unhappy you are and know where you want to get to. Um, that is not enough to actually make the change. You know, early in psychology, in the field of psychology, there was this notion that if we made the unconscious conscious, this is an old Freudian theory, if we could just make what's going on behind the scenes bring that to the forefront so we could be aware of some of the things that we're thinking and some of the behaviors that we're engaging in that are undermining our sense of self or our painting the world in a bit of a distorted way, that somehow that would be enough to create change. And for a long time it was very, you know, all of the practice of psychology was focused around helping you understand some of the stuff that was going on behind the scenes in your mind so that you could look at that and go, aha, I can see how some of this faulty thinking is uh is contributing to um to my unhappiness. Therefore, by knowing that now I can do something different, right? That was the thought. Turned out to not be the case, but that was the prevailing thought. And then we got into a whole field or a uh uh an approach in psychology that was much more what what's called humanistic psychology or regerian psychology, where it was really about um if I just show you unconditional positive regard, if I just made you feel okay, if I just made you feel safe and validated and all of that, that would be enough to really create some meaningful change. And it is not that there's no value in any of that. I want to be clear about that. It's not that that humanistic approach is in any way um wrong, so to speak. It's just not enough. It is not enough to just understand, have some awareness of some of the stinking thinking that we might have, right? Some of these thoughts that we have that are self-defeating. It is not enough to just feel safe and validated, right? It's not even enough really to even uh be told some of the things that we can do, like, well, here's an embodiment exercise, and here's, you know, uh here are a few tools for communicating that, you know, that that will be helpful. Those kinds of things, again, are important and valuable, but they are typically not enough. They're not adequate to really bring about the kind of change that most people are looking for in their life. I oftentimes describe change like taking a road trip, right? If I were to ask you, uh, can you do can you get to New York? Most of you would say, well, yeah. Uh and you could get there for a couple of reasons. One is you know where you are now, and you know where you are in relationship to New York. And if you don't, there's a roadmap that you can look at where you could follow a plan of action of, well, I need to get in the car, put my keys in the ignition, unless you have one of those keyless cars, um, which my wife just got, which is weird because you exit the car, just used to using the key thing. Anyway, um, you need to get in the car, you need to start the car, you need to, you know, get out of your driveway or parking lot, go get onto the road, get onto the freeway, you make right turns, you make left turns, you speed up, you slow down, and there's a certain course of action that if you take that, it will get you to New York. And actually, whether you want to be there or not. But what if what if I asked you to get to New York and you don't really even know where New York is or what it looks like, and you don't even know where you are, let alone even know how to drive. There would, you could want to be in New York, you could imagine what it would be like to be in in New York, but it would be almost impossible for you to get there, right? And the same thing is true with our lives, right? I think that a lot of the personal power movement, you know, like the Tony Robbins stuff and and uh and other kind of motivational speakers, they really give us a sense and help us create a vision of where we want to go and what we want to see in our life and the happiness and the success and the joy and the lifestyle and all of that kind of stuff. And that's great. And again, it's not that that it's not that any of that stuff in and of itself is bad or wrong. It has its place and it's important. The field of psychology primarily has been around understanding where you are and how you got there, right? The uh the the whole idea of um you know trauma-informed therapy and exploring some of our personal traumas, looking at our fears and our wounds and all of that is important. It's critical because what it does is it helps us understand where we are. If you were if you are taking over a business, right? If you were looking at a, you know, bought a business that was struggling, right? And we can look at our fail, our at our lives kind of like if we're struggling, um, we can kind of, you know, the business analogy kind of works. One of the first things that you're gonna want to do is you're gonna want to walk through and look at, you know, what's broken, uh, what's missing, what is expired, right? What what pieces here are no longer working? It doesn't, it doesn't help us to focus, just sit there in front of a uh you know, a shelf full of expired produce and just lament over, oh, how did this produce get expired? Oh my God. You know, whose fault is this? It just doesn't matter, right? It matters that we understand that that that is expired, but then it only matters in that it informs what our next steps are going to be, right? And that is an important distinction to make, is that it is critical to explore some of our previous traumas. It is important to understand the nature of our previous relationships and where there may have been some toxicity there and where we have experienced some woundedness. But as far as as far as um using that as a way of moving forward into a better life, that is really about like a business taking an inventory, just to understand where the starting point is, right? It's like, yeah, I had one of the things that I that uh that tends to trigger me is uh a fear of rejection, right? And now I know that. And instead of using that as a reason why I can no longer function or um or blaming my parents or society or whatever for instilling that that sensitivity in me, I just recognize that, you know what, that's a pothole in my road that I need to navigate around as I'm moving forward. But if I focus too much and stay in that space too much, it's like I'm standing in front of the shelf of expired produce again, or you know, or or broken office equipment and just lamenting about uh you know the broken equipment rather than just saying to myself, you know what, so what? Now what? This is all real, right? The the fact that I've been wounded, 100% valid. It doesn't, and and some of the perceptions that I have of myself as being bad, sick, wrong, flawed, broken, unlovable, unworthy, incapable, helpless, all of those kinds of things that we can internalize when we've had some bad relationships growing up, as well as some woundedness growing up. It's like knowing that we have that is important because it helps inform our way forward. But the only way that we are going to get from San Francisco, for example, to New York, is to understand that we're in San Francisco, you know, to have a sense of where we are starting from, what's our starting point, what is our starting line? Let's get away from the blame. You know, we for those who have wounded us, wounded us, uh, we have to kind of take some of those barbs out so that we are no longer tied to that person, so that we're no longer tied to those those instances where we were wounded. And uh and start implementing a plan, a simple plan of action. What are the steps that you need to take? What are the words that need to come out of your mouth? How do you learn how to navigate in a world where you want to be when you are used to work navigating in a world where you where you used to be? When when you grow up in an environment that is dysfunctional and unhealthy, there is a part of you that just absolutely hates that. You feel bad, it you know, it it uh it just reinforces a lot of negative stuff about yourself. But the problem is that you don't, there's oftentimes a lack of an intuitive sense of how to even live in a world that's different from that because you've never been ex you've never been exposed to that, right? You've never experienced that. And so oftentimes when people start to change, they start showing up around different people, more positive people, they start putting themselves in situations that are healthier, they start using different language, they start carrying themselves differently and making different decisions. There's a uh oftentimes a part of them that's like interior, that's like, what are you doing? You know, everybody knows you're a phony, you're a fraud, you're just pretending this is not you. And the truth is that it is not you. When you change, that is not the person you are. But as long as you keep taking the right actions, it will be, you will become that person. It will be the person you will become. It is not the per you are trying to not be the person of your past, you're trying to be something new. And the only difference between the people who you know live in that very functional space, a very successful space, and the people who are constantly stuck in a um, in in just kind of stuck in that that environment of struggle and just keep seem to put be putting themselves in situations where they're taken advantage of or not valued or made to feel like crap. The only difference between those people is uh in the things that they say, the things that they do, the things that they feel, the things that they think, right? And all of that can be changed by just implementing uh a plan of action, by taking certain steps, by learning some new language. You know, when I when I work with couples and I or work with individuals, but you know, couples are a really good example of this, right? I have I will have a couple come in and they'll be really stuck in this pattern of conflict, and both of them are unhappy with it. And both of them wish that they could be, that they could interact in a healthier way and want to do it. They want to get better. But unless they know what words to say and how to interact differently, they remain stuck in this pattern, regardless of how much they want to get out of it. And I'm like, okay, um I am going to start you off with an exercise. And during this exercise, these are the only words that you can say to each other, right? And it's like, this is gonna be five minutes, and I every day I want you just to sit down, and these are the words that you're gonna say to each other. And let's do that for a week. Then when you come back, we're gonna add on to that. And it's interesting. Um, I had uh, you know, it it is not unusual to have a couple come back and uh and tell me that just in that five minutes, they had the deepest, most meaningful conversation that they have had in years, even though all I did is just give them a teeny little exercise to do. Because, you know, it's like, in some respects, I I don't care what the history of the conflict has been. Um, because if we just sit there and rehash that, it just keeps you grounded in that conflict. It keeps you grounded in that dysfunctional pattern. What's going to have to happen before there can be any kind of healing from the past is there has to be the development of a new way of interacting in order for the relationship to be in a better place, right? And until that relationship is in a better place, and you're kind of in New York rather than in LA, you know, and you're you're now in a much more successful, much more functional, much healthier space. Now, if we need to revisit some of the wounds of the past, we can do that in a very different way. And using different tools and a different dynamic can actually create some resolution. What I've often found is that once people learn how to interact in a better way, it's like most of that stuff from the past just kind of tends to fall away on its own, right? Because you're no longer kind of engaged in that dysfunctional pattern of angst, that where things in the moment just feel so strong and so real and so important. It's like once you're functioning in a in a different pattern and in a different way, then all of a sudden it's just like a lot of that stuff just melts away, right? And I found that too working with individuals um who have experienced a lot of trauma because that's what I have had to do, right? Um I came into adulthood as a very broken human being, right? I mean, I um I was functionally illiterate. I was a drug addict living in an abandoned house, and uh I was so unhealthy and malnourished that I mean my eyes couldn't even adjust to the light when I went outside to coming in. It would take like 15 minutes for my eyes to even to be able to adjust. I was so unhealthy. I was down to 134 pounds, I'm six foot two, right? I mean, you can imagine how scrawny and emaciated that I was. And um I changed that on September 10th, 1983, is when I made uh is when I made a dedication to change my life. And I said, I don't care what I have to do, I am going to do whatever it takes in order to create the best Todd that I can be. And I don't care if it kills me in the process. I'm just willing to do whatever it takes. And unfortunately, there wasn't a dude like me on the other side of a camera somewhere uh giving me a roadmap of how to do that. So so much of what I'm gonna be talking about in this podcast has been uh has just been discovered through years and years and years of trial and error and you know, uh and and going to therapists and and finding it to be like less than satisfactory, right? I mean, they meant well, and uh and there were parts that were were helpful, but um, you know, the reality, it just kind of the reality is is that uh therapy has a uh a narrow place. There's a lot of people who need to be healed, but therapy has a has a very narrow place, in my opinion, of where it can be highly effective. And for the people who uh are in that place, it's it's miraculous. It works great. I've seen it, I've I've seen people do fantastic work, and so I'm not here to bash the profession. What I am here to say is that uh what what psychotherapy can offer exists in a fairly small uh domain, and just about everybody struggles with a lot of the emotional consequences and relationship difficulties that arise from things that happened in the past or things that have even happened in adulthood. And the problem is that without some clarity around where they are and what it why that the struggles exist, and a plan of action, some simple steps, some words to use, uh a path to follow to get to uh to a better place. Change is really difficult. And, you know, even if people really want to buckle down and do things different, if they don't know what words to say, if they don't know how to make decisions differently, if they don't know what kinds of things to do, so that they are showing up in their life differently, then it really doesn't matter how much you need to change, it doesn't matter how much you want to change, it doesn't matter how desperate you are or how unhappy you are, unless you're taking action, very specific, meaningful action, change just doesn't happen. Right? And uh I used to say people to people all the time in uh when early in recovery, right, in the end it doesn't matter what you think, it doesn't matter how you feel, all that matters is what you do. Because if you do the right things, if you take the right steps, things just have a way of working themselves out, right? And the things that were distressing at one point no longer become distressing, the things that we were afraid of no longer you know cease to be fears, the the the feelings of worthlessness and unlovability, and you know that that I'm I'm not valued, uh, those kinds of things tend to melt away. So the bottom line here, folks, is that this podcast is gonna be really focusing on two things. Um it's gonna be focusing on help you helping you get some clarity around where your struggles are coming from, and it is gonna be focused on giving you a plan of action that you can use to move forward in your life in a meaningful way. Because until you have those two components, um real change is just not gonna happen. I mean, I know a lot of people with a ton of books, they listen to a lot of podcasts, and they can recite all of these great ideas, um, but they're they're no closer to um they're no closer to having successful marriage. They're no closer to um to being successful in their business. They they're no closer to getting outside of the anxiety and depression uh and helplessness that they feel. Because in the end, um all that matters is is what you do. So there's my new podcast in a nutshell, folks. I hope that you find the conversations going forward interesting. And um and please uh give me a little bit of grace while uh while we're working through these first episodes and we're kind of really kind of dialing in our direction and the voice of this whole program. It may bounce around a little bit uh in the beginning here, but you know, that's that's expected uh whenever there's a new podcast. But uh I will uh I will commit to you that I will always speak from the heart and I will always be straight. And um and even if I say things that may seem uncomfortable, uh they're things that I have had to do myself, and I am just focused on what's real, not what is. My program may not be highly polished, um, but it's going to be packed with uh with some very, very important information for you to transform your life. So we'll see you in the next episode.