I'll get a team.
Welcome to another installment of the Bloody You Project, or just the You Project, Bloody You Project, the You Project.
Your choice.
Doctor Sam Casey has been many times on the show, but not being here for a little while because we were renegotiating her contract.
Are you happy with the way it's turned out?
Yeah, it's all panning out very well.
Yeah, what is four times zero? I think we're on the same but you did you know, your manager did go hard, so you know here, we.
Are great to be here.
I'm being silly, of course. How are you, doctor Sam? Have you had a good few months? How is life on the other side of Australia? Of course you're in I know you're in in wa but are you You're in Perth, Perth or you near Perth?
No, I'm actually Kartha, so I'm in the desert.
But it is Oh, you're way up, that's right, that's right.
I'm extremely cold here, like it's it's ridiculously cold. I'm not used to it, so it's like my body'scclarimatized to desert life. And then we get to winter and we have like a month or two of absolutely freezing weather.
So I've got I mean, now I'm good. I've got a heater on.
But yeah, generally I've got my winter jackets and I'm lay it up.
Let's put this in perspective. When you say it's freezing, what's the temperature in the morning.
It's probably like in their twenties, but for me it's freezing. Ah. I know you probably don't get my pain.
I definitely don't get your pain. We would in today's top temperature in Melbourne was thirteen.
Wow, that was the top the top.
That was the warmest part of the day, and you're complaining about twenty in the My goodness. But it is funny. I guess you really get acclimatized to certain temperatures. Like what's your optimal We'll get on something more interesting in the moment. In a moment, what's your ideal if you could go, it's got to be this temperature all the time, if you had to be a temperature well.
Probably early thirties, I reckon, really, yeah, that'd be great.
That would kill me or drumming nuts. I definitely couldn't do that. All right, now, you haven't been here for a little while, so could you. I know, we've done this once or twice, but you know, frown newbies. For the people who have jumped on the new project trained to in the last couple of two, three, four months, could you just give them a snapshot of who you are and what you do.
Yep, of course.
So I am a well originally trained as atal therapist. I then became a parent myself, and I started to get in a retrained and got into maternal mental health, and then I decided to teach, because you're obviously doing play therapy as kids. I decided to focus all my energy on teaching professionals and parents how to prescribe therapeutic play because I think it needs to get out of the.
Therapy room and into real life.
I really believe in taking that therapeutic insight, yeah, out of that clinical environment and just into everyday life because we all need it. We're all dealing with mental health on a daily basis. So that's kind of my bread and butter now and I've got in the area of training and play therapy.
So yeah, we're talking before we went live about how both of us end up counseling or coaching other people who work in a similar space, like people who are psychologists or therapists or even psychiatrists, and which kind of initially it seems like why on earth would they come?
But then the fact is everyone's human, everyone's normal. Just because you have a qualification, a degree, a PhD, a title, doesn't mean that you don't have your own challenges and issues, that you don't have to talk through stuff, And that knowing how something works, like the brain or the mind or human behavior doesn't mean that you're not going to have your own challenges exactly.
And I think, and I see this so often as well, you know, because we we actually equate knowing you know something to being able to do better.
And this is where the shame comes.
I get a lot of you know, trained like therapists or people in the health industry, and they come to me and they're like, I should know better, I know this stuff, And so knowing better doesn't replace the fact that they didn't experience better. And so their experiences, right are what they're coming from. Like we're human, we all have different experiences, and this is what we need to
I guess, you know, fill those gaps in. And no matter how much knowledge we get, it's not going to fill in the gaps.
We just need different experiences, we need healing experiences.
So yeah, I think it's definitely, if anything, they have additional challenges because they know so much in such an intense amount of time and they haven't really had a chance to integrate that in their lives.
And then, yeah, they do put that pressure on trying to read more, learn more. What if I missed?
Why can't I do this? And you get that from the general public too. Oh yeah, but you know this stuff like you should be all across it, And yeah, they've really kind of dismissed the fact that they actually haven't experienced this stuff.
They haven't experienced, you know, a lot.
Of the the validation or the space to be able to be them and trust themselves and listen to their you know, their own guidance, I guess as well.
And it's it's interesting how you can have all the intellectual understanding, the knowledge, the research, the awareness, and you can even know what's going on, but when you get trapped in that emotional loop you know or you're you're now feel like it doesn't sometimes it doesn't matter what you know when you feel fucking terrible, Like yeah, yeah, I get it, I get the science. I get the theory, but right now you do not understand the emotional state
that I'm in. And despite the fact that I know you know what to do in inverted commas, or I know the theory of this, I still feel grief. I still feel ashamed, I still feel sad, I still feel lonely, I still feel depressed. So knowing the theory of how to undo this or manage this or treat this doesn't snap me out of anything.
No, it doesn't replace the need you know, for that rest or for that you know.
Whatever it is.
So you're right, I think if anything, it can I guess hinder us sometimes because we do get so stuck in our head and we're shaming ourselves more than we are actually just creating more opportunity and space to actually process it or to just be right to go. I feel sad at I'm not going to try and fix myself right now.
I'm just gonna sit in that, sit in that space.
And what would I do for a friend that feels sad? You know, I would measure them, I would take care of them. You know, why an't I doing that for myself? Why am I shaming myself in those moments like, that's something that we can really fit with.
What's the intersection, sam between shame, which you mentioned a few times. That's an interesting term. It doesn't get brought up that much on this show, but I'm interested in it. Self loathing and shame. Are they first cousins?
They do? They hang out at the same bar.
Yeah, Yeah, they go hand in hand.
I like to think of I like to compare guilt and shame because guilt can be like I really didn't like my behavior right, like, so they feel really guilty about a behavior when against a value. Shame is like I there is something wrong with me, like I, and they're really hating on themselves as a person. They don't separate their behavior from them They're like, I've messed up. This is just a completely a me issue and there's something inherently wrong with me. And so that's a problem.
When we get into shame, we really struggle to find a way back. We really struggle to be able to, yeah, separate the behavior from ourselves.
And that's the big difference.
Why do you think, Like, I mean, I know this is a there's not a single answer to this, but what what what what triggers that response that shame.
I feel a shamed.
Is it because we don't live up to our own standards or we don't live our values or what is?
What is it?
That's such a good question because I think if we look at how that begins, right, we could have I don't know, had caregivers that also struggle to see us separate from the behavior as well.
So they were just like, you should know better, like I've told you this before, and you keep doing it.
And then the person's like, yeah, I did know this, and I kept doing it, Like there must be something wrong with me because if it, you know, why.
Haven't I been able to stop it? So there's that part.
But then I also think there's this belief that we can't come back from it, you know. So a lot of the time I've noticed and you know, I've done counseling and prisons and obviously with kids, and you see similar patterns if they deviated right from what is expected of them and they feel so guilty about that because you know, it's against their values and whatever else, but they don't know how to come back from that, They don't know how to recover, and so they just keep going.
So it's often not the thing that gets them of track.
That's a problem is that they get off track and they just don't believe in their ability to come back.
I've done it. It's no way you know forward with this.
Instead, then they spiral and they continue to do bad things to themselves or to others.
They continue to put others down all themselves.
So it really kind of comes down to that, I think self talk, which we often don't see with other people. We don't see how critical hour of themselves because we don't hear those voices, right, we just see how they treat others. We don't actually see that often people who are harming others actually harm themselves first.
But the words that they say to themselves, And.
What's what's in it for us? Like the beating out? Is there any upside in? Like why do we why do we beat ourselves up? Surely we don't do like even though that seems self destructive or it is self destructive, we must get something out of it in the moment.
I'm such a fucking idiot, I always do this.
I'm a loser, an an that's self loathing and that shame and that like, what what's the payoff in the moment for us.
Well, see, if you think about back again when we were children, there was something sometimes in our environment that is familiar about that, right that we're getting told off and you're doing this again and this is just how you are. And so if you could imagine that kind of talk when you're an adult.
It feels familiar.
Of course, I'm just an idyt That's why I did that, right, But this is actually going no, it's not. And you know, often a lot of environments would have been like you're just making excuses for yourself, you know, when you're trying to be kind and compassionate to yourself. So I do think that there is this element as well though, of accountability, and that's really important.
So you've got the.
Self compassion or you're kind to ourselves and you know, something comes up and you give space for that, but then you also kind of hold yourself accountable to hang on. I said that this is what I stand for, and I said that this is what I want to do when I need to kind of you know, meet like strive towards that I think about with the gym's Yes, this is why I think, you know, gym can be
really good for trauma survivors. But when you wake up in the morning, if you had a headache, right, a self compassionate response could be, you know what, I've got a headache, Like it's you know, it's it's really bad. I'm actually gonna allow myself to rest for a bit. This doesn't mean that my plan's completely gone for the morning. I'm going to rest and see how I feel. So what you're doing is you're being in tune with your
body and you're giving yourself rest. Now, a couple of days could pass and you're like, I still keep saying this, Like I'm actually I'm self sabotaging here, Like I'm not holding myself to this this activity that I know is going to make me feel better in the long run, and I am just wanting this comfort rather than pushing myself. And so that's when you've got that self accountability right, where then you get out of.
Bed and you push yourself.
But I think both of those things can't be done from the external. Like we have lots of external reinforcements in society these days, we need to learn and to develop this internal compass where we know, okay, this is where I need to keep compashion with myself and this is when I need to be accountable and we keep switching, right, that's where you get that self trust.
Mmm. How Like to me, it seems like in the middle of all of this, in order to be able to know this stuff, recognize this stuff, manage our motions and our mind and our behavior in real time, there seems to be a lot of self awareness required, like trying to understand me, Like me, trying to understand me is a cognitive shitfest because I'm me, right, Like, how on earth can I be objective about me? Because everything
I think about me is subjective? Right, And me trying to understand my mind using my mind as the tool to understand itself.
Like, and I know you get this right, Three.
Of my listeners' heads just exploded, right, But because that's so convoluted, But talk to me about my PhD is in self awareness. I'm really interested in just trying to understand and self manage and self reflect and all of that in the middle of a stuff.
Yeah, yeah, do you know what I mean?
Yeah?
I do.
And I think this is what's difficult, right, because you're right, you're using your own mind to I guess, assess your own mind to judge your own mind. But the problem is then what we do is we go to the other end of the extreme and we give that to an external person. I'll you know, people go to a side and say, assess me, you know, do this questionnaire with me, tell me what my issue is. And so hasn't lived your life, They don't know all your experiences.
They could have never known to the level of steps that you have walked your path.
And so there is somewhere in the middle there right where we.
Can reflect, we can journal things out, we can look at our own loops and then yeah, it does become.
Really helpful to talk it over with someone.
And you know, therapist is one of those going and this is what I'm saying, and this is what I think, give me something else here is there a blind spot that I've missed, like challenging me, ask me questions?
And I think this is where critical reflection comes really good.
So we often engage in normal reflection, which is what happened? How did I feel about it? What could I do next?
Time?
Critical reflection is where you get deeper and you go why do I believe that what was my perception of that thing? What are the assumptions that I'm holding about this thing?
What are my biases? What are my core beliefs around it? So then we get deeper.
And I think if we're just asking ourselves the right questions, we could also go on that journey where we're continually challenging ourselves and we are looking for this is what I think about it? What else could be true? Give me five other options? Right, also be ways that we could perceive this.
Do you think also just going well, this is what I think but could be totally wrong?
Yeah, Oh, I mean that's okay. That is a definition of psychological flexibility. And often I think people like you know, they call people contradictions or that they're but no, that's actually psychological flexibility, which is not being so rigid about life and being able to adapt and knowing that really life exists among the grats, not just a black and white situation. This is you know, we often have to really get comfortable with that great.
Well, when do you think, I mean, as much as you can turn down the emotion and the self protection and the ego and all the bullshit that comes with all the great and all the bullshit that comes with being a human right, if I think about myself, all the things that I've thought and taught and shared, spoken about, acted on, executed, there have been so many things over the years that I was just completely fucking wrong about right, some a bit wrong, some are a little wrong, some are kind of right.
There was truth in it.
But then things which I mentioned too many times on this show but not to you, like the food pyramid that I taught for twenty years because that was what I thought was correct, and that was what I was taught at university and that was science and blah blah, and then you go, oh, no, wrong, you know, or but just I think if you can kind of pull back the ego a bit and just go, well, of course I could be wrong. I've gotten thousands of things wrong so far in my life.
The chances of me.
Not getting something wrong today anything pretty much zero and every day. But what we were so self protective, right.
Well, yeah, I mean know, that's even a good point the way that you said it, because we could look at that and go, I just keep getting things wrong, so I'm probably going to get it wrong. But also it was probably right at the time, and then.
Things change and evolved.
We know what we know at one point, right, then we gain more knowledge and experience, and then we change our minds, and that is I mean, honestly, I love those examples. I can look back and go, I believe this, and now I believe something really different because it reflects growths. If you're still talk if you still hold onto the beliefs that you had X amount of times go and you have not shifted that, then that could really indicate
a lack of growth. So I think it's really good that we're always evolving and we're always really open to that and going what I know now to be true is probably not going to be the same in a year, a couple of years, and that's okay. This is a journey off life and being a curious researcher.
Right one hundred percent and being okay with not only being okay, but being comfortable with being wrong. And also I think one of the challenges is when you believe a thing right and then your identity is intertwined with that belief, well that makes you pretty much unteachable, right, because if you have a set belief and doctor Sam's identity is intertwined with that belief or that ideology or philosophy or whatever, and then I go, hey, Sam, I've
just been doing on my own research. I've been talking to these people and guess what I mean. This is a little bit you know. Then if your entire sense of self or a lot of it is intertwined with that ideology, then you're not open.
What happens to people They get really rigid because You're right, it shakes their sense of like their identity and how they see themselves and they just can't bear to see that.
And I think I hear that a lot.
Actually from adult adults whose parents just can't you know, be able to reflect upon certain things, and going yeah, actually, you know, I see that now that that could have really affected you.
It's like, Nope, that's what I did, and I did the best.
And I don't want to hear anything else because it really shakes and how they saw themselves right back then.
Yeah, It's like I was really interested a few minutes ago when you were talking about you know, psychevals when someone goes and sits with somebody and they do you know, the you know, the mental health professional whoever it is, or the health professional does some kind of you know, personality profile or cognitive assessment or whatever, some kind of
psychological evaluation. And then yeah, so the person who's doing the test is seeing somebody for you know, what is essentially a drop of water in a lifetime that is an ocean. Right, It's like, I'm I've never this person has been around for millions of minutes, and now I'm meeting them for thirty minutes, and then I'm telling them everything that's good and bad with them and.
What they should do. And so what is the.
Like, what are the pros and cons of psychological evaluations in that sense? Like what are your thoughts? I've got a few thoughts, but I want to hear yours first.
Well, I mean, let's start with the pros because I really feel like it's more of a systems based pros.
Right.
So for a lot of a lot of the time, kids can't access funding unless they have an evaluation or a diagnosis.
So that's where I feel like.
The DSM came in to be able to kind of organize these categories, to be able to give out either medication or to give out yet funding. I think for the person, right, what often feels like validation of like, oh this is a name to it now I understand it it actually existed before the appointment, is just because they didn't really give themselves, I guess, the chance to validate their own experiences.
Right.
So a lot of the time people are struggling with massive amounts of anxiety and all the symptoms, and they know that all these symptoms, but then they wait for that appointment to be like you have generalized anxiety disorder. They're like, oh, what a relief. I do have anxiety. But it's like they had anxiety along. It was just because they were waiting for the other person to kind of validate. So I feel like the diagnostic process these days are very limited because it is a bit of
a check box. I mean, this is not a blood test, right, this is a checkbox, and so it is very subjective, and so I think often if we can look at the symptoms that we're experiencing and then being able to go, I'm having this experience of anxiety, I'm having an experience of depression, we could actually get a lot quicker to the tools that we we need to be able to work towards healing. So I don't think it's very trauma informed either. So it's often about what is wrong with
you versus what's happened to you? And I think if we really focused on what's happened to you right from the beginning of childhood and then our adult years and all these experiences and relationships and situations and these unique contexts, and we actually understood our story, we would understand why we're struggling with what we're struggling with, and then we would allow the opportunities that we need to heal and grow because we get it right, and that's the only
person that needs to get it is just us.
I would say, what's your thoughts?
Yeah, I feel like thanks, I feel like you know, like I designed a measurement tool.
Called the S forty, which is the You Experienced Scale, which is evaluating you know, it's behavioral, emotional, cognitive, social.
It's like a three column tool where we where we measure a range of things.
So it's like how I see me, you know, So column one is I self rate.
On all of these on this, you know, like I am empathetic? You know, one seven like cart scale. Oh I'm super empathetic. I'm giving myself seven. So I rate me.
And then let's say you and I wear close acquaintances. Right, So we we rate each other and you do the same thing. So I rate myself on all forty criteria, and you know there's ten different kind of measures in each area behavioral, emotional, cognitive, social. I rate myself, and then I rate you. Then I rate how I see SAM on all of those variables or factors, and then I rate Column three is how I think you see me. So that's metaperception, right. So column one is me rating
me on all these things. Column two is me rating you on all those things, and then column three is how I think you perceive me, which is met exception. Then how good I am at that as meta accuracy?
Right?
But anyway, what is funny is I noticed that.
I could give this you know, this tool, this kind of this test or evaluation to somebody on a certain dat at a certain time, you know, and we would get totally different data to if we gave the same test to the same person in different context or at a different time of day. And like, this is what I think about, you know, it depends like the testing conditions and the time of day, and are they hungry, are they fatigued? Is it early in the day, is it late in the day of that a good day
or a bad day? Did they sleep well? Did they sleep shit? Like I just think in and I'm kind of throwing you and me under the bus a little bit, but I think some of the science in psychology it's not bullshit, but it's.
A dodgy do you know what I'm saying.
It's like, yeah, as well, because what you just said there makes complete sense. And imagine if we gave people the tools to go, Okay, so this is what happened and so are you hungry? Then were you this like for them to kind of self be able to not just monitor themselves, but actually I would say audit and going okay, the problems that I think I have, how was I feeling them? Did I get enough sleep? Have I got my basics down?
Part?
Because I feel like it kind of helps them, right rather just taking the snapshot and like you said, they don't have the context. They could not be feeling great and then they're just so fixated now on the results.
Yeah. Yeah, And it's like one of my.
One of my studies I ran, we had face to face I had I did two parts, so it was one study in two parts at Monash University, and I had in kind of installment one which was it doesn't matter Thursday night or whatever.
I had about one hundred.
People, and then in installment too, so it was just done in two parts. It was the same study. And if you if you did the if you filled out all the forms and the questionnaires properly, and I mean give or take, it would take about, ah maybe thirty to fifty minutes, you know, to do it pretty well, because as you know, you can't you can't ask people to do shit for three hours because they resent it
and they don't. But what was funny is so there were some people who were there because they really wanted to be there, and so they were very thorough and they really gave everything a lot of thought and you could kind of get the sense that this is probably going to.
Be good data.
And there were then there was a few people there who were there because they were getting credits for being there, right, so God bless the students. But like there were a few of them who got through, Like even if you were amazing, you couldn't get through any quicker than twenty five minutes.
Like they're getting through in ten minutes. I'm like, well, you're not even doing it, you know.
What I mean, And then you've kind of got to figure out, Okay, well do I keep this in?
Do I keep this out?
Do I?
Yah? See, that would be tricky as a research thing, because I think of that in general though, with I don't know, scales that measure anxiety and depression. You know, it's really how that person feels as they're going through that scale, it's going to be very different. So if you had a conversation with them and understood where that started, and you know how they've kind of approached it to date and being able to have that, I guess that qualitive qualitative measure versus a quantitative Yeah.
Yeah, very interesting, And that's I mean, then that's the whole messiness of psychological research or psychology research, you know. I wanted to ask you. You probably mentioned the word healing, heal or healing six or seven times.
I love it. I love it.
I want to know what is the difference between or the overlap of healing and recovery?
Is that analogous? Is that different? Do they coexist?
Yeah? I feel like they're recovery.
I don't know, I feel like they're both for me, like the journey right, because we're never recovered, we're never healed. So I think it's I mean, someone can go I'm on a recovery journey, and someone can go on.
A healing journey.
I did actually a post about this the other day because I hear often people talk about I need to take a break from healing, like it's getting too much, And you know, my argument is that we should need a break from the inner work.
Because if that means we're doing it in the wrong way, if we feel like we need a break from it, if.
We only see inner work as putting ourselves down or you know, yoga and climbing activities and constantly analyzing ourselves, if that's only the inner work, then yeah, of course you're gonna need a break from it. But I feel like the inner.
Work is giving yourselves what you need.
That could be dancing, that could be more rest, that could be taking a break from more of the intellectual stuff and just having more experiences of living life. So I feel like it could all be healing if we again take that approach. If I'm going to follow what I need here and constantly you know, recess and reevaluate to keep myself accountable, but at the same time, yeah, giving ourselves a break could still be healing.
Having fun is still healing.
So we talk a lot in exercise science, SAM and nutrition and lots of other health related kind of spaces about trying to find, you know, what is the best diet for you, what is the best exercise protocol for you? And I know you spend lots of time in the gym.
Is you know what is optimal for you?
Because you know, I could get another guy who's my age and my height, my weight, AND's got the same goals as me, and we both do the same workout and I'm good and he can't move.
For four days, right.
Yeah, Or he eats on average two thousand calories a day. I eat on average two thousand calories a day and I gain weight that I don't want to gain, and he is not getting enough. He needs twenty two, I need eighteen or whatever. It could be thirty two or twenty eight, doesn't matter. But it's like, you know, physiologically, the same thing will create a different response in different people, because of course, nobody other than some identical twins of course, have got.
The same physiology.
So it's not trying to figure out what's the best protocol the end, but rather what's the best protocol for Cray, what's the best protocol for Sam?
Like how you know.
When we look at sets and reps and overload and cardio and fucking target heart range and hours of sleep and micros and macros and calories in and out and situation and environment and job, and you know, it's like my job is I reckon? For me, if not the best job, I don't know what it is, but for me, it's one of the best. It's probably the best job. Like I'm doing, I'm talking to you. You're smart, You're great to talk to.
This is my job. This I'm getting paid for this, This show is sponsored. This is ridiculous, Right.
I go and I talk to you know, I was in Queensland on Monday and Tuesday talking to awesome people about all the shit that I'm fascinated with. I go up there, I talk about the shit I'm obsessed with. They give me money and I fly back.
Right. So for me, it's almost like the dream job. And I'm never not grateful. I'm always grateful.
But for somebody else that job would be a fucking nightmare.
Yeah, good you.
Know, and that's the importance, right, like you said, of having those individual protocols, because you could have even the best exercise plan for someone and then they just don't do it because it's not working in their schedule. So it's actually not the best plan for them, you know, So then you're having to tweak it and you're trying to find their barriers, I would assume.
So yeah, very and very good points. Well.
And then and then if we try to extrapolate that to you know, helping people with you know, trauma and grief and a myriad of mental health issues that you know, you understand way better than me. And what's going to work for kid one might not work at all for Kid two. It could be a catastrophe for kid three or grown up four. And so to what extent when you are prescribing treatment, therapy, healing or going on that journey, to what extent is it flexible and intuitive? Oh?
It has to be.
Like that's actually the number one thing that I really hone in on even with when I'm talking and teaching those professionals about therapeutic play.
We have to be adaptable.
And what we need to know is we need to know the next step right, but then being able to take feedback from the environment, from the child, and then being able to adapt and to rejig our plan. I think too often I see these really great behavior plans and they're super rigid, and they don't even survive first contact with the child.
And then you know, professionals get really.
Down to themselves and they're like, no, but I had all the best stuff in there, and it should work. And so we then become like I said, rigid rather than going actually, we just need to know the next step, and then also being really open to gathering more information about the child. And I think adults should treat healing like that too. We need to know the next thing and just start looking for that feedback.
Is this working for me? What would working look like?
How can I readus recess, reevaluate? It's always a work in progress. I think we need to, yeah, be as adaptable and flexible as we can while still, you know, stay on track with our goals or our direction.
To what extent.
I absolutely have no idea about the answer to this question. Often I asked something I think I have an idea of the answer. I'm often wrong, of course, but I have no idea what the answer to this is. You know, so in some settings and contexts with some problems, kids will be medicated, even adults, right, But to what extent could play therapy replace medication? Is there, ever, are.
There cases where or.
Conditions I guess is maybe another word where this kid is going to you know, experience improvements physiological, psychological, emotional improvements greater are like by climbing up a fucking tree, or rolling around on the floor with a phone ball, or I don't know, jumping on a dinosaur. Is that I feel like that's a much better route than popping pills if it's.
Effective, definitely, But you know what I think is always going to be the barer here. We will see what we want to see. If we believe that medication is the thing that's going to help, you know, a child, we're going to be very I guess fixated on that.
And it's like, nope, I've tried on the things. It's not working, and we've reached the end here, and a lot of parents, you know, they're like they really do feel stretched, they really do feel like they have tried all the things and this is the only thing that can shift it. But then I feel like, and this is a bit of a playful mindset to think of, imagine if medication wasn't available, what would we do?
How would we manage it? And then we go into that and I think as adults we can do that as well.
We could find adults being in situations where they go, I'm anxious, I just want that medication. Hang on, what if I just pretended like that wasn't available?
What would I do instead? And then you know, making a plan that way.
So I don't think it's clear cut because this is a very subjective experience. You could talk to someone. It's not a blot test. There's not you know, definite things about this. It's really the environment that the child's in as well, if they believe they can do with or without it. But I think it does get to a point that whether you're using medication or not, all those other things can help. And so we really do need to realize it's not we do the natural stuff or
we do the medication. It's whatever path you choose, natural or medication, you still need to do the strategy or you still need to do those things because it's not going to create this perfect child or this perfect situation anyway.
Yeah, and I guess if you're medicating symptoms, which I completely understand, right, there's no judgment in that. But you know, somebody's got a certain symptom, we give them medication, the symptom goes away or the symptom improves, but we're still not fixing the underlying thing that's causing the whatever, right, And so to what extent do we And again I don't know enough about this, So I'm just a dumbass
asking questions, So please don't hate me. Parents, don't go what do you fucking I don't know anything, right, So I'm asking honestly, like I feel like it would be while I understand the chemical approach, I myself have used the chemical approach for many things in my life, not list drugs, but of course, of course, like thank God for painkillers when my back has been fucked thirty times. Right, But to what extent can we like treat the underlying
stuff that is the producer of the symptoms. Yeah, you know, we play therapy or you know whatever.
In general, Yeah, I think to a huge extent. And I think that's why I really try and help parents to not get to fixated on do I communication or do I not? You know, it's like we can experiment with either option. That is okay, absolutely no judgment, like you said, but when you've but aside.
From that, that's one piece of the puzzle. So what about all these other pieces?
And I think that is about really targeting the self talk for kids, really talking about the role of the environment, because that does matter, right, Our environment can either work for or against us. Talk about the stories that we hold about ourselves, our cool beliefs, why do we be, what we do, what is our sception of these things, and then looking at those practices on a daily basis that we show up for ourselves or that we care for ourselves so that we create room in our life
for joy and full play and for all those things. So, yeah, I don't think it's either either. It's more like, okay, that's a medical thing, and if you haven't tried it, you want to try it, go ahead, But it doesn't replace the need for all those other things. So let's start like, let's just continue ticking away at that.
Yeah, And it's interesting when you think that you could take I was going to mention the name of drug. I won't, but you could take drug a and it might lower your heart rate, might lower your blood pressure. It might tone down your bloody sympathetic nervous system or switch on your pair. You know, you might start to it might change your physiology in that sense and you move out of a state of a heightened state to a more relaxed state.
Data.
Or you could go for a run, and not that that would work for everybody, but some people you go for a run, you get home. I know when I run, I get home and I feel like calm. I just I see it usually especially if I run hard. Or for some people that might be whatever meditation, or it might be being in nature.
But they it's funny the thing that that.
A drug does, which is change of physiology, change biochemistry. So does swimming in the ocean yep, and running it does.
Yeah.
Yeah, And you know a good point about that, because I think the issue here is when someone goes no, I definitely need that medication, and you might go hang on, you could go for a run.
What they hear is I'm not doing something. I've caused this. This is my fault.
If only I went for the run, I wouldn't feel like that. And so then they run and they come back and they're like, I don't feel better. See it didn't work, you know, versus I think the way that you explain it is really good, which is, yes, medication can change our brain physology, but so can running. So what running does? It actually rewires our brain. So does meditation that rewires our brain. So there's a whole bunch
of things that really our brain. It's not just medication, And I think the way that we can approach it can vastly change, right, because it's just not a lack of things that we're not it's just giving our brain another experience, and medication is one, but then we've got all these other things too.
I my listeners know this, pologies listeners. But about eight months ago, Sam I was my phone, gave me an alert and it said it basically went, you're super lazy.
To get off your ass, right.
It said you are walking on average four and a half thousand or four thousand, two hundred some disgraceful amount of steps per day. Right, this mister excise science DoD right, And I went, how am I walking so few steps? And this was averaged over the last three months or something, So it wasn't just a day or two. It was all the days on average, and I went, right, I
can't do that. That's unacceptable, And so I just made a resolution just to me, and I went, well, from tomorrow, I'm going to walk ten thousand steps a day.
That's it. Every day. I'll just figure it out, right, So I'll make phone.
Calls when I walk, I'll listen to a podcast, I'll listen to some research, or I might just walk and do nothing. I might just because I live eight hundred metres from the beach, I might just walk to the beach and fucking hang out with nature, you know. But the funny thing is, since I did that, and I haven't stopped that, since I've done that every day since, and I probably averaged closer to fifteen thousand steps a day.
But what I and I only did it for the physiological you know, the health, heart, health, moving my body, hips, flexibility, not sitting at a fucking chair, posture, all that stuff, and all of those things have really worked. But the thing that I didn't do it for and didn't expect was my energy all day is better. And I mean my physical energy but also my emotional energy, not all day every day, but on average, it's better every day,
my mental acuity better, my cognitive performance better, my ability. Like, I've been up since five this morning, it's caught to past seven, and I haven't eaten since eight o'clock this morning, right and right now, so it's almost twelve hours since I've eaten. I only eat two meals a day. I've been up and pretty busy and pretty productive for fourteen hours. I feel fucking great and I'm sixty one. And that's not an advertisement for me. That's just like, oh, now,
a year ago, I was fucked in the afternoon. You know I was, and I'm not saying so therefore, if you do this everyone, that will be the outcome.
So the core difference you feel is the steps.
One hundred percent. And so I'm literally walking probably two to three times every day more than I did.
It's like a thing came up.
So how many steps should you stay? On average? Would you do?
Yeah?
On average around thirteen to thirteen and a half on average someday sixteen, some days eleven, right, but mostly getting up towards fifteen.
I also lift weight every day and all of that.
But here's my point, Like, there's been this psychological and so I feel calmer, I feel clearer, but also this cognitive shift, which is I can focus for longer, I feel more present.
You know.
The other day, like I said to you, I was in Queensland working and I'm in front of groups for hours, hours, and I experienced no fatigue.
Wow, that's incredible.
Do you think that the eating twice a day helps with that too? Gives do you want to see galories when you do that?
Or is it just totally instinctively so I think one of them. We're digressing here, but fuck, it's interesting anyway. I truly believe that one of the one of the consequences of life in the new millennia is that and before is that we've become disconnected from our body. We don't We're not We're not plugged into the wisdom that is biofeedback.
We're not plugged.
You know when you think, I mean in a million ways, but you think just about food. I mean, and this is no, I'm not throwing any heat on anyone because I did this right. I had a toxic or not toxic. I had an unhealthy relationship with food for a long time. I would have had very close to an eating disorder. Definitely disordered eating. But I would eat just because it's time to eat. Oh wow, it's time to eat, and I wouldn't even be hungry, like my body is giving
me no signals that I need food, right. And there have been times in my life where I was morbidly obese when I was younger, and then I was I don't know if you know that.
Did you know I was a fat kid?
Saying that in one of the elia.
Yeah, yeah, so I was morbidly obese when I was a kid, and then when I got older, I also lost my way and going a whole lot of weight and blah blah blah. But anyway, for me, it's I think one of the mardest things we can do is try to reconnect with our body. Because our body is fucking brilliant. Our body is wisdom, our body is information, our body is guidance.
But what we do is.
We go, oh, old mate said I should eat this, Well, how about instead of old mate who doesn't know your body, who doesn't understand your physiology, who did a course well done, did a course right.
It's even when.
People say to me, what's the best way for me to get strong or increase muscular endurance or whatever it is.
I go, look, I don't know you.
I don't know how your bi can talk to you about the fundamentals of exercise science, adaptation, progressive overload, you know, physiology, biomechanicsper I can do that. But how your body will individually respond to a particular stimulus or stimuli, I don't know.
So let's start with something and then you pay attention to what's working and what's not working, and we'll do an N equals one project, which is why my show is called the You Project, because I think our lives in a way are ongoing experiments with that.
That is the research for me to so yeah, to keep experimenting with what works and what doesn't. And so you probably would have done that with your food.
Then it's like you start somewhere and then you took feedback I'm assuming, and then you tweak it and then you find something that works.
In COVID, I gained about four kilos, which for me is quite a bit because I always have a generally hover within one or two k's right, And you know, it's not like I didn't lose my shit over It wasn't a big trauma or anything, But I went, oh, and because I was moving less, the gyms were closed.
It was just, you know, a first world problem.
But nonetheless it was tricky, right, And so one day I thought, all right, I'm gonna I think I went from like eighty five to eighty nine kilos and I went, well, and I could feel it, and you know, it's not life threatening, and I wasn't, you know, having sleepless nights.
But I went, what am I going to do? What practically can I do?
Because I was probably well obviously definitely eating a few things.
I didn't need, right, It's more in the want than need.
Category, right, So I went, well, you know what, I'm just going to not eat lunch for two weeks. So I'll eat breakfast, I'll eat dinner, and if I happen to be genuinely hungry around one or two or three, I might have a little snack.
Yeah.
Day one day, one sam of the fourteen, I got to about two or three o'clock and I realized, well, one I wasn't hungry because once I kind of commit, I just I don't once.
I go lunch.
Yeah, what lunch is not an option? So I don't think about what I'm going.
To eat for lots.
You no coffees as well, like are you going completely after Yeah?
Well I would.
I would have tea through the day with water and you know, a dash of milk. But I wasn't eating a meal, but the unexpected consequence, so I did. I lost the weight, which probably took a month, not two weeks, but was my mental clarity and my mental energy didn't wane through the afternoon. Now until that, every afternoon I was hitting this kind of energy.
Wall where I'm like ah, and I used.
To go, well, of course you are, because you're fifty eight year old as fuck, you're tired. You know, this is what happens. And yeah, that was the That was the last time I ate lunch.
And that was so how do you know you're getting enough during the day?
Then, I mean like, sorry, how do you know you're not getting enough with your two meals?
Are they like monster meals?
No?
Not at all, not at all.
But what I do is it's like I'll eat dinner and then if I think, oh, I'm still hungry, I'll wait half an hour, maybe maybe an hour, and then if in an hour I'm still hungry, I'll go have something else. But there's a you know, trying to distinguish between a craving and hunger like this is, oh, this is a signal from my body that it needs more energy.
You know.
That is that is the challenge, and it's it's you know, there's my body's But I hate to say this. I'm going to say it, and this is am I going to say it? Yeah, I need to give up. My body's been telling me lately. This is like my last fucking bastion, right, I need to give up artificial sweetener. Some research just came out on artificial sweetener, which is not great, right, And I'm like, ah, did you know that like this that's.
The one thing you know I actually have?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, So I drink I mean I don't drink mountains of but I would have you know, I have some diet coke and I have some nutra sweet in my coffee and sugar stuff.
Right because that's the stuff that I like, the no sugar drinks.
That sound yeah yeah yeah yeah.
So like my protein powder has artificial sweetener in it. Yeah, I'm like, ah fuck, Anyway, some research came out from Monash University.
I could fuck this up a little bit, I don't think I will.
That said, one glass of soda or whatever, you know, fizzy whatever with artificial sweet and one glass per day increases your chance of type two diabetes by thirty eight percent. Wow, versus the same amount of drink with sugar twenty three percent.
To it as a worse than sugar, is what you're saying.
Yes, yeah, well it's this is what that. And I went and it was on the news, and you know how stuff's on the news.
I'm like, fuck the.
News, they've got this wrong. So I went and I went, I need to go look up this research. And I looked it up and it's exactly that.
I'm like, oh fuck.
And also my dad's are type two diabetics, so the chances of me history Yeah, I'm like, yeah, fuck, you know, so you just all right, So I just need to figure it out. So, you know, today this morning, I have my coffee no sweetener. I had another one this afternoon, no sweetner. It tastes a little bit cackr. But I'll get used to it, but I think adat yeah. Yeah, So all right, so I just want to ask you. We'll get back on track and we'll wind up.
What how much of.
Dealing with with kids and trauma is about dealing with the parents first. Or is it or is it like in conjunction or is does it totally separate am.
I would say that that would be the main thing, to be honest, because if you think about therapy, it's meant to be a short term intervention, right, They're not meant to be in therapy twenty four seven. So you know, the parent has the environment, like they hold the influence over the environment.
The child's in that environment. So being able to work with the parent.
Not only helps during the therapy process, it's a child is in therapy, but after because we know that there will be trauma reactions, right, trauma responsors post therapy, and so a parent that actually understands it will be able to accommodate for that versus a parent that hasn't been
part of that process anyway. So I think it is really important, if anything, probably more important that the parents are actually attending therapy and understanding and learning about trauma and learning about you know, talking about their child's behavior and how that's linked to trauma and what they could do to make adaptations or yeah, you know, for their child to promote that healing and that growth outside the therapy rooms.
I think that's really important.
Is it hard or it's probably not the right word, But when you talk to other health professionals, people that because you teach people about play therapy, right did I?
Yeah, so you you train them up to do play therapy.
With I will teach I guess the play therapy tools for people who aren't.
Therapists or profess or therapists.
Yeah, I'm really targeting those ones who don't get access to quality play therapy education because they're not a therapist. So I'm trying to make it a bit more accessible for them.
And so the people who are in the same kind of fields therapy and mental health and all of that, but the it not in your particular niche how do they respond to this treatment protocol versus more traditional routes, like you do you get much pushback? Do you get lots of support? Do you get curiosity?
Like?
What is the vibe from the psychology tribe?
So interesting you say that because I do have a lot of psychologists that.
Come through my training, and you know, a lot of them say, but I know this stuff and I'm you know, struggling, right, to make sense of that because we are the therapist, you know, so for them that traditional training is staying true to it. Then I have a bunch of others that are like, I'm learning more about this stuff than I did in university because I'm actually challenging own assumptions and own bias, and I'm actually creating tools and delivering tools that help the parents post therapy.
So I think you've got both.
And I've noticed the ones that are in therapy themselves and doing their own and work actually really welcome this. I think it's the one that go, you know, no, like I'm the expert, here's her parents still need to come to me, right, and I'll.
Do the therapy because then I want to do it properly.
The ones that are probably more stuck on the system.
But I think that that's very rare.
I think most of the time psychologists are welcoming it more because they can see they can see that the system has its limitations. Research doesn't match up with the amount of funding that we get for mental health treatment, so I think they are looking at more creative ways to be able to deliver these tools to parents. So god often therapists will still do my course, but they'll use it ask like a homework thing for their parents, you know, to.
Be able to give them the tools to extend this work at home.
So I think, yeah, being creative is probably the main thing, and being able to realize that the system does as limitations and so does the mental health model. But there are ways that we can add to that and be creative around it.
And is there a particular age where you can kind of open the conversational door with a child around how they feel and like you can actually ask them deress direct specific questions or do you just kind of wait and see what evolves.
I think you can, you can ask them.
I mean there's definitely approaches that you know do that, and I mean with kids, you know, you could still talk to them, but knowing that it's probably play that they are most going to process things and be able to actually you know, figure out how they feel and would get insight into their own world versus what they say to us, because remember, kids might be searching forward.
The right answer, the answer that they think we want to hear.
How are you yeah, I'm good, you know, versus actually playing out these things. And yeah, it's definitely just more appropriate developmentally, but I don't think it stops us from having or to abstaining from talking.
We can definitely ask questions and appropriate.
Yeah.
Always fascinating, Always fascinating. I love the way your brain works. I love the work that you do. I love the energy that you bring and the info that you bring. Tell people how they can connect with you, Sam and follow you and maybe even do some.
Work with you.
Yes, so you could follow me on Instagram which is doctor Sam Casey, or on my website which is www dot doctor samcc dot com.
Perfect.
Well, we'll say goodbye affair, but thanks, good to see you again.
Thanks to you too, Craig. It was a great conversation.
Yeah, I appreciate it.