Your Therapist Needs Therapy 51 - Open Dialogue with Alita Taylor

Jeremy is joined this week by the incredibly insightful Alita Taylor. Jeremy and Alita talk about the shortcomings of the medical model, the secondary trauma of working in a failing system, and Alita shares her expertise about Open Dialogue, a practical and philosophical approach to navigating mental health crises. We also chat about Finnish metal bands. It makes sense contextually.

To learn more about Alita or training in Open Dialogue, head over to her website at opendialoguepacific.com. You can also find several open access publications as both an author and editor here. And be sure to check out the Network for Dialogic Practices for blogs, news, and upcoming events!

Jeremy has all his practice info at Wellness with Jer, and you can find him on Instagram and YouTube.

Head over to Patreon to support the show, or you can pick up some merch! We appreciate support from likes, follows, and shares as well!

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Podcasts about therapy do not replace actual therapy, and listening to a podcast about therapy does not signify a therapeutic relationship.

If you or someone you know is in crisis please call or text the nationwide crisis line at 988, or text HELLO to 741741. The Trevor Project has a crisis line for LGBTQ+ young people that can be reached by texting 678678.

Transcript

Your Therapist Needs Therapy - Alita Taylor (2024-03-27 16:35 GMT-5) - Transcript

Attendees

Alita Taylor, Jeremy Schumacher

Transcript

This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it was created.

Jeremy Schumacher: Hello, and welcome to another edition of your therapist needs therapy podcast. I'm your host Jeremy Schumacher. I support the show you can head over to patreon.com/wellness with chair. rch we've got all sorts of stuff. We're trying to be a real podcast I guess. So if you want to support the show subscribe to all that stuff. I'm back with another systems thinker today. I'm very excited to have my guest on from the Pacific Northwest geography Alita Taylor. Thanks for joining me today.

Alita Taylor: Will you're welcome. Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here. Although the here that I am in is not the Pacific Northwest of the time.

Jeremy Schumacher: I Okay,…

Alita Taylor: I'm staring at a computer from Southern, California.

Jeremy Schumacher: what's got excited for a minute thought maybe you were in Finland for something. I was like, are we recording internationally because that'd be excited.

Alita Taylor: yeah. I'm not there now, but I did get trained there and that's something

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah, we can talk about that. I took finish in college. So we have that tiny little connection.

Alita Taylor: bad that very good.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I remember how to introduce myself and ask what time the bus arrives and that's about all I learned in my college finish. Not because my professor was bad,…

Alita Taylor: What?

Jeremy Schumacher: but because I was a poor student.

Alita Taylor: Yeah, we just don't have a lot of finish speaking people walking around but what time does the bus arrive meet that Mikey get a lot? busy Tula

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Your finish is much better than mine. I was many years ago and that was probably the class. I skipped the most. there Yeah,…

Alita Taylor: they would probably ask which bus

Jeremy Schumacher: and this is totally off topic and that what I was letting to talk about finish has a written language and then a spoken language that are like different things. Was how I was taught it and…

Alita Taylor: a little bit

Jeremy Schumacher: so we learned the written first and I don't think I'm particularly. I never really got to the spoken part.

Alita Taylor: Yeah, the good thing though about learning finish is if you do learn the correct pronunciation from the written. If you can speak anything, you can read anything out loud how to say because there aren't any weird rules. It's just that you have to learn to make the sound and…

Jeremy Schumacher: unlike English

Jeremy Schumacher: a lot Yes,…

Alita Taylor: things like that. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: my name in Finnish class was Jeremy. sounds much less fun than it sounds a lot different than Jeremy.

Alita Taylor: that's very good.

Alita Taylor: Yes, it's a wonderful land and I'm a daughter of an immigrant from Finland and my parents met at the syho Where my dad saw my mom? In queue, for the extra tickets and he gave her his extra ticket that his friend couldn't come. In Helsinki in 1961, and she tried to pay him and he wouldn't accept the money and then he tried to buy her a drink and she said no. And then she was really embarrassed that she was sitting next to him in the theater.

Jeremy Schumacher: Sure.

Alita Taylor: So then the rest is history.

Jeremy Schumacher: Dating in the 1960s an easier time,…

Alita Taylor: Probably I don't even think she knew much English and…

Jeremy Schumacher: I think.

Alita Taylor: he didn't know finish he was. a Fulbright teaching architecture. but they love the fins love Architects, so …

Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yeah.

Alita Taylor: but I went to Finland back to Finland in part to learn open dialogue and teach it. So most people in Finland don't even know. About open dialogue. It's not like all over the place. It was just practice in a small part of western Lapland.

Jeremy Schumacher: let's jump into it. Can you because my guess is a lot of therapist.

Alita Taylor: Yeah, they many don't and it's also a challenge to talk about it because We are. Culturized and in the colonized thinking to replicate things and to learn a model and then go. this is how I do it and I bring it here, this is CBT and this is this and this is this and it's not like that because at the time that open dialogue started to develop It was only.

00:05:00

Alita Taylor: Historically that you can understand it like the principles which are tolerance of uncertainty psychological continuity Responsibility flexibility and Mobility social network perspective and dialogism those seven principles were only just made up. In retrospective studies of looking back years behind.

Jeremy Schumacher: Sure.

Alita Taylor: noticing that they did something to reduce hospitalizations and something to get people back to work or off, long-term neuroleptics sooner and

Alita Taylor: less recidivism, there's lots of things that they were noticing but then they decided to actually look at what is it that we did differently starting from this point, which was I believe. 1980 maybe a little bit before then. when there was this A not decree, but when the state kind of tells all the counties the nation told all the municipalities. Hey, there's overflowing hospitals try to do something different and that's what their Western Lapland District. Took seriously and did different things and tried different things and then they looked back and they were like, we did all these seven things and it helped. so

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: that's why it's hard to talk about as a therapist.

Alita Taylor: To do things anyway, so I just really started to look into open dialogue because of my own experience. Of I guess you'd call it moral injury or Decades of watching in the emergency room being a clinician. and a family therapist

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: the division of the care, in patient outpatient, the teams were all changing all the time. that's why I wanted to learn a different way and that's why I went to Finland and took the two-year. Psychotherapy training to teach as a different way of approaching healing and in a community level not just the individual.

Jeremy Schumacher: And we're gonna just work backwards and chronology. I guess here. I always start with How'd you get into the fields? You've been in the field for a long time though? So it might be one of those kind of. Hit high points,…

Alita Taylor: 

Jeremy Schumacher: but it's a fascinating because I just had a new therapist.

Jeremy Schumacher: needs therapy to get their hours and then Go do therapy and…

Alita Taylor: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: who's that helping, you get your hours and then you get to go be a therapist needs therapy. It's not a great.

Alita Taylor: Yes, I know that driven by the economics of it. luckily I had one of my professors of abnormal psychology, which it's probably not even called that anymore. I guess it's called Psychopathology. I kind of like abnormal better, but he had us work in a state hospital and in California where I was at the time. This was the pre Reagan shut down. So there were still lots of State hospitals to choose to work at and he had us do a

00:10:00

Alita Taylor: practicum in there And these were really really. chronic people I mean they were very floridly, I remember I would hang out with them, during my time and then I would come back to this meeting with the professionals. And I would be just so in awe of some of their behaviors or I mean I was convinced. I was like you guys know the guitarist for rat. Is in your hospital and they were all laughing at me and I was thinking what are they laughing at? he's the guitarist for rat. And he's here hospitalized permanently for years. The world is doing without this wonderful guitarist and he actually wasn't

Alita Taylor: I'm like that's a delusion, but he believed it so strongly and he had me so convinced And then I also realized why am I as an intern hanging out with these people and the staff are in the room laughing at me and circled up complaining about their charting. This is actually more fun hanging out here playing ping pong with them.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: And I mean, I don't know what kind of work I did other than just.

Alita Taylor: I think I witnessed something some pretty severe stuff. somebody got a hold of a blade and there was a suicide attempt in the shower. And so I remember going hey nurse. I think there's something going on over here. so it was I mean,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: it did ready me to work in the emergency room, but I think what saddened me my years working in the emergency room is like Every place that was getting people in crisis wanted them not in crisis before they got there and there wasn't the attitude which is very different than in the open dialogue framework. The immediate help is

Alita Taylor: They would even say that when there's an emergent crisis. That's when to do the meetings. That's when to bring in the person's helpers. We don't need to push down an emergency and get them stabilized. Before then doing the work, which means they've been tried on different medications and then three weeks later. There may be in some program totally disconnected from the crisis. So I think that's really missing information in the practice of how we treat. somebody who?

Alita Taylor: I mean, why do we even say they can't be in crisis to come into Outpatient Therapy? I think that's a call to do it, and if it means that they need to be in a secure environment and that's kind of our job to help make that happen.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Alita Taylor: So that's kind of why I got started in the field sort of happened to me. I was in a part of a youth group in high school that was called The Prayer Karen encouragement. committee, and so it was my job to

Alita Taylor: people in need and that I don't know. I gave my phone number out to people and I remember I gave my phone number out to a guy.

Alita Taylor: Who called me one day?

Alita Taylor: I was on one of those phones that was on the wall in your kitchen, with a cord.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: And I answered it and he was really quiet. any he said, hey, and I recognized his voice and I knew something was wrong. in the silence I just knew. that he was

Alita Taylor: that's sometimes an interesting thing, when people are

Alita Taylor: They're not gonna say it. Sometimes it's preverbal what's going on and so just listening for those moments and he was in a real bad State. He had just had a drink of huge ton of whiskey and had his dad's loaded gun there. Ready to shoot himself. So

00:15:00

Alita Taylor: I just felt like it was an honor. That somebody would call and I think we're doing a little bit of a disservice.

Alita Taylor: by leaving peers out of the equation in schools. I don't know if that same thing would happen. I'd hope that someone would feel that they are capable of being a human being walking along with another human being during a hard time and that they wouldn't just freak out and call, 911 or do these abstract.

Alita Taylor: formulaic tasks that somehow have been put into an acronym for them, not What does that a decision tree? Algorithm, we mental health does not exist in algorithms.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Human beings are messier than that.

Alita Taylor: Yes, and we're so receptive, to change and to environments and people and sometimes we just need to neurobiology around us that can talk about things and in a new way and not have the answers, I don't the longer I'm a therapist.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: because when somebody's ready and they show up, they know what they want to talk about. If I'm sitting there asking checking boxes, there's a wonderful episode. Do you watch Chicago Med? Have you ever see it? So there's a psychiatrist on the show. And the psychiatrist, at one point in his life needed therapy the and here's a very seasoned, clinician But he couldn't find anybody. He was like, because his therapist.

Alita Taylor: And then they show this scene where he finally gets in to see a guy and the guys sitting at his desk with his laptop in front of him with and the character the psychiatrist who's sitting in the chair and then he starts to go so, how can I help you? What is your name? And he's typing the whole time and then he said he keeps interrupting him. just a second. And he's typing just a second and then he keeps Trying to explain something but the guy cuts him off and then all of a sudden they're silence and he looks up and the chair is empty. the character left

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Alita Taylor: that just happened way more than it should and if we don't listen to do our own work inside. And go, maybe I was taught wrong.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. yeah our Fascination and I go back and forth on this. Obviously. I think there's some gray area but our fascination with evidence-based practice. and I think the research matters and I think having a science back in matters, but I think when we get to prescriptive of formulate with it, we miss a lot of stuff. I was never someone who had notes I have ADHD, so if I have something in front of me, I will play with it and not pay attention. And so it's no computer. No nothing. But I was the odd person in my program. I mean I read Harley and…

Alita Taylor: Okay.

Jeremy Schumacher: Anderson's book and it kept me in grad school. Otherwise, I was not sure I was in the right field because of how little I fit with everybody because I was just showing up and trying to be authentic and curious and that was like you didn't do a formal assessment like no, but here's my diagnosis and here's why but Not the formal version. I can play the game but the formulaic stuff never worked well for me.

Alita Taylor: You are not ADHD. You are Jeremy but Yeah.

00:20:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Yes, my ADHD brain does make up a part of Jeremy.

Alita Taylor: And thank God I mean yeah,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: it's really I admire that over the years she maintains an aliveness with the person the moment What's needed? what's the right meeting what's the right treatment for the time and that we never know? so it's great to have studies and great to have an understanding of a sequela of things that go together that and know and treatments that help. but it's not the same as being with a person That on a new day.

Jeremy Schumacher: right

Alita Taylor: with a new relational understanding of and also what I love that she focuses on the most is what are the person's ideas? What are my clients thoughts?

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: And that's something that if I get rusty, fight I noticed I'm not asking those questions enough when I'm not present to it, thinking that I'm gonna say something so clever. To help this person, it's so much easier not to do that and just to go, and then there's some silence and then to go. So what are you thinking right now?

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: what do you notice? In yourself now that we've talked about that.

Alita Taylor: And to just close my mouth and just let their own. I mean, I think of therapy as meeting yourself. it's like in a minute you make with yourself, even though you're making it with your therapist.

Jeremy Schumacher: all night Yeah, I see so many clients who? Have been in therapy for years and haven't gotten much from it. and that to me is why are you doing stop going to see that person and I don't know. Why are we as therapist? a long time I work with religious trauma and I work with some stuff that are variable and might have a long treatment plan but I like to chit chat, but you don't have to pay me for that. So if we're doing the formal therapy thing like we should be getting something out of it.

Alita Taylor: Allow somebody to I mean, psychoanalysis was supposed to be for years and years and several times a week and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: it's still practiced. And so I don't think we can underestimate that power of the continuity of a person even if you're not doing too much if there's Trust then There's nothing better than that…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: because if that's a person that's gonna be there for and maybe take a year off or something and See what's left.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I think being in and out of therapy makes more sense. I mean I think that's a more realistic approach you go. when you need the extra support, or when you need to work on something specific or clean something up as opposed to indefinitely four years. I mean push back on the psychoanalysisco analysts the 1% of therapist a good model. at least in our current setup. I feel like that's really limiting…

Alita Taylor: mmm Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: who you can see and

Jeremy Schumacher: that's what I'm like the Science Matters. I mean I don't know if you're doing twice a week therapy for six years. I don't think that's great.

Alita Taylor: I don't think that. It's something we can ever decide like some people. When they come see me, I never say what is a normal amount? …

00:25:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: What works for them because sometimes they might need something and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: sometimes they might need it every month. So at the end of a session, which is also something I learned from open dialogue at the end of every meeting. They ask so when should we meet next what makes sense what is needed now after we've just had this meeting Next week, it could be no, we're good, we can take it from here.

Jeremy Schumacher: And I support obviously the client driven approach. I just like again that prescriptive or dogmatic approach of this is how it's going to be for every single client. I see I don't know that you're prioritizing the client then.

Alita Taylor: Yeah, we don't know and I should be looking at my job as like that. I work myself out of a job. I think

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. That's how I introduce it in my informed consent. It's like my job is to make myself not needed.

Alita Taylor: Yeah, and we just never know what's needed. I mean, I also need people in my life like my Pilates instructor and my hair guy and …

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: those are very therapist need. lots of different ways

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. and…

Alita Taylor: Mm-hmm

Jeremy Schumacher: the relational approach I mean Here your hairdresser and your Pilates person and all those relationships.

Alita Taylor: the coffee barista

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah, and all those things can be meaningful and They might not be like if they aren't serving us. Why are we? interacting with that I kind of have that approach of let's put our energy towards things that are Healthy for us are helping us or building us up as opposed to I see so many people. Coming out of high control religion or having family. I do a lot of boundaries work with folks and your family that you were born into might be awesome. That's great if they are and they might not be we can spend a ton of energy to maybe fix it or we can put energy towards our healthier relationships and build our chosen family and I think that Some of those Paradigm shifts are just really freeing for people.

Alita Taylor: 

Alita Taylor: yes there's some family origin work involved in the training.

Alita Taylor: There's your biological family and then you can choose a logical family. You…

Jeremy Schumacher: I like that.

Alita Taylor: which is nice way of seeing it because sometimes the people that we were born into we might have had a Contract or something, on some kind of spiritual basis to be having this thing worked out and we might have been harmed and then we maybe could recapitulate that in a marriage or in a religious group or whatever and get abused someone else abusing power that way but at some point you do get to choose it to be different and realize and take care of that child that didn't get what they need.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Alita Taylor: religious traumas kind of and that's everywhere because that's about power.

Jeremy Schumacher: Absolutely. it's growing as people leave the church, I think.

Jeremy Schumacher: I had an interview with an author earlier who wrote a book on ritual and how rituals very important for us. And so many people ascribe ritual to religion, but it's not It's not something religion owned. it's natural to the human brain. Our brains are wired for it. It's just that religion is where so many people have gotten their rituals for And as we have this large migration from people leaving organized religion, there's a need for that community and that ritual somewhere else.

Alita Taylor: I think we're in the middle of a big shift. in that regard because there's

Jeremy Schumacher: It's a podcast. So no one can see but yes fingers crossed.

Alita Taylor: yeah. That's right. we could be the later when someone's listening to this? But I mean, I'm talking sent from the century perspective because since the Middle Ages. Christianity has taken over and that basically any of the abrahamic faiths or any conversion. faiths they have been massively colonized politicized we have a lot of and Psychiatry could even be viewed a little bit that way because the oppressed and the oppressor. And the disordered, are kind of in some ways. there's a great book called the politic of Madness.

00:30:00

Alita Taylor: And it was written by a psychiatrist in France or he was Catalan trying to remember his name now, but he saw in France all of the politics and the massive. racial trauma going on and in hospitals and treating people and I didn't experience that level in where I worked just 15 years ago 10 years ago, but There is a power differential. when there is somebody going crazy losing their minds. It's connected to some oppression somehow. I don't know if it's epigenetic.

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah.

Alita Taylor: I don't know if it's

Alita Taylor: It's part of the equation. And I think…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: if we start to do our own work. and Work collaboratively and curiously to create circles somehow where people can share what they're difficulties are. And sort of metabolize it instead of us just being in this treatment model of going to the doctor and fix me there's something wrong with me, I want to be like a partner. with people going…

Jeremy Schumacher: right

Alita Taylor: what would help and so maybe even the mental health therapist needs

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: it is emergent. it's not me talking to you. and telling someone or me talking to a client. It's waiting and going. wonder what else? it's I wonder somebody listening to this what is coming up for them.

Alita Taylor: and waiting

Alita Taylor: We don't know.

Jeremy Schumacher: what has the Reception been to open dialogue. You're one of the few if only trains Americans who can do trainings in it. What has kind of your feedback been for people you've consulted with and organizations you've worked with to introduce this.

Alita Taylor: there was a early psychosis group that I remember being a part of their listserve and they're doing early. What do they call it?

Alita Taylor: I can't remember the name of what they call it. but it's Nationwide and it was very interesting. I was on the little podcast a few years ago, different early psychosis programs so to speak and someone asked me. When I was talking about it because the reason why it gets connected with psychosis because when you study something you have to pick a population. Even though they were performing this so to speak they were practicing this way no matter…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: what the person's crisis was. They had to definitively just pick one diagnosis for the studies. So that's just…

Jeremy Schumacher: Sure.

Alita Taylor: how it works. so I don't see it as just psychosis related, but if you're looking from a

Alita Taylor: evidence-based practice which I like to call what's more important is practice based evidence because something like,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Sure.

Alita Taylor: That's an end of one that matters and our clinical experience over time kind of can help us understand the meaning of things.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

00:35:00

Alita Taylor: I think even better Than studies designed to look at.

Alita Taylor: very narrow factors which are actually less applicable than I think our own intuition of looking at things. But they asked me on this. Does it scale? but just open dialogues scale and that question just doesn't make sense to me because

Alita Taylor: It's the wrong conversation. You…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: if you look at the science of fungi, you wouldn't ask the fungus. Does it scale? Because it's interactive and there's concentric things going on interacting the whole time that kind of are not in the control of the person at the top. It's not hierarchical. So it's not up to me…

Jeremy Schumacher: right

Alita Taylor: how someone implements. an open dialogue Practice.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: It's I don't want to be in charge of that. that wouldn't be even. possible it's but it's been something that I have learned.

Alita Taylor: Uncovered to me that my job just because I'm trained in this. It's not to train. It's to create places and spaces where the possibility for dialogue is increased. And that can be done anywhere at any time. and that's what dialogue does is it increases possibilities and so if people have problems with it then that's just fine, I mean I don't. They can read and I have had a positive experience teaching Physicians recently that there's these moments, where

Alita Taylor: they particularly have been trained to work with algorithms and thinking that they need to be talking in a particular way and one of the trainees was doing this right, and I was like, what's in your inner talk that would tell you that because you get to be yourself. In work and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, yeah.

Alita Taylor: she said my God, that's so cool.

Jeremy Schumacher: it's such a paradigm shift I think from The medical model and from kind of a fundamentalist black and white way of thinking.

Alita Taylor: Mm- Yeah, but it's definitely something for me that. I have to keep in the

Alita Taylor: in check, I guess because of my own water that I was raised in is this colonizing way of bringing something, so I have to be careful that I'm not saying I'm bringing this thing from Finland, I'm bringing myself to a space. And I'm teaching this information and then I'm curious of as to what wants to be created here. one of the reasons that we are teaching these physicians in this one place in California. Now is that There's in evidence in a real study about open dialogue that it decreased. a practitioner sick days

Jeremy Schumacher: Sure.

Alita Taylor: in their public Mental Health Services and increase basically Wellness, so that's exciting to your work, it's really important.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: So that feels like something I'd like to bring more to Centers or because the exercises and the learning reflection and doing your own inner work and it does take time and it's not a quick fix.

00:40:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: But maybe when things start breaking down a little more. people be more interested in that I don't know.

Jeremy Schumacher: I think health care for profit doesn't make a ton of sense. And so when you're talking about something that's healing. I remember when I was working in higher ed and I in a meeting got asked how are we making money off of this? and I was doing student athlete mental health and I laughed out loud because it was such a Preposterous question to me I could come up with answers on recruiting and marketing and getting kids in saying look at how healthy our student population is. But that's not The point is to have a healthy student population. I don't know…

Alita Taylor: That's right.

Jeremy Schumacher: how that doesn't pay for itself.

Alita Taylor: Yes. That's it. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: But stigma there's that barrier of people ascribing dollars and cents to it and wanting to get something out of it wanting to get their money is worth kind of mentality is I don't know how to put that math in equation for you I'm interested in healthy people.

Alita Taylor: Yeah. Yeah, I am too.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. What a world that would be.

Alita Taylor: Yeah, we're doing it right now and just kind of the intention I think. We do have some control over our intentions. And be having a healthy Society is definitely one of them,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: and open dialogue was named by the World Health Organization. a couple of years ago as one of the top 10 humane practices in the world

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: so some might be interested in doing that.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I think there's a lot of application. It's just figuring out how to get people away from that. colonized kind of Managed Care Medical model

Alita Taylor: Yeah, and maybe we don't need to figure it out because people will kind of have

Alita Taylor: everybody has Humanity, everybody has that feeling of when some things wrong. And how do we treat that moral injury? how do we treat our own?

Alita Taylor: standing up for the week and we can do it every day.

Alita Taylor: I mean, you probably can't see your clients till you've taken care of yourself, too.

Jeremy Schumacher: right Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: Segue, what do you do to take care of yourself? The theme of the podcast what's your self-care? What do you do to? Make yourself available to show up in a genuine and authentic way.

Alita Taylor: One of the ways that I have taken care of myself is Taking this open dialogue training and in starting this.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yep.

Alita Taylor: Training Center Program School, whatever it is because it really feeds me. And it really makes me feel hopeful.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: And I don't see the same amount of clients every day. that just seems to kind of fluctuate depending on how I feel like I see myself more in Cycles I don't know if this is the feminine or what but depending on the moon, it's just me. I take control of my schedule every day is not the same day. and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: I can't expect the same from myself if I'm not feeling it. so that may just be part of my Perimenopausal state of life right now. I definitely 20 years ago was able To do it differently and work 12-hour shifts and stuff. no, but even then I was the person that liked to

Alita Taylor: work and then rest and for have more of days off so I think just knowing myself and…

00:45:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: then Staying connected. I have a poetry bent. So I do that I don't have a group but I like to take classes sometimes and I Have a group of women that we meet with regularly.

Alita Taylor: dialogic women trainers So those are some things.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: I to go outside. to read I take a meditation class every week. on that Eric learnings, I guess you could call it that but the interconnectedness of all the religions before they came religions

Jeremy Schumacher: very cool Yeah.

Alita Taylor: things how about you?

Jeremy Schumacher: it's changed a lot. I opened my own practice two years ago, and that was a world of difference for kind of what you said knowing yourself and

Jeremy Schumacher: just a vast change in my schedule working less hours much more folk focus is the wrong word. More comfortable in seeing the clients. I want to see and referring other people out it less driven by. no. I not sure if I have enough money this month and more driven by here's how I'm gonna Here are the people who I conserve best and who I can mesh with and hear the people who want to work with me. How do I find them? And so I think just practicing in a much more congruent way the structure of my therapy is a lot better and then within that I don't work on Wednesday So what do I do on Wednesdays I go out in nature. I take my dogs out. I spend a day playing with my kids I go to Barnes & Noble or the library and read all day. I just have this open day.

Jeremy Schumacher: To do what I want with it and it's sometimes I do work.

Alita Taylor: What?

Jeremy Schumacher: And yeah, and it's a totally different vibe to work two days have a day off work two days have three days off like that's my schedule and it's delightful and even within those days I'm working. It's It's not like to the brim. I used to see six to eight clients a day. I don't do that anymore. So

Jeremy Schumacher: and I'm only 35. I don't think it's perimenopause or being old. I think there's a health and a ability to meet people where they're Seeing fewer clients in the day, I think. So that's all really good. I've always self-cares always been physical for me. So A lot of movement. I play a lot of sports still I have a three and a six year old. So there's a lot going on.

Alita Taylor: yeah, that's

Jeremy Schumacher: I wrote this in a blog but I recently did a float tank for the first time and I actually really enjoyed that so I think I'm gonna incorporate that into my normal. self-care routine

Alita Taylor: what kind of? Element are you in water?

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, it's in salt water. So you're a high concentration of salt water.

Alita Taylor: 

Jeremy Schumacher: So it's that kind of weightless floating in space kind of feeling.

Alita Taylor: that's wonderful. And what's the temperature?

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: 90 degrees

Alita Taylor: my gosh, that's so warm.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, it's warm but not oppressive because I'm a warm human being. And the first time I did it I didn't do there was nature noises. It was like a thunderstorm sound. And that was weird for me and my ADHD to do nothing for an hour and have no stimulation for an hour, but I got through that and I've done a couple of them now and now I'll play music or I can kind of pick and choose how I want to use the time but it's nice. We don't have a ton of downtime of don't do anything for an hour.

Alita Taylor: No, yeah, I cussed just makes me think about the embryonic. I don't know I just went down a whole Wormhole of infant. men, and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Okay.

Alita Taylor: there's that skin hunger thing that I don't know

Alita Taylor: Do we even know how much we need that? water or being like this remembering place? maybe that's something we should all be doing.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

00:50:00

Alita Taylor: I mean,…

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah, and…

Alita Taylor: I'm using again.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I talked to some clients.'s that Balancing Act of it's not accessible for everyone. I'm aware of that. There's a cost associated with it, but

Alita Taylor: But even just having a bath with Epsom salt.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: Sure, I'm six foot three. So I need a large space. I don't fit in a bathtub.

Alita Taylor: need a large Yeah, my husband is six foot three and he hasn't done it in this house yet. But in our house in Tacoma, he had in his backyard a cowboy jacuzzi that he made from one of those. He called it a cowboy jacuzzi, but he made it it was with that aluminum. big

Alita Taylor: a garden thing those things that they grow in and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: he put it up on bricks to get it out and

Jeremy Schumacher: Look at this full circle. We're going to come here. Finland's the supposed Originators of the sauna

Alita Taylor: That's right. It's so good. there's more sound as there than cars.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: Really? That's

Alita Taylor: Yeah, it is. they prioritize it it's not just for the luxury people. It's for everybody.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and it's a normal practice of cold water in the lake go in the sauna.

Alita Taylor: Yeah. we all

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, that's so good for Yeah. Yeah, maybe a summer project to build a I don't know what the cowboy part is a cowboy sauna.

Alita Taylor: yeah, you don't need to use the cowboy word, but Yeah, we are still putting ours together. It's in the garage. It's not together.

Jeremy Schumacher: nice Yeah.

Alita Taylor: Because it takes special. thing electrical we have to get an electrician to put I forget the name of the thing.

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah, I don't know about building one, but I'm sure there's a way I'm gonna look into some finish connections and get a good DIY sauna build.

Alita Taylor: And maybe you can learn get back to your finish.

Jeremy Schumacher: I'm going to see a finished metal. But here's the thing in my college experience. I graduated from college when it's 20. I was one of those ADHD kids who was really good at school, but was miserable.

Jeremy Schumacher: I could roll in and take a test and get an A but not remember anything from it. But I listen to a ton of Finnish music now, so I just like…

Alita Taylor: Uh-huh.

Jeremy Schumacher: if there's a class I could have taken again. It'd be my finish. Because I listen to a lot of Finnish metal I listen to a lot of Finnish music and I never know what they're saying, which is kind of why I listen to it because it's like a Vibe not knowing the words.

Alita Taylor: It's an old language. And do you know to almost Raul raoan Kari? he's the lead singer in the metal band there.

Jeremy Schumacher: I don't.

Alita Taylor: And what's the name of the band?

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. I'm going to see corporate klani men of the forest.

Alita Taylor: Yeah, That's his band. to almost was one of my lament teachers,…

Jeremy Schumacher: nice.

Alita Taylor: which is another whole finish thing. That doesn't have anything to do with open dialogue. But Karelian lament practice, so do you know that He was a shaman violinist. Who was a prodigy and he would go into trance on stage?

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: There's like you should listen to Wild Heart Vision. He's got all these things to say about lament practice and he used to run lament groups with This woman that he introduced or she introduced me to him and she revived the lament practice from karelia throughout.

Alita Taylor: Finland and I took a lament I did want with them in healthy.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: No It's so cool.

Alita Taylor: Yeah, and because lamenting it's one of the Traditions that existed before Lutheranism, before the Drums burned and everything and it was the way that each Village would learn to. process things that happened, Somebody died in war or there and the children would learn from their mothers of the song and it's like a song Cry. And learn and…

00:55:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: follow them into the forest and you sing it to the trees and you sing it to your ancestors and everything.

Alita Taylor: And yeah,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: so what he's on my website, he's one of the people on my website because he came to Washington. He just messaged me I'm in Washington. I'm doing a lament group here in concrete was in the middle of the state somewhere and he did one there, too, but Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah, what a small world soon there there.

Alita Taylor: When are you see? Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: It's like the first time they've been in North America and a decade. So I think sometime in April I'm saying corpocolanies Finnish metal band, finished folk metal like they're doing a bunch of stuff and…

Alita Taylor: I'm just

Jeremy Schumacher: then I'm saying hi along that same week and they translate old Rune sticks and they don't say they're in concert. They're in ritual and it's very one of their singers just like the two Vin throat singing and he's a shaman and it's very cool and Yeah.

Alita Taylor: okay. I'm trying to see if this is the same I think it is. I

Jeremy Schumacher: I mean if he's a violin player they have 12 instruments in their band and it's a mix of traditional folk music stuff and some metal and it's a lot but very cool

Alita Taylor: Yes, It's not a current member. He's on Wikipedia. He's a past member.

Jeremy Schumacher: more remember

Alita Taylor: Yes to almost row on Kari He's learning. I looked at his Facebook recently and now He's learning shamanistic music. from

Alita Taylor: Where did Finland the ancestors from Finland came from Mongolia or something? he's learning that type of music. that's the latest from him…

Jeremy Schumacher: nice

Alita Taylor: but He was part of them for a long time and I think in Seattle in 20.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: 18 was when I saw him there, but I didn't go to the concert because it's not my thing, but

Jeremy Schumacher: Metals then acquired taste I think.

Alita Taylor: Yeah, no, it can be very stimulating in a good way Who is the band that's kind…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: Nine Inch Nails is the closest I can get to that. I like them.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: But I have to be careful like it,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: if I do I don't know why I have Shame about that. But by my playing it really loud I'm okay. I really am like this is

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I have no idea what my neighbors think when I have my finished folk metal. I'm mowing the lawn or have a I don't know. It's good. Music. Yeah.

Alita Taylor: that's funny. if this has been so much fun.

Jeremy Schumacher: It has I know we covered a lot of ground. I wasn't expecting to talk about is really really great.

Alita Taylor: Yes, we contain multitudes as Walt Whitman.

Jeremy Schumacher: We do. Yes, if people want to learn more about Open dialogue if they want to contact you if they want to find your work. Where do they go? How can they? Get a hold of you.

Alita Taylor: Alita had opened dialogue Pacific Comm and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Alita Taylor: we also have a website open dialogue pacific.com.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, so we will have the website and links in the show notes to make it easy for people to find Thanks so much for taking the time and joining me today.

Alita Taylor: it was a pleasure.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and to all our wonderful listeners. Thanks for tuning in again this week. We'll be back next week with another new episode. Take care everyone.

Alita Taylor: Bye.

Meeting ended after 00:59:10 👋