3min chapter

Two Sides of the Spectrum cover image

Safety as the Foundation for Everything with Dr. Gillian Boudreau

Two Sides of the Spectrum

CHAPTER

The Importance of Perspective in Therapy

Therapists are trained in neurology amongst other things. In your work, you talk a lot about the brain. And I'm curious how this impacts your work and how you work with educators. So really the kernel of what I talk about in the brain is helping people understand what's going on for us when we sense that we are not safe. How massively do those alarm bells shut off our luxurious brain processes like empathy, curiosity, being forward thinking? None of that's going to help you if you're trying to survive.

00:00
Speaker 1
Yeah, your face is so excited. And it's something that we all need if we're going to be doing things differently in our work as therapists. And like you said, if things weren't so hard for us, we know that perspective taking, especially across neurotypes, is not a strength. We talk about the double empathy problem a lot on the podcast that neurotypical therapists aren't just intuitively assuming the perspective of our kids. I could have a whole episode just praising people for coming to this place where they want to listen and learn. That's what your story is bringing up for me. It's so exciting to have folks here who are doing the work. And it's hard work. And we're going to talk to you all about lots of ideas for how we can change things. I want to start with our training. So one way amongst many that the training of mental health professionals really diverges from behaviorists is that we are trained in neurology amongst other things. In your work, you talk a lot about the brain. And I'm curious how this impacts your work and how you work with educators. Yeah, that's such a great question. So I really like talking about the brain because it feels very normalizing because we all have one. So I like to sort of position us as just, we all have these sweet, lovely nervous systems who are actually still evolved for when we were early humans. Our sweet nervous systems, they're just looking for threat all the time. They're just trying to keep us alive. Even the situation is not life or death. And in fact, our sweet, wonderful nervous systems do believe that connection itself is life or death. And they believe that because we are evolved from the early infant humans who were the best at grabbing connection, who's cells really told them to scream the loudest if they were in distress, to do all those pro-social things that get adults to want to move close to a baby. And connection is life or death when we're tiny. And I doubt that there was much evolutionary potential to turning off that impulse once we get to be adults who are a little more freestanding. So really the kernel of what I talk about in the brain is helping people understand what's going on for us when we sense that we are not safe. What are the alarm bells that get turned on in the brain? How massively do those alarm bells shut off our luxurious brain processes like empathy, curiosity, being forward thinking? None of that's going to help you if you're trying to survive.

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