Going No Contact, Relationship Recovery, and the NY Times: An interview with Patrick Teahan, LICSW
Curt and Katie interview Patrick Teahan, LICSW after he was featured in an article on going no contact in the New York Times. We explored his experience of his work being sensationalized and the fallout from that article (and the string of duplicates). We also dug into how he actually works. We talked about the Relationship Recovery Process (RRP) and what it can look like when someone makes the challenging decision to cut off their family members.
Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.Transcript
An Interview with Patrick Teahan, LICSW
Patrick Teahan, LICSW, is a clinical social worker and childhood trauma survivor with a master’s in social work from Boston College and a dual Bachelor’s in Music and Psychology from the University of Massachusetts Boston. He has extensive experience in inpatient psychiatry with veterans and in clinical supervision within community mental health.
Patrick’s personal healing journey under the guidance of trauma therapist Amanda Curtin, LICSW, has been foundational to his work. He now practices, researches, and trains others in Curtin’s RRP group model for childhood trauma recovery and shares psychoeducational content on this topic through his YouTube channel, where he reaches a wide audience.
In this podcast episode, we talk with Patrick Teahan on his NY Times interview on Going No Contact
We read and had a big response to a NY Times article on going no contact, reacting to the sensationalized portrayal of Patrick Teahan’s work with adults who come from abusive families. After learning how he really works, we reached out to him to explore the impact of this article as well as what his model is for working with these individuals.
Reflecting on the NY Times Article: Is Cutting Off Your Family Good Therapy?
- Patrick was interviewed due to his viral videos and online presence on YouTube
- He talked with the interviewer about the process of Going No Contact and his work with childhood trauma survivors
- He felt like the process took a turn into his personal story and then sensationalized his work
- There were a number of duplicate articles (even in different countries) that led to misunderstanding of his work and hurting clients who have made the decision to go no contact with abusive family members
“[The article was] just like a client getting backlash from their aunt that they don’t really get a lot of talk with. Like, “you really should talk to your mom.” So the article is interesting in a way that it kind of spells out what is exactly happening in families in the way…it’s like willful misunderstanding.” – Patrick Teahan, LICSW
What is RRP (the Relationship Recovery Process)?
- Work to finishing business with family members
- Reclaim intimacy
- Group Psychotherapy focused on normalization of the experiences of survivors of abusive families and childhood trauma
- The work can include individual work prior to joining the group
- Late in the process (potentially years into the process) a client may make the decision to “get distance” from their family if they are not able to continue their healing process due to ongoing triggers and abuse
- Patrick is doing research on the RRP model and will be publishing those results soon
What is the process for Going No Contact with family members?
“[For example] someone is in a three year group, probably like around two to two and a half years [in]…the issues in the families become less tolerable to the person as they become more real about the abuse that came from family. And…for those who go no contact, it is usually about continued abuse that is going on while they’re in work…They will get support from the group and from myself, if they choose to go do that…[but] there’s really no pressure.” – Patrick Teahan, LICSW
- It is a very complex decision, usually after communication with family members has not led to any work on their part and repeated boundary crossings that make it impossible for a client to continue their work to heal
- It is better to transparently and clearly communicate the decision to go no contact, rather than ghosting family members, when safe and possible
- The decision to go no contact does not need to be total or permanent. Clients can seek space without making the decision to never talk to their family member again
Resources for Modern Therapists mentioned in this Podcast Episode:
We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!
Patrick Teahan’s website: www.patrickteahantherapy.com
NY Times article: Is Cutting Off Your Family Good Therapy? By Ellen Barry
Patrick’s reaction video to the NY Times: My Response to the NYT
Patrick’s YouTube video to start with: “Was I Abused?”
The Toxic Family test from Patrick’s website
Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:
Family Therapy: Not Just for Kids – An Interview with Adriana Rodriguez, LMFT
How Can Therapists Help Politically Divided Families? : An interview with Angela Caldwell, LMFT
Navigating Religious Trauma, Spiritual Abuse, and Lies About God: An interview with Dr. Jamie Marich
The Risks and Consequences of Failing to Report Child Abuse
Does Your Social Media Make You Look Like a Bad Therapist?
What is Parental Alienation and How Can Therapists Successfully Treat it?
Who we are:
Curt Widhalm, LMFT
Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com
Katie Vernoy, LMFT
Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com
A Quick Note:
Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.
Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.
Stay in Touch with Curt, Katie, and the whole Therapy Reimagined #TherapyMovement:
Consultation services with Curt Widhalm or Katie Vernoy:
Connect with the Modern Therapist Community:
Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapists Group
Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Creative Credits:
Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/
Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/
Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):
Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements).
… 0:00
(Opening Advertisement)
Announcer 0:00
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.
Curt Widhalm 0:12
Welcome back, modern therapists. This is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy, and this is the podcast for therapists about the things that go on in our profession, the things that go on in our world, the ever expanding voices that many of us attempt to have, want to have someday, and in this episode, the ways that those can backfire, the ways that those can sometimes not necessarily end up being what we are putting out into the world, but sometimes what the world thinks that we’re putting out. And this episode kind of got sparked by an article that Katie and I read in the New York Times. We had our reactions enough to the point where we did a reactionary episode that once we reached out to the therapists that this article is about we left that episode on the cutting room floor. You’ll never hear that one because we did our due diligence and we reached out to Patrick Teahan LICSW about what the real story is and how the New York Times maybe didn’t necessarily represent that every person should be cut off of their family, no matter what, any time whatsoever. And so here to kind of talk about this process, how that’s wrong. Thank you very much for joining us Patrick.
Patrick Teahan 0:22
Pleasure to be here. How are you guys?
Katie Vernoy 1:32
Oh, good, good. I’m so glad we’re having this conversation, because I think Curt and I had an initial reaction to this New York Times article, and when I went to review all your stuff and watched your reaction video, I went, oh my goodness, we’re, like, so many of the therapists in the world, and we’re like, ready for, for, for action, and oh my gosh, I can’t believe someone’s doing this. And then I looked at what you were doing, I was, ooh, this is, this is really good work that this person’s doing, and I need to know him. I need to figure out what happened here. How did this article, you know, get painted in such a way, and what are you actually doing, and how can we share it with the world? So before we jump into all of that, I’m going to ask you the question that we ask all our folks that come on and interview with us, who are you and what are you putting out into the world?
Patrick Teahan 2:23
Who am I? I’m having like a Breakfast Club moment like, who are you? Who are you? If anyone gets that reference. Let’s see who am I? Primarily thinking about this is thinking about how I got into all this work, is that I’m primarily a childhood trauma survivor who got to therapy with a really great therapist in my early 20s, who had a pretty highly effective group therapy model called RRP. Shouldn’t really name it as RRP at the time. And then that was significant work that inspired me to become, go into social work, become a counselor, undergrad, grad school counselor. And then I, sort of, like many of us, worked in jobs that were more kind of experience based. I was working in inpatient psychiatry with veterans, and then for several years, which was a really, really difficult experience, but really in a wonderful experience in terms of, like, the gamut of seeing how medications work, how short term, acute therapy works, how you know, and also just the seeing in real time a whole bunch of you know sort of diagnoses as they present to themselves, and understanding that and see what it looks like up front, as opposed to experiencing the stigma of how those things are written on paper, how they look on paper. And essentially, you know, after that, I really, I went to a clinical supervisor job in community mental health. And then I really felt like I, you know, private practice was always a long term goal for me, but that’s a scary leap, leaving sort of, you know, salaried positions, which are more kind of contained in house kind of stuff. But I really felt like going back to the therapy that I experienced in my early 20s, that I had a whole bunch of skills that were kind of dying on the vine. And it really they like where the my, you know, for any therapist out there, if you find that you’re you’re doing work that your heart really isn’t in in it, it’s really just advisable to look at that, because that was my experience where I just wasn’t inspired or jazzed up or feeling like I was doing what I was kind of meant to do. So then I opened up a private practice doing RRP, my mentors model on my own. That was like a, you know, the transition for all of us is a little bit scary, where you’re taking your own insurance and doing that kind of a thing. But primarily outside of all that is I think that where I noticed that I was able to really connect with people was more survivor to survivor, as opposed to authoritarian therapists to client. And I was able to figure out to do that in ways where it wasn’t really overstepping, or they had to take care of me in that, in terms of, you know what I mean, like I was my my whole thing is to be able to be able to share some of your experience from a place of, this is what it was like before, and this is a place that you can get to after.
Curt Widhalm 5:17
And part of the way that you’ve done that is you’ve built a pretty massive online following, and some people might be familiar with your YouTube channel, and that being kind of how the New York Times article starts in framing you is about people finding you through this channel and through some of your websites, and many of the things that we’ve encouraged our audience to do over the years, which is get your voice out there, do it in different ways. It doesn’t have to be just talking with your clients as you’re describing. And can you talk a little bit about just how you’ve developed that kind of background for yourself, and what ultimately attracted some of the attention here from the New York Times.
Patrick Teahan 6:02
To back up a little bit where I just threw up a video on YouTube. It was a project video that I wanted to do, to kind of like embed it on my website. If people would go to my website, or my Psychology Today profile, or something like that, that they would get a sense about me, but also get a little bit of education on what might the A Study consider to be childhood trauma? And then what it might actually is. The A study has like wonderful benefits to it. But I did this video that I animated, I spent about a month on it was like a project that I wanted to do, just so people could get a sense about me and my ideas and what we would be looking at. And then I put that up on YouTube with the idea that I I needed to embed it on my website. It wasn’t like a planned out, like, I’m gonna go be a social media therapist, and this is where I’m gonna put all my energy. And that video, after a year, it got 1000 views. And I was like, That’s pretty awesome. 1000 views over a year. Like…
Katie Vernoy 6:56
Sure.
Patrick Teahan 6:57
…no, it wasn’t wasted time. And I enjoyed the process as laborious as it was. And then somewhere down the line it got shared on Facebook groups or Reddit. And I would come back to the video, you know, this is a year and a half into it, and then, like, a year and a half into it, I’m like, oh, it’s got 10,000 views. Oh, it’s got 20,000 views. Like, oh, YouTube has monetized me. What does that mean? What is…
Katie Vernoy 7:18
One video?
Patrick Teahan 7:20
Well, yeah. And it was like, sort of, and then it was like, you made 50 cents today on YouTube advertisements. And it was like, what is it was just kind of dumb. It was just kind of this falling down the stairs kind of experience. And then I guess, I guess I just need to make more videos and keep doing this because, and that’s where it all kind of came from. And that’s, then there’s the pandemic in that. And then there’s in the middle of the pandemic, I thought my private practice would have to collapse because I wasn’t seeing people, in person anymore. So there’s this convergence of sort of like the YouTube stuff taking off with the pandemic, and then people really wanting human connection and maybe start to work on some things, they’re seeing my videos. So, it was a weird experience where my private practice went beyond, like, beyond what I could actually handle. It went to a huge waiting list, because people saw the videos, and then they wanted to sort of do that. And then a couple years later came a membership. So that’s where that steam that The New York Times kind of picked up on. That’s how that kind of came about.
Katie Vernoy 8:20
So, tell us about that process where you were approached by the New York Times and then got to this article that I’m gonna say, painted you in a different light than than than one that was actual.
Patrick Teahan 8:32
It was a learning experience for me around and hopefully this doesn’t come across in the super negative or something where it was a learning experience for me. The author of the article reached out to me to be kind of like, can you speak to you seem to talk about the issue of going no contact, can you speak to that a little bit. And then the more she talked to me, the more she became interested in my story. So, along this line of meeting several times for this content of this interview, we met once on Zoom. We actually met up in Boston, because there’s a picture of me in a bar. But what was the idea behind that was like, where, I think it seemed like she, she wanted to make me more of a focus due to the story of what happened to me as a child, and then getting into therapy, and then, then the direction changed. For example, there’s a picture of me sitting in a bar, but that’s the bar that I grew up in in Quincy, Massachusetts, that she does talk about my history a little bit. But what I’m getting at is that my the relationship with the interviewer is sort of what was presented to me and what it seemed like, and then the final outcome of what the article ended up being are two very different things. Where I kind of felt more and more comfortable to kind of talk more about. So I’m trying to say the learning experience for me was I didn’t really feel super duped. So I don’t want to make it sound like it was, like a manipulative kind of a thing. But the learning experience for me, it was I would definitely sort of, especially when mainstream media, be much more thoughtful about what I’m talking about, be much more guarded, in a way, from a place of sort of trust. It seemed like it would be, she was trying to create a balanced article, and speaking to both sides, which I really respected, and I thought would be interesting. I knew it would be inflammatory on some level, because the issue is so inflammatory. So I wasn’t like, this is going to be great. I was like, this is going to be a hard kind of thing going on, but it’s sort of in the name of doing a both sides approach. There was a lot of sensationalized stuff in it that that didn’t sort of convey to what the original plan was, if I’m making sense.
… 10:49
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Katie Vernoy 8:41
Well, and I think the thing that I found really compelling in your response video, and we’ll put that over at our show notes at mtsgpodcast.com, is that they framed things in such a way that your practice was primarily teaching people how to go no contact, and that you had almost 50% of your patients or clients who had gone no contact. And in your response video, you’re like, No, it’s, It’s barely a third like this is a very different…
Patrick Teahan 11:06
Yes.
Katie Vernoy 11:11
…way to frame the same numbers.
Patrick Teahan 11:27
Right.
Katie Vernoy 11:28
So ,that’s it’s it was, it was hard to see how they were even able to ethically get to what how they described your practice, from what I saw on your website in your response video.
Patrick Teahan 11:41
Yeah, and where I was asked to be part of that article as somebody who is a practitioner who also talks about going no contact. But the outcome of it, like, there’s a flow chart on there, which I thought you can read the into that flow chart in several ways. Do you know, I mean, like, I’m kind of, there’s some due diligence within that flow chart about whether to and why I’m educating the public in that way around it is that there’s not a lot of resources out there around it. And there’s related to sort of finding a therapist who can walk you through that process, you know, in terms of, like, also respecting how you want to do it, or educating them on it. That’s where that came from.
Curt Widhalm 12:25
I want to hear about the day that the article came out, and you seeing some of the reactions that were happening.
Patrick Teahan 12:32
Yeah, that was… it came out early in the morning, and I read it, and I I, to be honest, I freaked out a little bit because I wasn’t aware that my income would be discussed. I wasn’t aware that a snarky reel that I did a long time ago that I still I haven’t deleted, because there’s, there’s more nuance to that reel where I’m kind of being snarky and just I’m kind of making fun of an estranged parent’s reactions as creators and influencers who talk about going no contact or toxic family. Is we get a lot of accusatory messages that are like You caused this, without you know what I mean. So for if you know, if your podcast is encouraging therapists to be in on more on social media, which I think is wonderful to be creative, put out your ideas. Just be prepared emotionally for, you’ll get a lot of positive feedback for people that resonated with it. And then there’s just a lot of wounded people out there that want to find the reason that confirms their experience about maybe their child has gone no contact, or for some other kind of thing, you know, whether that’s domestic violence or something like that. Like, if someone’s doing domestic violence content, just be prepared that you’re going to maybe hear from perpetrators…
Katie Vernoy 13:52
Sure.
Patrick Teahan 13:53
…who are saying, you know, there’s two sides to every story, you know. So it’s just so there’s within that. But my reaction, you know, I read it the first time, freaked out, read it the second time, and kind of calmed down, in a way that that article as sensational as it was, there was interviewing people on both sides of this kind of issue, in a way that was that. I just felt like it was, there was some unfair things to me that it would have been more fair, there was two other therapists discussed in that and it wasn’t discussed so much that they are also monetizing their skill. They are also doing webinars. They are also providing services to, which I’m not trying to demonize. The other two therapist, if they’re providing services to estranged parents, everyone needs a home base, everyone needs a resource. I think both sides are accusing each other about the honesty around that. Or kind of like where I would be also be wondering if they are, there could be some enabling of estranged parents to not look at themselves. And I believe that the, if I’m making sense here, I would also be accused of enabling people to just cut people off willy nilly. You know, there’s that kind of, So initially, after the second time, and then reading the comments, it was kind of a thing that was just sort of, I was actually kind of expecting something like that, not expecting exactly what it was, but I was going to be expecting some pushback or that kind of a thing. I wasn’t expecting the level of how, from again, from trying to do both sides. It wasn’t really an honest both sides approach in that way.
Katie Vernoy 15:42
And that’s been my experience reading more and more than New York Times articles, is that they have kind of a be in their bonnet about how therapy is manipulative or being impacted by social media, or there’s, there’s so many different articles, and we’ve done responses to some of them that are kind of demonizing therapists and how we operate. And so that part didn’t surprise me. And yet, when I first read it, I had a reaction to what I perceived your work to be, and I know that there’s been subsequent articles and responses that I’m sure you’ve seen that have come out. And so…
Patrick Teahan 16:22
Yeah.
Katie Vernoy 16:22
…what has been the backlash for you? What has been the kind of ongoing impact of this article, and kind of the the copycat, I think it’s the word you used before, the copycat articles that have come afterwards.
Patrick Teahan 16:33
It’s funny, the backlash has just been about and it’s really interesting to take it into the childhood trauma piece inside an abusive family or toxic family system, the backlash is kind of spelling out again about what it’s like to be misunderstood by family. So in a way, do you know what I mean, we had this issue of going no contact. The article found somebody to say, here’s the person doing all that wreckage. Who’s the here’s the person doing all that damage.
Katie Vernoy 17:07
You became the IP.
Patrick Teahan 17:09
Yeah, that is, yeah, like, in a way, like that is sort of, it is just like a client getting backlash from their aunt that they don’t really get a lot of talk with. Like, you really should talk to your mom. So the article is interesting in a way that it kind of spells out what is exactly happening in families in the way, you know, it’s like willful misunderstanding. Willful. So, the copycat stuff is just literally just sort of the article as it was written, with a couple of thoughts that are just like this therapist is causing everything. Here it is. You know, it showed up in the Irish Times. There’s a South American one. There was one fascinating enough, one from Kashmir. And in the translation of the article, it was, it was sort of an attack on the concept of what I was doing, or the idea of going no contact and framing it from the idea they kept using the word discipline, that it doesn’t matter how old you are, you should have discipline. You should receive discipline from your parents. So that was like a wild cultural tangent in that way. I guess what I’m trying to say is that article, a lot of people took that article and went: See, this is what kind of therapists are doing, and this is a whole bunch of BS that people leaving their family. See. And they now they have that a little bit of kind of evidence in that way. And in some ways, people aren’t doing due diligence, but in other ways, the way the article was written, in some ways I can’t blame them for people having a big reaction. Like, if you’re a therapist in Minnesota, not really trained in Child Trauma or not, or having your own issues or whatever, or a therapist doesn’t matter, Minnesota, Florida, anywhere, you know, like, sort of Maine it doesn’t matter. But I find that they too can go see this is why we try to keep the ship afloat in families all the time. So the backlash is, I’ve done enough work in my life that I can be misunderstood. It’s still uncomfortable, but I can be misunderstood. But survivors who read that article, it was hard for them, you know? I mean, it was hard for them, outside of knowing me or whatever, if they don’t know me or not, is that article showed up a lot on Reddit, and a lot of people were just sort of like, you know, they were like, Great The New York Times, you know, even people have said, my dad forwarded me this article to say enough what you’re stupid bullshit in therapy. This is what you’re doing. Do you follow this guy? You know? So that’s where, that’s where it got nasty for people, and again, is I’m grateful for my recovery, because this is the the New York Times article is not very different than what happened to me in my teenage years about being scapegoated. Or whatever. And you know, I also understand it at the same time too, again, I don’t want to create myself as sort of the the epicenter of this thing. But that’s the backlash. The positives is we got kind of an overwhelming response of therapists who wanted to train in RRP from that article. There was a lot more interest in the channel. There was a lot more interest in, you know what I mean. So I think that other people read it too and found the work in some way, or found some relief in some way. And maybe they knew me prior, or maybe they didn’t, but you know, so it was really a mixed, mixed reaction.
Curt Widhalm 20:42
Our reaction in the episode on our cutting room floor was really around, kind of the idea that…
Patrick Teahan 20:48
Appreciate it.
Curt Widhalm 20:50
Just being transparent, which I think is our style, is our episode had really come from the idea that we shouldn’t go into therapy with: this is the outcome that we are going to arrive at. That our kind of initial reaction was around this might be one of the outcomes that people arrive at in working through family systems issues. And I guess giving this the pivot that we understand that that’s actually how you work. And want to talk about what is RRP, and being able to actually focus on what it is that you do rather than what the media says that you do.
Patrick Teahan 21:31
In that article, the media just it’s made it sound like I was just sort of selling directions on how to go, no contact, without taking in anybody’s subjective experience or types of family, which is not the heart of my work. RRP was developed by my mentor, Amanda Curt, and it is a group psychotherapy model.
Katie Vernoy 21:49
What do the initials stand for?
Patrick Teahan 21:51
The relationship recovery process.
Katie Vernoy 21:53
Okay.
Patrick Teahan 21:54
So, the relationship to others and the relationship to self. Because with childhood trauma, is about disconnection and lack of intimacy and lack of connection. So it has, RRP has two goals. The first goal is finishing business with our family system of origin, where we’re really looking at stuff like the internalized parent, self hate, shame, deciding about whether our parents were right about us or not. And really, it’s really for for people who grew up in families where they were really sort of unsafe. This is, you know, it’s where other people can come from good enough families. I think everyone is going to have stuff in their family system at, you know. And but really, this is really for people who were really experienced emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse. Finishing business when our parents is really looking at all the belief systems, all the situations. So there, it’s like an umbrella term for really looking at what happened to us and finding our voice and empowerment and truth telling about what happened in a safe environment, which is the group, which is usually of around six to eight people, ideally eight of adults over the age of 18. The other goal is reclaiming intimacy, in the way that childhood trauma survivors are often set up to really struggle with intimacy in terms of trust, intimacy with self, like being dissociative, we really use the vehicle of inner child work to help people connect with themselves more. They’re re parenting their inner child. Also, while they’re doing intimacy and conflict work with other group members over time. So those are really the two goals, finishing business and also reclaiming intimacy. So it’s a pretty you know, really advanced interpersonal group, almost like sort of yallum in a way of over time. But there’s a lot of lead up to that. You know, initially these RRP groups were, Amanda did a three to three and a half year program, which is what I did. And then in my own private practice, I introduced a six month model to give people an introduction to the work without, three years is a big commitment. When I was 20 years old and I was really in bad shape, I was so out there, I was like, Yeah, Sign me up. Whatever. I got nothing going on. So I came up with a six month model that if people wanted to continue in longer term work, should that work be available to them, that they can do that and not have to… It’s like kind of they can dip their feet in and get a lot out of a six month group instead of going a longer term route. But a lot of people want to continue in that way, because they get a lot of relief from the equalization of sitting in a room, in a sitting now, it’s a Zoom Room, but sitting in a room with someone who had a violently mentally ill mom and an unprotective dad and really the great kind of equalizer in that way. So but the intimacy work, there’s a lot of lead into it. It’s not, it’s not like the seventh session they’re doing, like conflict resolution. It’s really more and more safety over time.
Katie Vernoy 25:05
So, there’s a lot of individual work to get yourself, I’m thinking of, you know, the client, the group member, into a place where they can more confidently approach relationships and also have a stronger relationship with themselves. What does that look like long term? I know that there’s, I think you had said, you know, maybe 30% end up going no contact, other folks, I’m assuming, are having some reparative conversations with their families. What is, what does that look like when people go back to their families of origin and make the decisions around how they’re going to engage with their families of origin?
Patrick Teahan 25:40
I think I know what you mean. Through the course of the group people are really, a lot of RRP, the beginning of it especially is about making your childhood more real. So we’re really looking at what a healthy family system is like, versus an unhealthy family system. Processing things. And let’s just say, you know, in a No Contact is a very long process to get there. So usually, let’s just say someone is in a three year group, probably like around two to two and a half years they may have kept trying to go have a visit with their mom and dad, or a connection with their brother, or something come up. But I’m trying to say is that the issues in the families becomes less tolerable to the person as they become more real about the abuse that came from family. And what it looks like for those you know, 30% is like a good sort of not everyone needs to do it. A lot of people have, sometimes their parents have kind of mellowed out, and the person can go back into the fold of the family system without getting massively triggered. Or a lot of the for those who go no contact, it is usually about continued abuse that is going on while they’re in work. Which was in the case of me, that’s what it was like for me, of continued sort of fighting about what happened, or that the parent is still emotionally manipulative or sexually off, or that kind of stuff. So, usually it’s sort of around the person is really kind of waking up to how much they have very little to work with. And they will get support from the group and from myself, if they choose to go do that, you know what I mean? If someone would, you know like it’s usually that the person has been talking about these issues for a long time, and they get to a place where the group starts to talk about, have you considered this? I hate seeing you in this place, when you go back to them, or on those visits. And the person might have seen other people kind of benefit from going no contact. But we talk about it in a way where there’s really no pressure. If they want to know how it’s done, they are welcome to get some guidance from me, kind of around it. But if I’m seeing a group member really struggle in that way, I might bring it up and say, you have all the choice in the world, but I think you would benefit from some distance. And in those cases, it’s really because the person gets massively triggered every time they go back into the family system, and they’re really struggling within their work to get their work done around it. You know, it’s a little bit like the inner child still believes that dad is right about them. So, they go and they try to go do something there, and it kind of falls apart. So in those moments, when it comes up, I do suggest it, but I don’t push it. Do you know what I mean? It’s just something. It’s almost like when we have a client who’s struggling with alcohol abuse. Do you know what I mean? We’re not gonna go super hardcore, AA on them, and you know, the first time we hear it, and be like, you know, you’re a drunk and you’re a mess, and you need to get this together, and I’m not gonna see you anymore unless you do this. You know what I mean? It’s like, there’s just sort of letting the person, it’s almost like good parenting with a teenager, of letting the teenager have their own process with it, until there comes a point where it there might be some more directive help might be needed. But even still, that directive help really looks like I think you could consider this, but you have to do what’s right for you. Doesn’t really work for everybody, you know.
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Curt Widhalm 27:07
For the clients who do decide to go to no contact, I recognize that you’re saying that this is a very long process, but it’s not as simple as just ghosting their family. There’s something else that goes on with this. Can you speak a little bit to what some of those steps might look like?
Patrick Teahan 29:41
Well, I think it depends on the horrific nature of the family, where sometimes and again, it’s so individualized, if it’s super horrific, where it’s just off the rails. You know, I’m not gonna I think ghosting might be something that somebody need to do. I personally just don’t like ghosting in our in our culture in a way, that there’s just not a lot of closure for the other person. That’s just my own personal feeling about it, whether that’s, I know I’m probably going on a tangent here, but, like…
Curt Widhalm 30:09
No, I think this is a great tangent, because I can see therapists trying to help their clients with this, and their clients just immediately responding with something like, well, they don’t deserve closure. They were abusive to me for years. This is, you know, taking care of me, right?
Patrick Teahan 30:24
It’s a tricky thing. It is a, really a tricky thing that depends on, I think about a client who recently when one of my last groups, they struggled with it for a long time, and they kept getting re-traumatized by messages that they would get from a parent. It wasn’t like, I’m concerned for you. It’s like, why haven’t you done this thing yet, or something like that. And this is after really horrific, violent, violent childhood. They were at a point where they had been setting boundaries about those connections and communications for years, and they got to a point where they just kind of had to say, Yeah, we’re not coming together on anything on this. I’m going to take a break. And you’ve heard me in the past. It’s the same stuff, you know what I mean. That is sort of, that’s not ghosting. Like the other part, the other part of it is like when, when we set boundaries with someone several times, and I think we start setting boundaries with a toxic parent in childhood, like Mommy, do you have to get so mean when I make a mistake? Really early stuff. Those are those conversations that lead up to decades going into no contact. So, I think by the time the person is at that place where they might do it, which is the hardest thing that they will ever do in their life. So, I don’t, the article also makes it really kind of flippant, the way that it’s just kind of talked about, like, as if I’m talking about how to assemble an IKEA dresser. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, you just send a letter and you do this, you do the thing, and, yeah, just, do your best. I don’t know. So about the ghosting is, you know, thinking about it, and it’s not clear in the article, but I encourage people to make a statement that is not super long, because my, I think the danger there is that, let’s just say that the client that I mentioned, and that’s a very similar conundrum that a client finds themselves in. I don’t think it’s good to write a three or four page letter of stuff that you’ve already said for years. I think maybe a shorter statement that is, you know, the parameters around it, what you know, is there a time period around it, that kind of a thing. But a lot of the copycat articles from the New York Times made it seem like, make a letter, don’t make a letter. Just whatever you do, there’s a strict adherence to just being: No. I don’t know where that came from. I was almost make it sound like I was saying, if you’re going no contact, you can never contact them again, and it’s over. You know, it’s just like there’s in my own family, I’ve gone no contact from my surviving parent several times and trying to do that with them, and sometimes those times were good, and sometimes the behaviors just kind of came back. So, but I don’t know if I’m answering your question. I don’t think that ghosting is good. I think that estranged parents need some kind of notice. But we’re also dealing with an estranged parent who is most likely emotionally immature. Like, in other words, if someone wrote out a one page letter explaining the things, we’re not going to have an emotionally immature parent, like, Oh, I got it. I got it. They’re going to be defensive. They’re going to pick apart that letter. Their, it’s indicative of the article, as well as picking, picking and choosing, cherry picking issues to kind of go over. If that makes sense, I don’t know if that answers your question.
Katie Vernoy 33:51
In the way that I’m understanding this, the work that you’re doing is, first off, you’re educating and you’re letting people know what some of these dynamics are that are unhealthy, the things that can impact adults when their childhoods have been abusive or violent or toxic in some way. And helping individuals to get to the place where they’re improving their own health and their and their mental health in a way that these dynamics are no longer tolerable for them. And what that does is that upsets the system. And so then it sounds like, once the system is upset, that if they’re going back, they’re making these efforts with family. And I think probably there’s been some of these things that most therapists end up doing. They learn, oh my gosh, my family wasn’t perfect. They go back, and they may make some of these attempts or or provide, you know, psychoeducation on what’s right. And some families will do the work, right. The parents will learn. There’ll be different conversations. There’ll be dynamics that switch, because now you’ve whether it’s the IP or not, the person has come back into the system in a different way, and that may be beautiful work. And it sounds like for some of your clients, that’s what happens. But for the folks that come back and they keep get hitting the same system, they’re they’ve been re identified as the problem because they’re now the rabble rouser, then it becomes this thing where it may not be healthy for them to stay in that environment. And I like that you said distance versus no contact as kind of the initial piece is stepping back. It might be limited contact. It could be no contact for a period of time. But these are all, this is a, this is not a necessarily long term strategy for every single client. It might be required as a long term strategy for some folks, but, but you’re describing a lot of nuance, and there’s a lot of messiness in all of this and and there’s a lot of a lot of work that happens that’s so different than, you know, putting the IKEA cabinet together of of this is how you go, no contact. And so I really appreciate that work. Are there other pieces of the work that you’d like to share before we wrap up?
Patrick Teahan 36:01
Yeah, and I like what you just said there. Just to clarify, it’s super rare for my clients and clients that are coming to this stuff with childhood trauma, the majority have parents and families that are not working on themselves. So, whether it’s like we connect with an ex again, or we’re in a partnership, or something like that. If one person is working on themselves, the other person is kind of left behind. So, for those that go no contact, say for two or three years, to work on themselves six months or whatever, when they come back into their family system, the family might know a little bit more of boundaries that are along well, don’t set her off again. But that’s not really honest learning about how you got there, or how the family really is. So. But that can still be a positive, that the family is a little bit they don’t have to understand, but they may have to have some boundaries, which might make a Thanksgiving dinner or a connection or a weekend with them tolerable, if not a little bit enjoyable. But there’s just still such elephants in the room, which is what the client is going to need, sort of help with accepting, so. But it’s it does happen. Sometimes it’s super rare that a parent sort of looks at themselves or wants to go to family therapy. I see a lot of estranged parents going, well, let’s go to family therapy. And then when they get the family therapy, it’s kind of like, see the therapist is right, that you’re you’re wrong, you know, like you’re wrong, I’m right kind of stuff, you know. And there’s not a lot of insight in that way. So I just wanted to kind of put that out there. But your your your question was, what other, what other, what other work comes with RRP?
Katie Vernoy 37:46
Well, just anything else to give us a fuller picture before we wrap up, because I know that we’ve been still kind of focusing a little bit on the no contact, and I know that there’s other pieces of the work that you wanted to make sure that you shared, so I wanted to give that space.
Patrick Teahan 37:57
Right. The other pieces of the work are, I do want to sort of say that clients, lastly, on no contact, clients who do go no contact or set boundaries or withdraw in some way, for those that go no contact and who really are unsafe with their family, they do a lot better in terms of getting to the work that they need to kind of get to. Because it’s sometimes continued engagement with abusers. It’s not like it’s it’s really not unlike domestic violence when a way that you really kind of can’t get to a place of working on yourself if you’re constantly dealing with the thing. But the other work around RRP is people are, what I really love about RRP is people get a sense of really developing community for the first time. You know community of their peers. You know what I mean, like when you’re a child, a trauma survivor, when you’re sitting in a cube at like a bank or one of your jobs or something like that, and you come from a very dysfunctional or alcoholic or abusive family system, and the person in your next cube is having a lovely conversation with their mom, you definitely feel like you’re the other in society or an other in some way. So when they get to these groups, is the person the exact scenario that I just talked about, each group member would totally understand each other, just in an unspoken way about what it’s like to be that person in the cube and having to live your life and kind of maybe hiding this stuff, or trying to maybe find a partner and assimilate into a good, a better family. It’s a very lonely place to be. So what I really love it about the work is the community. It’s hard work. It’s a lot of like elective surgery, in a way, because you’re really, it’s not you’re really going into and really talking about some hard things. You don’t have to do that 100% upfront. But I find that when people join either a six month group or long term group, the first couple months of the psychoidation piece around it is people do a little bit more poorly before they get better, because they’re starting to really feel it. They’re really starting to feel their childhood. We’re starting to make the unconscious conscious in that way. I’m in love with I’ve been in love with the work for a really long time, and what I really love about it is, for years, I’ve known that it’s really, really worked. It worked for me. But you know, for the past two years, we’ve been doing research and having clients fill out a PCL-5 and some other measures like self compassion, and we’re doing a research project of, kind of really crunching empirical numbers to see how clinically effective it is. In our findings, especially around the PCL-5, incredibly effective. Which we’re really, really happy about to have that be kind of like known to us, and working on, sort of publishing our first paper within the next sort of six months on those findings and how we did it. So we’re trying to launch a therapy, which is like a really interesting concept. We’re trying to launch, and how did DBT become a thing? How did CBT become a thing? It’s kind of like a wild thing, and I didn’t think I would love the research as much as I really like it, because it’s just so fascinating about what we’re kind of finding, and how even just measures compared to other measures, how that can have its own kind of outcome. You know, like where initially I had wanted a measure to measure authenticity in the six month group, and I was really super jazzed about that, but it’s where there wasn’t a lot of change in terms of in terms of changes in authenticity, and then realize after that that comes with the later work, that comes with the longer work. So lots of good things kind of going on about it.
Curt Widhalm 41:36
Where can people find out more about you and the work that you’re doing?
Patrick Teahan 41:40
The internet, you can find all kinds of stuff, some stuff you don’t want to find. My website, patrickteahantherapy.com, YouTube channel, just Google. You know, I think a good introduction was kind of the initial video that I did. It’s a video called, ‘Was I abused?’ And that is really kind of spelling out, there’s an assessment I did in that video, comparing it to the ACE study, where the ACE study leaves out a lot of the population, like unless you were in horrific shape according to the ACE study. And again, I’m not criticizing the ACE study. I’m just like those, and I know that they have a longer assessment now, and walking through that assessment, or walking through the toxic family test on my website, which is also on step to be in a publication sometime the next year. We’re kind of in a review phase with it. That’s really where I would kind of start, is to kind of like see about where it’s not so much about, the score is important in both of those assessments. But the nature of the questions is something that I really want people to kind of think about.
Curt Widhalm 42:42
And we will include links to those in our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com. Follow us on our social media, join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Group, in order to continue on with this conversation. And until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy and Patrick Teahan.
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