How Can Therapists Help Politically Divided Families? : An interview with Angela Caldwell, LMFT
Curt and Katie interview Angela Caldwell, LMFT about family therapy for politically divided families. We explore what therapists get wrong when working with these families as well as what works better. Angela talks us through the goals for family therapy, how to move families from trying to convince each other to understanding each other better, and the importance of distress tolerance and finding ways for families to survive, even when members strongly disagree with each other.
Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.Transcript
An Interview with Angela Caldwell, MA, LMFT
Angela Caldwell, MA, LMFT is a California Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Family Coach. She serves as the Founder and Director of the Caldwell Family Institute in Los Angeles, specializing in family-based coaching. She has been teaching graduate students for over a decade and is currently an adjunct professor at California State University Northridge, teaching systems theory and related courses. Angela offers regular trainings, lectures, and speaking engagements covering a broad range of topics, including building a family identity, finding core values, parenting in the digital age, and understanding non-suicidal self-injury.
In this podcast episode, we talk about how therapists can work with politically divided families
During the run up to the 2024 US presidential election, we are seeing more and more political division, even in families. We reached out to our good friend Angela Caldwell, LMFT, to talk through how therapists can support families during this challenging time.
What do therapists get wrong when working with politically divided families?
“Families are coming in with the stated goal…that they want to work on their communication. [This] disguises a more covert goal, which is…make the other party agree with me…Our goal actually is to increase tolerance of differing opinions in families.” – Angela Caldwell, LMFT
- Therapists inaccurately agree with families that the goal is either communication skills or getting consensus
- The goals for family therapy are increasing tolerance for differing opinions and sustaining relationships even when you disagree
How can therapists address the societal messages that negatively impact relationships?
- Modeling holding affection while disagreeing on viewpoints
- Hold sacred that everyone in the room has come to their viewpoint honestly
- Focus on the why for the positions people take
- Listen for and mark trigger words to help “opposing party” to stay with the explanation of viewpoint
- Soften the relationship through understanding
What can therapists do if clients feel frightened of the beliefs of their family members?
“This is the beautiful moment in therapy…when the therapist gets to go, look at this…what we share here is we want good things to happen in the world, and we want good things to happen to people, and we don’t want to harm one another, and we don’t want to harm the world. And you’re afraid that Catherine’s viewpoints are going to harm the world, and Catherine’s afraid that your viewpoints are going to harm the world, that is it. Now, here’s what’s going to dissatisfy all of your listeners. You’re done. That’s it. That’s the work. We did it….you the therapist, are holding a space, and it usually lasts like 10 seconds, you’re holding a space where we all sit in that anxiety together, and we what? Tolerate it.” – Angela Caldwell, LMFT
- Explore perspective and increase clarity on the real anxious feelings
- Find common ground related to hopes for the world
- Work on distress tolerance with the anxious feelings
- Hold the moment of anxiety and then move to reassurance (i.e., that the relationship can survive opposing viewpoints)
What does the work of family therapy look like with politically divided families?
- Set reasonable expectations
- Make sure to give pep talks
- Plan and promise for the next session before ending the previous session
- Personal connection between sessions (like short texts)
- Don’t play “gotcha” when someone is wrong
- Set ground rules at the beginning of therapy related to showing source material for viewpoints
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!
Angela’s website: www.caldwellfamilyinstitute.
Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:
Rage and Client Self-Harm: An Interview with Angela Caldwell, LMFT
Therapy as a Political Act: An Interview with Dr. Travis Heath
Family Therapy: Not Just for Kids – An Interview with Adriana Rodriguez, LMFT
Treating Political Reactionism and the War on Science, An Interview with Dr. Tereza Capelos, PhD
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 0:15
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 field, the ways that we handle things going on in the greater zeitgeist of the world. And it’s election season, and with that comes some very divided clients, very divided families in not so polite conversations, maybe some not so good active listening skills. Maybe there’s a reason that some of the general advice is just don’t talk politics at home. But we, as much as we would like our clients to follow all of that, they still run into those things, and those clients still come into our offices. And we are joined by our friend Angela Caldwell LMFT, to talk about working with families who bring this stuff into the therapy room, looking for us to be the arbiters of who is correct and why everyone should just listen to one half or the other. So thank you very much for joining us on this very timely topic.
Angela Caldwell 1:22
Thank you for having me on such a juicy topic, and that the topic that has consumed my practice. I no longer do garden variety family therapy. I am now a mediator and referee. I’m actually thinking of of changing my my business card to family, family Fight Club Referee.
Katie Vernoy 1:41
Oh, geez. How funny. How funny. So you’ve been on the podcast before. We’ll link to your previous episode in the show notes, but it for folks who haven’t heard of heard of you or heard that podcast with you on it before, who are you and what are you putting out into the world?
Angela Caldwell 1:59
Good question. Hi, I am a family therapist, family coach by trade. I do therapy primarily with families and putting what am I putting out into the world? So this is my thing. I think we will solve world hunger and all the pains of war and everything if we have more healthy dinner tables, and so I am trying to build more healthy dinner tables. I want families to have dinner together, and I want them to debate and argue and compliment and flatter and play games and compare and discuss their days and argue more and get defensive and learn how to deal with the defensiveness of another person. And I want all of that to happen in a family so that we change the world dinner table by dinner table. That’s that’s what I’m putting out in the world dinner tables, Katie.
Katie Vernoy 2:48
I love that so much. That’s awesome.
Curt Widhalm 2:52
We ask this question at a lot of the beginning of our episodes, is, what do therapists get wrong when working with politically divided families.
Angela Caldwell 3:03
Okay, well, likely all the things that I got wrong when I first started working with politically divided families. Interestingly, well, maybe this is not interesting. Maybe everybody knows this. Everyone’s saying we are in an extremely divided time. I think that’s probably right. When I was growing up, I don’t remember this level of strife when I was first becoming politically active in my you know, I turned 18 and I could vote in my 20s, getting involved in political discourse and volunteering for campaigns and getting really active. I don’t remember this divide. However, my hero, you might know this guy, Barack Obama, he has always said that we always romanticize the past and that actually it’s always been really difficult. It’s always been really hard. We’ve always been very divided. I try to hold that in mind, that, yes, we’re very divided right now, but maybe it’s kind of always been that way, and I was just too young to really observe that or take that in at a mature level. That said, I do see a change in my practice. So, I did not have political discourse coming into my practice as much. I had it, but I didn’t have it as much as I’ve had it in recent years. And it has changed the nature of my work, because families are coming in with the stated goal: This is every family’s stated goal. They need to work on their communication. And as you know, we therapists have a cute little joke about that. We say actually, actually people, humans are very effective communicators. It’s more that you don’t like what you’re being told, right? That’s that’s more likely the problem. Sure enough, their stated goal being that they want to work on their communication disguises a more covert goal, which is: Angela, make the other party agree with me, right? Make the other party see the error of their ways. You have to know that going into a family that presents with a political divide, you have to know that that’s what they’re really after. What they’re really after is that you’ll persuade the other party to agree or or even move a little in the opposite direction. What therapists get wrong the most is they agree. They don’t know that they agree. And in their minds, they’re going to stay neutral and they’re going to do their best to facilitate a conversation. But what happens, because we are also very political people, what happens in the midst of the conversation, we internally find ourselves siding with one or the other and and sometimes consciously, I think probably more unconsciously, agreeing that the goal is to get our opposer, our opponent, to open their mind and see the error of their ways and try to get everybody in line with the same goal, excuse me, the same viewpoint, right? And so I think what therapists get wrong is the goal that the and the goal and their role; that the goal is to get everyone to agree on a particular viewpoint, and their role is to facilitate that, and that is absolutely dead wrong. Our goal actually is to increase tolerance of differing opinions in families. That’s the goal. That’s the goal when you have political division come into your room, the goal is to increase tolerance of the differing point of view so that you can have debates and maybe even arguments that are at least healthy and respectful, right? Because if we, if we can’t even get to the point where we can tolerate an opposing point of view, then we never get to the juicy debate. We never get to hear the other side. This is something that we value in society so much is talk to someone who disagrees with you so you can hear the other side. Well, you have to tolerate the differing opinion in order to have that conversation in the first place. So the therapist role and the therapy goal is that, I sometimes even make it more specific than that, that the goal of this kind of therapy is to find a way to maintain the relationship despite the opposing views. So rather than try to get everyone to move to the middle, rather than try to get one party to agree with the other party, go ahead and have the opposing viewpoints and see if you can compartmentalize those enough to still maintain a positive and healthy relationship. Yeah, that’s what they get wrong. The goal and the role.
Katie Vernoy 7:30
I hear that, and I recognize some of the challenges in myself. Like but wait a second, the other side is just so wrong. They need to see the right thing here. And I as I was thinking about I was like, well, I’m actually a pretty good quote, unquote mediator. I can get there. Maybe I’m, maybe I’m doing things okay, but I think about how messages are being transmitted in society around if someone opposes you, they are evil and wrong. They are, they are completely unintelligent. They are, they’re delusional. Whatever it is like there’s such negative descriptions that really go against this idea of tolerating a different viewpoint. How do you deal with that? Because it’s so hard to fight these messages that people are hearing every single day from right now, people who are proposing to be the leader of the free world.
Angela Caldwell 8:33
Right. Right. The people have the microphone right now are the extremists. I guess that’s true, not just right now. That’s always the extremists get the microphone. They’re the ones that are saying, you know, if, if they don’t agree, screw them like, cut them out of your life. They are the T word everybody loves T word right now. They’re toxic. Get them out of your life, right? And, yeah, you have to oppose that in the room. There’s a couple of different ways that I do that. My favorite way to do it is model. So, I can think of a family right now that we’re working with where the parents are Southern Baptist, very conservative in their viewpoints, and the parents and I would vote very differently out in the world. I am much more progressive in my viewpoints. I lean more blue and democratic. They clearly lean more red, and I like them. And what I do is, in the session, I show how much I like them, and when I disagree with them in front of their son and daughter, who are the opposing parties in this case, when I disagree with them in front of their son and daughter, I go, I go to to pretty great lengths to say, Oh, I don’t know, George you and I could have a beer, but we part ways on this one, and I let them see that I still like you, but I disagree with where you are here. The other way that I like to do that, and if you’ll just let me go off here for a long the other way that that I do that it’s really important to me, the therapist, to hold sacred in the conversation that everyone has come to their viewpoint honestly. What I mean by that is that if you feel passionately about a political issue or a topic, you likely have some emotional investment in it. You likely have a personal connection to it, or a spiritual moral construct connected to it. There is probably a deep personal investment in why you believe what you believe. So if I hold that sacred, then I can, I can find lots of different openings in a conversation to bring it back to not what you believe, but why you believe what you believe. So you voted for Trump, I can never be in a relationship with you again. Hold on. Hold on. That’s what. That’s that’s the, that’s the what, why. Why did you vote for Trump? And you have to work with family members on this because they’re they’ll give some shallow reasoning at first. They’ll say, Well, because he’s a better choice than the other guy, or, well, because our government is inefficient, you know, inefficient, or something like that. And you’ll say, yeah, yeah, no, I get that, but, but what’s your personal, how did you come to this? When you did your own analysis, your own personal examination of the issues and the candidates what, what drove you to this decision? And I am pleasantly astounded at what happens in the room when someone can can reach into their personal experience and explain how they came to their viewpoint, and not just watching the person do it and helping the person do it, but getting to see the impact on everybody else in the room. That all of a sudden we’re not interrupting anymore. All of a sudden, everyone’s kind of leaning in and interested, because they’re showing where this viewpoint came from that it is so deeply personal to them. I am definitely vigilant, because I am listening for the trigger words that are inevitably going to come up in someone’s explanation of why they believe what they believe. And so I’m I do a thing, and this is kind of one of those things. This is a family therapy technique, right, where I’ll hold up my hand to the opposing party. So as you know, let’s say George is delivering his speech about why he voted for Trump. And I’ve got daughter over here, Catherine, who’s really angry with him. And as he is getting personal and deep and explaining his spiritual belief that God chose Trump, which is absolutely absurd to Catherine. Catherine, this is the most, the dumbest thing Catherine’s ever heard in her life. But he is getting deep and personal. If I can, if I can pick up on the words that are going to piss off Catherine, then I kind of gently hold my hand up to her and let her see like I know I heard it too. I’m doing this with my body. Sometimes I do it with my words. I know I heard it too, but let’s focus on what he’s saying here. Let’s, let’s, let’s get to the bottom, what he believes here. And that’s pretty effective, because Catherine, or whomever sees that. No, no, I heard it too. I got it. I know that this is not where you agree, but we can stay in that, what is that it’s a softer relational moment, rather than a cerebral, you know, clusterfuck of debate, right? We can, we can get into heartfelt discussion about why someone believes what they believe, even if the other party disagrees.
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Curt Widhalm 13:24
I’m trying to take this from kind of the bigger principles that you’re talking about here and how this actually plays out, because I can imagine George in this scenario being like, well, I voted for Trump in this case because Biden wants abortion access kinds of things for everybody, and based on, you know, George’s religious principles that that doesn’t seem, you know, at face value, to be something where that’s a particularly personal story to George, in this case. So, Catherine’s, you know, sitting in the corner, still rearing up like, how does this continue to to play out here?
Angela Caldwell 14:05
So, so the abortion so I was using George’s example of voting for Trump for different reasons, but let’s say it was the abortion issue comes up. The abortion issue used to come up a lot. It’s coming It’s in second place right now, behind transgender, at least in my practice. But when the abortion issue comes up, I can still get George to be personal. And so can you, so can any therapist, because even if George doesn’t have a personal story about abortion, he certainly is passionate about this viewpoint from some place, right? And if he and in this case, I actually have never talked to George about this, my guess would be that George would say, I believe in the Scripture. I it, I believe, I have chosen to believe that God wrote the rules down, and I want to follow God’s rules. I want to, I want to follow God’s rules. I want everyone to follow God’s rules. I think that’s what makes this planet a better place. I think that’s how we solve world hunger and end all the wars. And if I can get him, you know, that’s maybe, like one level down, if I can keep digging into deeper and deeper and deeper spiritual beliefs. I disagree with his beliefs, but he believes in them deeply. What I can do with George is even get to when he started to believe this. Did you always believe this? Did you always believe that God wrote the rules? And in George’s case, my guess, I know a little bit about his background, he’s going to say no. He’s going to say no. Actually, this was introduced to me when I joined a choir group in high school. And he’s going to tell the story of how he tran, you know, he transformed into this other kind of person that believed deeply in this thing. Curt, Katie, you guys know this therapist, know this very likely we will hear the story of how this filled an empty place in his life, how this resolved a trauma in his life, how this answered an unanswered question for him. And that’s where we go. We go deep, deep, deep, personal and you realize after a while you’re no longer talking about abortion. But that’s that’s where it comes from. It comes from this long narrative, not he read an article once, but a long narrative of what he believes and why he believes. And all of a sudden, I’ve got Catherine kind of calming down a little bit. Catherine is going to get the floor, and she gets to tell her narrative and why she believes what she believes. But I’ve got the room softened at least, because I’m getting George to go deep, deep down, maybe way back in his past and his story of how he came, maybe how he came to develop his political self in the world.
Katie Vernoy 16:28
I see the benefit of understanding how someone has come to believe what they believe, and getting into that personal story. And I also recognize that there are types of folks that feel dangerous to, I’ll say to some of my clients, someone who has deeply held very conservative religious views, or folks who who tie back to, you know, Christianity, the scripture, those types of things, or I’ll use more of a progressive word, the patriarchy, or those types of things. And so for me, part of what I’m hearing is I’m getting to know George, but I’m also finding more and more reasons why he and I might not get along, or that he might be dangerous to me. And and I think that especially when we’re looking at whether it’s religious beliefs around abortion or trans folks or or whether or not Trump was chosen by God, I think that there is this element of getting into to a really scared place as someone who has been harmed by religion or or some of the other pieces that you’re getting to. Once we get to that place of understanding, this is where, this is your foundation. How do you address that other part of: your foundation is scary to me?
Angela Caldwell 17:56
Yep, that’s exactly what we do. Katie, that’s that’s the second phase, right? So the second phase, and I so, are you finding this in your practice? I don’t know. I don’t like to use the word scare anymore, because now when, when this person says, You scare me, or that scares me, the other person gets really defensive and like, Well, I’m not trying to scare you. And there’s something I’m trying to tell therapists, try frightened for some reason. Frightened is more romantic and poetic, and people aren’t getting as activated for some reason, and then, you know, and then that will stop working, and we’ll need a new word, but that’s what I encourage. Okay, so we get to the foundation, we get to the understanding. And I sense anxiety in the room, right? And I’m glad, because I’m sensing what I would consider to be the genuine anxiety, rather than the angry, defensive, I can’t have a relationship with you because you’re toxic. Right? Now, we’re getting into the exact same message, but it’s it’s coming from a genuine like genuine place. And now I’m going to encourage each party to say, Okay, I think I understand you for the first time. I think I understand where you come from. And there’s something very frightening to me about your beliefs. And then I have that person now, now we’re talking about old fashioned psychotherapy 101, now we have that person explain what they’re what is frightening to them. Again, this word is poetic and not as, not as electrically charged, right? So say this is what’s frightening to me about that. To your point, Katie, George could say the same thing. Catherine could say, oh, wow, I understand. And that’s frightening to me, because I have been hurt by that belief set. But George could say the same thing. George, can hear Catherine and say, oh, boy, that gives me a lot of nervous feelings, because I have been hurt by that point of view, or I’ve seen the world get hurt by that point of view. This is the beautiful moment in therapy, right? This is when the therapist gets to go, look at this. Look at how, look at where, where we, what we share here. At least what we share here, is we want good things to happen in the world, and we want good things to happen to people, and we don’t want to harm one another, and we don’t want to harm the world. And you’re afraid that Catherine’s viewpoints are going to harm the world, and Catherine’s afraid that your viewpoints are going to harm the world. That is it. Now, here’s what’s going to dissatisfy all of your listeners. You’re done. That’s it. That’s the work. We did it. It is the most unsatisfying answer probably, all the therapists listening are gonna be like, there’s gotta be more. No, because at this point you the therapist, are holding a space, and it usually lasts like 10 seconds, you’re holding a space where we all sit in that anxiety together, and we what? Tolerate it. We tolerate that anxiety because the truth is, we don’t know. None of us have has a crystal ball. We don’t know which viewpoint is going to harm the world. We know that both viewpoints have harmed the world in the past, right? And we don’t know what’s going to happen, and we’re allowed to be afraid of what’s happening. I hold that moment. If anything happens next, it is no longer about getting one person to see the other person’s viewpoint. We already did that. We established understanding. It’s no longer about expressing how your viewpoint makes me feel. Now I switch the focus after my 10 seconds, or maybe I’ll send people home and wait for the next session. But after, the next part is the reassurance. So now I need reassurance that we can still have a relationship. Now I need reassurance that, well, actually, the client gets to determine what they need reassurance about. What I push for is reassurance that we can still be in a relationship despite our scary opposing viewpoints.
Curt Widhalm 21:45
How do you get people to come back for like, a second or a third session before they have this tolerance for everybody. Especially a lot of the families that I’m getting now aren’t like adults with teenagers that it’s like, well, if you don’t go to family therapy, you’re not getting dinner tonight, but like I’m getting more of the families that are it’s adults, and it’s their parents who live in the next neighborhood over, that they don’t all have to continue to come back together. How do you get people before they have this tolerance for each other, to commit to continuing to come back to this discomfort knowing that this is going to take a while.
Angela Caldwell 22:26
Usually my charm and good looks. I’m just kidding. So that first session, so what it’s promises and pep talks. So you guys probably do this when you work with families, you a lot of us have to like family therapy is not fun. I always tell people it’s like going people it’s like going to the dentist and getting a tooth pulled like it’s does. It’s not you have to do it, but it’s not fun. Nobody likes coming to family therapy. So if you thought this was going to be fun, allow me to enlighten you, right? So we end family therapies with pep talks, right? And so usually, if you’re working with families, there’s something at the end that says, Hey, I know that was hard. I know there’s a lot of pain right now, but I promise you, this is the good kind of pain. And next week we’re going to and then you make promises about what’s going to happen next week. So a lot of times, and Curt you probably do this anyway. A lot of times, the promise is about how you were going to hear from someone else, because there wasn’t enough time for everyone to or even one person to finish what they were saying. So I don’t have a problem getting them to come to the second and third session, because the other person other person wants their turn, right, because they did all the understanding, and now they want some understanding in return, right? They want, they want a chance at the microphone to explain their personal narrative and how they came to their beliefs. So we make promises, and that’s a nice carrot, right, to get to come back, and then there’s personal connection in between sessions. So I do a lot of pep talky one liner texts. So I might wait a little bit when I know that somebody’s home or free, and I might send a text to, let’s say, Mom, who was particularly uncomfortable and fighting back tears the whole time. I might send a pep talk text to her that says something like, Hey, I know that was tough. You did great. Or a kid, I might, I might send a text that says, proud of you. Can’t wait to see more of that, right? And so, so I so I do, I do in between session contact like that. I don’t do much more than that. There’s not a lot of phone calls or not a lot of texting back and forth. But that helps. That helps because each individual family member gets to feel okay, Angela saw that that was hard for me, or Okay, Angela going to take care of me next time, and I do, and I keep my promise, and I take care of them next time.
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Katie Vernoy 24:36
In getting to some of these things, and you started to talk about this, but I think this is more of kind of how the therapist can actually get to a place where they can do this. It seems like a lot of therapists, you said, you said this yourself: We’re very political beings. We have our own viewpoints. And then there’s also many of us, not all of us, but many of us have a strong interest in evidence based facts, critical thinking, all of those things. And so when we’re sitting in the room as the therapist, and whether it’s we agree with one of the side or we disagree with everybody in the room, how do we handle our viewpoints and and even further, how do we handle when someone is factually wrong and putting this forward.
Angela Caldwell 25:24
So I love this question. Katie, I wrote down a couple of examples for you.
Katie Vernoy 25:27
Okay, great.
Angela Caldwell 25:29
Okay. One time we had a mom give, and she gave, like, a whole speech to the entire family about how foreign governments were paying abortion doctors to take down the United States, right? And this is like she was clear and certain that this was happening. I mean, she, you’re sitting there listening, kind of convinced, like, Wait, really, is that really? Like she was so convincing, right? My favorite one just happened last week. We had, we had a teenage boy explain to his parents that testosterone from pigs is more effective and faster working than human testosterone. Absolutely, as a therapist, you are going to sit in your chair and go, Oh my Holy Jesus. Okay, absolutely, here’s the thing. There’s two things, if I know I had to learn this one the hard way. Oh, man, you never want to play. Gotcha. That makes you look bad. It doesn’t make people want to come back. It’s embarrassing and humiliating to the client, right? So, so when they make an absurd, asinine claim, you don’t want to be like, really? Where’s your where’s your source for that? Or where did you read that? We never want to play anything like that. Instead, if you know you are dealing with political division in a family, then you set the ground rules at the beginning of the therapy, knowing that people are going to say very incorrect things, factually unsupported, incorrect things. And you say, Hey, listen, if we’re going to do this therapy and we’re going to talk about these very sensitive, very personal and political issues, it’s going to really help your case if you bring your source material. So so if you read an article or attended a class or read a book, and this is where you’re getting your material, bring it. Share it with everybody. Because when you make a claim, probably what’s going to happen in your family is what happens in lots of other families, and the opposing party is going to want to take down your claim and discredit you. So bring where you got your information. If you set this as a ground rule at the very beginning, then it you don’t look like you’re playing gotcha when they when someone says, Well, foreign governments are paying abortion doctors, right? Then you can say, okay, all right, so that’s it. We have a claim. Can you can you share your your research with us? Can you show us where you got this information? Almost always they do not have their source material, almost always they did not bring it with them, or they are kind of exposed and busted because they realized they stated a claim that may may or may not be true. That’s a tricky moment, because, again, I don’t want to embarrass my client, and especially if it’s a parent, I don’t want to embarrass a parent in front of a kid. I don’t want to embarrass a kid in front of a parent either, right? So if someone is making an absurd claim, and then I, because I set the rule early, I say, like, okay, all right, hold on. Hold on, guys. Hold on. We have a claim. This is the thing where you show us your source material, right? This is what everybody’s doing in here. And if I can see that they don’t have it, or that they’re, I don’t know, regurgitating something that’s on Tiktok or, you know, whatever it is, I let them off the hook, and I do that in front of everyone. And that’s a cool moment. It’s a delicate moment, but it’s a cool moment to model grace in in difficult conversations. So I say, I say, Do you not remember where you were? Or is this? Is this something where you can’t remember? They’ll lie. They’ll say, like, well, I can’t remember, or I’ll, I’ll have to bring it next time, or something like that. And I let them off the hook. And I say, That’s okay. That’s all right. How about this, guys? How about let’s not use that claim for this particular conversation, and then I make the promise that I never keep, and I say, we’ll come back to that later. No, we will not. We will never come back to that, right? I very gently take it off the table, save that person from embarrassment, and say, well, let’s back up a little bit to what got us there in the first place. And then we do, we back up to whatever, I don’t know, maybe there was a claim stated right before that, or someone was making an argument right before that, and then I’m very directly steering the argument in a direction away from the absurdity of that claim. So, yeah, that’s a long way to say, set the rule early that you need to present your source material. This is a actually, I’ll go off one more time. This has become a very effective way for me to work with teens in families who are massively guilty of not doing any research and regurgitating what they read or hear or see off social media. When I set the rule early in the therapy, usually the first time they’re busted is enough for them to learn. And a really cool thing is happening now. So now, you know, in later sessions, when the teen is making their claim, and we say, okay, source material, the teen actually has learned how to research, right? Because they don’t, that was embarrassing, and they don’t want to get busted again, and they do want to convince their parents, and they do want their parents to see another side of the story, or, you know, whatever it is. And they actually bring, so this just happened yesterday, they actually bring an article, and now we get to see, what’s cool about that is, I’m sort of accidentally teaching teens to double check what they’re what they’re seeing on social media. I didn’t mean to do that, but it’s having that kind of bonus effect, right? And so it’s kind of cool to get a little bit of skepticism in the parties, about what you’re seeing, about your resources, about where you’re getting your information.
Curt Widhalm 30:45
What if it’s the parents who are wrong? Like, I had this happen a lot more during covid and around like vaccine debates. So what I’m ultimately getting out of this is, this is not new information or new processes that are happening in family therapy, it’s the subject is going to change from time to time. But during covid, I would have parents who typically were on the anti vaccine side of this, with children who were in college, grad school, studying things like microbiology and things that were very, very relevant to science.
Angela Caldwell 31:29
Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 31:30
How does this look different when it’s the parents who are just I have pulled here my resources, and now I’ve added your practice email list to the email list for here’s everything wrong with vaccines.com and their daily newsletters. How do you handle this differently when it’s the parents?
Angela Caldwell 31:50
So, that’s great, and yes, of course, we have a lot of that. Like my mother, who is certain that foreign governments are paying abortion doctors, mysteriously. No, of course, it happens in the other direction. So Curt, there’s a very cool intervention you can use here. I will meet with parents separately or get on the phone, maybe in between sessions and charge but I will have a separate conversation with parents, and I will tell them, hey, you have an opportunity to do a really cool parenting thing right now. Remember that our job as parents is to build confidence in our kids. They need to feel confident in their opinions and their points of view. And what you need to do right now is you need to let them feel confident and let that, let their opinion matter to you. Find value in what they’re saying. What happens is the parent then, if they take your coaching, then the parent then comes in and is like, Okay, I never thought of it that way. Or, and I’ll feed them a lot of script too, say, I’ll say, like, you know, you can say, I never thought of it that way. Or you can say, Huh, interesting perspective. I’ll have to think about that one. But make them feel like they matter. Make them feel like what they are studying, what they are reading, is important to you, because they are your child, and that is your job as a parent. A lot of parents will respond very positively. Oh, yeah, okay, Angela, all right, all right. And I, I’ll ego stroke the parents on this one, you get more bees with honey, right Curt? My ego stroke the parents on this one, and I say, I say, Hey, listen, you win all the debates. They’re little, you’re big. You always win. Let them win. Let them win a couple of these debates. Let them feel like their voice matters. Let them and I may I try to help the parents see like, let them into the conversation, the more you’re squashing down their side, the more confidence you’re chipping away at and that tends to work. That tends, then parents come in and they think you’re doing this like charitable, honorable thing and and what ends up happening, of course, you can imagine, is as they are conceding a point or two or or admitting that they had never thought about something like that, then the then the kid is getting more confident and more passionate in the way that they’re talking, and I am shooting thumbs up signs to the parents, like, Yes, way to go. Great job. You’re doing a great job as a parent. And lo and behold, it might be a session or two later that the parents actually are realizing that there might be some merit in the opposing argument or the opposing viewpoint. But again, if they believe something absurd and wrong, there’s not much you can do there except build tolerance for that. I also come from a family where my mother believes things that keep me up at night. And that’s I mean, I can send her all the studies and textbooks and factual information in the world. I can do it till I’m blue in the face. She believes what she believes. She believes it for her own personal narrative reason, for her own development of how she became to you know, how she became this political self in the world. And I’m not going to change that, as much as I would like to try. And I accept that. I accept that she’s going to believe some bullshit, and that’s okay, because we can still go to lunch together, we can still hang out, we can still give each other Christmas presents.
Katie Vernoy 35:19
You’ve talked a few times about building tolerance for these disagreements, practically, what does that look like? Because I find a lot of people have very few distress tolerance skills, or the ability to stay in uncomfortable moments.
Angela Caldwell 35:34
It’s a great question. It’s what you just said. So, I would recommend that we just take a page out of the DBT book and go back to distress tolerance building, right? Like, actually, go back to the skill building of that. You can do, you can start with really benign stuff with families. And see what would be something benign? Like disagreeing on chores at the house. And I think I should have to do this. Well, I don’t think I should have to do this, and what would it be like to disagree and just like breathe through that disagreement? What would it be like to accept? What would and go from there? These are, and this is not, as Curt said, this is not new information. This is just borrowing from the DBT playbook.
Curt Widhalm 36:16
Where can people find out more about you and your practice?
Angela Caldwell 36:20
On my website, then go to www.CaldwellFamilyInstitute.com, all of our information, all of our phone number, address, email, all the internet stuff that I don’t know how to work, but my people do, that’s all on the website.
Curt Widhalm 36:36
And being some of the people we will put on our site and our show notes, some of the stuff that Angela is just vaguely referencing here, and we will include links to that over at mtsgpodcast.com, and follow us on our social media. Join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Croup, to continue on with the conversation. And until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy and Angela Caldwell.
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