Jan. 4, 2024

Living the dream with author and psychotherapist Phyllis Leavit

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Explore the depths of familial dysfunction and the path to healing with Phyllis Leavit on the Living the Dream podcast. Delve into the insights of a seasoned psychotherapist as she unveils the parallels between personal trauma and societal issues. This episode is a profound journey into the heart of America's mental health crisis and the transformative power of psychotherapy.

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> Speaker A>Welcome, um, to the living the dream podcast with curveball. If you believe you can achieve, cheat, cheat.

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> Speaker A>Welcome to the living the dream with curveball podcast, a, uh, show where I and a few guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today I am joined by psychotherapist and author Phyllis Levitt.

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> Speaker A>Phyllis works with dysfunctional families and people who have been abused and family dynamics like that and the aftermath of it, and the most important parts of, uh, healing, the most important elements. So we're going to be talking to her about her story and her book. So, Phyllis, thank you so much for joining me today.

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> Speaker B>Well, thank you so much for having me. It's really a pleasure and an honor to be joining you.

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> Speaker A>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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> Speaker B>Yeah, um, I started out, um, well, my career for my whole adult life was being a psychotherapist.

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> Speaker B>And I initially did an internship when I was in graduate school in a sexual abuse treatment program. So that kind of really initiated me into some of the nitty gritty of the most dysfunctional family dynamics.

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> Speaker B>Um, and then I went into private practice for the rest.

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> Speaker B>I worked there for a couple of years, um, as a co director, and then I went into private practice for the whole rest of my 30 plus years, um, as a psychotherapist. And what I discovered was that, um, abuse and dysfunction are really quite rampant in America today. I think families are really suffering from a number of different factors going on in America and probably in the world as well. Um, and so that early training, besides what I learned in graduate school, really helped me a lot to understand what was going on in families. Uh, um, and to really dig deep for some of the causes of dysfunction and abuse and violence.

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> Speaker B>And I also had done my own recovery from some of that in my own family. And so between my personal experience and my professional experience, um, just a quick note, and then you take this wherever you'd like to go.

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> Speaker B>Um, it really occurred to me very powerfully that family dynamics are in all groups of people. We take our family dynamics with us wherever we go. People who have learned to become really dominating or really passive or, um, really aggressive or who wall off and isolate. We learn these things early in life and we tend, not everybody does this, but we tend to do as adults what we learn to do to cope as children. And so I began to see schools and places of worship and communities and our nation as also operating on family dynamics. And to the extent that those family dynamics aren't healthy and dysfunctional, then we have that as the environment we live in m nationally. And my book is called America in therapy, because what I really saw so clearly is that many of the dynamics coming down from the top in our country are just like abuse family dynamics.

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> Speaker B>And, um, the american therapy point of view and discussion is really outlining what that looks like, how we can understand those dynamics and how we can change them using the best of what we know from the world of psychotherapy and healing. So that's my nutshell beginning, and you take it from there.

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> Speaker A>First of all, tell us about the sexual abuse program that you helped work to create. And if it's still in effect now.

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> Speaker B>I don't know. It was in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I think it's not in effect now. It was run by a nonprofit agency. Um, it was the parents United program, which was, I think, um, in many places in the country at that time. And basically what was really good about that program and why I, uh, thought it was a good program and why I learned so much there, is that it was a family treatment program for sexual abuse. So we treated survivors of sexual abuse, children and adults. We treated the perpetrators. We treated what we called the non offending parent, because most of the cases that we worked with were incest.

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> Speaker B>Not all of them, but I would say the vast majority were incest. So the sexual abuse had happened in the family. It was often a father or a stepfather or, um, a male relative. It wasn't always a male. Sometimes the perpetrator was a female. But the majority of perpetrators that we saw were men.

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> Speaker B>And, um, most often they came out of abusive childhoods and environments themselves.

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> Speaker B>So we saw a lot of intergenerational abuse. And by treating the whole family, you have the best access to interrupting the cycle of abuse, rather than if you only treat the victim, which, of course, the victim deserves a lot of treatment.

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> Speaker B>Um, and that's really the lens that I see the country through, that we all need help.

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> Speaker B>Um, and so I'm going to say a little bit about the non offending parent. It was often the mother. Um, and again, I'm not trying to categorize people, but I'm just saying that was what my experience was. And, um, we saw a variety of symptoms in the non offending parent. And part of what was really challenging in the family dynamic was that often the non offending parent depended on the abuser, either financially and or emotionally.

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> Speaker B>And so it made it hard for that person to accept that there was abuse, to see the abuse, um, and to want to do anything about the abuse, because it would disrupt the whole family system, which it would, and it did. And I just want to make that quick correlation to our country that so often we tend to look the other way because we depend on people in positions of power, um, who could hurt us if we speak out and speak the truth and, um, try to change the system or hold people accountable for what they're doing. So that's one good example of how what we see in individual families translates to the country. If you're dependent on an abusive employer or an abusive government who might put you in jail, if you speak out or attack you as a peaceful demonstrator trying to advocate for justice, um, you might not want to do it because your life might be at risk or your whole family might be at risk. And it's the same in an individual family that often people are afraid to speak up and tell the truth of what's really going on in their home, because they don't know that they'll ever find safety or be believed.

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> Speaker B>So, ah, again, that's some of what I got out of being in that program, and I realized how important it is for people to be safe, to tell the truth, and to find safety if they're in an unsafe situation. Um, but also what I realized is that so many of the people that we call perpetrators and the victimizers really need help and treatment themselves, and that's really how you interrupt the cycle of abuse.

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> Speaker A>Well, tell, uh, us why you feel that America is experiencing a mental health cris.

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> Speaker B>Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple of things that I could really point out that I think once we sort of identify them, they kind of become obvious. And one of them is that the whole world of psychotherapy and family therapy and psychological treatment for people is to heal the wounds of whatever the dysfunction is that they experienced, whether it was in their family or, and, or in their community.

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> Speaker B>The whole point of psychotherapy is to heal our wounds. And if you're talking about family therapy or couples therapy, which is a part of family therapy, the goal is not to pit one person against the other. The goal is to help people find common ground. The goal is to help people listen deeply and develop empathy for each other's point of view and each other's experience and each other's needs. So the whole point of good psychology and good psychotherapy is to reunite people. It's to resolve conflict in a healthy way, where one person doesn't just get to dominate and another person has to submit, and we don't see that going on in our leadership in this country, we see increasing divisiveness and name calling and attacking and endless lawsuits. Instead of the role model in Congress, for instance, of people actually sitting down with respect for one another, even if they disagree, even if they have different needs, even if they have different value systems and different policies that they want to enact, we don't see them sitting down and actually trying to work it out. And that's what we desperately need in this country today for, uh, our safety, for our well being, and for our emotional health, and the fact that divisiveness and threats of violence and people getting death threats, if they have a difference of opinion, these are all signs of mental disturbance. And if we saw them going on in an individual family, we would say that family needs help, that family is operating on unhealthy dynamics that are hurting the individual family members.

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> Speaker B>And we know from all of our work with families in the world of psychotherapy, that when you have two parents who really don't get along and don't have the tools to work it out and don't want to work it out, because they want to assert their own, um, opinion and their own needs on the other person, instead of coming together and really reaching some kind of mutual empathy and understanding that the children suffer. And many children that I saw in my practice, there was nothing wrong with those children. They were suffering from the dysfunction of their parents and the animosity between their parents, or the open fighting between their parents and the inability of their parents to resolve conflict. And I think the people in the United States, and this applies to countries all over the world, but I'm just talking about America, are really suffering from the increased divisiveness and escalating violence and threats of violence, um, that is going on in our leadership. And I think we really need a brand new paradigm that is based in healing our divides.

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> Speaker A>What do you feel like are the leading causes of mental health, not just in America, but all around the.

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> Speaker B>I mean, I think part of it is there's so many know, discrimination is a cause of incredible injury to people.

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> Speaker B>Poverty is a cause of incredible psychological injury to people. Um, being marginalized for your sexual identity, or your religion or the garb you wear or whatever, all of these ways that we make people other, that we sort of sensationalize in the news, these become our role models of how you treat people and how you see people as others.

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> Speaker B>These things certainly contribute to declining mental health, um, because they're not based in a mutual understanding that we're all human beings. And that we're all deserving. Um, there's no baby that's born less deserving than another baby, no matter who you are, what you look like, what family you're from. So I think that's one. And again, what came first, the chicken or the egg? I don't know. It's a snowball of effects. I think that war, um, and the continued investment in war and the belief in waging war, um, is a terrible disservice to our mental health.

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> Speaker B>We never advocate in our offices that people keep fighting because we know the results are always detrimental. There's never a good result for anybody from continued fighting in the home. And why would we imagine that there would be a good result from continued fighting in the world? And especially when we're armed with weapons of such terrible mass destruction and so many. And of course, we see this now. Um, Ukraine is a terrible example, and Gaza is an even more flagrant example, that the people who are injured and killed are innocent. They have nothing to do with it. Children, thousands of children are dying because we believe in war as a resolution to our problems, and it never resolves anything. And I think we need to educate ourselves to really understand that this will never yield the result that we want. Certain people will get really rich off of it and get a high on the power that they get from winning a so called war. But the human race is, um, under dire threat of a third world war and the use of nuclear weapons. How can that be sane? How can that be a sign of mental health?

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> Speaker A>Well, talk about how you feel that psychotherapy and psychology can help deal with dysfunction and abuse and things like that.

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> Speaker B>Absolutely. I mean, I think what's the great contribution of psychology and psychotherapy that's missing from national discourse today is that psychology is not partisan. Psychology is not invested in somebody winning an argument.

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> Speaker B>It's invested in healing conflict. It's invested in bringing people back together. Because one of the things that we've learned in the world of psychology, and I don't know that the average person knows this, because we get so many different messages in our society and so many different messages of what's, um, desired and, um, is to be praised in our society or what's wanted. One of, um, the things that we've learned as psychotherapists is that love and belonging and peaceful conflict resolution are the best food for human beings. We all thrive best when we're loved, when we're valued, when somebody sees us for our inherent goodness, for our essence, when we're supported to be our best selves, rather than humiliated or criticized or blamed or ostracized, um, or attacked.

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> Speaker B>No one does well when they receive that kind of treatment and we have symptoms. If we are persecuted by other human beings, and when we're loved and when we belong, and when there's a commitment in a family, no matter how small or how large that family grouping is, when there's a commitment to nonviolent conflict resolution, we all thrive, we're safe, we're wanted. Um, how many people in this country feel unwanted right now? Um, on a societal level, and it's tragic, the psychological impact that that has on them. So the best psychology really helps people come back together and heal those wounds and see each other as equal, deserving, essential human beings, um, that need to be treated well and help people.

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> Speaker B>I don't want to sound like a Pollyanna.

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> Speaker B>Conflict is, I think, part of human nature.

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> Speaker B>We will not agree. We don't see things the same way. We don't want the same things all the time. I think that's just part of what we are as individuals. We will have conflict, and some of those differences are amazingly helpful.

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> Speaker B>It wouldn't be necessarily helpful or growth producing for the human race if we all had the same personality and the same contribution. Each person has a contribution. Um, but what we don't know is that, um, the real courage that it takes today, the real strength, the real power that we need, is the power to sit down at a table and treat each other as equals and try to resolve our problems. And that's what the best psychotherapy does, and that's the model that I try to bring to the country. Is that easy?

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> Speaker B>No. Is it really hard? Yes. And we probably all know that from our own personal relationships. How many times have we had an argument with our spouse or our children or an employer and just felt like that person is a jerk and they're wrong, and I just have to set them straight. We probably all have that experience, but taking that attitude is not healing. So learning some of the skills of really healing relationship internally with ourselves and what we've internalized and in our relationships with other people is the gift that psychology brings, and it really involves doing our own work. Most people are focused, and I think it's not blame that I say this. It's just sort of what we learned. It's how I grew up. And you probably know this for yourself. We're just focused on what the other person did wrong, and we want to correct them, and we want them to see it our way. But they want the same thing from us. So if we don't really learn how to listen to each other and take responsibility, and this is really the big thing, take responsibility for ourselves, how could I do this different?

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> Speaker B>How could I be more empathetic to your point of view?

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> Speaker B>How could I be a better listener? How could I say what I need to say, even if I feel very invested, that what I have to say needs to be heard? How can I say that in a way, the best way that you could maybe hear me rather than beating you over the head with my point of view and thinking that that's going to work.

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> Speaker B>Um, so taking responsibility for ourselves, whether that's me as an individual in my marriage, with my children, with my friends, in my community, me as a therapist, me as somebody, ah, who wrote a book, whatever it is, take responsibility for myself and, um, still speak truth.

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> Speaker B>Still speak truth that might be uncomfortable for other people to hear, but really take responsibility, then, for how I react to them. Maybe somebody doesn't like what I have to say. Chances are they won't, or some people won't. Um, can I be responsible for my reaction? Can I still stay in a nonviolent frame of mind, even if I feel hurt or angry or dismissed or humiliated? Um, so, taking responsibility and holding for some kind of agreement.

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> Speaker B>But let me say there's a step in between, because most of us have also hurt people inadvertently, whatever. Through our own consciousness, through our own conditioning, whatever. Most of us are sometimes blind to another person's needs or another person's feelings. Can I say I'm sorry? Can I say, you know what? I hear you, and I shouldn't have spoken to you that way, or, I understand that what I said to you was hurtful, or when I walked out of the room, you felt really abandoned, or whatever it was I did. Can we do that as a country?

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> Speaker B>Can we really look at our own history and make amends, true, sincere amends, for the aggression that we have perpetrated on other people?

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> Speaker B>Uh, and this is common history, what we've done to Native Americans as the United States, what we've done to people who were enslaved, black people who were enslaved, what we still do to women, what we do to marginalized religious organizations and communities of people, um, can we take responsibility for that? One of the beautiful models that is out there that we could use is the truth and reconciliation model that happened in South Africa. Was it perfect? No. Did it yield all the best results immediately? No, but it's a model for bringing victims and perpetrators together in a spirit of reconciliation and healing, and we desperately need that in our country.

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> Speaker B>We shouldn't feel shame at saying, I was wrong or I could do it better. And I think people feel like it's shameful or it's weak, or, um, it puts you in a one down position when actually it takes great strength. So these are some of the gifts that psychotherapy has to offer, because this is exactly what we help and facilitate people to do in their own lives. And the more people do it in their own lives, and the more they see the value of actually reconnecting and feeling like they're joined with other people, which is what we all want. Love and belonging are probably two over the most essential needs for human beings.

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> Speaker B>When we have that, we don't want to kill people, we don't want to wage war.

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> Speaker B>We want to further our connection and our cooperation, and we desperately need that in the country, and we desperately need that in the world. And that's why I think psychotherapy and psychology have so much to offer today. And that's why I wrote America in therapy to try to share some of that with the general public.

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> Speaker A>Well, you mentioned some of the principles in best practice about breaking the cycle with abuse and violence. Uh, do you have any more that you could offer?

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> Speaker B>Well, I think one of the things that comes to mind, there are so many things, but one of the things that comes to my mind first is that I think we really need to take a really honest look and a deep psychological look at our criminal justice system. Because one of the things that I found when I was researching my book is that more than half of people who are incarcerated today are untreated victims of some kind of child abuse. And so we have people who are untreated, they're symptomatic, they're already outcast on some level in society, and they're more prone to, um, ending up in the criminal justice system. And then it's like a double whammy. Then they're punished again for the symptoms that they have of untreated abuse to begin with. And so I really strongly believe that we need a criminal justice system that is absolutely dedicated to rehabilitation, to giving people the help they need. There are not.

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> Speaker B>There may be, but there are people that we don't know how to rehabilitate. They're so injured, they're so damaged that we just don't have the skills and tools to bring them back to a place where they could be safe in society.

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> Speaker B>But there are many, many people who are. There are many people who never got a fair shot at life. And they deserve one. And they deserve the chance to a second chance. And they deserve healing because they do, because they're human beings who are suffering. Um, so that's one of the things that I feel is really important. Um, I don't know the statistics. I need to put them in front of myself so I can quote them. Um, but we have a prison system that is outrageous in the world today.

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> Speaker B>And unfortunately, it's become profitable for many people to have a prison system that's filled with all kinds of people who actually deserve help. And that's wrong. It would be just as wrong as if a parent was profiting off of the abuse of their child. And some parents do.

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> Speaker B>Um, and we know that's wrong in a family, so why isn't it wrong in a country?

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> Speaker B>So these are big things. Go back and ask me that question again and I'll see if something else comes to mind or maybe that sparked something in you.

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> Speaker A>Oh, well, I definitely think that's, ah, good information that you've given out. So tell the listeners about your book, tell us where we can get it and what we can expect to find when we read it.

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> Speaker B>Well, thank you. So, book is, you can buy my book on any of the bookstore sites.

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> Speaker B>Um, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, um, and all the other, um, people that put out, uh, books. It's called America in therapy, a new approach to hope and healing for a nation in Cris. And, um, you can also.

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> Speaker B>I just want to put this in quickly. I'd love it if you would contact me on my website, which is ww, phyllislevitt.com. Um, and I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn. And please sign up for my newsletter. Contact me if you want more information yourself. I'm very open to responding to any and all, um, you know, what you can expect to find in the book is basically what my own personal experience was that sort of led me to this lens. My personal experience as a child in a dysfunctional home, and then, of course, years of experience as a psychotherapist. And then I really outline what the dynamics of an abusive family are, so that it's very clear what happens in an abusive family, how it affects people, what the symptoms are for many people who are hurt and not helped. Um, and then I talk about how that corresponds to some of the dynamics going on in the country. And so I try to give really clear examples on the micro level, which is the individual family, and the macro level, which is the family of America. And you can see, I think from what I've researched and pointed out, and what most of us are observing today, is that the correspondence is very, um, exact.

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> Speaker B>What happens in a dysfunctional family is a lot of what's happening in a dysfunctional country. And then the whole rest of the book is really dedicated to what does psychology have to offer that can help us heal? And one of the key things that I want to emphasize, um, for you and your audience, because I think so many people today, I hear this a lot, so many people today feel hopeless, like this is just the way it is. There's nothing the individual can do. The system is rigged, there's dark money or whatever. And all these things may be true, but there is something we can do. And I think the average person really needs to feel like there's something that they can do, um, because feeling hopeless and feeling powerless are very difficult experiences for all human beings.

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> Speaker B>We need to feel like we have some power somewhere that's appropriate. And when people don't have appropriate power, when they don't feel like they can impact their environment, often the power that they exert is inappropriate. They become aggressive, or they become rebellious, or they become naysayers, or they become walled off. Um, and that's how they exert their power in a way that's not even constructive for them. So I really want to emphasize that we can all be a part of the change. You don't have to be a therapist. You don't have to be an academic. You don't have to know all the principles of psychotherapy. You don't have to know any of that. You can just do your own work, work on your own wounds. See how your own wounds have affected the way that you respond, the way you are in relationship.

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> Speaker B>Um, get help if you really need help.

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> Speaker B>It's not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of strength to go get help and be vulnerable and cry the tears you may need to cry or talk to someone and get a different point of view, or get support for your greatest self, which is what we all need, is support for our greatest self. And we all have a greatest self.

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> Speaker B>Um, we can all be a support to one another. We can try to drop the lens of you're other because you look a different way, or because you have a different religion, or because you have less money, or you have more money, um, or you come from a different country, or whatever it is. We can all work to drop that lens and just see each other as equal human beings. And what that might look like is nothing difficult it just might be being kinder to the person who waits on you in a restaurant or being kinder to the person on the other end of the phone, or noticing somebody in your office and saying, how are you this morning?

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> Speaker B>Noticing that they're there, letting them know they, um, isn't. Sometimes all it takes is for somebody to see us and let us know we matter.

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> Speaker B>Um, I know that when I checked out in a Walgreens the other day, and the lady behind the counter was so upbeat and so friendly, and you know what? It was just a delight. It was a wonderful energy to receive.

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> Speaker B>She didn't know me from Adam. She was like that with every single person in the line. What a gift. And it's free.

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> Speaker B>We can be kind to each other and accepting of each other and gentle with each other and understanding, uh, each other. And it costs nothing. And it's priceless.

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> Speaker A>Well, you threw out your website, which was my next question.

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> Speaker A>Phyllislevitt.com. So tell us about any current or upcoming projects that you're working on that people need to know about.

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> Speaker B>Yeah, I mean, the basic project I'm working on is my book, America in therapy. And my website right now is pretty much devoted to information about my book, where you can find my book, where, um, you can order the book and some of the contents of the book. Um, that's my big project right now. And I, at some point, may be writing a sequel to this book and the other big thing that I'm doing. So it's american therapy and speaking. I just really want to share these ideas with as many people as I can and inspire a drive and a willingness and an openness to actually healing instead of keep on fighting with each other.

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> Speaker A>With some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to touch on, that you would like to talk about it. Just any final thoughts you have for the listeners?

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> Speaker B>Um, well, I think I shared the essence of my book, and I so appreciate you giving me the opportunity to share that with you and your listening audience.

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> Speaker B>And I think my final thought is, um, healing begins with us. There is something we can each do to heal our own wounds. I have never seen, ever. In all my 30 some years of practice as a psychotherapist, I have never seen anyone do healing work and become more aggressive, more hostile, more warlike, and more hateful. In fact, I've always seen the opposite. The more a person heals their own hurt from other human beings, the more loving, the more cooperative, the more understanding they become. So anything that any one individual does to heal themselves helps heal our country. And that's what I really want to share.

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> Speaker A>Absolutely, ladies and gentlemen. So follow rate review. Share this episode to, uh, as many people as possible. Pick up Phyllis's book. Go to phyllislevitt.com. Check out everything that she's up to. She also has another book out there, too, so you can definitely check that out.

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> Speaker A>If you have any guests, uh, or suggestion topics, cjackson 102 at Cox. Net is the place to send them. As always, thank you for listening. And, fellas, thank you for joining, uh, us today and sharing the message of healing.

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> Speaker B>Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you, and I appreciate your show and appreciate the opportunity to share. Thank you.

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> Speaker A>For more information on the living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurveball.com.

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> Speaker A>Until next time, stay focused on living the dream. Dream.