The Devil You Don’t Know
In The Devil You Don’t Know, Lindsay, Cleveland, and their guests discuss personal growth and development by taking chances and getting out of your comfort zone. Topics range from whimsical to serious and everything in between but are always relevant to growth and development.
The Devil You Don’t Know
Do Better Next Time
Our recent episode focuses on empathy and the vital role it plays in countering division in today's world. We highlight Dave Chappelle's (SNL 50) poignant remarks on humanity, trauma, and compassion in the wake of societal upheaval, urging listeners to reflect on how they can elevate empathy in their own lives.
• Exploring Chappelle's perspective on division and empathy
• The necessity of compassion in mental health
• Realizing the uniqueness of each individual's trauma
• Mindfulness as a tool for addressing emotional reactions
• Accountability as a critical component of personal growth
• The importance of mutual understanding in relationships
• Encouraging active practices of empathy in daily interactions
• Reflecting on historical figures and their lessons for today
Please email us at Gettoknowthedevil@gmail.com
This is Cleveland.
Lindsay Oakes:And this is Lindsay.
Cleveland Oakes:And this is another episode of the Devil. You Don't Know, lindsay, what are we going to be talking about today? Do better next time. Ah, do better next time. I know I'm the one that came up with this idea, but I just want you to just tell the folks what we're going to be talking about a little bit.
Lindsay Oakes:Well, I mean, I didn't read through everything, but you know my style.
Cleveland Oakes:Well, you got to do better next time.
Lindsay Oakes:I have no intention of doing better next time Not when it comes to this, because I like when you lead things, but what I would imagine is just kind of constantly making improvements Right, so that there's a different outcome.
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, yeah, that's really boom. You know you set it down succinctly. Where I really got this idea from is big weekend in the United States of America was the inauguration today of the president 47, who like Dr who, who like our last David Tennant? Dr who is both the 45th and the 47th president of the United States and I think for Dr who fans when David Tennant regenerated he was both the 15th and, I think, the 12th version of the doctor. But somebody out there in nerddom will correct me.
Cleveland Oakes:But Dave Chappelle usually brings Dave on during these times because Dave, even though he is a polarizing figure in the world of comedy, Dave is also a comedian in the same extent of an Albert Ellis or Fritz Perls, in that he uses comedy to address the cognitive distortions that we are facing as a nation. And a lot of times when you these if you know anything about Gestalt and RBT Linz, these are kind of like methods of mental health that you kind of throw in a cup of cold water in somebody's face and making them wake up, and so sometimes Dave's humor is not really accepted because that's his humor.
Lindsay Oakes:Sometimes people need that though.
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, sometimes people need it. That's that's my style of counseling A hundred percent Me too. But Dave's monologue this week was actually a very serious one, where he talked about the level of divisiveness that has come up in the country and the level of dysfunction that we've come up with in the country. He talked about the Palisades, he talked about Palestine and, most importantly, he talked about the importance of being the president of the United States. And he gave a really good example about how Jimmy Carter went to Palestine without the support of the American, without the support of the American government and without the support of the Israeli government, and walked the streets of Palestine surrounded with no little to no security, surrounded by thousands of Palestinians. And Dave said I don't know if that was a great man. And Dave said I don't know if that made him a good president, but I know that made him a great man.
Cleveland Oakes:And what he finished that comment off with is that the office of the United States, the president of the United States, should not be an office occupied by petty people. And he he finished it off with a quote, which was you know, donald Trump, you know a lot of people are counting on you that didn't vote for you and who voted for you, and he was like I would like you to do better next time. And he said you know what? Not just you, but all of us need to do better next time. And I just wanted to ask you, like what are your thoughts as a mental health person on that topic and how we can take that topic and not just talk about these things but expand it to how we can handle the next four years of anxiety and uncertainty that folks are going to be going through?
Lindsay Oakes:Well, I think it's a little bit to do with what we talked about last week, which is that you kind of lack control, you know, over what's going to happen, so really all you can do is keep your side of the street clean.
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, yeah One of the main things that Chappelle talked about in that audience was do not forget your humanity and please have empathy, and this is what he closed his monologue on was please have empathy for displaced people wherever they are, whether they're in palace, whether they're in the Palisades or whether they are in palestine. Why do you, why do you think that was an important statement for him to make, and how can we take that in the context of what a lot of what we see going on in the world today?
Lindsay Oakes:well, I think that we just need to have compassion overall for everyone. Right, because the people with these you know that have lost these massive homes.
Cleveland Oakes:Right, they just have the same amount of trauma that the rest of the world has right, it's funny right, because one of the jokes that Chappelle said and it made me think about and it goes back to what you just said and it talks about and Mate talks about this in the Myth of Normal, about small T and little T you mean big T, big T, big T and little T Is one of the jokes. He said is I can't stand poor people because they can't see past their own pain. And he said is I can't stand poor people because they can't see past their own pain. And he said it as a joke and the audience laughed ironically. But that was the point. Is like to you just what you just said is many of us can't see past our own pain and we do not accept that other people's traumas are real traumas.
Lindsay Oakes:Right? No, I definitely agree. I was going to say something and then you kept talking and I lost my train of thought. But it should come. It should come back to me in a moment.
Cleveland Oakes:I thought it's because you were playing on your phone and I heard it go boom.
Lindsay Oakes:No, that's my computer and I don't know how to turn any of those notifications off. The kids usually turn them off for me, but then whenever it updates, they go back on. So let's feel like I'm getting a little bit of a cold, sorry.
Cleveland Oakes:So let's just like I'm getting a little bit of a cold, sorry, so let's just jump right into it. Right, and I know you know. Good news on your part. You just got into the critical. Tell us a little bit what's going on with you. I don't want to.
Lindsay Oakes:Saturday night while we were out, that I got accepted into the program and I registered right away yesterday. So I will be, hopefully by the end of the summer I will be a certified compassionate inquiry practitioner and yeah, and I'll also be starting up my mindfulness meditation teacher certification program. Oh, congrats. So that's starting in April, I think. So I have some stuff coming up for that of like welcome events and getting started and yeah, I'm really excited about that because that's really the direction that I'd like my life to go in, because I know that you know for me, mate, you know what Mate talks about and you know the way that he talks about mental health is so it's so impactful, I think, and it's so different than the way that he talks about mental health is. So it's so impactful, I think, and it's so different than the way that mental health has been described and explained over the years by other people. But this just makes the most sense to me.
Cleveland Oakes:Right when we think about this idea of do better next time. How would Mate tell us to take these next four years or the things that we're concerned about, and how would Compassionate Inqu these next four years or the things that we're concerned about, and how would Compassionate Inquiry tie that back into a lot of the anxiety that folks are feeling?
Lindsay Oakes:Right. Well, one thing that he does say right is that we don't need to know all of the specific details of things. Right, we can just sit and learn, to just be comfortable with being uncomfortable, but just to be aware and authentic.
Cleveland Oakes:One of my favorite authors, jason Pargin, on his I think in his sub stack, but on his on his social media page said that what he would like folks to do for the new year in 2025, what he would like them to do better next time, is in 2025. When somebody asks you about something that you might not have all the information about, jason Pargin said say this I do not have enough information to form an opinion Right.
Lindsay Oakes:You said that last week.
Lindsay Oakes:Okay, I remembered what I was going to say before too, when you were making the comparison to people with money and people who you know are more economically disadvantaged, was that?
Lindsay Oakes:I think the people that are more economically disadvantaged are probably a little bit more stuck in the victim role, right, and that's why it's so hard for people to see past that. And the thing with being the victim is that you have to be so tired of being the victim that the scales tip in favor of you really wanting to do something else, right? I mean, of course, these people lost their you know homes, and that's a tremendous and devastating loss for many people. But a lot of them, given the homes that they lost, probably have the resources right to to make a change or to rebuild and do things like that. And while it's still, you know, very traumatic and devastating, right, a lot of these, a lot of people that are in that victim role, like you know, people who are more disadvantaged, tend to stay and really stay stuck in that role. It's you and I talk about this all the time. It's like a cycle.
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And that was one of the jokes that not really jokes, because Dave can be very serious, but he talked about seeing his neighbor. I think it was Dennis Quaid that he said. He actually saw Dennis Quaid, who's a friend of his, on the news, like crying as he was, like you know, like in tears as his house burned down and like reporters were interviewing. And so it goes back to this idea of both big T and little T and I want you to speak to that a little bit is is my trauma, like if I had something terribly traumatic happened to me in my life and I think I've seen this in a lot of couples that I work with is that people are comparing their traumas to each other. Well, what happened to me is far worse than what happened to you. Why is that unhelpful for families, for relationships and for us as a culture, for us to compare our traumas to each other?
Lindsay Oakes:Well, I mean, trauma is different for every person, so there really is no comparison, right? Because it's also not even about the event, because you know the event is actually. What Gabor Mate would say is that trauma is not actually the event. It's also not even about the event, because you know the event is actually. What Gabor Monte would say is that trauma is not actually the event. It's the lasting effect that it's had on us. Is what the actual trauma is.
Cleveland Oakes:And it goes back to the same thing that Ellis says about RABT it's not the thing. It's it's not the thing, it's our reaction to the thing. Part of doing better next time for me, you know, especially as I go through, you know, a lot of changes that I've gone, that I'm planning on making over the next four years and beyond is to be you know what you try to tell me to be more mindful.
Lindsay Oakes:Right, yep, well, it's just slowing down, right Doing things with a little bit more awareness.
Cleveland Oakes:And Jonathan hates the anxious generation, which is a great book. Haidt warns us that when we use free tools like social media, that we become the product right. That's something that my dad intuitively understood as a little kid. I remember my dad when he would go to work at night he worked for transit for many years that he had a bag with logos, or you know. He would always cover over the logo of the bag. Or if he had a shirt that said Izod or Nike on it, my dad would always cover it over and he was like I'm not these people's product right. I am not putting money into these people's.
Lindsay Oakes:But then why not just buy something without a logo on it? Like I always tell you, I'm sure it's probably made in the same factory. It just sells for a really different price.
Cleveland Oakes:But if he got the shirt from somebody but no, my dad was like, was adamant, like that he would not buy something with a logo on it. Or if somebody gave him something with a logo over it, he would cover it up. But the reason why I think this is important and especially as we work with clients, is a lot of the stuff that we watch today is to activate you. It is to make you upset. We've talked about that and we've talked about that numerous times. But how? I want to talk to you about it in the context of a compassion inquiry.
Cleveland Oakes:I'm a client that I came in today and if you saw the inauguration today, donald Trump for many people this is going to be a victory and for many people it's going to be a tragedy says I am signing an executive order day one that there are only two genders in the United States. How do you as a person, how do I now I'm going to spaz out about this how can you can control your anxiety or what you feel in regards to social media? In regards to that, how could you use CI to help people manage their anxiety?
Lindsay Oakes:Well, that's a good one. I don't know, because that's never come up for me in CI, but it's more. Ci is more about exploring the feelings and the somatic experience than it is of the actual event. And so if you, you know, if, ideally, if you are a trans individual right, then you can still be that Right Because it's it's the other people's words, you know, that are telling you something, but it doesn't really identify who you are internally, right, right.
Cleveland Oakes:Right, and I think one of the things that we talked about and we talked about it last week is it's really important to be mindful and that's something you always encourage me about, right, and it's really important to be mindful, and it's really important to be mindful and that's something you always encourage me about, right, and it's really important to be mindful and it's really important to be authentic and it's really important to understand who you are, yep.
Lindsay Oakes:Well, I mean just being mindful, and it doesn't even necessarily need to be in a practice. But I think the thing with mindfulness is is that if you practice mindfulness, you're pretty much a little bit more aware and a little bit more you know. You do things a little bit more, maybe strategically or with more awareness, right? Like one thing I think I said to you the other day is you kept saying that I was in a bad mood and you were like we were having a conversation and I was like no, we weren't. You were just sitting here spouting off for like 20, 25 minutes at me and you didn't even say like good morning or ask how my day was. I was like a conversation is between two people. So if I appeared to have been annoyed to you, I was just sitting there and waiting for you to actually pause and make room for me to speak, right, and that's.
Lindsay Oakes:You know, that's that mindfulness is. Like you have to kind of constantly read the room and be aware of what you're saying and doing and how it is impacting other people. But you know you don't have to take everything that's said by other people and internalize it, and that's a problem that we have as a society and as a culture is that we listen to what other people say and then we believe it and we lose sight of who we are. So someone can tell you no, you can't be this, because I'm signing an order that says it doesn't exist, but you can actually still be that. I mean, I think we're going to see a lot of very crazy things happening.
Cleveland Oakes:And what you just said, to just to bring it back to, to, to bring it back to on a small scale is that miscommunication between you and me, where I was stuck in my point of view and I'm a therapist.
Lindsay Oakes:It wasn't even a point of view. We're just like telling me stories back to back to back. It wasn't even like you were trying to shed light on something that happened to me. It was just this.
Cleveland Oakes:you know, it was like I was like you were giving like a monologue and I was just sitting here like but I want to take that as an example of how communication goes wrong, and not only in a marriage, but and we are both uh trained individuals.
Lindsay Oakes:We both have master's degrees, but I always tell my clients that too, like I'm married and I would be lying if I didn't say that we don't have disagreements right or a lot of the things that happen in our home, you know, are similar to what happens in the homes of my clients.
Cleveland Oakes:And so how does critical thinking, so how does critical thinking, play into mindfulness? I and I want to just and to give you an example is a great podcast that we listened to, called the critical thinker, by JT and his wife, lady C.
Lindsay Oakes:Well, it's not about thinking. It's about just being and being present in the moment and not worrying about what's going to happen next or what you could have done differently with what just happened. It's just about being in the moment, and so when you're present, you're just listening, you're tuned in to what's going on around you. Yeah.
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, and that's one of the things that JT and Lady C talk about is the critical thinking helps you engage and I love that podcast.
Lindsay Oakes:Oh, it's a good podcast right.
Cleveland Oakes:Critical thinking helps you engage. In a way is like question the messenger, question whose interests are being served, but also just question the message. One of the things that's driving me crazy and you and I were just talking about it, I'm not going to really get into specifics is clients who come in and act like they have no agency. Clients who come in week after week with the same problem.
Lindsay Oakes:Well, those are the clients that I say come to therapy because they think it's cool or it's a thing to do. Yeah, because you know there has to be an ability to dig beneath the surface, otherwise you're never going to get to the core of the issue.
Cleveland Oakes:Otherwise you're never going to do better next time.
Lindsay Oakes:Right, a hundred percent Right. It's the same thing Like when you, for example, like a client let me think of something like off the top of my head I don't actually have any clients like this, but like a client who is constantly like making poor choices at work, right? Or a client who keeps dating and repeating the pattern and dating the same type of person it's. You know you have to start to look at it and actually want to change. Right, you have to be the victim. It has to be. You have to be so strongly in that victim role that you're like, wow, this is not working. I'm trying something different now.
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, you know Monte has these and I know we talked about a little bit last week, but I want to talk about it again Um, the four A's of healing, which were, I know you said I said something different last week, but they're the same, they're, they're, they're similar, they're, they're, they're very similar. It's authenticity, it's agency, it's acceptance and it's attunement right. Authenticity means that you control, you are being who you are right, right.
Lindsay Oakes:You are doing the things that you want to do. You are doing the things that you want to do. You are living the life that you designed for yourself. That's authenticity. Right, right.
Cleveland Oakes:And do we need someone? Do we need a president? Do we need a governor? Do we need our mother? Do we need our father to tell us who we are, for us to be happy?
Lindsay Oakes:Absolutely not. But the problem is is that we live in a society where we constantly take the messages of other people and then we internalize them and they we make them about ourselves.
Cleveland Oakes:Right right, right, and Jonathan Haidt says that's one of the things that makes social media, even though we're a social media platform ourselves. But we're out here to try to educate people and not to solicit, not be salacious, not be you know, put out misinformation, but help you understand that you are in charge of your of yourself, right.
Lindsay Oakes:And when I one question that I always ask clients. When they tell me like, oh, I need to do this, or I should do this, or I have to do this, I'm like, well, who's telling you? You, or is that someone else's voice, like, whose voice is giving you the message? Because if it's not your own voice telling you that this is what you need to do, then you don't need to do it.
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, that's something I always appreciate with you and it's something I've sat and work with my own clients is like well, who's the person that told you that first? Can you, can you talk to us a little bit about that more from a CI?
Lindsay Oakes:Oh, it doesn't even have to be a CI context, but right, when, when you have a problem with, say, kind of attacking people right, or responding really critically or harshly for pretty much no reason, right, going from like zero to 100. I always say to my clients, well, who talked to you like that, right, because the thing is, is they learn that somewhere? Because our behavior is learned Right? I mean Tara Brock says when you think about what's going on out in the in the Middle East, right, all of that is learned behavior. This, this, you know, kind of war out there has been going on for so many years on off. Right, it'll, it'll amp up and then it'll come down. It'll amp up, it'll come down, it'll amp up and then it'll come down. It'll amp up, it'll come down.
Lindsay Oakes:And you know, what she said is like new generations are constantly being born but we are teaching them the hatred and we are teaching them the behavior, right, and that's exactly what happens to us, and it doesn't have to be necessarily by a group. It could just be that you pick up the patterns because of you know what you learned in your home, right, you said it about. You know one of your kids, like last week that you were like she's a combination of the two. You know two people that raised her that were of the same gender, right, and it's like we constantly, we constantly like listen to what other people say and then that's how we learn to behave. I work with someone like that and I find it really challenging to be around her because her opinions are so strong. But it's like, it's like I think what she doesn't realize is how like offensive and disgusting her behavior is.
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, you know, I started reading Jack Kornfield's success principles, and that's one of the things that he talks about in the success principles is you have the agency to change yourself, you can. You have to set aside and you have to envision it. It's, it's. It might come across, corny, well, I'm going to cut out this BMW or I'm going to cut out this picture of this thing. And he said it doesn't even have to be monetary success, but you have to be the architect.
Lindsay Oakes:You have to be content in your life. I mean Gabor Mate says the same thing.
Cleveland Oakes:Right, when you, when you really when, really love something and it aligns with you, then you have to create your life around that, and that means that your life is not created by what you see on MSNBC or what you see on Fox or what you see on CNN or what you read in the wall street journal or the New York times. Your opinions should be formulated from yourself Right?
Lindsay Oakes:Here's a perfect modern day example, right, jimmy Buffett. Right, jimmy Buffett created an entire brand around what he loved. Yeah, and he never, ever gave up. This is a man who wanted to be, you know, in flip flops or barefoot and wearing shorts year round and singing to people and, let's face it, he is not the most talented singer, right but he created his entire life around what he loved and therefore people were drawn to him.
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, you played me a really good interview with Kenny Chesney. He was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this past week and just tell our listeners a little bit about what Kenny said about.
Lindsay Oakes:First I'm going to tell you thank you so much, cause tomorrow at noon you are not going to be doing anything but getting me those Kenny Chesney tickets in Vegas at the sphere, his residency.
Lindsay Oakes:Um well, you know he what he said. Um well, you know Jimmy Fallon was also a big fan of Jimmy Buffett and he'd been on the um tonight show many times with him. But what they both said and what you know well, what Jimmy Fallon said was just always how happy Jimmy Buffett was and how he was just never, ever took things and, you know, spun them in a negative way, that he was always positive and he was always happy and he always just loved every moment of life. And what Kenny Chesney said is there's really something that we all need to learn from that, right.
Cleveland Oakes:Right and I wouldn't. That that takes me and I want to segue into our next segment, which was empathy in an era of division, or empathy in a divisive era. Um, in the Bible it says in the last days that you will, that there will come a time when the love of the greater number of people have cooled off. Right, and I'm not saying I'm not going to be, you know, I was raised in this millennial religion. That was like the end of days is coming and I don't want to be one of those guys that says the end of the world is coming. But do we definitely see a lack of empathy amongst people in the world today? Of course we do.
Lindsay Oakes:A lack of empathy and a lack of compassion, because we live in a world where all we do is point fingers and blame and criticize and accuse. We never, ever want to take accountability for what our role was. And that's another thing that I tell all of my clients, every single one of them, and sometimes, if they're really going through something hard, I will say to them I don't think you're going to like what I'm about to say, but you are the cause of and the solution to every problem that you will have in this lifetime, Because you know, we all play a role. We all play a role in what happens to us.
Cleveland Oakes:How is empathy different from sympathy?
Lindsay Oakes:Well, empathy is, you know, I mean sympathy is feeling bad, right, having an emotional reaction. Empathy is, you know, really kind of putting yourself into that person's shoes. It's a real relatability, right, not like an oh I'm so sorry, that's sympathy, right, but just wow, I can't even imagine what that feels like.
Cleveland Oakes:Right. The example. When I was in grad school, the example of video they showed us about the difference between sympathy and empathy was it was like a bunch of animals and one of them fell down into a hole and the animals at the top of the hole were like hey, we're really sorry that you're down there, we're going to try to help and get you out.
Cleveland Oakes:And empathy is I'm going to get in that hole with you and I'm going to help you get out of this hole, and we'll get it out together. Why is that critically different than sympathy?
Lindsay Oakes:Well, people feel supported, they feel loved, right, they feel like they're not, not alone, because often what happens is that when someone experiences a trauma or something really negative, it's, it's very isolating.
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, yeah, it is, it is a hundred percent. I think one of the things that we've seen and I think you can see empathy, like when we were in Naples, florida, and always like to use traffic and how traffic works as the lack of empathy. When we were in Maples Florida, remember how everybody was nicely, driving nicely, and everyone oh my gosh, yeah, it was amazing.
Lindsay Oakes:And you know, and there's like a lot of crazy turns and U-turns and all these things, because it's these massive thoroughfares, yet there's nobody honking when the light is just about to turn green. There is nobody that's cutting you off and speeding around you and weaving in and out of traffic Like everybody's just kind you take a walk and it's like everybody's just like hi, good morning, merry Christmas, how are you?
Cleveland Oakes:And then, as a New Yorker, sometimes you're just like oh listen, we were on the highway yesterday and it was snowing and a guy is flashing me in the snow and I'm already doing like 10 miles over the speed limit, asking me to go even faster. There is a definite lack of empathy of people. What do you always say that about people that don't practice mindfulness or don't even practice empathy amongst themselves, as they are a danger to?
Lindsay Oakes:Yeah well, my meditation teacher, Sarah Swatiati, says people that do not practice self-care become a menace to society, and it's true, because if you took a moment and you took a breath and you valued yourself, why would you do that? I mean because not only are you putting yourself in danger, but you're putting other people in danger too.
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, one of the craziest things that I will say. And listen. You can cancel me for this if you want to. I really don't care.
Lindsay Oakes:Who me? I can cancel you. No, I'm talking about the audience. Oh, do I get to cancel you? You get to cancel? Well, you don't do things that are going to cancel us. So I don't know what's about to come out of your mouth, but I have no association with it. None whatsoever. Carry on.
Cleveland Oakes:Is. Is that you really need to have empathy for everyone? If I could name the amount of people that said well, I hope this person dies and I hope that person gets hit and I hope they get what's coming to them. That is not empathy we will never get into. We will never solve anything in any part of it. So say, for instance, you don't like the president of the United States or you don't like the mayor.
Lindsay Oakes:I don't like him, but I don't care yeah.
Cleveland Oakes:Or you don't like the mayor of New York, or you don't like the governor of whatever Is it, is it logical to wish them dead, like would you wish your spouse dead if you had a miscommunication, or would you want to?
Lindsay Oakes:try to figure it out. I don't, but I also. You know, I also look at my demons and my own therapy, and I do the internal work on myself to realize that the only person that I really need to work on in this lifetime is my own.
Cleveland Oakes:Right, right, my own self, and so we need to fix ourselves first, right when you have yes, is the health care system messed up.
Lindsay Oakes:Well, I don't know if we can fix ourselves that's probably not the right word, right, but we have to be able to look at our own pain, right, and our own wounds and our own trauma, and we need to just work on healing them. That's what we need to do.
Cleveland Oakes:That is what our job is is to heal ourselves so that we can, you know, be better Right and the next day, and we can be, you know, better for the people around us yep, and so empathy and that's the point that I'm trying to make, but you hit it right on the head, and that's what chapelle was trying to say in his monologue is empathy explores a deeper message of how we can move past our pain to understand the experiences of others, and I think mate talks about that when he says I want to make sure I'm saying it correct when he talks about big T and small T.
Lindsay Oakes:Well, big T is is, you know, really very big trauma like sexual assault, right, Rape, you know someone pulls a gun on you, someone murders someone in front of you, right, those are big, catastrophic events that inflict a lot of trauma on people, right, little t trauma is more of like the bullying, the name calling, those kinds of things that are. They are still trauma, but they're not like these big events that you know really cause us, you know, to really kind of change course, right, for example, if you have someone, say, who's sexually assaulted and then goes on to like never, ever, enter a relationship because she thinks that all men are bad, right, right, right, and it's, you know, and so and that's, though, that's you know, the big tea, right, the impact that it has on us and the way that we, you know, kind of have that trauma inside of us around. That is different.
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, I want to move on to another part of being empathetic and it's something that we talked about without. We're going to have them on the show eventually, but I'm not going to say their names until they come on the show, but we recently visited our friends out in out of state that adopted the most lovely little baby in the world and we had a great conversation with them, spent a couple of hours with them and it went by too fast. But one of the things that we talked about and Jonathan Haidt talks about this in his book the Anxious Generation is we have moved from a culture of being empathetic to one another, where parents support other parents, where we now point fingers at other parents, and one of the biggest failings that we have in America today is back in the old days and in many other countries, parents helped other parents. It is hard to listen.
Lindsay Oakes:We got seven. Well, I mean, I was on the receiving end of that because of the struggles that I've had with one of the kids and I I mean I used to get a lot of messages of like, oh well, he needs to get it together. You know he really needs to get it together. And it's like, yeah, oh well, he needs to get it together. You know he really needs to get it together. And it's like, yeah, okay, well, don't you think if he knew, how he would? I mean, you know, and and that's what I call the shame and blame game right, because I that's what I that's what I call that with my clients, especially with couples, because when you start to point your finger at someone and start to kind of shame them and blame them for something that's happened, you now take away from the initial problem and now you create a whole bunch of new problems.
Cleveland Oakes:Right, right Gottman talks about that in the principles of making your marriage work, and this is not just fundamental to marriages, it's fundamental back to what we said about empathy. It's fundamental about doing better. Next time is first seek to understand before you can be understood. What does that mean to you as a clinician and as a person that lives here? Say it again Seek to understand Before you can be understood. Gottman says that's one of the founding principles in the seven of the principles.
Lindsay Oakes:Well, you have to be able to be flexible and to be able to really, you know, maybe I don't know if understand is the right, the right word there for me, because I kind of switch up respect with understanding, right. But I do realize and I was going to actually say this earlier, so this is actually maybe a good time to bring it up is that you know, if you and I kept all of the same habits and the patterns that we brought from our childhood in this marriage, which we had in the beginning when we were dating, right. But if we still had them today, do you think we would be together? Absolutely not, right. Right, because it's and I do help my clients Right, and this is something that we've done with each other is to understand or respect where your partner is coming from, that their experiences in life are different than yours, and therefore you, you know, instead of that shaming and blaming, right, say, oh well, I have compassion because there's a reason.
Lindsay Oakes:This person is that way, right. And then when you, when you give that compassion to someone, hopefully you get it in return.
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, I, you know I'll. I'll use an example without naming um any specific scenario or incident is I thought that I would hate couples counseling and it is still challenging, but when you have couples that work together and love each other, it's so great to see that love and understanding help them make that relationship grow.
Lindsay Oakes:I actually love seeing couples. I do. I love seeing couples. I didn't think I would like to, but because of this training, one of the things that I love to do is to help couples learn about their partner's perspective and why it may be that way, about their partner's perspective right, and why it may be that way.
Lindsay Oakes:And I think, um, you know, I had once I had a woman I was seeing individually but she was funny because her set kept complaining about the husband and complaining about the husband and something he was doing. And I was like, oh well, you know what he's allowed to do that. And she was like, oh, and she said she thought about it all week and she's like, oh well, yeah, just, I'm like allowed to feel annoyed that he does it. He's also allowed to feel sad or upset about something. And you know, and that's it's because you know when you have like here's another example when you have, say, one person who came out of a home full of addicts and the other one who came from like a pretty stable home, I mean there's going to be a lot of learning about each other and how to interact with one another and to realize that you know, even if you do something and it's always been okay, maybe for this person it's a trigger.
Lindsay Oakes:And I think, even using our own story, I remember, a couple of months ago I think, you were cross with me about something, and then you listened to something in a CI training and you were like, oh, that made me understand him so much better now, and I've had a similar experience in in regards to I can't remember what it was, but I remember we had that conversation and I think I said to you like, oh well, now I get you and and that's why we constantly have to do the work on ourselves, Because if I wasn't doing the work on myself then I wouldn't even have the capacity to comprehend that you could have had a different experience than I had, Right?
Cleveland Oakes:One I, I, I love comic books and I love science fiction, and one of somebody I've worked with in the past is somebody who loves Batman, and one of the great things and we actually had a moment, um, in a session some time ago where we both connected over Batman, the animated series, because what made Batman the animated series such a good show, uh, uh, was uh, I can't remember um the gentlemen show was.
Cleveland Oakes:I can't remember the gentleman that made it, it's like Paul Dini and Tim I can't remember his name, it's on the tip of my tongue but what made those guys good writers was that they explained how good people became bad. And so what makes science fiction good, or what makes a good villain, is when you understand why the Joker became the Joker or why the Penguin became the Penguin and why Two-Face became Two-Face, and those stories were incredible because you could sit there and see, oh, I would probably become a villain in those circumstances also. Right, and so when marriages don't work, or when couples don't work, or when families don't work, it is because of that simple principle that Gottman says is for me to understand you first, for you to understand me, I first need to understand you.
Lindsay Oakes:Well, and if you're never going to take any personal accountability, then the relationship will never work.
Cleveland Oakes:And that's why accountability is an inside job and we all have to understand our role in a thing Do some of us have more power than others? Of course, do some of us have more power than others? Of course, do some of us have less powers than others? Of course. But as Dave Chappelle said in that opening routine, when tragedy hits, it don't matter if you're in the Palisades or in Palestine. At the end of the day, when you lose everything, you've lost everything, and there needs to be a level of empathy and fellow feeling that we have lost and we do not have with each. I want to move on to mindfulness and resilience, and this is like your thing, that you always telling me that I need to ground myself and I need to go to the retreat. So tell us, tell the audience, how like mindfulness.
Lindsay Oakes:First, I'm going to just say, like, the frustrating thing is that you listen to me and you say OK, and then you go back and you constantly do the same thing again.
Cleveland Oakes:That's what makes me crazy, because I'm not mindful but I'm working, I'm going to do better next time. That again, that's what makes me crazy, cause I'm not mindful but I'm working, I'm going to do better next time.
Lindsay Oakes:That's, that's the whole goal. That's the whole, that's my whole thing.
Cleveland Oakes:So for eight no, nine years now we've been together.
Lindsay Oakes:You have not rinsed a dish that you put in the sink. So when is it going to do? When are you going to do better Today? But well, I mean, the thing with mindfulness is it brings you into the present moment. In the present moment, everything is OK, right, right. We can't rehash, we can't rehearse. When you are in the present moment, just sitting and being, you're not doing anything, you're not typing, you're not reading, you're not watching TV, you are just sitting. When you stop wanting things, when you stop not wanting things, you have this really beautiful and brief moment of just being there and being okay with whatever it is that's happening in that moment and it's, you know, and it just it's. It's, it's beautiful, and it's very hard to stay there because our minds are always going and there's always things happening around us. But you know, that's really what it is, right, it is a an opportunity for us to just be here now. As Ram Dass would say, it's, it's ironic.
Cleveland Oakes:Right, but doing better next time means that you have to do better, as you just said, now, right, and you have to start now. And mindfulness is doing better next time by starting now, right, and you have to start now. And mindfulness is doing better next time by starting now, right, right, how much. I'm going to ask you a question is how much of our stress comes from things that we can't control.
Lindsay Oakes:Probably about 100 percent of it, probably about 100 percent of it.
Cleveland Oakes:So if I'm sitting across from you and I'm a client that's sitting across from you and it's like oh, trump is going to, he said drill baby drill. Trump is getting rid of DEI.
Lindsay Oakes:Well, what did I tell you? You're both the cause of and the solution to every problem that you're ever going to have in this lifetime, right? So somehow you're playing a role. And if that is the role that you're playing, that role because you're sitting here and you're listening to this person's words over and over and over again, right, I mean, I get my news from you and you filter it significantly before you give it to me, and I didn't watch any of this today. And I mean, maybe you know people will see that as ignorant, but I just feel for my own nervous system that I I just cannot participate in listening to and watching things that I know are going to activate me. It doesn't mean that I don't know that they're going on. I know that they're going on, but why? Why do I want to put myself into a position where I'm completely activated?
Cleveland Oakes:Right? No, no, you're absolutely. You are absolutely right, my friend. You are absolutely right. In the Anxious Generation, jonathan Haidt refers to a Kurt Vonnegut story called Harrison Bergeron, and in this short story that Kurt Vonnegut wrote it was an America. That that the goal of the American public at that point was to make sure that everyone was on the same playing field. Right, that no one was better than anybody.
Lindsay Oakes:Well, we all are on the same playing field. The problem is is a lot of people perceive that they're on a different one.
Cleveland Oakes:Oh, go ahead, but no, no, no. But to the point in that story, what the government did is if you were somebody who was highly intelligent or question, or had a high degree of critical thinking and could question things, they put this device in your ear that would buzz in your ear all day long and keep you off balance. Right, and Jonathan hates um at analogy is, the thing that keeps us all off balance is social media. It is your iPad, it is the video game consoles, it is 24 hour news. These things keep you from. It is the buzzing in your ear that stops you from being mindful, it stops you from being resilient, it stops you from being empathetic and it stops you from being a critical thinker. Because you have these noises. You have TikTok telling you what to think, you've got LinkedIn. You've got Facebook, you've got Rachel Maddow, you've got Wolf Blitzer, you've got, you know, sean Hannity. You've got all these people telling you what to think, except for yourself.
Lindsay Oakes:Right, I just lost my train of thought again. What's going on with me?
Cleveland Oakes:I don't know, maybe.
Lindsay Oakes:I don't know.
Cleveland Oakes:I don't know no no, you've been on point and I'm letting you and I'm letting you do most of the talking today, but I just want to understand, like how is that the buzzing in your ear? How is this a dangerous?
Lindsay Oakes:How are these devices, which are really good for getting information, also very dangerous for our. Well, look at the information you're getting from it, right? I don't, yeah, I mean I don't, like I told you, only thing I follow on Instagram is vegan things that make me happy. I don't. I don't Google for news. I don't read the newspapers. I don't get myself like immersed in, you know, articles about traumas and tragedies, because I just know my own self. But it's. We're constantly getting fed information and a lot of it isn't even true.
Cleveland Oakes:Right, right, right. Jason Pargin once said and we talked about this before that a lot of times you'll see an article and I've seen it in my feed recently because I really stopped I, the algorithm can't figure me out anymore Like it'll send me, it'll send me comic books. There's like, oh, I don't want to hear that. It'll send me like horrible news stories and I don't want to hear that. But Jason Pargin often said, sometimes in these, in these feeds, that you get a story that happened five, six, seven years ago and they put it in your feed to activate you. It's the buzzing in your ear so that you are not critically thinking and you are not taking care of the most important thing, which is to be empathetic to not only yourself and compassionate towards yourself, but empathetic toward the people in your life.
Lindsay Oakes:Right. And what is anxiety? Anxiety is a future trip. Right, that's what it is, right, right here in this moment, sitting right here, we are fine, right, there's nothing for me to be anxious about.
Cleveland Oakes:So, as we wrap it up, you know this was a good one, we were 42 minutes in and we've hit all of our topics.
Cleveland Oakes:I want to say, and I'll let you do your closing thoughts, but in closing what I want to say, I do think it's important to love him or hate him, dave Chappelle. I do think it's important to reflect on what he said, which is do not forget your humanity. And I think we live in a world and in a universe where each of us have realized that we are human but do not give, afford human kindness or human love to even the people that we live in a house with. And it's amazing because I've actually seen the people here in this house like, not want to and it's my own kids used to do the same thing but not want to help each other. And if we, if we live in houses where we're not helping each other, well, I will not get up out of my room and hand my sister, uh, some toilet paper in the bathroom, or will not get out of my room and wash a dish or wash a plate. How, how is that? How is that translating over to to, to the broader society?
Lindsay Oakes:Well, I mean, you know the people who live here, so, right, I mean, I guess people just feel the need to be difficult. I don't really, I don't get it because I'm not that way, but it's you know. You know, for me accountability is such a huge trigger, right, but and that's and that's, and that's something I'll say you know in closing is that when we are triggered with some kind of emotion whether it's anger, sadness, whatever it is instead of spouting off at the mouth, stop and look at why it's bothering you. Who else made you feel that way? When was the first time you felt that way? Who did you tell about that?
Lindsay Oakes:So that you could learn, you know, a set of coping skills or how to navigate these things, but learn, right, to stop and to think about why is this bothering me so much? Right, that's that theory of holes by H, almost, which basically says that when we are triggered by somebody, we are not angry with them or sad about what they said. We are struggling because it opened a wound in us that is not healed. And so when that wound is open, right, it's, it's painful, and so then we react because we don't want to look at our own pain.
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, the great irony about today is it's Martin Luther King Day, and Martin Luther King was somebody who we've been told our whole lives was somebody who you know we shall overcome, and he was a uniter and he was not a divider. It's ironic because at the end of his life he wasn't really very well loved or respected by either blacks or whites, because he had actually realized that the real problem wasn't necessarily just racial inequality, it was the lack of fellow feeling, it was the lack of human empathy that people had toward each other. And he had started pivoting his civil rights movement for more than just the civil rights movement, but to a poor people's campaign and to stop the war in Vietnam. And on this day, january 20th, which is five days after his actual birthday, I would challenge you as a listener, if you want to do better next time, look to the example of a Martin Luther King, look to an example of a Jesus Christ right and look to these individuals who decided to be empathetic. Even Malcolm X, toward the end of his life, realized that it was about empathy, and when he went to Mecca and he saw all Muslims of all colors and faiths and that they were all in fellowship and loving one another, he realized that the world can only get what the world.
Cleveland Oakes:You were singing it the other day. What does the world need now? Love, sweet love. It's the only thing that there's just too little love. And as we think about doing better next time is how can we love ourselves? How can we have boundaries?
Lindsay Oakes:And how can we share that light and that love with everybody else around us?
Cleveland Oakes:Yeah, and I really don't have any much more to say on that.
Lindsay Oakes:If you got anything else on it, Lynn? No, I think that's a good place to wrap it up.
Cleveland Oakes:That's a good place to wrap it up. That's a good place to wrap it up. We will continue to be regular with these episodes. Thank you, we had a lot of downloads last week, so thank you guys for listening to us and supporting the show. We have a lot of exciting content coming up in 2025. Lindsay's going to look at the notes, maybe. Maybe she's going to write a couple more episodes. We came up with the last couple episodes we recorded. This one was mine, but the last couple episodes we recorded were 100% her ideas, and so we really want to get your engagement out there. Remember you can email us at gettoknowthedevil at gmailcom. You can also text us directly from iTunes or Spotify for any questions or comments out there. And just remember, no matter what happens over the next four years or the next 40 years or the next 400 years, it's up to us to do better next time. This has been Cleveland and Lindsay, and this has been another episode of the Devil. You Don't Know.
