When Religion Enters the Therapy Room with Dr. Stevan Lars Nielsen

[Music] In psychotherapy, religion can be one of those topics, clinicians either avoid completely or handle with a little too much confidence, and both can be a problem. In today's episode, we'll be talking about what it can look like to work with religious clients in a way that's clinically useful, respectful, and grounded in the client's own beliefs rather than the therapist's agenda. This conversation's pretty heavy on the R-E-B-T or rational, emotive, behavioral therapy perspective. And when you hear us refer to Al Ellis, we're of course talking about Albert Ellis, the developer of R-E-B-T. But even if R-E-B-T isn't your home base, don't run away. Much of what we discuss fits very naturally with other cognitive behavioral approaches, and the broader considerations of how to integrate religion in psychotherapy can be applied transparently. One other bit of context. I did my doctoral residency at BYU's Counseling Center, which is where I met my guest. And that matters here because BYU's a religious institution, but I'm not a member of BYU's sponsoring organization. So in some ways, this conversation sits in a kind of interesting insider-outside or space, which is exactly where a lot of the clinical nuance lives. That's what today's episode is about. But first, if you're new here, I'm your host, Dr. Dan Cox, a professor of counseling psychology at the University of British Columbia. This is psychotherapy and applied psychology, where I talk with leading researchers about what actually matters in practice, what's behind the findings, and what they wish clinicians new sooner. And if you enjoy the show, please subscribe on your podcast player or on YouTube, like and subscribe. That small click mixes a surprisingly big difference for the podcast. This episode begins with my guest responding to my question about how we got into writing, thinking, and doing research on psychotherapy with religious clients. So without further ado, it's my pleasure to welcome my very special guest, Dr. Steven Lars Nielsen. First, I discovered pretty early that I was a psychologist. I got my training at the University of Washington. And my undergraduate career was at BYU, and my undergraduate mentor was Alan Bergen, and Alan is famous for two things. He's one of the founding members of the Society of Psychotherapy Research. And he and his longtime colleague, Saul Garfield, they wrote several editions of a book called The Handbook of Psychotherapy and the, let's see, The Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change. They had multiple chapters about what psychological science and clinical science can tell us about psychotherapy and about psychotherapy outcomes in particular. And so first, he was famous for that. And one of the founding members for the Society of Psychotherapy Research. I'm a member of the Society of Psychotherapy Research. And then he just decided, you know, most psychotherapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, marriage and family therapy wasn't as big a thing then, but certainly we could say that now. Most of them are not religious. Many of them would consider themselves to be irreligious. So he began to consider that very carefully. After I started my graduate training at the University of Washington, he wrote an article in the Journal of Clinical and Consulting Psychology, JCCP, in which he said that the psychotherapists really dropped the ball in this way. Most of their clients are religious. And a minority of psychotherapists are religious. And many of them are either agnostic or atheist and irreligious. And that creates, he didn't call it this, but that creates a cultural disconnect because a very important feature, cultural feature, an individual difference, but also a cultural difference between groups will be their religious affiliation and their religious beliefs. And it was his most cited referee journal article. Then immediately, two other, I forget the name of it the second, but two other psychotherapists wrote articles criticizing him. One of those was Alan, it was Al Alice. And Al's criticism to which Alan responded was his most frequently cited referee journal article. So there you have the two most frequently cited journal articles by Alan Bergen and Al Alice. Okay, so after I finished my classes at the University of Washington, I had two small kids and I thought, well, how am I going to take care of these kids and my family as an intern? And the director of clinical training, Martha Perry, University of Washington, she said to me, well, you know, we just had a recruiter come from the US Army. And I thought of you and your family. So I went out and talked to the recruiter and they had a program called, let's see, it was called, well, I can't remember the technical name of the program, but they had what was equivalent, roughly the equivalent of officer candidate school for graduate students. And they were doing this because they were trying to get more clinically trained professionals in the army. Now, they've always had something for physicians. And the main thing they did was for physicians, they would support them during their medical education, pay their bills, which are not small, and give them extra pay. But the health professional psychology program, HPSB, they wanted to get psychologists and dentists, along with physicians, social workers, lab officers, and so on. And so what I was offered, because I was offered a stipend during the time I had left at the University of Washington, that's nice. They pay for all my books. And what I had to do is give them back one month for each month they supported me. And the internship was part of the payback. They don't do that now. The internship now is part of, you have to pay them back for the internship. Sound like a great deal. So I joined the army. And I spent seven years in the army. It's great clinical training, buddy. And the reason it was great clinical training is often I was the only psychologist available to do all kinds of things. So I attended three court marshals in which Martin Blender was giving testimony for two court marshals, excuse me, in which Martin Blender was giving testimony for the defense. And I got to interview him or sit and listen to his testimony. Martin Blender is the psychiatrist, the forensic psychiatrist, who's famous for having said, well, Dan White was suffering from exhaustion and he did nothing with junk food. And because of his testimony, it's thought Dan White rather than being convicted, a first to remurder for for gunning down Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, greater riot in Castellan. And it was called the Twinkie defense. Now he never used the word Twinkie. Martin Blender never used the word Twinkie. But in the second of those court marshals where he was present giving testimony, there was a pretrial motion which was accepted by the judge, court marshall judge. And if the word Twinkie was out of it, they would declare a mistreat. Just because of that history yet. Anyway, I was present at court marshals where he gave testimony just because I was the only game in town. You know, so I had great training. Anyway, I came from there to here, back to BYU where I'd been an undergraduate. And I got a job working in the counseling center. I thought I would go on to the psychology department. I happened, they were very chosen. And one day I was having lunch with Alan, Alan Bergen. And by the time I got back, in addition to those two articles, the article he had written and Alan Ellis's criticism of him, Alan had had two debates with Alan Ellis at APA. Now Alan Bergen was very smart, very capable. I don't think he was outmatched by Alan Ellis, but he wasn't as funny as Alan Ellis. Alan Ellis is very funny, very profane, very quick with it. And both of those two debates were packed. People were just delighted to have the two of them debate. And I went to one of them. I was in Europe during one of them, so I couldn't with the army, so I couldn't come back for the debate. But I'd been here for a while, and I said to Alan, "Well, isn't it about time for you and Alan Ellis to have another debate?" And he said, "I'm tired of that. I'm not going to do that anymore. Why don't you debate it?" That's what he said to me. Now, by this time, understand, I was at the University of Washington. That was first of all, heavy duty behavior therapy. And then after Marsha Lynnahan came, she was one of my professors, Marsha Lynnahan. After she became, it became much more cognitive behavior therapy. And then on my internship, and while I was a practicing psychologist in the US Army, I was redoing cognitive behavior therapy. And most of my clients in the army, true to what Alan Bergen had said, were very, very religious, not all, to be sure. But I would say that as a group, soldiers are more religious than the civilian world. Why? Well, a lot of them are from the South, the South, the Southern US. And you do face more risks if you're a soldier, sailor, in the Air Force, or a Marine. But also, the issues that will pull people into the military that may be associated with religious belief. By the way, I do not believe, I believe there certainly are atheists in foxholes. We've heard there are no atheists in foxholes. That's not true. There are lots of people who are atheists that are not afraid of death and they're not afraid of being killed in wartime. There are various ways that you get over your fear of death when you're an atheist and you don't have to be religious to not be afraid of death. And by the way, if you are religious, you might be more afraid of death because you might be afraid you're going to go to hell and you die, right? So I mean, that's a, that's, that's an issue that's more complicated than people make it. So anyway, I had already decided that I was going to be, I was going to do cognitive behavior therapy. I didn't want to debate him, but this is what I did. I sat down, I wrote a letter to him and I said, well, I think it would be useful for you and I to sit down and talk about the role of religion and probably the use of religious concepts in rational, emotive therapy. The time he had changed the name to rationally motive behavior therapy. And I'll tell you why he changed the name. Why he held off on changing name. Just a minute, funny reason. And I said, this is in the days of snail mail, by the way. There was email, but it was, it was not widely used and he didn't have an email at it. So I wrote my letter, put it in the mail and, and on Monday, Friday, I had his answer. He was one of the most, he's in New York and I'm here in Provo, Utah. He was one of the most efficient writers I have ever met. He was extraordinarily efficient. And he said, sure, happy to do it. That'd be fine. But don't expect APA to accept your proposal. I think they're tired of me and religion. Okay, so I wrote it out and I sent it in. And then I, it was in fact rejected by division 36, but it was not a form letter. I got a letter from David Wolf, who is the committee chair. And he said, we talked about this proposal for about an hour. And finally, in a close vote, we decided not to accept it because we don't think there's anything new to be said. Of course, I thought there was something new to be said, but anyway, so I, I wrote a letter to Al, he said fine. Then three weeks before the APA convention, which was in Washington, DC, when was it? 94, 95. I think it was 94 and 95. So this is like 32 years ago. I got a letter from the program, committee chair, inviting me to do that presentation in the hospitality suite. You know what hospitality suite, Tari, APA. Sure. Yeah. And so I wrote to Al, he said, sure, when? And I asked them when? And so he said it out that he and I would have this discussion in the hospitality suite. And just like every other thing I ever attended with Al Ellis, even though it wasn't publicized, it was packed overflowing. So here we are in the suite, you know, just the little living room. There's standing room only. Okay. But it worked out. It worked out. Now this is where it all started. This is where I started to write stuff about religion and psychology. Now I knew because I had a couple of supervisors who were RB tiers at the time, Re tiers. I knew that Al wrote funny songs about psychotherapeutic issues. Okay. So I sat down and I thought, well, what could I do to give this the kind of attitude or the kind of make this setting fun? So I wrote a song. And I put it to the tune of the dance of the hours. You want me to sing it to you? She go for it. Yeah. So Al and I were sitting on a couch in the suite and there was a Gideon's Bible. This was at the hill. There was a Gideon's Bible. So I sit next to Al and I hold up the Bible. And this is the song I held at the Bible. Here's religion. Here's Al Ellis, my hand on his shoulder. They have both got lots to tell us if we're honest and we'll listen. We may help more folks and say, ain't that our mission? Please, strings. Don't neglect religion. Let's all try to learn us, Midgen. Bowed how phased and holy doctrine work to help us offering soul. Don't smirk our ebt and religion. They can help see if we use them when our clients learn of Ellis. They may save themselves from on we, on us and help us. Well, he laughed. He liked it. Everybody liked it. And then he was smiling for the rest of the discussion because he knew I was going to be light-hearted. So he could be. And that's where I started. We just talked about all kinds of things. I had my prepared notes and I hadn't sent them to him. But then when he was talking to somebody, he would just write down notes on a three by five card and then he read from his three by five card. That was it. Now, what I didn't know is that the Journal of Psychology and Christianity had already decided to have an issue, one of their four issues, four issues a year, devoted to RET and its role in Christianity. Now, the editor of that guest, the guest editor of that issue wasn't there, but the overall editor of the Journal of Psychology and Christianity was there. And he heard the whole thing and then he wrote to the guest editor and the guest editor wrote to me and said, "Well, would you like to summarize that?" And of course, this was my brush with with fame. So I'd recorded the whole thing and I had it all transcribed. I sent it to Al and we turned it into two articles. What I said is what he said. And I called it religion and RET. I think this is the title, religion and RET. Let's not throw out the baby with the holy water. Okay. Then he responded. And then I sent it in and then the editor said, "Well, would you like to do something else?" So he liked it enough. So I said, "Yeah, what I'd like to do is I'd like to interview Al Ellis about religion and RET." And so he said, "Great, let's do that." So the next year we were in Toronto. And Al said, "Yeah." And so I went up to Al's room and we spent three hours. I had a bunch of questions and I recorded it all. We spent three hours talking about questions I had, his comments and so on about religion and RET and psychotherapy and psychology. Generally. And it was cordial and his magnum opus is reason and emotion in psychotherapy. And so the title of our argument, our article was reason and emotion in RET. And so we had this joint article and then my article in his response in that issue of the Journal of Psychology and Christianity. Now here's an interesting side note. It's published by the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, CAHPS, I think. But it's an association of Christian psychologists. Okay, it was published. And then the overall editor sent me a letter of complaint they've received. And this is the letter of complaint they received. I don't like that you gave a whole issue to rationally motive therapy. More than that, I don't like that you had this Mormon in this issue. Mormons are not Christians. Does he believe he's a Christian? He can't be a member of CAHPS. And by the way, I couldn't agree to their articles of faith. They've changed them now. So I could be a member of CAHPS now if I wanted to. And I just thought that was funny. I can't find the letter because I wish I had that letter. And he said, "Don't pay attention to this." And I said, "Well, you know, I got the publications. I don't care if they complain. You're not going to take them out. Are you?" No, we're not fine. So that was just the funniest I know. So then why was Ellis hesitant to change it to ReBT? Yeah, okay. Great. Well, so when he first started it, this is 1957, he called it "Rational Therapy." And Raymond Corsini, who was a friend, said, "Look, it's not rational therapy. You talk about emotions all the time." And he said, "You're right." So he then started to call it rationally motive therapy. And then Raymond Corsini said, "But you also do all kinds of behavior therapy. Why don't you call it ReBT, rationally motive behavior therapy?" And he said, "We've got too much stationary." It says, "R-E-T-R." So they didn't change the name to tell it used up all the stationary that Fritter. And then once they'd used up all the stationary, so they could print new stationary, they changed it formally to rationally motive behavior therapy. So that's out now. That's great. All right, so getting one of the things that you said was that, and even the motivation for that first article that you talked about was that in our training programs, the faculty psychologists that they're sort of leaning away from religiosity. And I think that's still the case. And so one of the questions I have is, so I think lots of therapists don't bring up religion with their clients because they're nervous and they feel like they don't know what to do. They're not competent to talk about it. Or they don't when you talk to folks about these sorts of things who are in these situations, what do you tell them? Well, I don't just say, are you religious? Are you a believer? That's all they say. You want to talk about it. And if they do want to talk about it, then I join in with them. You know, if they go on to talk about it, as far as they can tell from that moment on, I'm an agglostic or atheist. Now, if they ask me directly, are you a believer? I would say yes, I am. But you know what? Not many people ask. I would say that less than 20 times out of 1000s and 1000s and thousands of clients I've treated. How does anybody ask me directly? And I will go two or three years here at BYU without anybody asking me. Now, BYU, of course, most individuals here have to have to abide by a code of ethics and an honor code. And they have to actually tell their religious leader, well, you know that you hear. They have to tell their religious leader that they're practicing that they're, you know, they believe, right? Now, we have a larger percentage of our clients who would not say they believe. But after they've been here for three or four years or even two years, they've got credits. They want to protect. They don't want to leave and have credits. They can't transfer and graduate. So I have a fair number of clients that are no longer believing, but they don't ask me. When they when they say they've got this or that problem, I just sort of join in with them and talk about the problem. There's nobody has at BYU. Nobody has to come to counseling psychological services to hear about religion, right? They just turn to the person right or left of them and they'll have somebody to preach to them. Not me. It's not going to be me. I know never preached points. I would never do that. Although if they're religion, if they're religious, if they're believers, then I would say, okay, well, you you've told me you're a believer. So you believe in the Book of Mormon, you believe in the Bible. And if they say yes, then I can point out things that are in the Bible or the Book of Mormon that are relevant to rationally motive, behave your therapy. I would not say, hey, what you're doing here is a sin. No, I'd never say that. I'd never do anything like that. I might say, look what you're doing here. I don't think it fits anything sin according to your religious beliefs, but I would never say, look what you're doing here is a sin. That's just not my job. And I don't think anybody comes wanting that. And I don't think that'd be confused about that either. So what I'm doing here with religion is I'm using what they already believe to try and support rationally motive interventions. And of course, very famous in the rationally motive perspective, rationally motive model, is the ABC model of emotion. It's not adversities, but what we believe about adversities that leads to the to self-defeating emotional consequences. Also, non-self-defeating emotional consequences, but clients, you know, they're having emotional experiences that are defeating them, right? So that's the ABC model of emotion. Is it a, is it a, is it a scientific formula? Well, it's sort of on the edge, because people mean different things by what, when they say belief, they have different perspectives about what beliefs might be. And, you know, belief can range from automatic thoughts about which we are barely even aware, to religious crease. Those are beliefs written down and turned, turned formally into philosophies, theologies, right? So those are beliefs. And so there's a wide range there. And, and rationally motive behavior therapy under its beliefs, it includes that. But there are three big beliefs, maybe three and a half. And they are human rating that human beings can have different worth, demanding that certain things in the universe should or must happen that people should odd or must behave in certain ways. Catastrophizing that there are things that happen in the universe that are unacceptably bad, they're horrible, they're awful. And sort of in between those two frustration intolerance. And that would be sort of believing this is too hard, it shouldn't be this hard. So that sort of three and a half beliefs, because that frustration intolerance sort of sits between catastrophizing and demanding. Now, there's something very special about those beliefs. They have no truth value. I could have the belief, my car is in the parking lot, and it's there or it isn't. But there is no truth value to how much is a human being worth. That's arbitrary. There's no truth value to what should happen this afternoon. I can make a prediction of what's likely to happen. There's no truth value to how should people behave. And by truth value, you mean like an objective truth. That's right. There's no objective truth there. That's utterly subjective. And if it's utterly subjective, it's arbitrary. There's no clear definition for something being horrible or terrible. Now, that's probably where we're going to get the biggest debate. Okay. It isn't, it wasn't the Holocaust horrible. Yes, yes, it was. However, it happened. We can't, unmake it. We can't unmake it. Now, we could sit around and be depressed and discouraged and angry. 24 hours or 18 hours, however, however, long we're awake about the Holocaust. If we talk to ourselves about it over and over again, but it's not unique in human behavior. It's not unique. Gank is con. Probably killed more people than Hitler. Stalin probably killed more people than Hitler. Now, it's a tone probably killed more people than Hitler. And sometimes it was racial. And there are other reasons that people were killed. Well, that's just about the worst behavior, probably the worst behavior that any political leader can engage in. That's not unique. It's not unique. So what I would say is it doesn't help to call it horrible or believe it's horrible. That's really the issue. Now, what you call it, it's what you believe. See, if you tell yourself that's just horrible, what you probably mean is it's worse than it should have been. Too late, it's already happened. That's arbitrary. I went to Auschwitz a year ago and I went to Schindler's factory in Krakow, Poland. And it's deeply moving and touching. And I think Schindler's list is a movie that all adults should watch. Well, should I need to be good for all adults to watch it, you know? Will they, I don't know. If they watch it, they may or may not be touched by it. I was deeply touched by it. It's something else besides entertainment, you know? It's not really entertainment. It's a unique kind of experience to watch it. But then the attitudes we have, that's where the problems arise. See, that's where the problems arise. So this is not a global statement about all people, although I think all people would do better if they decatastrified their view of the universe and what might happen to them. But people aren't asking me to do that, right? So if I try and do RABT with them, I'm probably going to annoy the majority. Unless they're asking. So, so what you're describing about RABT sounds like typical framework for thinking about RABT. How does your work when religion is central differ than when it's not? Perfect. Well, not perfectly, very good. That's that's the question to ask next. Well, so when people are religious, they have indoctrinated themselves or been indoctrinated with theology, right? And so their minds are focused on theological explanations for many things. Yeah. Now, let's go back to those main ideas in those main beliefs that are the trouble maker. Religion has a lot to say about that. Now, I don't say spirituality. And the reason I don't say spirituality is that that is a much more or a much less easily defined term. Spiritual could be how you feel when you're on a mountain top, right? Or it could be you're being visited by the Holy Ghost or you're having a revelation. I mean, that's that's such a wide and difficult to define set of criteria that that I don't get into that much. And I also think it's a little bit arrogant for psychotherapists to believe they can invite the spirit. I think the spirit's going to do what the spirit wants to do, right? Hopefully you won't drive the spirit away, but psychotherapists might easily do that, right? I like it. I sometimes get my clients to laugh by saying, well, you really need some good psychotherapy help, but unfortunately you just got this wicked old shrink to help you. Anyway, they may laugh, but religion we can we can grab on a little more because almost all organized religions have scriptures. So it's written, right? And in that writing, if you study it, you can find many, well, at least some core ideas that are drafts, human writing, demanding, and catastrophizing, or authorizing, quite straightforward in almost all scripture. Now, I'm certainly not an expert about the Quran or the Bhagavad Gita or, you know, the holy books of Buddhism and they're a lot, so it'd be hard to become an expert, right? Hinduism and Buddhism. There's a lot to read and become familiar with. I'm only just familiar. I've read the Quran. That's a lot less, but there's a lot of extra things to read, right? If you want to become more familiar, but my clients are Latter-day Saints, by much. Now, I have a few clients that are not Latter-day Saints. I've had a few clients that are Muslim. And if somebody's not Latter-day Saint, or I don't know their religious traditions, I have something to do about that if they tell me they're religious. I'll tell you that in a minute. When they're Latter-day Saints, I know what they've read, or what they might have read. And so I can say,"Oh, well, you just said that you're a bad person." Because you've done this. Did I hear that right? Yeah. Oh, well, that's very interesting. So you'd rather be a good person? Well, of course I would. Well, did you know what Jesus Christ said about good people? And they'll sort of stop and say,"No, would you like to read what Jesus Christ said about good people?" And they would. So we go to the Bible. Do you know what Jesus Christ said about good people? Do you ask me? Yeah. No, but I want pins and needles to find out. I bet. I bet. So I'll have them turn, I'll have them read it. Okay? And I'll say, "Okay, let's go to the gospel according to Saint Mark." And I'm going to ask you to read verses in chapter 10, verses 17, 19, 2021, and 22. We'll get back to 18. Now I'll have them read it. And when he was gone forth in the way, there came one running and kneel to him and asked him, "Good master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life, skipping 18?" Thou knowest the commandments, do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, defraud not honor thy father and mother. And he answered and said unto him,"Master, all these have I observed from my youth. Then Jesus, be holding him, loved him, and said unto him, one thing now like us, go thy way, sell us wherever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." And come, take up the cross and follow me, and he was sad at that saying and went away grieved, where he had great possessions. Now that story is in Matthew and in Luke as well as in Mark, but I like Mark because it has that little phrase, "Jesus be holding him, loved him." So he wasn't being mean when he said this to him, he said to him because he loved him, and I'll say that to clients. Famous, right? Very famous. All right, now let's read 18, read 17, and then read 18. And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running and kneeled to him and asked him, "Good master, what shall I do that I may inherit you to her life?" And Jesus said unto him, "Why call us thou, me, good. There is none good, but one. That is God." Well look, you want to be a good person. There aren't any. Now what if you believed, as Jesus said, that there are no good people? Notice, he also gave these commandments, don't do these bad things. Do these good things. Don't do these bad things. Do these two good things. Are there any bad people? See, what if you believed, as Jesus says here, there are no good and there are no bad people? There are good and bad behaviors, but not good and bad people? Now we know you don't believe that. You can, you can, you can, you can tell me you don't believe it. But what if you did believe it? Would that change anything for you? Then I wait. And you know what almost everybody says? What's that? Yeah, it feels lighter. The most frequent they say, thing they say is it would feel lighter. And of course that's a metaphor because they're not losing any weight, but their losing is an extra idea, right? The good or bad behaviors make them a good or bad person. Now, I sometimes, depending on how much they will be kidded, well, so what does Jesus say about good people? Well, he says there aren't any. Yeah, but what does he know? And they laugh, of course, right? Because that's that's making a joke that's impossible. He knows everything, right? But they always laugh when I say it. And I love it if my clients laugh, because if they laugh, they're feeling better than the moment before they laugh, right? Now you have to be careful because if you get people to laugh, they might resent you. They don't really laugh, but usually they, usually they like it, right? So I just, and of course, these jokes would get old, but I only use them once with each new client. So it's not old for the client, right? My wife gave me, my wife gave me a New Yorker cartoon and it has a guy sitting at a table with the rest of his family. And some guy comes up with an award and says, "Congratulations. You've told the same joke one thousand times." So anyway, try not to say the same joke to the same person, right? But see, there I'm using scripture to D dispute the B belief that humans can be good or bad. And so that's the ABCD method. And then when I say, well, what if you believe that you are neither good nor bad? You have good and bad ideas. You do might do good and bad things, but what if you believe that doesn't make you good? What would that feel like? And really, the great majority said, "Oh, if I believe that, that would feel so much lighter." That's E. That's the effect of disputing the belief. And really, I would add another D. That's the that's the effect of displacing human rating and replacing it with rating behaviors and ideas. Not the person behaviors and ideas. And then we're often running, see? And I would gladly do that in the first section. Do you ever find yourself in a situation where a client is going tit for tat with you in terms of quoting scripture, sort of trying to push back on what you're saying? No. No. It's so rare. It's so very rare. I would say like once every three or four years, trainees, yes. You understand why that would be, don't you? In role plays, yes. Do you understand why that would be? I tell my students that doing role plays with totally where you're pretending to be somebody else is almost, is never useful because how people act, like when they're acting, it's consistently inconsistent with how actual human beings behave in therapy. Yeah. Let me add a side note here. This is important. So I'm a certified supervisor for the Albert Della Institute. And I spent a lot of time at the institute going through training and then doing training. And then I recommend it to anybody. I think it's marvelous training in the introductory practicum, the primary practicum. You spend the morning in a lecture and then the afternoon and evening you divide into small groups of 10, even numbers, maybe six, usually eight or 10, maybe 12. And then you pair up and one person presents a problem and the other person does RABT with them for 10 to 15 minutes. Well, everybody's watching with an RABT supervisor from the institute there to help them or talk to them, right? Now, first time I did it, I did it twice while I was there. First time, first time was just my introduction to the institute. Second time, I went through it again so I could get my certification levels. And and and Al said just just like this, don't role play. If you are role play, you're flock. No, you wanted real problems. Now, you could present tapes of real sessions because when you role play, you can change the role, right? So your questions a very good question. Do I have people who will argue with me about scriptures? Rarely. It's very rare. And then I think there are a couple of reasons, but the first reason is they're in therapy because they want help with the problem. And they can tell if it makes a difference. Now, sometimes I'll say, well, if you believe there were no good or bad people, how that feel, sometimes they'll say, I don't know. I can't tell any difference, but most of them can tell a difference, right? I would say more than 90 percent can tell that it would feel better. And this is my explanation. My explanation is that when they try to believe there are no good or bad people, they are suspending their former beliefs. Now, I'm sure you've heard of in the context of drama, willing suspension of disbelief. When we watch a Marvel movie, we have to suspend our disbelief in superpowers, right? And I know, I know people who shed tears when Tony Stark Ironman dies, right? I know a couple of people have cried for a couple of days that Tony Stark died at the end of the Marvel movie. There is no Tony Stark that's Ironman, right? But that's too much, just mention of disbelief. Or maybe that's maybe too much credulousness. You know, they're too credulous. Anyway, I think when you ask that question, can you tell a difference? That is inviting them to suspend their disbelief and play with a new belief and see what it feels like. And so almost every session, I would say more than 90 percent of the sessions anyway. I'll say, okay, well, this is called rationally-motive imagery. I'll have them tell me some situations bothering me. And then I'll ask them to tell me about a situation they remember that kind of haunts them. You know, something they've done they're ashamed of, something they're done that they feel anxious about, something along those lines, or something that's coming up when they feel embarrassed, something like that. Now, having closed their eyes and see it as vividly as they can. Now, the vividness of their imagery, the goal of that is to help generate an emotion. Doesn't always work, but for more than 90 percent, they will begin to experience this self-defeating emotion. Could be shame, could be depression or discouragement, could be anxiety. What do you feel? They'll tell me and say, okay, really let yourself get into that. Really let yourself get into that. Give them five, ten seconds and say, okay, now continue to see that. But I want you to say to yourself something we've already practiced. I want you to say it to yourself at least five times and then open your eyes. Now, I'll just ask, well, what happened? Well, I just I felt much better when I said it. Now, Al didn't do it quite that way. He would just say, okay, I want you to see it. What are you feeling? Okay, keep it in your mind. I want you to change the emotion. So if they're feeling angry, I want you to say it change the emotion to annoyance or they're feeling anxious. I want you to change the emotion to annoyance or concern. And that can often be just as good. How to do it? Now, tell you. And often it has to do something they're saying themselves or they see themselves in some different situation. So, I really want the session to include some change in their emotion. And laugh, there's a very good way to help that happen. Because if they can laugh, they're feeling an immediate lightning of their move. And I'm a little careful about this because I don't want them to think I'm making fun of their unpleasant feelings, but sometimes I'll sing rationally-motive songs to them. I give them the assignment to go and sing them. But only if I think they'll do it. If they're not going to do it, I don't want to give them an assignment to do something they find difficult to do. And I'll give them shame-attacking exercises. That's to do something that they would not normally do. But you know, that's where the art of psychotherapy comes in because you make judgments about how much they're going along with you, how willing they are to do things. And if you give them something to try, I don't call it homework because they're already college students. I don't want them to become giving them more homework. This is an experiment to try. And if they can't get themselves to do it, then I immediately say,"Oh, well that wasn't a very good assignment I gave." We have to recalibrate. We have to do it in a different way. So, let's figure out why it didn't work. And often it is that they're anxious about it. It was just too big a step or something like that. But the goal is to have them work in the session and do things that change their emotion and then apply that outside the second. So, one of the things that I'm hearing is that when you're bringing in scripture, rather than framing it as, "Here's this new truth. This puts a bit of a crack perhaps in some beliefs and allows some other ways of thinking in." So, it's just creating a little bit of space rather than using it as some sort of like, "Here's the truth. It just makes it crack." Right. But here's the source of the crack. That's a wrap on the first part of our conversation. As noted at the top of the show, be much appreciated if you spread the word to anyone else who you think might enjoy it. Until next time.[Music][Music]