14132 Steve Harper Interviews Susan Engel Psychotherapist, Social Worker and Certified EMDR Clinician

Broadcasting from the business capital of the world. This is the Podcast Business News Network.

Well, welcome back, everyone. Appreciate you being here. We are going to help move your life forward today in silence. That's what we're doing. We're going to talk about essentially nothing in a way, silence, and how it is a game changer. It can move your life forward. They've often said silence is golden. There's a song by Depeche Mode came on at the gym just a little while ago on my playlist, came out in the 90s or 80s, late 80s or early 90s. Enjoy the silence. What's so special about nothing? The silence. We're going to talk about that today. So much to dig into. We're not going to be silent because we can't. This is such an important topic. She's an amazing psychotherapist. So wonderful to have her back with us.

Suzy Engel is on the program. How are you doing today?

I'm great, Steve. I it's a beautiful day and I always have a good intention at the beginning of every day. So thank you for asking and I'm so happy to be here.

I'm great grateful that you're here because this is something that needs to be talked about because we don't realize it. It's almost as if when you say to somebody, you need to breathe or breathe deeper or do breath work, intentional breathing. People are like, I breathe anyway. What are you talking about? But that is healing and therapeutic, but so is silence. And this kind of began, I wrote this down a week or two ago, that, and it's in my notes right here, quiet is the beginning of the cure.

That's great. Yeah. So you're, I mean, so it's not nothing. It's a lot, right? And when you talk about quiet is a cornerstone. We've also used words like regulation, self-regulation, calming the body. And we all can relate to, whether it's an infant or any one of our age group. And in the middle of that, the, oh, I hear feedback from of my voice.

Do you, do you need some silence? Are you trying to tell me you need some silence? Is that what it is?

I need silence from hearing my own feedback.

I don't know why I was doing that, but we got everything, you know, the way it should be said. I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. Hmm.

I don't know. Oh, no, I saw. That's fine. But, but silence, and we all can relate to this, is at the end of a day, we don't feel like talking. We just want to decompress. We just want to do our thing, maybe process a little bit, or maybe just realize we left everything at the office, or we left everything in a backpack locked in our trunk of the car. I mean, I'm very good at just leaving everything here at the office, but I don't feel like talking necessarily, unless I have plans to socialize.

But I like to just take this moment and have quiet and silence. And it's funny, a lot of people are uncomfortable with, a lot of therapists are uncomfortable with quiet and silence in sessions.

I find that interesting.

Because this all came up for me because I intentionally have taken the last week and a half to now two weeks and just tap the brakes a little bit, taking walk, get a little warmer out here in the Northeast, taking some more walks with my dog, seeing things, just, you know, just taking it a little easier. And it's been, it's been an eye opener. It's, and it's not like I'm not social. You know, got plans tonight, doing something tomorrow, doing something the day after that. But around that, I love the silence. And my dog, first thing in the morning, he'll wake up. You know, he's like, you know, he wants to go out. Whether he has to really go to the bathroom, he just wants to go out into nature.

And I'm like, dude, no, just lay down. Give me another minute because I just want to sit there in bed and be in silence. Not to go back to sleep, although that could happen, but the silence is so wonderful. Just the thinking and just allowing your brain to go where it wants to go. Is it true healing? Is that because I heard that recently?

Yes, definitely. I mean, think about meditation and think about yoga and think about, you know, all these things that are healthy techniques of going inward and the contrast between busyness and input and output compared to quiet and regulation and um whether it's total silence or just that calm. I mean, I just think that there's so much to it. And also for most people

who self-diagnose or go to a therapist and get diagnosed, um and I would warn against self-diagnosing. It's just unnecessary because there are ways to cope with whatever patterns we want to break. Um, there, there are there's, there's something to be said about taking a break, quieting our mind, regulating ourselves. That's the cornerstone of coping with anxiety or going above the window of tolerance that we've often spoken about, or going below the window of tolerance and feeling, you know, exhausted and depleted and you want to curl up and put a hoodie.

But when we can quiet ourselves, it gives us a little recess.

Isn't it funny that you look at things differently? So here's my example. FedEx has been trying to deliver a package. Comedy of errors. They put the wrong number on the door tag. That's on my door, so I can't even track the package. I'm not even sure what packages is, but they're saying they're delivering it. And then there was another door tag that was connected to a package that went to a residence. This is my business. And they've screwed that up. Like this comedy of errors going. And then they're like, we made four attempts. I said, well, I only have two on my door. I don't know what you're talking about. Just bring my pa- and then your representative said that I don't need to sign for it, but now they're telling me I do need to sign. And my first thought is, you're taking away my peace in my mind. I'm giving energy to

this. Just drop the package off. That's it. Come in, I'll sign for it. But it's taking, this stupidity is taking, and I don't talk like that often, like comedy of errors.

No, I know you don't.

But it's taking away my silence. I'm on the phone twice, three times with representatives. One was fantastic. The other two kind of clueless. You're taking away my peace. My point here is that was my silence. I had a little time in between shows. So I'm going to take a little bit of time here and just, you know, I like to reflect and everything. Now I got to be on the phone, but you realize the value of your peace when things like that present. That makes sense?

Yeah, sure. And what you're identifying is the frustration, the day to day frustrations.

We all have them.

Dealing with whether it's AI or a delivery or this or that, whatever it is. Cable, being on the phone, mistake with something that you have to remedy, which is unfortunate that they're not able to remedy it. But that's frustration. Frustration is a low level on the spectrum of anger. And frustration is natural. That's a natural response. And I like what you're saying about recognizing, wow, I'm expending this energy on something that's kind of taking away from these few minutes I thought I had for quiet and calm and silence and meditation.

But the, but the other issue is this, how many times during the day do we feed into conversations that are really non-conversations? How many times during the day does somebody defend themselves or answer to somebody else? When, if they were calm and regulated and using maybe a few times a day to quiet themselves, they would be able to say, you know what, I'm not even going to respond to this. Now, I'm not talking about getting a package delivered. I'm talking about conversations when somebody in people's social lives or family lives or work lives.

Have a way of getting somebody's defenses riled up and then without realizing it, we're thrown into some sort of interaction. And if we quiet ourselves, we can say, wow, you know, I'm on this. I am not partaking, this is not how I choose to spend my energy. And that's a great thing. It's a great, all these conversations are talking about are, are pointing to the benefit of what do I feel in my body when I can quiet myself? Or when I'm in silence, what do I feel in my body? And how do I replicate that in day to day life?

Hmm.

Does that make sense?

The recognition of it, the recognition of it, even people that are around you that may be negative and then realizing, hmm, I need to like maybe distance myself from certain people because they're, I'm getting swallowed into this negativity. And even on the package thing, final thought, I, a little while ago, I said to the representative, thank you so much for, for bringing clarity. I said, you're wonderful. She really knew her stuff and she, she apologized and I was like, I know it's not you. And I even said, I'll just go pick up the package. I have to go to the bank today. I have a little break here. And so I'll pick it up like around two o'clock or whatever. She goes, oh, I won't be in the depot until four to six. I'm like, oh, okay.

But whatever. Um, but it's, I think.

Of course.

Trying. It's the, the recognition of these things and how they can suck the silence out of you, take away your peace and that, you know, maybe have to put a block up. Um, but the awareness is I guess maybe half of it. Cause many of us probably going through our daily day with stuff and they, and we let it get to us.

Yeah, the awareness is not half of it. The awareness of.

I'm recognizing, I'm feeling agitated. I'm recognizing I don't want to expend my energy this way. And sometimes we have to for a FedEx package. Excuse me. And sometimes we don't to partake in a conversation with somebody who's, whether the person is just negative, remember I'm allergic to negativity.

Well, I love that.

Or whether the person is, um, uh, you know, just good at getting somebody on the defensive. The awareness is like, I would say ninety-five percent of it. And then we have choices, then we can say, wait a minute, how do I want to handle this? Well, I want to keep my peace, which you did with this representative. You kept your peace or regulation. You were self-regulated, you didn't take out your frustration on the customer service person, which is awful. I mean, I feel badly for people who, who, I mean, I feel badly for people who do that and victimize the customer service person. And I feel badly for the customer service person.

You know, I really don't like customer service people who are uh, on the defensive and ready for it and just automatically curt and angry. And that takes away my peace when I'm calling somebody for help with a good attitude.

I always have a good attitude, I know I do. I'm like very professional, giving the information, you know, the, the dog, not dog, door tag number was incorrect and, you know, we have a comedy of errors here. Um, it'll get resolved, but the point here is to recognize those things and not, not let it suck you into the, the negativity rabbit hole or the one that's going to take away your peace and, and take away your silence.

Well, and when you're talking about silence and peacefulness, it's so different than so many other things that we have to do to cope. Cause really it's when we think about meditation, our quiet, our self-regulation, these things are inward and they're our own agency. And that's why it's way more than fifty fifty. That's why it's like ninety-five percent, kind of like playing sports. It's ninety-five percent.

Psycho- or mental or psychological and five percent body and strength and athleticism, really, because if you're consciously unconscious while you're doing something, you're not criticizing, you're not taking away your own peace, you're not disrupting your flow or whatever this is. And these inward practices like breathing or meditating or appreciating our quiet time or our silence, whatever people want to label it as,

that's so different than the life pace of our society. Like work, get these tax, tax, I'm saying taxes, it's the fifteenth. What I mean is tasks accomplished, what am I doing to get things accomplished? That's so outward and expanding compared to the inward peacefulness and regulating and quieting. You know, it's, it's, it's a good balance, it's healthy. And you mentioned the word before we recorded, detoxing. It's cleaning. It's like clean. I like it.

The silence is, is cleansing. I never thought of it that way. I heard that recently. By the way, I wrote down what you said. I'm allergic to negativity. I'll be using that one.

I'm like so allergic to negativity.

So good.

That came up in our negativity thing. I think we were talking about positivity, actually. And I was like, I'm allergic to negativity.

It's, it's so perfect. It's almost as if, you know, you're just, you're putting up a boundary and in a nice way, you're being transparent when you say, and, and it just in a nice way. You're not pointing anybody out, you know, you could be in the middle of a situation and it's like, I'm allergic to negativity, just letting you know.

Personally, well, we don't even have to say it out loud. It's like note to self, I'm allergic to this and I'll excuse myself. But I like what you said because I meant to follow up on this. You mentioned the word boundary before and just think about it when we're expert at quieting ourselves and regulating ourselves and being in silence because we are our own agency.

We are creating natural boundaries. There's like a natural, I had a client once, she did beautiful work. She was in her early thirties. She said, you know, Susan, nobody changed in my life. My boyfriend, my sister, my family, work, people. None of them changed, but I have this invisible force field around me now with the work I've done. And I said, that's the key. That's it. So the boundary in recognizing what does my body feel? What does my mind feel like when I am quieting? Yeah. It's good.

It's like I, I crave quiet now. I crave it. Like, I'm like, uh, I never did before.

Yeah. And don't you hear people talking about the opposite? Like, how should I distract myself? How should I keep myself busy? And it's, that is so counterintuitive to me. You don't wanna do things to distract. You wanna sit with things and figure it and understand how you're affected. So I love it. I love it that you need doses. You're dosing yourself with quiet.

Oh, it's so, it, it, it's, it's beautiful. And I know, I wanna go back to something you said about detoxing the mind. And when we think of certain things and, and our, you know, we've got that negative voice in our head. You play tennis.

Yes.

Do you find that when you're not thinking about the game? And thinking about, oh, I gotta do this. I gotta do, do it better. I gotta, when you're just doing it. You're just, you know, whacking away at the ball and you're just, you know, moving around and doing your thing. Do you find you play better?

Absolutely. And my hitting partner slash pro person.

She's just so wonderful because every once in a while she'll just be like, just stroke it, just stroke it, you know, and I know what she's telling me. She's saying, don't criticize myself. And it's of course I play better. I play fantastically well. I, you know, for my, whatever my skill set is. But, but it's amazing, you know, and it goes back to look at how children teach themselves to crawl and to walk. There is nobody imposing in them. You know, you put this hand forward and then you bring that knee forward and then you put this hand forward and bring this knee. You know, the kids just do it naturally.

So that natural, I say unconch- uh, conscious unconsciousness.

Absolutely. And, and look what's going on there with that little child that's learning how to crawl. It's curiosity. It's no negativity whatsoever. There's no voice saying, what are you doing? Hey, don't, don't put your foot that way and don't do this. They're just exploring and enjoying the moments. And I've thought back, you know, times like once every five years when I bowl, uh, somebody invites me out, whatever. I think back to the best times I've ever done it. And I even say, I wasn't even thinking about it. I was just like lobbing the balls like, oh, got a strike. Oh, look at that. We, we get in our heads and we, even the curiosity level of playing tennis, bowling, whatever it might

be, you know, think for a second, I wonder if I, you know, just flick the ball that way. I wonder what it's gonna do. Instead of worrying about, oh, I'm gonna be judged. Oh, I'm gonna suck today. Oh.

Yeah, I don't think that at all, though. I never think that because I don't really care. And I've had people on the court and it's funny. It's like a backhanded compliment because there are people who are like, it's just incredible. You have such a positive attitude, even when people are like giving you this feedback. And I'm like, why wouldn't I? I mean, I don't say that to the person. I just kind of like thank them. But it's like such a funny thing. But the, the, we should do a podcast next. Week about the shame or the shame people put themselves on because I'm not like that at all like I just I'll pick up a golf club and go golfing with somebody. I'll do anything. I don't mind.

But I also have a sense of humor about myself, but I also am not embarrassed. I mean, I'm not, I'm not worried about what other people think. If other people are judging me, that is their problem totally. Like I don't look at other people and judge them when we're playing sports.

You know what?

I don't do.

I, Suzie, I get, I get what you're saying so clearly because I was that other person. And then I flipped it around in the last number of years where I don't really worry about, you know, what people think. I don't really worry about how that performance is gonna go.

Not about anything. Yeah.

I don't and, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna say these words and I don't know if it's the right words, but I don't care anymore.

Well.

I don't mean that in a negative way, but I don't care. Like I'm just gonna go do my thing. I don't, you know, I don't care if I don't score high. I don't, I'd like, I'm just having fun with it. That's the, that's the goal.

The goal is what I care about is having joy in my day to day or my day to day experiences. Or when I set out to play tennis or when I go for a swim in the ocean. I expect to have joy and that's in our command.

Oh, you know what? Expectations. I believe that expectations are everything. So setting that expectation, I expect to have joy. I expect to have fun doing this.

Hmm. Everything. I do that in everything. Yeah.

Yeah, I wrote that down.

Let that generalize. I don't mean to your show off.

No, but I never, I never thought of it that way. Like we have, I'm literally right down. I believe that expectations, it just makes things better. You know, even hanging out with your friends on Friday night. There are expectations. There really are, when you think about it, you know, that we're gonna have a good time. Right. But I'm, I'm, I have a friend who's celebrating. There's a birthday celebration Friday, and here's my expectations. When we all get together, not always that we're all together at once, this, you know, group and, and bring all, bring whoever you want in. That we have a good time. The band that's gonna be playing, I have an expectation. I've seen them sometimes before, they're great.

That's my, I've already set the expectations, it's gonna be a wonderful time, but.

But the expectation doesn't have to be measured by what are other people thinking.

Right.

Is the band on point? Is the, the, the expectation is measured by ourself? And isn't the problem with life? The loss of joy and experiences?

Yeah.

And I know that that's a different discussion too. And then we're gonna be next week, we're like, what were we gonna talk about?

We'll press the pause button and, and shame will be next time we get together. What do you think?

Okay, I'll write it down.

Hmm, yeah, I'm gonna write down too. I'm writing down everything today. And I have, I have thoughts about that, that whole shame thing. I heard something recently and, and we'll get to that. Um, you're wonderful in these conversations. We can take the, the tiniest little thought and open it wide up and see it from all different angles. Uh, but this, this is what you do.

There's so many perspectives.

Yeah. Susan Engel, your website, SusanEngel-LCSW.com, you're available. Um, you guys got questions, you can work with people anywhere. Uh, this and more, like it's.

We should have a gigantic Zoom meeting once every two weeks.

Yeah, like, like, who are, join us.

Hundreds of people should just sign up for it.

And heal.

Chat in their question.

And move your life forward. And by the way, [email protected]. Hit us up on that today. Even what we're talking about here in the quiet, maybe you've experienced it, maybe you have no idea what we're talking about and you think we're crazy. We want to hear it. We want to hear it.

They're crazy. Good crazy.

Good crazy. Thank you for today. Love you. Love what you do. We'll talk soon. Okay?

Thanks, Steve.

Broadcasting from the business capital of the world, this is the Podcast Business News Network.

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