Refrigerator Moms

Julianna Scott 00:00
What if the opposite of depression isn't happiness? What if it's something closer to excitement, curiosity, even mild interest? And chasing happiness directly is actually the wrong move. That's the core idea from our guest today, who built an entire practical framework around it after living through a decade of severe depression himself.
Julianna Scott 00:22
Hi, I am Julianna Scott and this is my friend Kelley Jensen and we are the Refrigerator Moms. And today our guest is Dr. Scott Eilers, known to many as the Depression Doctor. He is a licensed clinical psychologist, author and mental health coach who specializes in treating severe, treatment resistant mood and anxiety disorders. Rather than traditional talk therapy, Dr. Eilers focuses on practical, evidence based tools drawing heavily from his own decade long experience with severe depression, which lets him connect with people who feel let down by mainstream mental health approaches.
Julianna Scott 00:54
He's the author of When Everything Is Burning, written for those dealing with chronic, deep seated depression. He also hosts the podcast The Psychology of Depression and Anxiety, offers mental health coaching and shares educational content across platforms. He practices therapy in Iowa and offers mental health coaching globally. Welcome, welcome, Scott.
Dr. Scott Eilers 01:14
Thank you both so much for having me. It's great to be on.
Julianna Scott 01:16
One of the reasons why we were so anxious to talk to you is because, like I said before we started recording, we are fangirling over your books, but both of your books, particularly today, we want to talk more about When Everything Is Burning because we feel like our community, moms and dads in our community, are dealing with situational depression. I used to always say, I would be crazy not to be depressed. This is very depressing. This is something that there is no answer to and I just have to live with that. How do I do that? What tools do I need to do that? And we really feel like you got your finger on the pulse of the answer to how do I find coping mechanisms for right here, when things may never get any better? So we wanted to start by having you talk about shame. And shame grows when we shelter it and it withers when we express it. You want to talk a little bit about that as we feel like that's very useful for moms?
Dr. Scott Eilers 02:24
Absolutely. I mean, you know, shame comes from so many sources. But one of the commonalities with shame, I think, regardless of the reason you're experiencing it, is it's typically something you don't want to talk about because you feel like you have done or experienced something terrible, something really screwed up, and you don't want anyone to know about it because you're afraid of what they might think of you or how they might see you if they knew this terrible thing about you. The problem with that is that in most cases, the person who is probably going to think the worst of you for that thing is you. And so if the only person who even knows about the thing you feel shame about is you, then 100% of your feedback on that topic comes from you. And that's probably the worst case scenario. So often, in both my personal life and my work with clients, I have found that when people share the things they are ashamed about, they often get responses that they do not expect. Sometimes dramatically different than what they expect, sometimes subtly different, but typically no one thinks they should feel quite as bad about whatever the thing is as they think they should. We weigh our own stuff, whatever it is, a failure, a mistake, whatever the thing is, we weigh our own stuff so much more heavily than we weigh other people's stuff.
Dr. Scott Eilers 03:05
And I have a brief anecdote I'll share that is, I think, the perfect example of this. I kind of had two groups of friends in high school. I called them my good friends and my bad friends. I had one group of friends that was kind of like this positive influence on me, and one not so much. On one particular night, I happened to hang out with both groups of friends on the same night, bad first, then good. And specifically, I had this one friend who was a pretty devout Christian and just really trying to be a good guy and really wanted me to be a good guy too. And I wasn't really into that, but he invited me and a couple other mutual friends to a sleepover, and I had been hanging out with my bad friends first. So I show up to this sleepover, very obviously not in my right state of mind, not remotely sober, and I do not think in any way, shape or form I probably hid that well. It's the first time being at his house, I met his family. Absolute disaster in my eyes.
Dr. Scott Eilers 04:26
Anyway, long story short, ten years, probably after we graduate high school, he finds me on Facebook, adds me, and then messages me. And he says, hey, there's something I've been wanting to talk to you about. I'm like, oh my gosh, we're gonna talk about that night, aren't we? And I won't say what, but turns out he had been holding on to shame for something he did in our friendship. And the funny thing is, he wanted to apologize to me for it. And the thing that's so crazy about this is the thing that he apologized to me for, I do not remember him doing.
Julianna Scott 05:04
Interesting.
Dr. Scott Eilers 05:04
I don't think he made it up.
Julianna Scott 05:13
Yeah, but it did not even register to me. I have no memory of this thing.
Kelley Jensen 05:13
And then, did you tell him about yours?
Dr. Scott Eilers 05:23
I'm like, well, hey, as long as we're apologizing, I got something to say too. And so I said, I apologize for that night. And I don't know if he was just being nice, but he said that that's not how he remembers that night. He says he remembers it as just a fun night. So yeah, both of us have been holding on to our respective shame for a decade, while the other had moved on from it probably the day after it happened, apparently. And I think that's how it goes, is we can't move past it, we can't forgive ourselves for it, so we assume no one else will either. And that's just often not the case.
Julianna Scott 06:21
You talk a little bit about platitudes, and this notion of platitudes, and Julianna and I really resonated with that, because oftentimes, if a mom does express guilt about being a terrible mother or just not knowing how to advocate for autism, we have a tendency to get some sort of, oh, you know, you don't get anything you can't handle, or everything happens for a reason, and anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. You know, these kind of things, which elicits groans from every mother that doesn't wanna hear that. And it doesn't feel very comforting. Talk a little bit about that.
Dr. Scott Eilers 06:41
Yeah, it's not comforting when you hear, well, you wouldn't have this burden or challenge if you couldn't handle it. And that's really not helpful because it doesn't change the situation at all, or even the framing, like of just saying, oh, I guess I'm strong enough.
Kelley Jensen 06:49
What would you say to that mom that has to hear that, and that's nails on a chalkboard to her? And then what would you say to the person that truly wants to be supportive? What would be a better thing to say?
Dr. Scott Eilers 06:56
There's a lot I want to say about that. I agree with everything both of you said. I will say my least favorite reaction to that, though, was one neither of you mentioned, which is when a person just says, no, you're doing a really good job, you've watched me for ten minutes, you don't know, I might be terrible at this for all you know.
Julianna Scott 07:12
Right, that goes to the consider the source, another piece of advice you give.
Dr. Scott Eilers 07:17
In that way. I think a lot of people, when we perceive someone making a statement that we believe to be unrealistically harsh or negative towards themselves, we automatically want to correct it and be like, well, no, that's not how I see you, or that's not how I see your situation. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that conceptually. I think the biggest problem is that people overshoot, and when they hear someone say something very sad or air quotes negative, they try to just do the opposite. Like, no, it's not that, it is the complete opposite of what you just said. And of course that your brain is just going to instantly reject that because it's so far away from the reality that you're experiencing that at best, it means nothing to you, and at worst, you're now more angry because here's one more person in my life who doesn't get it.
Dr. Scott Eilers 08:52
So if you're the support person and someone says to you, yeah, I feel like I'm a terrible mom, or I'm just stuck in this situation and I don't know what to do, rather than trying to convince that person that their reality is not what they believe it to be, because they probably have a pretty good handle on what their life is like, given that they're living it every day, maybe aim for something in the middle, which would be, obviously, what exactly that sounds like is going to vary from person to person and situation to situation. But I would start by acknowledging the reality of what this person has said before you try to correct or offer an alternate perspective. So before you say, no, you're great, or no, it's not that bad, or whatever it is you want to say, first acknowledge what this person has said to you, like, you are in a really difficult situation.
Julianna Scott 09:02
Right?
Dr. Scott Eilers 09:02
If you legitimately believe you understand their situation, if you're talking to an autism mom and you yourself are also an autism mom, then you can offer some degree of, I do kind of know what this is like. If you don't, don't say that. Just acknowledge what it is to that person. I know that you are going through something that I do not understand. Often that's half of what the person even just needs to hear is just that. And then within that, then maybe you can say, for what it's worth, I don't view you as a bad mom, I think you're actually doing quite a good job with the situation you're in. Not like you're perfect, you don't make mistakes and everything's happy and you have the best family ever, because that's, again, you're just gonna be like, well, no, that's just not true. So rather than trying to respond to what appears like a negative statement with a positive statement, try to respond with a realistic statement, one that captures the reality of what this person is experiencing.
Dr. Scott Eilers 10:00
But you know, we are all probably our own harshest critics, right? And so when someone is venting to you, they are probably going to say some things about themselves that you don't agree with. And it's okay to point that out, just do it respectfully and with acknowledgement of what they're actually going through. If you're the person on the receiving end of that comment, I don't necessarily do a lot outwardly with things like that. Even doing what I do for a living, at least in a personal context, I don't have a lot of luck getting people to change their behavior, to be frank with you. It's a hard thing to do. For me, it's usually much more of an internal process, a question that I've been asking and answering in my own mind for probably half my life that I've gotten so much value out of, is the question, was this truly meant for me? Does the person who's saying this to me really understand enough about my life? Or are they just, if a person's just trying to make me feel better and they really don't know what to say, I can filter their words. Because you never get more than you can handle, one is, so I do not know, why has that become the thing?
Julianna Scott 11:16
I don't know, it's very irritating.
Kelley Jensen 11:16
Well, and I think maybe, you know, you hit the nail on the head. They're just trying to make themselves feel better. Just hearing about your situation is so stressful for them that they just want to make it stop.
Dr. Scott Eilers 11:30
And then you're in a weird position of having to say, no, no, you could handle it. Why am I doing this, making you feel better? It's a weird circle of that, but often that is how it plays out.
Julianna Scott 11:47
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Kelley Jensen 12:30
Julianna and I, I would always call her when we would get the worst of those comments and we would have a good laugh about it. So my suggestion to moms is find yourself a trusted friend that you can laugh in private, because we would be a little bit brutal if it was just the two of us, but we needed that, right? We needed somebody that really understand that that was not a helpful thing to say. But speaking of that, it goes into my next question for you, is we were talking about this before, about, I really liked what you were saying in your book about, do you like it, like asking yourselves, is this something that you like? And ultimately the nugget I got was it kind of felt a little bit like the Konmari Method. Do you know, about, does it spark joy?
Dr. Scott Eilers 13:01
Absolutely.
Kelley Jensen 13:01
So I really, when I read that, I'm a big fan of the Konmari method, but also, it felt like the mental version of that. It's just like, think about what you've accumulated and if it's not kind of serving you or taking up a lot of energy and space, let that go. And so to me, we were talking about this idea a little bit and I said, I think we unconsciously did a little bit of that. Like, you kind of shed the things that don't serve, and that might be people, and maybe those people that constantly say, I couldn't do what you're doing. Can you talk a little bit about that notion and how that might work for people who are feeling depressed?
Dr. Scott Eilers 13:53
Absolutely. I have one last super quick comment on the previous question too, then I'll go to the one again. This goes back to being on the receiving end of a commentary, like, you've been given what you can handle or whatever, at the moment you receive that feedback, you may very much feel like, well, I actually don't feel like that's true. I very much do not feel like I can handle the things that I currently have. In order to avoid having that become this very doom and gloom, permanent defeatist mindset, though, I have tried to ask myself some variation of the question, but could I become a person who could handle this? And if so, what would that entail? And that might kind of lead into this next question, like, what would I have to change or modify about myself, my lifestyle, my relationships, to get to the point where maybe this did feel manageable, even if it does not right now.
Dr. Scott Eilers 14:46
And to your point there, I do think that often involves a focusing process. I think a lot of the times we just accumulate stuff in life, and I'm a big Marie Kondo fan too, and I like the minimalists, I'm kind of like a wannabe minimalist. Sometimes we accumulate stuff, like literally physical possessions, or it's responsibilities or obligations or tasks or positions or people or relationships. And that actually was something I distinctly remember. I have a few light bulb moments with my daughter. One moment I remember was the first day we had early intervention come to our house, and they got there before I got home from work, so they'd already been there for a little bit. So I walk in the door and my daughter was not walking at the time. I walk in the door and I see my daughter in, I can't remember if they're called walking wings or something, like the harness that they use to teach kids to walk. And the second I saw her in that harness, it was such a, okay, life just got real. Like that was the moment when 100% for sure accepted and realized I have a special needs child. And in that moment I just felt like so much of my brain just laser focus on her, and so much of the stuff I cared about before just disappeared. I remember thinking in that moment, like, it's time to probably stop drinking. I don't even drink, I didn't even drink much, it wasn't like a problem for me, but it's just like I can't waste time, I have a really, really important job to do here, and a lot of the frankly frivolous things that I've accumulated over the years probably are not going to serve a role in this chapter of my life, which is probably going to be a pretty long chapter of my life. And so I think, especially, I think all adults and all parents go through that, but I think it's maybe a stronger refining process for a special needs parent of, yeah, you get to the point of like, what really matters to me. In my life, it is really the gift, if you're there to accept it, of being a special needs parent, is really being able to slough off a lot of those things that you just can't spend energy on.
Julianna Scott 17:26
Yeah, it is definitely what autism teaches you, any sort of special needs parenting. It teaches you how to manage joy, how to manage chaos, how to keep your sanity, and how to really be laser focused on everything that matters. So, to your point earlier, there was a lot of relationships that just didn't feel worth sustaining at that point.
Dr. Scott Eilers 17:26
I mean, I started thinking of my time and energy from almost like a budgetary perspective, like these are finite, limited resources, and my family's going to need a lot of them. And so anything I spend outside of my family, it needs to be something that's producing returns in some other way. Like, obviously I'm still going to go to work because my family's also going to need money, and I need to sleep because if I don't, I am worthless to everyone in my life. But beyond taking care of my basic needs, providing for my family, I want to pour a lot into my family because I'm not going to be able to be an average dad and have this work out well, by definition I'm going to have to learn how to be an above average parent if I want my family to have a good life. And that's just the reality of the situation.
Kelley Jensen 18:14
And a crash course, you get a crash course. Some people are just getting around to it in their 50s and 60s, and you get around to it when your child's a toddler because you have to.
Julianna Scott 18:27
Right, right. Another thing that you mention is this idea of considering the source. And that's, in the context in your book, it's consider the source, if somebody is telling you something, consider that, like if it's something that if you feel shame, or if I feel anything, that you're considering the source of that information, if someone makes a comment. But it really resonated with me because in the other context of considering the source, we talk a lot about considering the source when it comes to who's telling you what to do on social media and all these things, it's really relevant across the board. But I thought it was great to take it into the internal and the personal. And if you're feeling depressed and you're kind of vulnerable to hearing things that are going to make you more depressed, that if you're considering the source of that, I think that's really important. So tell us a little bit, you're in social media, explain a little bit how you navigate that world and the whole notion of considering the source, and what people need to do when they are scrolling, if they are depressed, because that really stuck out to me.
Dr. Scott Eilers 19:45
If you're talking about an external stimuli like a reel you see on social media or something along those lines, there's a couple important considerations. One is, is this person actually qualified to speak on this topic? I'm sure I don't need to tell either of you or your listeners this, there's a lot of people that have opinions on autism and autism parenting that have no reason to have opinions on those things. They are not autism parents, nor are they mental health professionals or development professionals, they're just like people with opinions. And they don't necessarily start their content by saying, hey, I'm just a person and this is my opinion. They present it as an expert level factual opinion, as if they have a doctorate or they themselves are doing this work and they have every reason in the world to have the utmost confidence in what they're saying. And then they say something stupid and unhelpful. So you got to consider, does this person actually have any, do they know what they're talking about? Do I have any reason to value the opinion or the perspective of this person above my own? Because obviously if you are an autism parent, you are, by definition, then you are an expert, you've been doing it for however many years old your child is, you have much experience.
Dr. Scott Eilers 20:49
The other thing that I think is really important to consider on social media is, what is the agenda? Because so often it starts with something fear based, like if you're not doing this for your child, you're gonna ruin them. And then 30 seconds later it's like it's a product or something. It's really disturbing, how much, because obviously my algorithm is somewhat fine tuned to that, I think, but the amount of people who want to make money off of parents of autistic people is a really disturbing thing.
Julianna Scott 21:07
That's a, oh, we talk about the autism industrial complex.
Dr. Scott Eilers 21:29
We've, it's real. And I'm not going to be totally cynical, I'm just going to say that people that are selling whatever they're selling, they believe it, but it might be bad science. And so, to consider the source, we have a paper that we call the Trientific Method, and one of our tenets of that paper is start with people that actually work with your child, because there's a lot of autism industrial complex out there that is selling you a supplement, is selling you more work to do. But start with the people that are actually working with your child.
Julianna Scott 21:54
And one of the stories I always tell is about some sort of a dietitian that I was trying to take my son to, and she said, oh, you don't have to bring him next time, because he was, he had some echolalia. And I just picked him up and left. I just said, we're not doing this diet, because if you can't even be in the room with him, you don't know anything about autism, and I shouldn't believe a word you say. So it's sort of like that mentality, right? How much are they, how much are they in the room with autistic people, is one of the tenets of that paper.
Kelley Jensen 22:31
This is only tangentially related to what you just said, but I'm just going to put it out there. It's one of my biggest frustrations, not so much with social media, but a lot of maybe even local resources that market themselves or are designed to help autistic kids or autistic people, then are really not geared with those people in mind at all. We took our daughter to an occupational therapy, well, we've taken her to several, but one in particular, an occupational therapy office, and she had to leave because there was somebody screaming in an office next door. And they had terrible soundproofing. It's like, if you're going to advertise your business as a place where autistic people can come, you need to make sure the offices are quiet.
Julianna Scott 23:22
Oh my gosh, there's no easier way to show you don't understand this and to not control the sound.
Kelley Jensen 23:22
That was a little bit like the, I don't know if you're thinking of the same thing.
Julianna Scott 23:33
Well, one time I took my son, we brought our son to the same psychiatrist, and this is a psychiatrist we dealt with, autistic children, she learned. This is not a diss on her because she's amazing. But there was a child that was having a very serious meltdown, and he was non verbal, his mother was trying her best. And my son had a little bit of language, but we were all in the waiting room, and I said, what's wrong with Adam, or whatever his name was? And he said, no music, turn music off, or something to the effect that I didn't know what he was talking about, I didn't hear any music, but it was music in the back, somebody was playing, in, you know, like two offices down, to your point. And they were able to finally turn the music off, and the child stopped, and it was like, oh, okay. And then she also had a, the garbage can, that was the garbage can that you could, I think you could, it was either motion sensor or you stepped on it or something, but it would be, oh my gosh, my son was obsessed, he had OCD, and so he was literally obsessed with making it open, close, open, close, and I, this is not good.
Kelley Jensen 24:45
And I wanted to point out, in the realm of social media and who to follow and what you, we are always going on about the parent coaches. You take a class from another coach, you get a certificate and you call yourself a coach. So I want to take a chance here and now to plug that, look for a license. A lot of times, what happens when you're crossing social media, your license is in Iowa, so of course you're a clinical psychologist, of course you have the credentials, but that is if you want to practice in Iowa, but that license does qualify you as a coach across the board, across the regions, as a licensure. So look for that. If you're a parent that is following a particular social media personality, where is their license? Where do they hang their license? If they don't hang a license at all, don't start with them. Maybe start with, you know, Scott, because he's got a, he's actually done the work.
Dr. Scott Eilers 25:42
Right. Coaching is an entirely unregulated title and profession. You do not have to have any qualifications. There are certifications, you don't have to take them. The qualification to be a coach is to say, I am a coach, and now you are a coach. And I am a coach, so I'm not saying they're all bad, but literally anyone can say they are.
Julianna Scott 26:04
Have you seen that kind of explode over the last, I don't know how many years?
Dr. Scott Eilers 26:10
I have, and there's a lot going on there.
Kelley Jensen 26:11
I mean, what's going on, tell us, we are curious.
Dr. Scott Eilers 26:19
It's big business, it's just big business to call yourself a coach. And the piece of it I can probably best speak to is therapists like me becoming coaches. Well, also, I'm also still a therapist, I do both. And I think the biggest reason for that is for somebody like me, I live in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, it is not a very wealthy area, and so in order to have a full practice, we have to take insurance here. There's no way we could have a full practice of cash paid people, there's just, the average income level here would not support that. But being a healthcare business that accepts insurance has many challenges, such as you cannot set your own prices, there is no way to raise, the only thing you can control about your finances is your costs, you cannot charge more per unit of service, even if I do my job ten times better than the clinic down the street, we get paid the same amount. Insurance companies can audit you at any time, they can look at up to three years worth of services and they can claw back payments they've already made, sometimes in the six figures, for minor clerical errors. So taking insurance is a terrifying thing to do. And I think for a lot of therapists, they want to be able to set their own rates because maybe they think that the services they offer are of a higher quality than the average person out there, or maybe they want to be able to make sure they get paid before they provide the service, rather than, hopefully, fingers crossed, a month later, and sometimes not at all if you made a mistake or if the person's insurance changed and they didn't tell you. I mean, it's such a scary thing to have all of your income completely reliant on an entity that does not care about you.
Kelley Jensen 28:09
And I know that obviously I get it on both ends, because when you're a parent trying to get services for your kids, insurance is equally frustrating to deal with, because it's the same, you didn't cross this T, dot this, now your kid can't get therapy, it's a maddening system.
Dr. Scott Eilers 28:27
It really, I think for a lot of people, that's why, is they want to exit that system.
Julianna Scott 28:37
Yeah, that makes sense, and I think the best of social media, particularly for a busy mom, is an account like yours that can really speak to her in the ten free minutes that she has, and your words are sharp, clean and crisp, and they will resonate with her. It'll be a good idea that she'll ruminate on. And that's the best social media can do, is the opportunity to have access to a doctor like you.
Kelley Jensen 28:59
So, but buyer beware, because make sure that they're of the quality that you are, if you're a parent that relies on them and uses them, because it's your best method of thinking about these things and dealing with life's challenges. Well, I want to dig into some of those really good tips. And so in your book, you talk about the six lies the world tells you, and we won't hit on all of them, but a couple that the three that stood out to me for our audience is really one of them is that everything is your fault, this lie, and that you suggest responding to the lie with a statement like, I'm still working through the effects of events I didn't choose to experience. So I think that's a great one to kind of adopt as a little bit of a mantra, because I think that you can get really stuck kind of in that blame, and it's all my fault. I think that's a good way to push back on some of that.
Dr. Scott Eilers 30:01
Yeah, I think that's great, I mean, no notes. No human being has complete agency over their experience, we all understand that, right? Even an adult, let alone at one point, all of us who are now adults were children and were adolescents, and we did not choose where we lived, we didn't probably choose where we went to school, we didn't choose the families we were born into, we didn't choose the neighborhood we lived in. And so we all get to adulthood being primarily a product of a bunch of stuff that got chosen for us or was just random, essentially. And of course, these things all affect us. I mean, when you're a young child, the reason human beings learn so quickly is because your learning ability precedes your critical thinking ability. So when you're 3, 4, 5, 6 years old, you just believe anything you hear, and that's how you ramp up quickly and learn language and learn skills and stuff like that, it's because you don't second guess every single thing a person tells you, you just accept what you're told, and that's fine when you're learning academic skills and factual information. The problem is those aren't the only things people impart on us at an early age. And every single one of us gets to adulthood with a set of subjective belief systems that we primarily learned from the people around us that may or may not serve us. And they don't just magically go away because we now have fully formed critical thinking abilities, because we don't automatically go back and reassess things we already believe to be true.
Dr. Scott Eilers 31:28
And a perfect example of this is language itself. I think all three of us are native English speakers, and so when you look at any object, the word that comes to your mind for that thing is the English language label for that thing. You logically understand there are other correct labels for that thing because you know other languages exist. Yet if you tried, at whatever age we all are today, to learn a brand new language from scratch, it would be difficult because we have to overcome however many years of conditioning that, nope, this is what that thing is. Our brains don't automatically update beliefs, and it's very difficult to go back and reconsider things you consider to be true because you don't think about them, you don't question them. And that's so much of where I think we end up believing everything is our fault, because we have these ideas in our head about what is true and what is real, and they don't hold up to scrutiny, but they never face scrutiny. So to give an example, I had some really ridiculous ideas in my head just from the people I grew up around about what the role of a dad is, what the role of a male adult is with the family. And for a long time I viewed that as being almost exclusively resource provision, because that's what I'd seen, that's what I had modeled for me, that's what I'd experienced. And so I just did it, I didn't even consciously think, this is my job, it was like instinct. And it was actually that moment I mentioned earlier, the first day my daughter had early intervention services, that was one of the things that changed for me on that day, was like, nope, that's not going to be enough, but if that's all you provide, she's not going to be where you want her to be, you're going to have to be more than that.
Kelley Jensen 33:35
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Julianna Scott 33:35
What's your opinion along those lines of the, I'm sure you've heard and seen all of the items in the news about going no contact with family, and this is the trend, and a lot of people are blaming therapists for this, and maybe even some of these online forums and online coaches, what is your opinion about that, and do you think it serves?
Dr. Scott Eilers 34:03
I think it entirely depends on the situation. I do think there are some family situations where that is probably a very warranted response. If there's ongoing abuse, for example, or if you have a family, I mean, one, I'm sure your audience will understand, if you have a family member who can't be safer on an autistic child, some adults can't do that, well, that person probably doesn't have a role in your life then, or at least a very, very limited role. So I don't think no contact is always wrong, I don't think it's inherently just an inappropriate thing to do. I do have some concerns about what seems like a growing list of scenarios in which it is encouraged. It does seem like there's maybe a lot of retroactive analysis of parenting happening, and like most human beings on earth, I come from an imperfect family that had its fair share of problems.
Dr. Scott Eilers 35:11
I have seen people go no contact for things that to me subjectively seemed like less than what I went through, I don't feel like my childhood experiences warranted that. There's a concept I was introduced to in my pre doctoral internship, I put a little bit of a spin on it, but there's two principles that you could use to guide your relationships theoretically with every human being, and they could be expressed as two parallel continuums. One is the safety of the relationship, so you could have the most unsafe relationship in the world, that this person's just terrible and wants to hurt me, and on the other end would be just a perfect person who never does anything wrong. And of course everyone's actually going to be somewhere in the middle, so that's one continuum. And the continuum below it would be basically how much you let that person into your life, and you should be able to draw a vertical line for every person in your life, between these two continuums, and that then is an effective and healthy relationship to have with that person. So if somebody's not great with emotions and rarely knows what to say and doesn't show up when you need them, you're probably not gonna have a super close relationship with them, that's fair, that's warranted, doesn't mean it has to be nonexistent. It's when you get lines that are skewed that you end up in trouble, and that can be either direction.
Dr. Scott Eilers 36:39
I'll tell you where I see this happen a lot, is with people's moms, regardless of your age, a person maybe generally has good boundaries, but my mom can kind of say anything to me and I just kind of take it because she's my mom. There is a concept called safe by title, which means we treat people not based on who they are as a human, but on the title they hold with us, because there's certain titles that imply safety, mom, dad, teacher, coach, doctor, therapist, police officer. If a person holds one of these titles, there's an implication of trust, there's an implication of safety. And many people who hold those titles live up to them, and some do not. And if you set your boundaries with this person based on their title rather than based on who they've shown you to be as a human being, you're probably going to end up getting hurt. But some people have the opposite problem, where they're just very guarded with everybody, usually these are people who've frankly been through a lot in their life interpersonally, and they can have a wealth of really safe, supportive people in their lives, and they have very firm boundaries, and they can't open up to these people, they can't let them in. That's also going to be a boundary that does not serve you, because this relationship could be a lot more supportive, maybe a lot more intimate, a lot more whatever you want it to be than it is, but your own wounding from other past relationships is the barrier there. So if you just visualize a vertical line between safety and basically openness and vulnerability, that should work for any type of relationship.
Julianna Scott 38:05
Oh, that's quite great, good tip as always, and a great answer to that question of the moment. I want to go to a little bit about perfectionism because it's something we've talked about and something that a lot of autism moms struggle with, and I know that we just struggle with it as human beings. She made me take a test, I know we took quizzes, but she has the adaptive form of perfectionism, I have the maladaptive.
Kelley Jensen 38:37
I will own, was no surprise, the results of the quiz were no surprise, but Kelley, it's working for her, it's working against me.
Julianna Scott 38:37
But this whole, and Kelley, one of her favorite expressions is, don't compare, don't compete, which is I think really echoed in what you're saying, is that the lie that the world is telling you is you're not trying hard enough. And so I thought that was great, and that you kind of remind yourself of something like, nobody's traveled my path before. And I think, I mean, it's these little simple turns of phrase, I think that, you know, is really helpful for moms who might not have time to go to a therapist, but also just like constantly reminding them, and it's daily, it's just sometimes it's hourly.
Kelley Jensen 39:20
Just reminding yourself, like, I didn't choose to experience this, or no one's traveled this path before, I think reminding ourselves of these things are really important, and I loved that, that was just a really helpful nugget.
Julianna Scott 39:40
Well, because we all had a vision of motherhood, we all had the, I used to call it the Christmas card, I wanted the Christmas card, and my son will ruin a picture if you give him a chance, he will, and I had to let the Christmas card go, we don't have a beautiful Christmas card, and I'm embracing it, but there was a mourning period for the Christmas card and what I thought my motherhood was gonna be.
Kelley Jensen 40:13
Yeah, I also loved too, on this perfectionism thing, and then you also talk, there's a great section after the lies in your book that you talk about kind of the to dos, and one of them is rewrite the research, which again jumped out at me because we're always talking about research. Another thing, and I loved that one, because it's, you say to consider your negative beliefs as theories, not facts, and think each day as a research project, and try to pay attention to data that doesn't support or even contradicts your negative beliefs. Don't accept a one sided version of your life story, which I think really speaks to those perfectionists. The Christmas card doesn't have to be perfect, you could make the Christmas card with three of us in it, or it could be mid meltdown, if that's what your life is.
Dr. Scott Eilers 41:08
For perfectionism to even exist as a construct, there has to be some degree of comparison involved, because otherwise it's just a data point floating in space, there has to be some other data point to compare it to, to try to figure out is this good, bad or average. Something I think it's important to keep in mind is on a broad scale, when you're asking big questions like who is a better person, who is a better mom, these really broad questions, there is no meaningful, scientifically correct way to compare people. You can make a comparison, like you can figure out who's taller or something like that, but even in a narrow group of people, like even among two autism moms, if you were to say who is a better mom, mom A or mom B, and you tried to actually scientifically and empirically answer that question, it is unanswerable because there is no experimental control. Because how many variables are different between mom A and mom B, billions, like literally, I'm not exaggerating, billions of variables, every second of each person's life is different, they have different upbringings, they have different genetics, they have different children. You cannot look at another person and figure out, am I doing better or worse or about as well as this person, it's an unanswerable question. And that's something I lean on more than, we were talking earlier about placations. Rather than trying to convince myself I'm doing a great job, because I can't always believe that, I have, in order to feel like I'm not, though, I have to compare myself to someone else. And if I realize there is no comparison point, there is no meaningful data point that I can put next to my life or my achievement in any particular domain and figure out where I stand, then my life is just a series of disconnected data points that can't be evaluated. And that's not necessarily a positive thought, but it just is.
Julianna Scott 43:07
That is a great visual, and I really love that. Another thing I definitely wanted to touch on, and I was telling Kelley, I'm like, I've got to start implementing this, is this idea of the counterpoint to depression might not be happiness, and this idea, I think that would really resonate with autism moms, because let's just be honest, some days that is not a reasonable goal. And this is long, but I loved the part where you're talking about finding an emotion and putting that into asking yourself, making it that sort of your grounding question. So you say, for example, if your goal is competency or accomplishment, then you would slot in, will this make me feel more accomplished? So you're not saying, will this make me happy? I think that's so common, that you're lying in bed depressed and you're just like, oh, well, what would bring me joy, what would get me out of bed, what will it do this? But it's like, what will make me feel competent or accomplished, or fill in the blank, examine what it is that you really want to feel instead of depressed. And I think that's really powerful. So you say that most people have one or two feelings that generally feel better to them than other enjoyable feelings, and try to figure out your preferred feelings and use that knowledge to guide the choices in your life. And I think that's just really great advice.
Dr. Scott Eilers 44:35
Yeah, I agree. Happiness, I have a lot of problems with the pursuit of happiness. One is it's always acute, it's not a state that can be maintained, it's just a feeling you get sometimes. The other is so broad, it doesn't guide you to meaningful action, or in some cases it guides you to harmful action. Like if I have a day when my daughter has a three hour violent meltdown from 3pm to 6pm, and after she finally goes to sleep and I have about an hour before I myself go to sleep, and I think, what can I do in this hour to make me happy, the only answers to that question are very unhealthy things that I probably, to me it's probably seized chocolate, there's a couple, but I'd rather not do that. And so that's just not gonna be an achievable goal. But maybe I want to say, how can I go to bed feeling like I've actually accomplished something today? And so maybe I place a pickup order for groceries for the following day, because we're out of the three foods that she eats. There are still positive emotional states that can be experienced even if it's not joy or happiness, that's just some days that's just going to be too high of a bar to set with anything other than things that you're probably going to regret doing the following day, or make you feel less good.
Julianna Scott 45:52
It will. And just the whole notion, I just want to be happy, lots of times people say I just want to be happy, I just want to be happy, and that's a tightrope, I think people don't realize what a tightrope that is.
Dr. Scott Eilers 45:52
Because we're human and full, so happiness is just one of many emotions, and sometimes I think when people say I just want to be happy, what they're really saying is I don't want to feel the bad stuff. It's understandable to prefer happiness, but saying you want it every day is like saying I want the sun to shine every day, okay, well it won't, you can want that, it won't happen, and if you try to make it happen, you're going to drive yourself nuts. What are you going to do every time it's cloudy, you're going to end up doing some ridiculous impulsive things because you think you're living your life wrong, because you set an unrealistic standard that can't be maintained. Now I would say contentment, I do think contentment can be maintained, I think contentment can exist outside of circumstances.
Julianna Scott 46:35
Well, talk a little bit about that, because I have this theory that we are growing so discontent from the scrolling, everything is like a slot machine, and contentment is, in my opinion, very different than the stimulus that we're getting, and I just feel like people are losing the fine art of contentment.
Dr. Scott Eilers 46:59
Yeah, I mean, it's semantics, but I guess to me contentment would be a general sense that overall my life is acceptable to me, that doesn't mean every single part of it is exactly where I want it to be, because I don't think that ever happens either, because again, we're all busy adults, you know how it is, you make one part of your life better, you have to spend more time, energy on that thing to make it better, and something else gets worse. It's not like we're sitting around for hours just doing nothing, so if you work on one thing, you're by definition working less on something else. And so all you're really doing is trading, you get to a point where it's just trade offs, and you can't actually make a life that is just better in every way. But you may be able to make some trades that make a life that is better for you, as a unique idiosyncratic individual. So for me, contentment isn't everything in my life is fine, it's more like I think I'm spending my resources about as well as I can. I would love to have more time with my family and I would also love to have more money, not a lot of options to get both of those, and if I try to get more of one, I'll probably have less of the other. So it's not that I have all that I want in every domain of my life, it's that I think the balance I've been able to achieve among all my desires is relatively well done. I always want more of everything, as does every single person on earth, but if you let that consume you, then you will never experience contentment.
Kelley Jensen 48:27
Yeah, I think motivating is good, consuming, not good.
Dr. Scott Eilers 48:27
If it's motivating, great, if it's consuming you, not so great.
Kelley Jensen 48:39
You mentioned impulsivity, and I know we talked a little bit about, we would like to get your opinion, it's one of the things that we talk about so much, as we have some, it comes up a lot with children, obviously autistic children have a tendency to be very impulsive, but we all, I feel like, have a tendency to be impulsive, and I feel like we're all getting more and more impulsive by the moment, speak to some ideas for that.
Dr. Scott Eilers 48:56
Get eight hours of sleep, or as close to it as you can, make sure you eat three well balanced meals a day, try to get some physical activity in, and keep an eye on your caffeine intake. Because impulsivity is a lack of behavioral inhibition and long term planning, it's the inverse of those. Behavioral inhibition and long term planning are functions of the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex becomes less active when we are tired, hungry, sedentary and or are on a mood roller coaster because of substances. So rather than thinking of it as a thing to defeat in the moment, like I have this urge but I'm going to fight it and overcome it, there's going to be days, if you slept two hours last night, you might eat like crap for lunch, you're going to probably do something impulsive that day because your brain is lacking the resources it needs to do its job. So to me, it's not so much a conscious battle as something you kind of win or lose on the forefront through lifestyle, which I know that can be frustrating to hear, because I completely understand, of course we don't have full control over our lifestyles, we don't have full control over our sleep schedules, we sometimes have to eat in very short time periods, it's not always feasible to go and have 40 minutes to yourself for a workout. Just do the best you can in your circumstances, it goes back to the contentment, right, not am I maxing this thing out, but am I doing it as well as my circumstances allow for, because those are going to be two very different answers.
Julianna Scott 50:40
Well, we've talked a lot about depression, but I want to ask a question about anxiety, it's friend and its companion usually, and the idea of, for people, moms, dads, and also autistic people themselves, anxiety is pretty much across the board. So when you're talking about chronic anxiety, and I think that the idea of worry time, and those are really good for something, like if you're kind of fretting about a specific thing, what advice do you have for people who are just chronically anxious?
Dr. Scott Eilers 51:16
Try to delineate pathological from non pathological anxiety, because I think it's really easy to think that all our anxiety is a symptom and it's all wrong and it's all a problem. But if you have a level 2 or level 3 autistic child, and you're like, I don't know if they'll be able to work, that's not, that's a realistic thought, that's a real thing you're facing. If you think if I let my child out of my sight for five seconds they will die, that's probably pathological anxiety. So that's one thing I try to say right off the bat, is not all your anxiety is your brain messing with you or something out of proportion or unrealistic, some of it is just a reasonable rational response to your situation. And so it's never going to be zero, you could at any point in your life, almost think of it as like a bar graph with two bars, there's some amount of your anxiety that is just the reality of your life and is the very real objective stressors that you are facing, and then there's a second bar on top of that which is like the story I tell myself about that stuff. So my goal with anxiety management is to minimize the story, my life is hard enough if I just take it at face value, I don't need to add to it. And when I catch myself adding to it, fortune telling, catastrophizing, mind reading, stuff like that, that's when I try to catch myself. But I don't try to talk myself out of just objective life stress or anxiety, because A, I won't be able to, B, then I'm being like one of those people who tells me I can't, I'll never get more than I can, I'm being the person I get mad at, so don't.
Julianna Scott 52:29
Right, right, well, your advice is spot on, and we are encouraging everybody to follow you, everybody to read your books, great tips. I have a friend who is going through a very difficult time, late onset autism, late onset psychosis for young adult men is one of the things, unfortunately, that many families live through, and she's going through that right now, and your account is helping her, and I wanted you to know that, because I want everybody that is having a hard time turn to the best that social media has to offer, and that is you.
Kelley Jensen 53:26
Yeah, and I also think that what Kelley and I really value is that you can do some of that internal work, and I really like the mantras and the things that you need to remind yourself, but also a lot of your advice, and we haven't gotten to a ton of it, is really doing things, like literally doing things. And I was just talking to my son about this one last night, and it's just the idea of shifting from consumption to creation, because we are all on our phones, all of us, and we're consuming things, whether it's scrolling or bingeing or whatever it is, and when you're doing something, whether it's cooking a meal or going for a walk or doing a puzzle or whatever it is, building something, you are taken out of that, and I think that that is good, along with diet, exercise, sleep, all those things, like doing things. I think so many of us are not doing things, that is probably your most tried and true advice, is creation versus consumption, and always ask yourself, what's your ratio of creation versus consumption?
Julianna Scott 54:19
Right, well, we are going to, we appreciate your time, we are going to put all of your information up on our social media accounts, we are going to have a paper, notes from the Depression Doctor, and thank you for your contributions to that paper, and best of luck to everything that comes next for you.
Dr. Scott Eilers 54:36
Thank you, thank you so much to both of you for having me, I really appreciate the time today.
Julianna Scott 54:41
Thank you so much, thank you, take care.
Julianna Scott 54:41
If this conversation resonates with you, which I'm sure it will, please go to our website refrigeratormoms.com, you will see links to all of the things, YouTube, social media, I know we talk about social media, but go find us there too, and come back and listen to us again.
Julianna Scott 55:18
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Julianna Scott 55:44
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