342 | Interview with Faust Ruggiero on Positive Talk Radio!

Unknown Speaker  0:00  
This is a production of km media dot Pro. Welcome back to positive talk radio. Our goal is simple to explore evolving ideas one conversation at a time. So come on over into our world. I know you'll like it. Because on today's show, we have gotten an extraordinary author, counselor guy that's been working for 40 years and trying to make our world a better place. And we're going to talk to him for the entire hour. And by the way, it's Monday morning. And Benny Monday morning. Are you still there? Sir? I am still here. Yes, it is. Yes, indeed. What happened last week, it was at some because they're in the 70s. And now it's raining and 55 wapen. October finally showed up. Now they're all gonna be late to the party. It's okay. Yes, if k showed up and is late to the party, and it has changed everything again. And now we're going into our winter and winter pattern. So I want you to just relax, stay where you are. And you've got a great show for you for this hour. And it's Monday morning. And do you ever feel anxiety on Monday morning? You know, you gotta go to work. You have the the weekend off. And maybe you started thinking about work at seven o'clock last night going, Oh, crap, I gotta go to work. And stuff and you and your your life is kind of run by anxiety. I know yours isn't better, because you actually go to work on Sunday night. Well, it's not Sunday night. Yeah, there's some days like you, you know, you sent a log in the head ahead of time, which I appreciate so that I'm kind of like set up when I show up here in the morning, because I'm here, you know, like 430. So it's, it's early for me, but I like to just start getting after it. Yes, indeed. Well, you do a fabulous job. Thank you. They want to thank you for everything that you do shape that you're very good. Well, are the author that we have for this hour. His name is foster rigidity, Virgilio, thank you very much. And he is the author of the book that's out is he is called the fixed yourself handbook. But we're going to talk a lot to a bunch about a new book that he's got coming out. You can preorder it now. It's called the fix yourself anxiety handbook. It's bringing you out of the darkness and into a brilliant new world. Let me tell you a little bit about Faust he is he's a published research author, a clinical trainer, a therapist who's worked in settings that have included clinics for deaf children, prisons, nursing homes, substance abuse centers, inpatient facilities, major corporations, both nationally and internationally. And he's the president of the community psychiatric psychological center in Bangor, Pennsylvania. fosse how're you today, sir?

Unknown Speaker  2:51  
It's great to be back, Kevin. And I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.

Unknown Speaker  2:55  
Well, you're you're welcome back anytime you like, because you're smart guy. You know, you throw all kinds of stuff about what's going on. And I cannot recall I'm only I'm not very old. Well, okay. Yes, I am. I've been around for over 60 years. And I cannot recall a time when in our society that is as anxious about what's going on in our country as it is today. And that bleeds over into all kinds of issues, both personally and professionally, and what's happening in your life, and it can lead anxiety is a insidious thing, isn't it?

Unknown Speaker  3:35  
It really is, you know, that's a great word. For Kevin, I use that often. It's one of those things that you don't know you have it sometimes, when you have it, it presents in all different ways. You try things because you think it's affecting your head, it's really hitting your body first. So it seems that no matter what you do, it's just seems so difficult to stop.

Unknown Speaker  3:59  
And if it continues to grow, and it just, if you don't know you've done it's, I suppose it's like anything, if you don't know you've got it, but you're feeling a certain way. You don't know how to fix it, because you don't know what the problem is to begin with.

Unknown Speaker  4:14  
And that's just the key. A lot of people will, it'll manifest so differently. It's so many people's in some, it'll, it'll come out as fear. Some people will have an idea, they're anxious, other people are angry all the time. And they think, you know, that's just something that's happening in their lives and they're responding to it. You know, it just it just shows up in so many different ways. That you know, by the time you have it, it's just too difficult to stop it. It's the key is to learn about it, understand what it is, then you can formulate a plan so you can you can begin to deal with it.

Unknown Speaker  4:52  
Now, you worked in lots of different settings with when working with deaf children prisons, Nurse Seeing homes, substance abuse centers? Is there any particular segment that suffers from it more than another? Or is it pretty much? Even throughout

Unknown Speaker  5:11  
it? You know, I get that question a lot. Well, maybe this is what's making it happen. Anytime. things get difficult as we saw in the pandemic, we're gonna see rises in anxiety. But anxiety is with us all the time it crosses, all demographics. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't discriminate, and it doesn't take prisoners, you get it, and you got it. And so I always tell people that you know, your watch it from the beginning, if we can get a little better at diagnosing this in our children, we can start treating them young. And that's what people will say, Well, you know, kids don't really they're resilient. They, they don't, they don't pick up things like anxiety that yeah, they do. That's where it starts. It's physical. It's often generational, you know, it passes from generation to generation. And we can see it in kids, there are many signs that tell us that they have anxiety, by the time they get into teenage years and into their 20s, this thing is usually full blown. And we see that substance abuse and we see anger and violence, we see all the kinds of things that are that have a tendency to present themselves from, from the anxiety, but it's just that the important thing is to try to get to it early. And I will guarantee you at least one out of three kids is suffering from anxiety. Do they get

Unknown Speaker  6:39  
that from their parents who have anxiety from their surroundings? From their playmates? Where Where do they get where does it come from?

Unknown Speaker  6:50  
Well, it's all the above. But as we say, we tend to see anxiety just like depression, we tend to see it, right habits run in families. One of the things I do when I work with people is I'll do the, you know, a pretty intense family history. And I'll say, you know, and I always find that if you come in and you say I've got anxiety, I'm gonna see mom and or dad had grandparents, uncles, cousins, it's, it's throughout people, or, you know, it's not just my uncle had had anxiety, and maybe he was on anxiety medications, it's many people and there's suicides in the family, I'll ask for things like substance abuse, because people think they're just going out having a good time. And what they're doing is they're medicating, you know, and now we have marijuana that's legalized, they people are really really overusing that particular drug, in order to deal with anxiety, because what we know, our society's mentality, Kevin is where, you know, if I get a headache, I take a pill, you know, i It's nothing happens, I take something for it. So the anxiety hits, and I get my pen or my gummy, or whatever it is out in and I and I use the pot, and then three hours later, I feel anxiety again, so I do it again. And we felt we're finding people doing it four or five times a day, well, you know, that's going to have in the long run, it's going to have its negative values, too. So you know, you don't treat the symptom. You you go in and get the problem, or at least you get the starting point for everything. That's always the body.

Unknown Speaker  8:21  
How does anxiety prove for those and for those that are familiar with the term, but don't really understand how it presents itself? How does it present itself? And how can you identify it?

Unknown Speaker  8:33  
Yeah, you know, and it's, they're all different triggers, and depends on the people, for some people, they'll tell me that it comes on slow, and they can feel it starting all day long. For some people, they'll say, I'm sitting in watching TV, and all of a sudden I'm in a panic. Other people say my stomach starts to die, I can feel that my stomach tightening. And there I go. Other people are monitoring how they how they speak to others, and the agitation is there. What I always tell people to do is get it manifest physically. First, it's something that starts physical, goes to the emotions and then to the brain into the intellect where we interpret things. And what we tend to do is where we're thinking about what we feel is we're thinking it's, you know, anxiety, people with anxiety will say something like that mental health issues. No, they don't. Anxiety is treated as a mental health condition. It's a physical condition. So now what we do is we we say, Okay, now I'm thinking about this, I have this anxiety. So I'm going to try to do all these things, to try to fix it. It's not going to happen, you get it. It's about learning how your body operates, and learning how to deal with there, getting your body healthy, not doing the things you shouldn't do. I love when people come in and they say, you know, I got all this anxiety and I say, Okay, well, you know, let's look at your diet. First, what do you do when you start in the morning? I have my three or four cups of coffee. I said, Well, gee, that's not going to play into an anxious condition is it? How about the rest of the day sugars? Yeah. Do any of those energy drinks? Well, I have one at two o'clock. I said, well, by the time you're done, you probably have a couple 100 milligrams of caffeine in your system. You think that might help or their schedule is off, you know, they're going to bed two in the morning, and they're trying to get up for work, you know. And, you know, when you're tired, you always are more anxious, your body doesn't have the resources to deal with it. So the schedule was off. And then it's the things they tend to do last night here on the East Coast. Or, you know, we were the Phillies were playing San Diego and won the pennant and, and the partying started and congratulations, by the way, you know, and, and you know, and we do that it was Football Sunday, so I'm going to relax and watching football games, and they're screaming and yelling, and, and drinking. And by the end of the day, they're pretty well played out the next day, they're going to work and Monday, and Monday in football season, all the employers tell me is just a difficult day to get people going. And you'll get more backtalk, you get less production, you get arguments among employees, all that kind of stuff. Again, because they've done all the things that bring the anxiety level up. It's learning how to deal with your body and answering the call, not not trying No, when you have this idea that we could do whatever we want to do, and it's going to be okay, no. We are subject to physical laws, doesn't work that way.

Unknown Speaker  11:48  
It wasn't on Sundays during football season. If you're like, I'm a Seahawks fan, because I live in Seattle. And there is during the course of a three hour game, there's ups and there's downs, and there's they score and then you feel badly and then you score and then you feel good, you're euphoric when they are close to winning. And then if they lose, it affects you for the rest is at least it did me.

Unknown Speaker  12:13  
What does, it does, everyone will say I always say to my wife, when Phil is doing come while I'm kind of in and out. Because if I stay there, too, it's fine. If I'm with if you're with a group of people, you can yell it out and scream it out and maybe get it out of you. But if you're you know, home watching, it's a different story, you know, so again, so when using that example, I'll go in and out because if the anxiety level goes way high, what do you do with it? Well, let's go get a beer. I mean, that'll help, you know,

Unknown Speaker  12:45  
or 10, which,

Unknown Speaker  12:48  
you know, we, it's, again, it's great to watch the game have a good time, but we should. But if it gets to the point, whether it's the game or anything else in your life, your relationships are your work, whatever you do, and it's making you feel that way, and you're not doing something to correct it on that fundamental level, then there are problems. I learned.

Unknown Speaker  13:11  
I was in my 20s that when the Seattle Seahawks were playing the Redskins, and Joe Theismann was the quarterback, this is how old I am. And Josiah was the quarterback he threw a long touchdown pass. So I hit my hand on the carpet, I was lying on the floor, and I broke my hand.

Unknown Speaker  13:33  
You could have thrown something at the TV and broke that right?

Unknown Speaker  13:36  
When the TV's important apparently my hand isn't. But the but the problem is, I was a bartender at the time. And I was sitting there going, Oh, this isn't good. I can't move my hand and I'm a bartender, I'm supposed to grab bottles and, and pour drinks and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, the unintended consequences of anxiety and what we do to ourselves can be really profound.

Unknown Speaker  14:03  
It can and again, it starts young. If you look at I always tell people go back in your life went to when you were a kid. Did you think anxiety was there? And they'll tell me things like, yeah, I got quiet. I escaped to my room or I have temper tantrums and outbursts and people thought I was an angry person. You know, I, I was on this. I didn't want the limelight at all. But I always felt everyone was looking at me. I said, Oh, those are all the things that we see with childhood anxiety. We can catch it Young. What we do is we teach to people then do these things. Don't do those things when you're young that sets you up for the rest of your life by the time you're in your 20s you know, then you know they're coming in my office and I always say you know something I've said the past a couple of years. When I started counseling Kevin 5% Maybe 10% of the people were on anxiety meds they, when they come in the office, I bet I'm around 70%. And some of them that is an absolutely insane statistic.

Unknown Speaker  15:06  
And there are some of them that have been on these medications for years

Unknown Speaker  15:11  
when he years mult. One for anxiety when they go to sleep, one for depression, you know, and, you know, we are really in a drug culture now, you know, it's unfortunate, but if the pharmaceutical companies have succeeded anything, it's that they have now trained this public that, our, our culture to say, well, if I got this, let me go get this, that go to the docks, they're quick to prescribe. And before you know it, people are no longer working on themselves, they're not trying to get to the cause of the problem. They are now medicating symptoms, that never changes anything. That's the problem. If you could medicate and change a cause you'd be great. But medication is not designed by its by its design, it was never ever designed to affect the cause of a problem only to treat the symptoms.

Unknown Speaker  16:11  
Like taking pain meds, if you gotta if you got a back problem, and you're taking muscle relaxers and pain meds because it hurts, and you want to keep moving it but that doesn't solve the problem, you got to go to a doctor, you got to go to a chiropractor, you've got to go to somebody who can figure out what's wrong with your back, and then get to the point where you can get out of pain. But the muscle relaxers and stuff doesn't work long term.

Unknown Speaker  16:38  
Again, it wasn't designed to, you know, when you take an anti anxiety medication or admission medication for depression, whatever, you'll notice, they'll tell you take it every so often because that's the that's the pharmaceutical physical laws, if you will, after a certain point, it loses some of its potency. So you put the medication back in, it's called a drug Half Life. The problem is that these you know, you put it in your good, then it goes down, then your body adjusts to it. So you get a higher dose, you start with 10 milligrams, two years down the road, a year down the road, you're on 50 milligrams, you're on the highest dose of that particular thing. So you know, what does that medication do to your body over time, you're going to hear things like anxiety meds, and meds for depression. If you use them properly, they're not addictive. No, that's not the case. If you stop them quickly, you'll know how addictive they are, you will go into withdrawal. I don't care what your dose is. So you know, they treat symptoms, they cause problems, I'm not saying and not to take them. Usually when people come in to the to the office and they're on an anxiety met, our goal is, you know, we say let's just stay on that, let's work through that. Find the cause. When we find a cause, and we make some changes, then we'll work with your doctor to alleviate that. Take that medication out of your plan. At that point, things get a whole lot better. But until that time, and people have been treating symptoms, there's not a whole lot we can do. And the other problem is you're treating symptoms, you're not treating the cause, you're still going to get some of those other things you don't want, like the anger, and the resentments and the relationships that were destroyed, and the Substance Abuse and all those kinds of things. And when you get substance abuse in the picture, and you're telling people, well, we're going to put you on the medication, you know, there aren't, it's unfortunate but not enough of the doc's will say, Are you Is there a substance abuse, how many how much alcohol you drink, and every day before I put you on Xanax or Ativan or something like that, because it's a double whammy, and that's for suicide often comes from, I'll wash my Xanax down with my bourbon, you know, and just accelerates the process. And there I go, you know, so it's, it's not only at the medications are there, they're not prescribed the way they should be. They're not monitored. Again, Doc puts them on the medication I'll see in a month. And with medicine the way it is today, it may take a month just to get in. And if you miss your appointment, you may be two weeks or three weeks back, you get the next one. So you know the whole system is broken.

Unknown Speaker  19:26  
Does this conversation ever happen in a doctor's office?

Unknown Speaker  19:29  
Yes, might with I have doctors I work with and who are good, you know, good at what they do. And they will monitor and they'll call me and I'll call them and so that's the other thing is, if you're prescribing medicine, and you're a doctor, I really believe you have to have a counselor or someone who is talking to that person to help them through at least once a week. And when the docs do that, that's where your rate of success goes up. But most of them you know, they're a little more Prior to that, and they say, No, you come in, I'll give you this. Well, I don't really know about sending anywhere, everybody's got a liability issue. I don't want to send you there that doesn't work out that I'm the guy that sent you there. And the lawyer comes after me. And, you know, it's just it's a vicious circle that never stops.

Unknown Speaker  20:16  
So what happens is they you go to the doctor's appointment, and they'll say, How are you feeling? Well, you know, I was feeling better, but now I'm not feeling quite as good. And said, Well, maybe we need to up your dose. And so then that, so they up your dose, and then you're feeling better. And then, but that's a kind of a chronic system that continues to go on.

Unknown Speaker  20:37  
Yeah, it is. And as you're talking, you know, if anyone listening, should it be saying, okay, the person comes into the doctor's office says, Doc, it's not working again, the question is why? Let's talk about what you're doing, like, let's talk, so I get more information. However, now you're a doctor in practice. And you've got three times the patients that you can see in a day, so I'm going to give you a five to seven minutes maybe. Or if you're a doctor, and this is really where it gets bad, and you work for a hospital, they will tell you how many people you have to see in a day. And they're often involved with the pharmaceutical companies. So your goal is to get so that whole thing now has a business approach to it. No one likes to say that. But you know, you know, someone comes to my office and says, Well, the medicine, it's not working, and I don't go say well call your doctor, and let's get a, you know, let's double it. I'm gonna say let's talk about this first. Now, in the end, we may say, get to the doc, you know, because this medicine, your bodies metabolize this, it's not working well. But that's only after I've really looked into it, you know, we've talked now for almost an hour and I said, at the end, I might say, Okay, let's try this. Or I might say, Hold on, you know, maybe your body doesn't assimilate medicine very well doesn't metabolize it properly. You may be you may not be a candidate for medicine. And, and we see that where the person comes in, and they, and by the time I've been seeing them for a year, the doctors try five medications, well, okay, something's wrong here. Right. And that person is really getting now getting beat up on the medication. And as one fails, you're building more failure into that person's life. Up goes to the anxiety. You know, it's a vicious circle. It's a vicious circle, but it's but it doesn't have to be No, well, I want it down with the person and really open up their lives. So let's get to all the features all the dynamics of your world, your family, your life, let's talk about it. Almost always there is a, you know that there is a cause. And there are are ways we can fix that. But people aren't taking the time. And now. Now, to make matters worse, probably 60 70% of all the counseling is being done online. So now I'm not even looking at you. I don't see your body language. You know, either. It's one of those things where we tune in. And then, as you and I are talking, if you and I were doing an in studio interview today, the dynamics will be completely different. Yeah. Yeah. No. So we're losing that closeness, that that that part of the counseling experience that is just that personal part. That's so important to getting into things. So now we're complicating the problem. It's financially better for the counselor. It's easier nobody leaves their home everybody thought thinks my God, it's revolutionary. No, it is and we've taken a giant step backward in our treatment. In our mental health treatment.

Unknown Speaker  23:43  
It is really easy for me to lie to you when you asked me how much alcohol I'm drinking over zoom. Because you can see my body language you can see the the sweat on my brow when I'm lying to you sitting there and all that kind of stuff. It's it's a completely different thing. So

Unknown Speaker  23:59  
I can't see the color of your eyes. Bloodshot there, I can't see your eyes, your leg twitching, I can't see a lot of things. I mean, and when we go back into graduate school, we were trained, I mean, there was part of a class where we we studied body language and how that is going to be incorporated in the information gathering and treatment process in counseling there. You might toss that those courses out, because we're not going to see it online.

Unknown Speaker  24:30  
Yep, well, you know, and the other thing that and they will correct me if I'm wrong, because I have heard that if you in this course to become a physician, that nutrition is takes a really a backseat to all of it and maybe you get a quarter in the six years uh, you're training to be a doc, you might get a quarter of nutrition rather than in but everything else is chemicals. So Is that true?

Unknown Speaker  25:02  
It's the medical approach to studying the body and knowing how to diagnose and then being able to prescribe the treatments necessary. Nutrition is a part of it, but what we're finding is that there's a considerably more training available and the holistic approaches where we're incorporating meditation and, and nutrition and breathing exercises, those types of things, as well, you know, as well as we're using herbal preparations and natural components that the body can, can assimilate better. The problem with that is we become a culture, again, drug dependence, so that those approaches take a little longer to work. And we become quick fix. So we we do that. And we say, Well, that didn't change anything, while it sort of the analogy I always use is a diabetic who comes in and says, Well, I've got diabetes, but I tell you, I have insulin. And then when he that person wants to eat more of the wrong things, they take more insulin, you know, and I said, Well, wait, stop, you know, I mean, that's there to, to fix a problem not to allow you to go hog wild and do what you want to do on these things.

Unknown Speaker  26:13  
They've proven that. I don't know who they are. But I've seen it myself, where if you are a type two diabetic, and you're overweight, and you change your diet, and you work to get back into shape, and you really make these changes, you can actually really make diabetes go away,

Unknown Speaker  26:33  
you can take a diabeetus. Again, it's a physical thing that some people are just going to have, I've seen thin people that and it's there. But the majority of people with diabetes, are overweight, are not eating properly, do not exercise, do all the wrong things. Our culture, again, quick fix, not only meaning fix problems, sometimes Quick Fix means about I love that cake, and I love the soda. And you know, that's a fix for me. And I say to people, but just don't have it anymore. And I look at me and say that's not easy. And so what you don't go to you go to the store, you don't buy it in the store, it's not going to be in your house, and then say, Oh, I'll go out and get it. So, you know, so that pleasure principle is huge. And unfortunately, it plays into anxiety. We're doing all these quick fix things. And we don't take the time to say, You know what, my, let me let me just stop everyone and give you a psychological component we call habit formation. habit formation is habituation is normalizing the brain gets used to whatever we do, and it tries to accommodate. So it's going to accommodate addiction, it's going to accommodate the feeding the demon, all those things we do to make anxiety worse, it's going to accommodate and we're going to continue to do it. But the brain will also accommodate if we try to get healthy and we will be happy. That's what the brain does with habit formation, it makes us happy doing what we want to do. So if we change it around and put exercise, and a good sleep schedule, and the proper diet and get away from all that junk, our life will be happy the brain will adjust and everything far more pleasure than we have right now. We just don't do that. And we go into the quick fixes. And those quick fixes always lead to anxiety.

Unknown Speaker  28:26  
By the way, we're talking with thoughtful Juryo if you'd like to go find out more about him and the BAFTA books and preorder the second book which is going to be published here really pretty quickly, but you can pre order it now you can go to foster juryo.com And you spell the last name spell your last name. You can do it faster than me.

Unknown Speaker  28:48  
I don't have it in front. You don't have it in front of you. But I do Don't worry.

Unknown Speaker  28:52  
I don't want to have anxiety over the website is

Unknown Speaker  28:55  
Foster drill.com F A ust last name Ruggiero Are you GG i e r o.com. All one word lowercase.

Unknown Speaker  29:05  
That's perfect. And we're going to take just a real quick break. And when we come back, we've been talking about, you know, having anxiety. And the next part I want to talk about is let's fix it in a natural way. That can be life changing, life affirming. And you can actually be honest to goodness, happy on a Monday morning, rather than anxious about everything that's going on in the world and what's going on in your personal life. We'll be right back. You're listening to the positive talk radio right here on K K NW. 11:50am. Hey there, I'm excited that you're listening right now. And if you're like what we're doing here, you're gonna love positive talk radio.net on positive talk radio.net. Each show which is recorded live is packed with positive information with real people discussing real issues and positives. solutions that can work for everyone. I hope that you'll join us on positive talk radio.net And listen to all 340 Plus shows. I think it's worth your time. That's just me that's positive talk radio.net your home for great progressive positive podcasts.

Unknown Speaker  30:17  
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Unknown Speaker  30:52  
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Unknown Speaker  31:46  
Read Welcome back to positive talk radio for a Monday morning. I am so glad that you're here. We've got a great show for you today. Our guest is Faust Ruggerio. And he is a counselor. He's a therapist, he's got a couple of books out. And one is talking about anxiety. And we've been talking about that for the last half hour. And so now I want to set myself aside and have fosse tell us, okay, so we figured out that we've got it, we're not happy. Our life is full of stress, and it's full of anxiety. And then we turn on the radio and we are watching the news. And we get more anxious about about the situation in the world and all that kind of stuff. And then the it just seems seems like it's overwhelming sometimes. How do we fix it? How do we how do we take control

Unknown Speaker  32:35  
that people will come in? And that's the first question that let's get this fixed, I want this Adam, I want this out of me, they say the first step is almost, you're taking a step backward. And by that what I mean is we're gonna go back and get that social history that in depth life history of yours first, that's the first thing we're gonna do, I'll get all the information I need. The next step is just what we kind of concluded with in the last segment, which is, we're going to start purging, and what I mean by that is we're going to remove elements from your life, that don't work. Those could be the way you're eating, they could be those, what's going in your body that's causing anxiety, they could be toxic people in your life, there's all this all the components that go into it, that feed that then we're gonna get, we're going to define what all of those are. When when we do that, we're gonna, you know, either we're going to either adjust them, or we're going to remove them. You know, it gets most difficult when we're talking about family, obviously. But that doesn't mean that they're removed family members just means you have to learn how to set and defend boundaries. But we're going to do all of that first. Because if I try to move you ahead and say, Okay, fine, let's do all these things, while you're still experiencing and or doing all those other things. You know, we're just gonna, we're just gonna have these things cancel each other out. So we're gonna, we're gonna remove some things. First, we're gonna determine if short term medicine would be necessary. By short term, I mean, you my goal, you might deal with that for two or three months just to get you over the hump, but I'm not looking for long term, if we don't have to. It we're going to get family members in if we need to, again, if we have some things that we need to change and family members are interested enough to do so. Let's make that part of it. And, and then we're going to start really putting the plan together, I will guarantee you it's going to go physical first I get it. We're going to get in there and determine how this thing manifests, what triggers it, how it runs through your body, to your emotions to your brain, where you're trying to interpret it. So I want so I'm going to give you really in depth education about what two things what anxiety is in general, but more specifically, what your anxiety is all about. Anxiety is essentially a physical thing that hits the nervous system and just tears our lives up. But we all experiencing just a bit differently, which is why you'll hear people say, Well, no one understands me. Even people that have anxiety, they don't understand what I'm going through. Okay, I'm going to also teach you how to communicate about your anxiety. Because if you want people to understand you, and fix this, and help you fix it, then you've got to get better at communicating what's going on, the more you understand the, the more dots you can connect, the better you're going to be to communicate what's happening about your situation. And then the treatment plan we put together is designed specifically for you.

Unknown Speaker  35:53  
That sounds like a really good program instead. And it also makes it doesn't make the people that you're working with understand sitting there in front of you, doesn't it make them feel like they're being heard, that they're, you're actually working with them to attain something positive, rather than the doctor comes in? How you feeling? Okay, well, that's a prescription and see it next month. It's like, but but but you know, but so you actually give them the opportunity to be heard, so that they can fix themselves in the problems that they have.

Unknown Speaker  36:24  
Kevin anxiety causes people to feel alone, isolated, misunderstood, and kind of cast aside. That happens because we don't validate, you know, our children, it starts and I mean, it starts when we are young. This isn't, you know, just adults. By the time someone's in their teenage years, approaching 20, they already have now defined themselves as a weaker person with anxiety, who no one understands, no one's willing to listen to, and no one's going to help. So they're kind of fresh out of Hope already. We start when the kids are young, we start by the first step is validating them. We see differences in behavior, they're aggressive, they're, they're isolating, they're argumentative. They don't seem to be focusing, well, there are all these little things that brick that tell you they're off the baseline, this kid that I know is somehow different. At that's the point where we say, let's talk the child may not know how to express themselves, they probably don't know, adults don't know how to do this, children don't have that language built up yet. So we're going to just talk that we're going to tell them what we see that we're here, that, you know, maybe things aren't as good as you'd like to be. And we're, we're here here to help you. We start with the validation process, we get them to talk, we get them to talk in a safe place where they trust the person who's looking at them. And, and, and wanting to talk to them. We are affectionate. We are people who are interested in what they have to say, even if we don't agree. We don't quite say that yet. Because we don't know enough about how they're feeling to disagree. But we have to, we have to really help them define that. When we do those things, kids respond when I help parents parents come in, and and that might my child has anxiety and and she's nine years old. And they say, you know, how are we going to deal with this? And I say, Well, all I want you to do is mom or dad is sit down there and sit here and watch me. Now I start talking to the kid. And invariably, the child begins to open up. And the question, almost every parent says, Why didn't you tell me that? It says you didn't ask me. Okay. And you're looking at that and say, it wasn't that simple. I said, all I did, I didn't try to go to the problem. You can't go there, Mom and Dad, you're not going to fix it. All you want to do is make sure the child says it's safe to talk to these people. I'm not going to get judged. They're not going to try to throw some solution through some quick fix thing. You know, I mean, they're interested, how do they know that you don't want to leave and you don't want to get it done quickly. And you don't put them in a position to say, Oh, come on. Now. That's not that bad. You don't say those things to a child.

Unknown Speaker  39:42  
But but that's what that's why when you're talking to the child and the parent and suddenly is saying, Well, why didn't you tell me that is because of the reaction that they were going to get from the parent that they want to have.

Unknown Speaker  39:53  
Right? And by the time the child wants to present that they have a communication dynamic with their pet All right. And they know before they bring it out, they have an idea what's going to be said, you know, dads have a tendency to be a little more abrupt Come on, you're stronger. Now you'll get over that come on, tough it out here, it's going to get better. Moms will say things like, well, I know. But it'll get better, let's just do something. And maybe they even do something to try and help. But they, it's interpreted as the child being blown off, so to speak. So all you want to do, the first thing, and this is what we do in therapy. My first if you came to me, and you say, these are all my problems, I'm not going to say, here's the things I want to do to fix them, I'm going to make sure you feel comfortable talking, I want to know that when you're leaving the session, you want to come back, that anytime you have something going on you you're willing to come to me. And you know, it's interesting, as a therapist, given I, most therapists, you see them once a week and whatever, they all have my number they call, it could be two in the morning, it could be you know, late at night, I could be on vacation, the commitment is there all the time, I don't have set office hours outside of that hour, you and I speak, they know that it's safe, and they can call anytime. And I asked parents to your children know that. They have to figure out when it's okay. You're you've worked, you know, and you're tired, and you're sitting down and watching TV. And you know, the child comes to you and says, Mom, Dad, I have to talk about not right? Not right now wait till the commercial comes on. And they and people do this, of course. You're a child, you've got this thing. Now what's happened is, you're the child, you muster up all the courage to go out there and say, Mom, Dad, something's wrong, I need you. And they said, not now. Well, it, let's just you know, and then they, and then when that commercials on or the show is over, the parent may or may not even remember that the child came over. Right? You're the kid, YouTuber just told Look, you're not important enough for me to stop what I'm doing. You're not going back. As adults, we have to kind of get to the point where we're willing to put ourselves on a line anytime. And we really have to learn how to enjoy being with our kids. Parents have gotten into the adult self care, and all the things they believe are their rights and they're entitled to and things they have to protect everything we have to protect his or her children.

Unknown Speaker  42:44  
You know, and the thing is, is that we can we tend to forget that our mom and dad when they had us were in their early mid 20s, maybe maybe at the latest 30. And so they weren't very old themselves didn't have a lot of life experience. If they were they were depending upon previous things. And let me can I tell you a story real quick that I? Absolutely. Well, I was thinking about when I was growing up my mother, whenever we did something that was really good, she would want to not, she wouldn't want us to get a big head by he said by saying, Oh, that's really good. You did a great job, she would say you got really good, you did a great job. But you could have done this better. You could have done that better, and, and so forth. So it defeated the purpose of even giving you the compliment, because then it was followed up by a but and so. So fast forward. I'm 17 years old, I'm on the football or the baseball team. I'm playing right field. And there's a guy on second base. And I was a high fly ball hit to right field where I was, and it was way back but I had this real strong arm. And so I caught the ball and throw it to third base. And we tagged the guy out and we all ran into the dugout. And rather than when the coach came by and he said that was a great throw good job, rather than me saying thank you. I said I'm sorry, I didn't have to cut off man. Because when you're when you're at that far out. And so I was taught not to believe in the good things that I could do that were good. And by themselves. I had to add in. Well, I must not be that good because of x or or there's does that happen to a lot of folks? First of all, am I right in that? Was that? Was that the consequence of what I was told when I was a kid? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  44:36  
yes, it was, you know, and we do that to kids all the time. I have parents do it in the office where all Stop I say Did you hear what you've just said? And the kid is a pain. Yeah, but sometimes, you know if I can't get your attention by doing something positive, I'll break the vase because Maybe you want to have, you know, and then I can get you to say, you know, I'm having all the AI to listen, I'm sorry, I have I have all these problems, we just simply have to have conversations with children. That's where That's where we're going to start to fix this, I watched the pandemic, and I watched the adults behave like children, and be angry and go at each other, and everyone else in the world was wrong, and they were entitled to whatever and it didn't happen. And instead of working as a team to, to get this themselves through this, they were going at each other to, and I watched what the kids are like. And then I thought, well, I'm going to know, when 2022 comes back, if we're back in school, kids are back in school now. And teachers now in where I in this area, are saying that they want to retire, they want to get out of it. What's what has come back to school is loaded with anger, is loaded with resentment in your face fights all the time that were never there before. Country schools behaving like they were, you know, inner city, urban places. We have taught children to become angry, and to become violent, because we don't sit down and talk with them. And say, you don't have to do all that I got you hear that violence, that anger will be traced back to the anxiety they have, and how they were taught to deal with it at home. And those children will turn in to people who go into puberty and feel though that hormone change, and it exacerbates, then, then there'll be mid teens, and the social pressures on kids today social media and bullying, you know, we we are so conscious about bullying today, but it's at its, its at its peak, it's never been this bad. Kids going at each other horribly. Then those people go to college and we're thrown into a world they cannot address, we're not given the skills to do that. Now the drug abuse and the suicides really pick up. And if they get out of that they're into adulthood with absolutely no skills to deal with anxiety. So we go to the doc and we get medication. And that's what happens. That's the routine in our nation, all we have to do is stop the process when they're young and sit down and talk with them. They may still have anxiety, but we have a handle on it we have, we have an understanding, we have validation that the person is worthy of other people listening to them, and hearing what they have to say. And we have kids that are understanding how to accept love. And that it's safe enough to express yourself, even if what you're expressing is a little bit off the beaten path. That's okay. You're okay. If we started, then we're going to have a huge handle to fix this as we get as we go through life.

Unknown Speaker  48:18  
In the sad part is there are parents out there that don't think because the when they were growing up, that wasn't part of their youth, their parents didn't ever talk to them. And so it becomes a generational thing. And so there are parents that will say, No, he's just a kid don't You don't need to bother talking to him, just, you know, this is what he needs to do. And he needs to toe the line. And he needs to just do what we tell him to do. And I don't want to I don't want to debate with my child. I don't want to have a conversation with him. Because it always turns into something that I you know, I want to be in charge, and I want to be the boss and does the long term. It doesn't work very well.

Unknown Speaker  49:00  
Not only that, we talk about peer pressure, Kevin, we also have adult pressure. I don't want anyone to think my kid can't my kids supposed to excel, I don't want to admit that he or she could have problems. You know what, that's okay. Whether your child has problems, or whether your child is excelling or anything in between that person and that is a person is your child. Love them not, don't worry about what they're doing or not doing. Don't worry about whether they excel or they're, you know, they're getting trophies or whatever it may be. Just let them know that when you come into my space, I am thrilled that you are here. Everything will take off from that point.

Unknown Speaker  49:45  
So wonderful message. I hope people will listen to it. Do people that come to your practice? The parents, do you get any pushback?

Unknown Speaker  49:55  
No, I really don't. They're looking they're desperate for a solution. And when they see that happening in the counseling session, then they say, okay, there is hope, then they start asking questions, well, what should I do? And then I give them that type of advice, start there, you don't have to solve the problem. They're not asking you to solve the problem. They're just asking you to love them at all.

Unknown Speaker  50:20  
You know, it's interesting that you say that, because I know that one of the places you've worked at substance abuse centers, and and you've worked, you've worked with people that are suffering from substance abuse, my brother in law, had a cocaine problem. So they he went into rehab. And through the counseling process, a lot of things came out about his childhood, about what happened with his parents, and so forth. So they invited the parents in to talk to them and the him at the same time, they refused. I don't need to be solely psychoanalyzed by shrink, because I'm a good parent, and I didn't do anything wrong. So they didn't even go. And subsequently, that child turned into a man, that man committed suicide at 42 years of age.

Unknown Speaker  51:08  
We see a lot of that, you know, if I could just say one thing to parents, because it's, you know, I always get this, why are they listening to you, I said, Look at what I'm doing here, I'm looking at them, I'm enjoying, I laugh with them, I make I make the counseling session fun, I let them know that not only do I love and care about them, and I want to help them, I let them know that I love being with them. And, and that message is so invaluable, particularly the kids with anxiety, I'm not broken, I'm not doing things wrong, they do not need will, they helped me, they really like being around me. You know, take care adult relationship if if your spouse gives you that kind of message, utopia of oh, we have marital bliss, kid, this fragile little person learning how to navigate through life just wants somebody to hold on to, if we do that, we start the process to changing your anxiety into a condition that can be communicated can be talked about, can be accepted. And then treated from that point. It's not rocket science, Kevin has just good old fashioned love from one person to another.

Unknown Speaker  52:28  
And the beautiful thing about that is it doesn't take any training, you can do it without having a degree, you don't have to go to school to learn how to be kind and to listen, all you have to do is to sit there and listen, if you're actually listening, and not talking about, you know what, what what you're gonna say next to, to, to what the kid is saying, if you actually listen to what they're saying, you can get something done and that then every parent I think, should be willing to do that. And, by the way, Foster, I want to thank you very much for being here. Foster Ruggerio rajulio, is, uh, has been our guests for this entire hour. He's got the book that's out now is called the fix yourself handbook. It's an award winning book, pick that up. And then when the new one comes out, you can you can preorder it now and but you can, when the new one comes out, that'll be great to have as well. And thank you for being here. I really appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker  53:25  
It has been my pleasure, Kevin, it always is.

Unknown Speaker  53:28  
Now I'm going to do this. And because I've got just two minutes left or three minutes, I think somewhere in there, maybe two and a half, I'm going to set myself aside I would like you to tell the person in our audience that is still listening to you that started and with our our because this is an important topic for them. I want you to tell them anything that you feel they need to know.

Unknown Speaker  53:49  
You know what, never the best way to end this is for the adults, if you have anxiety, be willing to treat the cause. Also, try if you can to get some help move away from that old feeling about yourself that there's no hope and you know, your life will never be positive, and you're never going to be happy because there is a way through this. As far as for your kids. You know, again, it doesn't take a degree to do this. Don't worry about whether you think you're a good parent or a bad parent. The only good thing about being a good parent is to be there. That's all be there for your kids. If your kids need help and it's a professional counseling you need so why go do it. None of this says you're doing the wrong thing. This is a problem that's been around with us for centuries. We have indeed it yet. It's not that you did anything wrong. Go get help. There are people like myself there are many of us willing to listen started home by listening to your kids. Sometimes you start with your kids. And you listen. And you feel that loving your family and then starting that move with your kids fixed your entire family because everybody comes to board. Feel worth it? Because you are

Unknown Speaker  55:17  
that sensor you just said maybe for some of us the hardest thing to accept that we're actually worth it.

Unknown Speaker  55:25  
We are everyone is everybody's God's creation, Kevin.

Unknown Speaker  55:30  
And I happen to believe that we are all one we're all connected and we all deserve to have the best things in life. And if you go see fast, or a another counselor, he can take care of everybody, their 380 million people or 40 million people in the United States. He can't do it all but you can go find a good one. And do that please. A foster Ruggerio has been our guest and I want to thank you again for being here, sir. A Foster ruggerio.com. Go find him. Go get the book. And I want to thank everybody. We'll be back Wednesday at 4pm By the way, be kind to one another because you know, each other is all we got. We'll see you next time on positive