The Systemic Way
The Systemic Way Podcast is a therapy and mental health podcast featuring conversations with experts, practitioners, researchers, and people with lived experience from the worlds of systemic psychotherapy, family therapy, psychology, social work, and community practice. Hosted by Sezer and Julie, two systemic and family psychotherapists, the podcast explores mental health, relationships, trauma, resilience, social justice, culture, and change. Through engaging discussions on theory, practice, and real-world experiences, listeners gain a deeper understanding of how systemic and relational approaches can support individuals, families, organisations, and communities.
Artwork by Arai Drake Creative: http://www.araidrake.com/portfolio/thesystemicway
Music by Rena Paid
The Systemic Way
The Wisdom of "Not Knowing" - Collaborative Dialogical Practice and Embracing Curiosity With Dr Harlene Anderson
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Join us for an inspiring and thought-provoking interview with Dr. Harlene Anderson, a trailblazer in systemic psychotherapy and co-founder of the Collaborative-Dialogical Approach. In this deep dive, we explore her revolutionary ideas—from challenging traditional therapy hierarchies to redefining power, knowledge, and the role of language in healing.
We’ll unpack:
- The origins of her work—What drew her to the Mental Research Institute (MRI) and constructivist ideas? Who were her early influences?
- The birth of the Collaborative-Dialogical Approach—How did she and Harry Goolishian shift therapy from "expert diagnosis" to conversational meaning-making?
- The myth of "not-knowing*—How has this controversial (and often misunderstood) concept evolved? Is it a political stance, a therapeutic tool, or both?
- Power, reflexivity, and ethics—Can therapists truly "not know"? How do we balance lived experience with professional knowledge without reinforcing oppressive dynamics?
- Real-world applications**—How do these ideas translate beyond therapy into education, organisations, and social justice?
Plus, we include listener questions which tackle the tough critiques: Is "not-knowing" still misused today? Does it risk ignoring systemic power? And how do therapists ethically choose which discourses to engage?
This is a conversation about unlearning, curiosity, and the transformative power of dialogue—one that challenges therapists and listeners alike to rethink how we engage with each other’s stories.
Welcome to the Systemic Way. In today's episode, we are meeting with a true pioneer in systemic psychotherapy, the brilliant and revolutionary Dr. Harleen Anderson. She is the co-founder of the Postmodern Collaborative Approach, and she helped transform psychotherapy in the 1980s by flipping the script, ditching labels, empowering clients, and making the therapy a true collaboration. Her groundbreaking work didn't just change family therapy, it sparked a movement that shaped education organisations and beyond. She's an award-winning author, a visionary institution builder, and relentless advocate for authentic connection. Harleen's legacy is nothing short of extraordinary. From her game-changing book to her decades of leadership, she's proven that therapy isn't about fixing people, it's about listening, learning, and unlocking possibilities. Harlene Anderson is a therapist who dared to say the client is the expert. Julie, upon reflecting on our episode with Harleen, some of the things that stood out for me was um the tone of how she spoke about not knowing. And there's there's been lots of debates and discussions around that position of not knowing, which is crucial. And we've had episodes where we've discussed that kind of you know, the Jed Smith, the 1.5 order position, and some of the tensions between knowing and not knowing. Um, and it comes up a lot actually in discussing our ways of working with other professionals and even within the field. But hearing the way Harleen spoke about it in her toward, it was such a gentle invitation to explore people's experiences rather than what I probably misunderstood was of this very rigid position of not knowing. Um, and there was something much more flexible about the way Harleen spoke about that, and in our episode she talks about the myths of not knowing and where it came from and and the development of it and some of the challenges of working in this way. But yeah, a really inspiring conversation with her, and to and I I took a lot from it in actually really having a much deeper understanding of what what is meant by this concept of taking a not knowing position and and really holding a kind of ethical position where the client is the expert and really working from there. What about you, Judy? What something that stood out for you?
SPEAKER_04Thanks, Sedda. Um, I was really moved actually just when you were doing the introduction to Haleen because it's such a reminder of how much she has contributed and given to the field, but I I think with such generosity as well, um she has such a is the tone that you picked up on as well. She's got such a a gentle and inviting tone that's backed up with so much knowledge and experience. And I mean, I I just ordered one of her books this morning because I feel like the way what she embodies, what she talks about, um that ethical stance really aligns with me as something that I wish to sort of develop in myself. And I think particularly for me, not just to add something to what you've shared, is is really at the moment I'm feeling this sort of tension in CAMS of like a not knowing how how how do you hold this not knowing position within, I suppose, within my work context where I always feel sort of drawn into needing to have certainty and feel feeling a bit more expert. So it kind of touches and nourishes me this conversation because it's a lovely reminder about who I want to be and who I aspire to be as a therapist and a reminder of ways to do that. So I hope it offers, and I'm sure it will, something of a flavor for the listeners. So I hope they enjoy the episode. Welcome Harleen Anderson to The Systemic Way. We are very excited to have you here with us today to join us in a conversation to cover aspects of your amazing career, to dive a bit deeper into your key ideas with your work and important factors in your practice, hoping to go into collaborative dialogical practice and the concept of not knowing. Um but before we get there, it would be wonderful to have a brief introduction from yourself in whichever way you feel comfortable to do so.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. I would like to first say greetings to everyone who might be watching or listening to us. And I would like to thank you and your colleagues for inviting me to participate with you in a conversation about my work. I am inspired by the idea and I feel quite honored that you invited me. I am with the Houston Galveston Institute and the Taos Institute, and right now I'm in my home office in Houston, Texas.
SPEAKER_00Nice. Thank you, Arlene. Um, yes, just to echo, very excited. I think we have to contain some of our excitement. But we we really want to dive into some of the key ideas, but I'm really, really uh kind of like excited to hear some of the early stories that drew you into thinking about collaborative approaches. And your your work is so important to systemic family therapy. And when we talk about a kind of paradigm, cultural paradigm shift, epistemological shift, the mindset shift really in the way my family therapy is is practiced, your your name is a key name. And I'm really I'd really like to know more about what that era was like and what what drew you initially, maybe to some of the ideas in the Mental Research Institute and the constructivist ideas.
SPEAKER_03Well, thank you, because my work, the way I think about it, how I do it, has been a long emerging process. And I guess I should start with that my background is in very traditional psychology. And by accident, so to speak, I ended up having a position at a medical school. And I started in the pediatric department, and the day that I arrived, I started hearing people talk about something called family therapy and saw all of these announcements about family therapy training coming up. This was new to me. I had never heard the term, never heard about it in any of my classroom or education, my readings, my experiences up until that point. So I have always been kind of a nosy, curious person. So I thought, okay, this sounds like it could be a cult, family therapy, but I'm going to go apply to this training. And if they accept me, I'll go to the first meeting or two and I'll see what it seems to be like, and I'll make a decision. I can always say this is not for me. Well, what happened was very surprising. At the very first meeting, I was extremely enthused by what they were talking about. They were talking not only about what one might call family therapy, but they were also beginning to talk about things outside of this family therapy and psychotherapy literature. And they were focusing that day on two concepts that I had really never had much exposure to. And one was, this may surprise some of you, the concept of context and multiple realities. And by the end of that first meeting, I thought I have found something I did not know I was looking for. So I continued, and I soon joined the teaching and supervising team there. And then we started the Houston Galveston, we started the Galveston Family Institute, and that emerged into the Houston Galveston Family Institute. And the rest is history. But I was very fortunate to uh meet Harry Galician, who had been with a team that had started doing a research project with families in the 1950s, long, long time ago, before many of our listeners were born, for sure. And um they started working with families because they were very curious why all the good work they felt they were doing, and this was in the days of like extended long-term hospitalization, like not just weeks or months, a year, two years, three years, four years. And people would reach a point where they would go on home visits back to their home or to their to their family or their social network system, and seem to come back regressed. And the staff would get into conflicts with each other over pointing out each other as the person to blame for this regression that had the social worker done a better job with the mother. Now we're talking about days in which they didn't even know there were fathers, okay? So the social worker would meet with the mothers. That was the family at that point. And this is the so this is kind of what I walked into. And what they did is that they created something that they called multiple impact therapy, and they would invite very similar to what you might call network therapy or how the open dialogue movement uh began to start, they would invite everyone from the immediate family system, they would invite any professionals who had been working with them in the in the local community where they were from, as well as people within the medical school who had been working with them. And um then they would invite anyone else that the family thought was important and involved with this particular family member. That might be uh for an adolescent or a child, it might be a soccer coach, it might be a priest in a church, it might be a judge that had sentenced them to hospitalization. So we would begin, or they would begin, uh, with a meeting of all of these people. And they had three team members who were the primary team members at that time representing the three major professions psychiatry, psychology, and social work. And then they invited a fourth team member to be a consultant to the team because I thought, oh, we don't know anything about families, and families are very powerful. Obviously, if after a home visit, everything's just gone to hell, so to speak. Um maybe we need kind of an outside set of ears and eyes. So that's the work that began and turned into a book and all kinds of things. And so that's kind of the history on which I stepped into. But Harry, going back to Harry Galician, he was a very curious person, very intellectual, and very irreverent. So he never minded challenging any of the traditions of psychotherapy and of psychiatry in particular, and uh trying out a new idea. That's why I said I've it's like I found a pot of gold in work that I didn't know I was looking for, with lots of nuggets, and I'm still exploring with all of those nuggets. Um, so that's just a little bit of the history that I think is important for people who are listening and watching to know that my current work has a long history and it has been evolving and it is still evolving. It's like I think the people that I trained with and the people who've been my colleagues over the years, one of the things that we have in common and have always had in common is that we consider ourselves lifelong learners. You never reach a point of accomplishing learning, accomplishing knowledge, but that it's an evolving, continuing process, being open to being challenged yourself, being open to challenging other people, but always in respectful ways, not appearing to be um a confrontational, irreverent person. But so there's always been this element of what I call humanity in the work, being very careful to be respective, to allow people that we work with to maintain their dignity or their pride. And then over the years, I began to be very curious why do we, just because we're at a medical school and in a psychiatry department, which I had then shifted to from the pediatric department, why do we think that we are any better at what we do than our colleagues out in the community? Whether they were local colleagues that we knew within the medical school community or with a larger geographical community, are the community statewide and nationwide, of which we were working with some family members. And so I began asking people: tell me a little bit about your previous experiences with professionals, whether that was a therapist, a psychiatrist, a medical doctor, an attorney, a judge in a court, a principal at a school, a teacher, whoever that person in authority was, what was that experience like? And what and what seemed to work and what didn't seem to work? And what became really obvious to me and to my colleagues was that the people we were working with were much more clever at times than we were, and that they were really the experts on their lives, and that we really needed to not only invite, but we needed to sincerely and genuinely appreciate the expertise that they brought on their own life, their history, their circumstances, their rituals, etc., whatever it might be. And that our role, we decided over time, was that we were to facilitate talking about what the clients brought and what they wanted to talk about, not what we thought they should talk about. So so many things began to evolve out of this idea of the client being the expert. Not saying that the therapist doesn't have any expertise because I have never said that, I would never say that. But I think the therapist expertise is a very different kind of expertise, the way I think about it now, than traditionally the way therapist expertise has been thought about. So let me pause and kind of see where the two of you are at this point.
SPEAKER_04Wow. Um well I'm just I'm just enraptured by the the story that you've told of the history. It's it's so um it's really helpful in a way, the picture that you've created actually in my in my mind of the context and the time in which you stepped into the world of family therapy. For me, I was thinking in a way the question that you began to ask, I was wondering what exactly it sounds like to me that you were kind of responding to kind of the hierarchical power structures in some way that were there and questioning them, and I don't know if that's right or not. So that's where my mind was going.
SPEAKER_00I was thinking about the the kind of the context and the time and the place of that it was in, and that kind of that paradigm shift, really. That I mean, looking back on it now, it feels like a paradigm shift that occurred, but I imagine it being quite different um living it, you know. Um for us reading it as a book of first order, second order, and I I for some reason I don't imagine that really capturing how it must have felt like. But I do I do imagine it being quite a radical approach. Um this kind of understanding of human systems being language and generate um kind of language of meaning generating systems and being conversational beings, these ideas being for for us now feels very kind of mainstream. But at the time I'm interested in what some of those responses might have been to you and some of the challenges, but also some of the supporters and what that kind of the what the time felt like at that time period.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so let me back up to Julie's question. I'm not sure if it's just kind of the kind of people that Harry Galician attracted, but we were not purposely thinking about hierarchy or authority in that sense, in terms of the broader sort of social political sense and that kind of equitability. But we seemed to, as individuals and as teams, lived it. And we were also working at a medical school, which the medical services, it was a state hospital, so we had people from all walks of life, and we had people who had excellent insurance who could afford to be in the hospital and the insurance, or they could pay their own bills for a year, two years, three years, or as I said, some unfortunately four years. And then we had people who were on what you might call welfare or some kind of public assistance, or they were just not charged for the services. This was a very different time than we live in now. I'm talking about when the original work began with the team, I said in the 1950s, then I started at the medical school in 19 early 1970s. So just a very, very different time. And you didn't have to worry about money or the bill being paid. Everybody was on a salary, and that's the way it was, and the staff, and we didn't have to worry if people were being charged or paying their bills. I will say that I began to understand from the very beginning in my training, and certainly have been faced with it throughout the years until the current time right now, that there was a lot of pushback from um I'll say what psychotherapy disciplines, communities, uh leaders in terms of what we were doing and what we were saying, because it was so different than what was traditionally having happened. And how could the client be the expert? Or as you said, you want to talk about not knowing, how could you how could you even come up with an idea of not knowing? But I think the important things is that that a lot of the ideas in terms of what I call the conceptual framework came from outside of psychotherapy, things that we would be curious about. So it might be that one of the team members, even in the training and then the the teams afterwards, might like I read something on the in a magazine in the airplane backseat pocket, and it was by Stephen J. Gould, who I had never even heard of by that time. And it just inspired me. So I took that then to our next next meeting and shared it with people. And so what we began doing is that the faculty began having their own seminars where we would meet at Harry Gulishan's house with his wife as a gracious host, always having popcorn and wine available. Uh we would sit around their kitchen table or a broader or larger table and just snack and visit and talk. And I think that was very important because I think that often in our everyday work we don't have time, we don't take the time or create the luxury, so to speak, of being able to talk about things that we're really interested in and things we're really struggling with and puzzling about. That's so often, at least in my history and in the consulting I do with leaders of mental health uh service organizations, the meetings are around, they're like staff meetings, they're around practical things like money or chairs or heating system. They're very seldom around the kinds of things that people really want and I think need to talk about with each other. So I have always valued outside of the formal workspace and training spaces and learning spaces to do things. So, like in my university teaching, I often have students meet with each other in what I call pods, and I use that because I was so impressed. Peer orchestrated development, that's exactly what we're talking about. Students learning with each other. So would provide an assignment for them, and they could do it any way that they wanted to, but they had to have it done in a certain time period, and they had to do it with each other, and they didn't have, and it was not something that would be done in class time, but in between class time. What would be a definition of I would say the conceptual framework in my writing, and at least to date, in my talking, I use the term postmodernism or postmodern umbrella. Because I think of an umbrella, either it's turned upside down and it holds, or it provides a canopy for a set of ideas that run through not only you want to call it postmodern philosophy, but runs through hermeneutics, runs through some ancient Chinese philosophy, some Buddhist concepts, um, certainly the philosophy of hermeneutics, and some theories of dialogue and theories of language. So they're just, but what we began to realize is that there was kind of a red thread or a theme that ran through all of these different perspectives, and we would kind of pluck them out or relate to some of those themes more than others. So it's really hard to say and give it a name. And I don't tend to use myself the term systemic therapy, that's another thing that surprises people because I think when people say systemic therapy or systems therapy, people mean so many different things. Anything that you call anything can mean so many things to so many different people. So it's like you often have to be able to more explicitly say what you mean by the terms you're using. But right now, for lack of another term, I use postmodernism. I call it a postmodern tapestry. And using this metaphor of threads weaving through and creating something, and that the threads are brought by different people and different colors, different thicknesses, shapes, etc. So I hope that responds to your question.
SPEAKER_00It does, yes. Um we I really enjoyed the paper you shared with us. I I understand it's a chapter from the Collaborative Dialogical Approaches book that you wrote with Diane Gerhardt.
SPEAKER_03Yes, we have two books that we have edited. One focuses on therapy, and one focuses on using these ideas in other contexts like education, research, organization. We even have a chapter on climate change. So that's one of the things that both Harry Galician and I over the years always thought was that there was something that happened in family therapy that was extremely useful, that was staying within kind of this closed community. And so one of the things that I began to realize is that as I would talk with various people, you know, I might meet somebody at a social reception or something, or some kind of meeting, or in a class I was taking, and tell them what I did, and they would ask questions, and they might be focused, their question might be focused on teaching, or it might be focused on research, or being their team leader. And so more and more we all began to realize that the applicability of the ideas, the concepts, even the how-to, so to speak, outside of psychotherapeutic and mental health system context.
SPEAKER_04Thanks, Colleen. Um I believe, yeah, from from looking and and and reading the the chapters that we read to prepare, um some of the key concepts were around, you know, like language, the importance of language, of knowledge, dialogue, ways of being and becoming. And I just wondered if you wanted to speak to some of those concepts.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_03Um knowledge became a real important concept and connects with this notion of the client as the expert and what kind of knowledge that the therapist has. Well, we came very interested in, we happened to bump into some of the readings by Kenneth Gergen, who I think of is sort of the dean of social constructionism, and a colleague of mine, and we read everything that he was writing that we could get our hands on to, and we began to think about the whole notion of knowledge being socially or communally constructed or created. It's not created within the mind or head of one person. You can't take knowledge from one of our heads and put it into somebody else's head. That knowledge really occurs into something that you might call a human or a social activity with each other. And of course, an important vehicle of knowledge creation is language, whether that's spoken language or out loud language or silent language within one's head as one's talking with oneself or an imaginary other, or whether that's language on the pages of a book or a magazine or a journal article. But um the importance of language and how each person, each family, each system begins to develop its own language, is what Gittenstein said, it kind of its own language gains the way that they relate with each other through language. So we begin to always see knowledge and languages going hand in hand, they were connected and interrelated. And then that began to help us find ways to think about what I call the how-tos or the practice aspect of it. So, what were we doing? Well, we were obviously talking with the people we were working with, our clients, and we began to think, okay, so we're in conversation with them. And this whole notion of with became very important, of doing something with another person. I often use the analogy of taking a walk with, imagining with another person, listening to something with another person, watching something with another person, talking with another person, rather than talking too far about another person. And we begin to think, okay, so the whole process is what's important. And how I'm sure that you have each had, and that many other people have had, the experience of a client coming back and saying, Well, I did what you told me to do. And you think, Oh my gosh, I didn't tell them to do that, or I did this or I did that. Where did they come up with that? I could have never thought of that. It's like we began to really pay attention to those kinds of moments, that there were creativity that the people we were working with could bring with them. And people often challenge that by saying, Well, what about when you work with people who aren't so bright or who aren't so smart or aren't so verbal? So work with those kind of people all the time. But I don't think of anybody like that. I think that everybody has their own stories and everybody will talk if you appear to be interested in what they have to say, and if they are allowed to, permitted to. But if but if they are invited to talk about what they want to talk about, and not what you or me or I as a professional think they should be talking about, and not only what they should be talking about, but how they should be talking about it. Like this whole, I'll say what more Western notion that stories should be told in a chronological order and that they go chapter by chapter and they kind of build. Somebody might want to start at the end of a story, and somebody might ask me, what do you do with people who just want to talk and talk and talk and talk and talk? Like I can do. And then I often hear, and what do you do with people who seem to come in and tell you the same thing week after week? I say, well, I start looking at myself. I say, Harleen, what are you missing? What are they wanting you to hear or understand that maybe you are not obviously getting if they have to keep telling you that there's some reason that for them that they're telling you. And I don't specifically ask people, why are you telling me the same thing every time we meet? I'm sure I might have done this at some with somebody, but I usually punctuate anything that a client might indicate or that I might think or sense or feel is not going okay in therapy. I punctuate that with myself. How am I contributing to this? What am I contributing just in my way of being? So to make a long story short, and I should send y'all a handout that I have on this. Um okay, so the conceptual framework we begin to think of as a philosophy of practice and not a theory. Okay, a philosophy because philosophy to me has to do more with life, everyday life, and what people have been struggling with. Who am I? Where am I going? How am I going to get there? Who am I going with? All these kinds of things humankind has been struggling with, as far as I know. And so then it's a philosophy of what? It's a philosophy that has a way of thinking about knowledge and language and how that influences how you think about people as people, as members of systems, the broader ecosystems we might think of, are a family system or a team system, and then to the to the quote-unquote individual system. So we I begin to think, okay, so we're really talking about how people begin to be and are in relationships and conversations with each other. So those the whole notions of relationships and conversations just begin to kind of surface up and bubble to the top as being important a long time ago. And they're still very important for me in terms of I use the analogy in my writing and in my talking often if they go hand in hand. In other words, the kinds of relationships we begin to develop with people begin to inform, permit, limit the kinds of conversations we can be in with each other, and vice versa, if you flip it.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Halina. I'm taking loads of notes of where to go to next. And my question is is about knowledge, actually, the knowledge aspect of it, if that's okay to ask. Um it's an important aspect, isn't it? It's kind of the mindset of the approach to be, and I think you've used the words as the critical and informed consumer of knowledge, and to respect the expertise that people bring about their lives and their context. And you also talk about um like a warning of the risk of generalized knowledge. Could you maybe say a little bit more about what you mean by that and what you might suggest as a kind of alternative?
SPEAKER_03I think that somehow, in at least, and I'm only most familiar with our Western culture, my Western culture, or the Western culture in in general, is that we tend to meet people or talk to people or hear about them, and we begin immediately to place them into categories or think of them as kinds or groups of people, whether that's a a racial, uh uh ethnic, a national category, a political category, a lifestyle category. And once we do that, it's very easy to slip into only seeing them and experiencing them as a member of that category. And I think my experience is, and I feel strong about this, that once we begin relating to that category, we are no longer relating with and interacting with that person, and we're participating in um sustaining that kind of categorical thinking that not only we as therapists can have, but certainly the people that we meet can have. Think of somebody who comes in and says, because it's in the literature, it's in the popular literature, I'm uh I am an alcoholic, I am an adult survivor of childhood abuse. That you know, these things are out there, and I don't know about in other parts of the world, or certainly in your world in the UK, but here in the United States, the advertising on television is mostly from pharmaceutical companies. And people come in now for help, and they they know exactly what they have, they know exactly the medication they want, and they know the positive side effects of the medication that they want. So that's the thing about generalizations, it's it's risky and it limits you, it can put you into a narrow box, I think. So then the other thing about knowledge that you mentioned at the very, very beginning in some of our discussion outside of this formal part, uh, is the concept of not knowing. One of the things that began to happen is that we were doing training in teams. And most family therapists are familiar with this. You have a team, they meet together once a month, once a week, every week, or every day, and they seek clients together. And often two members of the team are kind of the co-therapist, and then the other team is observing, and and then you take breaks. Historically, traditionally, you take breaks, and the breaks are private. In other words, the client, whether it's a single client or multiple people, don't know what the team's really saying. It's only reported back in if the therapists tell them. So we began to think okay, this is really not good to have these private conversations where the people we're working with can't hear what we're saying or what we're thinking about them. And this for me was inspired by my talks about people who described the characteristics of successful therapy and therapists they would like to meet again, or unsuccessful therapy and therapies that they would never ever want to see again. They often wondered what these people really thought about them. What was the student therapist telling his or her supervisor? What were they putting in their notes? So we began to think about these things about privacy and things being private, and why were things that were private, why were they private? What is that useful for? So I, as you can see, I go off on all these tangents because there's so many things to talk about. So, anyway, uh, and with teams, we would often see a family, and then at the end, you know, there'd be this long extended discussion, sometimes uh carried on afterwards at happy hour or over coffee or something. But and people would have all these ideas and all these questions, and they would want to know what the mother's theory really was about you know her family or etc. And so Harry Golish and I would kind of look at each other and I would say, Harry, I don't know. Do you? And he would say, No. So we would say, We don't know. If you really want to know that the next time we meet with this family or this client, then remember it, and you tell them that after they left, we had a discussion of our session, and that these were some of the questions or curiosities that emerged, and just ask them and see what they say. So we really began to say, I don't know so much, and just weaving in the whole notion of knowledge and knowledge being communally created, and you can't transfer knowledge from the head of one person to another. We began to came up come up with in writing about the concept of not knowing, which really to use the word trumps, which trumps the pushback we had on the client as the expert. People are still challenging that idea and saying, Harlene, how can you say you don't know anything? And I'll say, Do you know what? I don't think I've ever said I don't know anything, but I don't think I know. I may have at some point, of course, but I certainly don't think I know now that I know any more better how another person should live their life than I know how to live mine. So it it really so many of the things that are kind of part of what I call the philosophical stance, the the characteristics or the features of the work really not only come from ideas outside of the therapeutic community, but also from what we've learned just from experience, from hands-on experience. And that's that's why I think colleagues meeting with each other and getting to know each other outside of the formal settings is so important. And I encourage that with people that I quote unquote am in teaching or training relationships with to get to know each other. You'll interact in your work together much differently when you get to know each other a little bit more than you do in the formal work setting. So I have a lot of what I've thought of sometimes as quirky ideas. I once uh had a young man that I was supervising, and he worked in an agency that the referrals came from what's called juvenile probation. In other words, children and adolescents who've been in some kind of legal trouble and they have to now be on probation and have to see a counselor or a therapist. And he always talks so positively about his work. But one day he was talking about a father and a family that he just did not like. And he, it was not only one day, but it was kind of a theme throughout. You could tell he just cringed at the thought of this man and this man's lifestyle and his way of behaving and his family as a partner, as a father, as a person in the world, really. And I just said to him one day, I said, Do you know what I would do if I were you? And he happened to live in a small community. I said, I would invite him to coffee one morning, like a local, we're just a regular local cafe where people go, you know, traditionally. And he kind of looked at me and he said, I'll think about it. The next time I saw him, he had done that. And he had learned so much about this man just having several cups of coffee with him and just talking about everything, not only from family, his work, but sports, etc. He decided this was someone he thought he liked. And I even go so far as to tell people that I supervise that if you really don't like someone, I think it's unethical to keep working with them. I said, would you like to have a therapist who didn't like you, who privately thought you were a jerk, or that you weren't so smart? I just think that's unethical. So I do have some strong opinions. I wouldn't necessarily call them knowledge, but there's no definitely opinions or prejudices that I lean toward or lean into. I interrupted you, Julie, you're getting ready to say something.
SPEAKER_04Well, I suppose I was just thinking about the example that you gave of going to the cafe, and it it made me think of, you know, when you talk about way ways of being and ways of becoming in some way of is there an invitation in in some way to explore that in in different ways, in new ways, perhaps outside of the therapeutic, the therapeutic room, official room in some ways, and to invite ways of, I'm thinking, I'm going back to your um the reading that I did of the eight invitations in a way, of ways of engaging dialogically. So there's something that I was hearing and perhaps in going into the cafe that is inviting trust and openness in a different way by going into a different space that is inviting curiosity in other ways.
SPEAKER_03And I think if you really think about it, that therapy I think should be and can be more like everyday life. Sometimes people say, Well, you know, how do you talk with adolescents? Well, what adolescent wants to be in therapy or counseling? Not many. They're usually coerced into it by somebody else in their life. If it's not a parent, it's a school principal who says you're going to be expelled unless you go get some help with your bullying or whatever it might be. And so I began to suggest to people that I was supervising or consulting with, think about in your particular setting or your community or your whatever group you would consider yourself a member of, how do people relate with each other? What do they do when they're not in therapy? Can you have a sewing club, a knitting, or a quilting club for some of your clients who are interested in quilting? Uh can you go for a walk with an adolescent? Can you try to play basketball? And I'm very short, but you should see me try to do that. This was a long, long time ago. I've given that up. But um, you know, and children and adolescents communicate with other people in their lives very differently than adults do. They're not just emerging adults or adults in little packages. So I I think I think each each therapist has to be uh creative. I had one uh colleague who was doing her dissertation and on how people that she had met in her years of doing therapy who used some kind of art or art medium, and so she began asking them if she could come and visit them at their studio or one of their classes, and she began doing that, and she was began using what she was learning and talking with them in those kinds of venues, and that can be used in the therapeutic session. For example, remember when you were telling me about doing this sketch of this family what you were saying, da da da da. So I I do I think I think we need to find ways to get outside of the therapy room and in ways that we each as a person and as a therapist are comfortable doing. And that's very difficult, I found, for therapists to get out of the therapy room or outside of their organizational setting.
SPEAKER_00As well as outside of their framework of reference. And uh I understand and and I'm beginning to understand anyway, this kind of irreverent position of not knowing. A bit of a kind of I know you described it as a philosophical approach as well, but um but a political stance of it absolutely. I guess, yeah, it keeps us from marrying our hypotheses and and sticking to a particular worldview. And what I was really interested in in what you said in your paper on the kind of the the myths of the not knowing position, that you point out that in that kind of seminal paper that you wrote with Harry Goodishan, which I'll read the title, so it was in 1988, and the title was 1988, yeah. It's human systems as linguistic systems, preliminary and evolving ideas about the implications for critical theory. And the word you point out is um evolving ideas, and that these ideas will will will evolve or change and develop. And I'm I'm wondering if we can begin to talk a little bit about that concept itself, that kind of um not knowing position and where it's gone, some of the kind of perhaps misconceptions or the myths or the misunderstandings, or or the meanings people have assigned to it that might be different to where yourself and Harry Gulishin had kind of thought about it, and where you are now with with some of the ideas.
SPEAKER_03Well, in one in one translation of something that I had written, it was translated to ignorance, not knowing. Just as kind of a bold example, I'm not going to say what language or or what country published that, but but that is kind of a dramatic example of how people do not hear something or they do not understand something in the way that at least I hope I am communicating it these days. And so I have to go back to myself and I keep asking myself, how can you talk about this? How can you write about this? And so I begin to try to focus on that it's part of this larger conceptual shift. If you want to call it a philosophy of life shift, an epistemological shift. I find that people can relate more to the notion of a mindset shift, just the way you think about yourself, the world, your world, the people you work with, what you do together, how you do it. And I begin to think in terms of okay, so it's it's really a concept because there are things that have been developed in family therapy and by family therapists that I think of as concepts that are taken as techniques. For example, reflecting teams, which now we say reflect or I say reflecting processes, uh, circular questioning, just to mention a couple. But people take them as a technique or a sort of a method of something that you do, a skill that you develop, rather than the way that you think about something. So then if you go back to this whole notion of thinking of knowledge is something that we create together and that we're all participating in it. Uh, and another analogy that I use sometimes is an analogy of clouds, because where I live, we have lots of cumulus clouds and make these big puffy clouds that float around in the sky and bump into each other. And so a favorite thing when I was a child that I liked to do was to lie on my back on the grass and look up, and especially when I had other playmates around, look up at the sky, and we would see these clouds, and we would each say what we thought it was. And it was always something different. And then all of a sudden, a couple of clouds might merge into each other, or the wind had influenced the cloud, something had something in the atmosphere, and the cloud would take on another shape. So what I might have thought was an elephant, someone else thought was a deer, or someone else thought was a house, now was um a turtle. I'm just making this up. So it I think of knowledge that way. So, for example, as I'm talking and taking up most of the space in this conversation, I apologize. Um the most important thing is what each of you are thinking, what you are doing with what you bring as you meet and interact with in your own inner conversation, your own inner talk, what I'm offering, and what people who may be listening or watching us in the future might bring. Because you're comparing and contrasting, so to speak, is one way of thinking about it. What I'm offering with what you're used to, or what's familiar to you, or what you're striving for, or what traditions you're carrying on, and I think that that's important. Again, I go back to this notion of luxury and taking the time to pause and kind of step back and reflect on your work and think about what you're doing. We often don't do that enough. Then I also often influenced by John Schotter and his being influenced by Mikhail Bakteen, this whole notion of uh what I call being a reflective, reflexive practitioner, that you not only think about what you're learning from your practice, from the doing of it, or what you've been reading, but how are you carrying that forward? How is that influencing your work today, tomorrow, next month? So that we each continually think of ourselves as learning machines, creative machines, and how can what we're doing together with our clients create that same kind of process, and this is uh talking about what I'm interested in currently, right now, and certainly in the near future, is what I call dynamic sustainability. There's something that happens in some therapies, and I'm not saying it's only the way that I do therapy for sure, but there's something that happens that has some sustainability. And what is it that has sustainability? And the sustainability can be an action, what someone does in the way they live their daily life, it can be sustainability and kind of a shift in thinking or a way of talking, it can be anything, it can take any shape or form. But I think that for me, successful therapy has some sustainability, not that something in particular is duplicated or can be repeatable, or that a client can pinpoint it and put their finger on it. So this is something I'm really interested in trying to trying to understand more.
SPEAKER_00Are you writing about that at the moment, Arlene?
SPEAKER_03Well, I mentioned that term in my current writing, and I try to add a couple of sentences, but I haven't written about it because it's still too elusive for me. I don't really have a grip on it, so to speak. Okay. And I need to have more conversations. I need to have another little study project with other therapists and ask them, did they experience anything like this? And how do they think about it? And to ask clients, because I often again, it's like clients may leave a session and come back the next session and say, like I said earlier, I did what you told me to do, and it didn't work. I did what you told me to do. Oh, you did? What did I tell you to do? I don't know. I'm just making this up. Okay, so can you tell me as if I were a fly on the wall, what I would see, what I might hear? Tell me what you and the others did that you think you did what I told you to do or suggested that you do. So I not only think of learning to be a therapist as if you want to think of the classroom or the experiential parts of it, I think of it as a laboratory in human relationships. It's a laboratory for continuing to grow and develop. And I think that therapy is a laboratory, so to speak, for people we work with. And some things you experiment with in a laboratory and they work beautifully, and some don't.
SPEAKER_04And Holly, no, I I suppose you're you you're talking about it as a as a laboratory. And I think the things that's really touched me from reading your writing and listening to you speaking today is the preciousness actually of the laboratory, that space in a world actually that just moves so fast. And you talk about the importance of the pausing and the reflecting. And if it's okay, I I just want to read I think it's the last two sentences in in the chapter on the conceptual framework because it speaks to me in a different way now. And I think as you've so eloquently sort of described the framework, um I just thought it might be helpful. I think, yeah, it says, as Tom Anderson in 2007 wrote, human being is the step of a human becoming in the next step. It allows us to be a human being with another human being. I repeat, it allows us to be a human being with another human being.
SPEAKER_03That touches me now as I hear you read those words. And Tom Anderson died much too early to have really expanded on some of his own work. I do have a chapter in the book that I let's see. In some book I wrote. That Tom wrote that I will try to share with you. Anyway, thank you for sharing that. And and then do you have some other thoughts that come from there?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well, yeah, I think I think I suppose I was thinking about what you were just saying about sustainability and and the the meaning of of that word, actually, in terms of therapy offering some sustainability, the importance of be of of being able to be a human being in a space. And I suppose I was connecting the sustainability of how you keep hold of that when you move outside of that space somehow. And the the therapeutic practice to to work, or is there's an element of bit what you're able to hold on to when you move out of the space? I don't know if that makes sense to you. So I was thinking about the sustainability in that way.
SPEAKER_03It's a very important question that I do not have an answer to. I'm sorry, yeah. Um and often sustainability has the connotation or the meaning of something that continues as it is, or the major components of it continue as they are. And and I maybe I need to find a different word because I don't I don't use maybe that's something to say about it. I don't use sustainability in that sense because I think that what happens after therapy really takes on a life of its own. The therapy that works.
SPEAKER_04Well, I suppose I was thinking that perhaps whatever's created between the people in the room might be unique to them, and that is what is sustained in some way. And we don't know what that might be, it will be whatever emerges.
SPEAKER_03Right. And each person would have a different description of what that outcome was, yeah, and what someone's done, or how someone else has changed, they've changed, etc. That that's why it is so difficult to try, and maybe that's really the answer that it that it doesn't need to have one answer, one description of what dynamic sustainability is, or dynamic, whatever I want to call it, end up calling it. I welcome new words for my words anytime, just send them anytime.
SPEAKER_00Oh, sorry, did you want to say Judy?
SPEAKER_04No, I didn't know if you were gonna move on with some other words we had.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so we mentioned it kind of before we started recording that we've got um we've we've we got an idea, and I don't I don't know if surprise is is the word really, um but what we what we've experimented with this episode, Harleen, is that we opened Up um some questions from kind of our our listeners, and we said, uh are there any we're meeting with Harleen this this week? Are people interested in posing some questions to her? So it was really grateful, actually. And they they sent some really amazing questions, and um just to kind of tee it up, it was around the kind of not knowing position. Um, one you might have known some of the people. One of them was uh I should just say Jed Smith, who who said he interviewed you many years ago. Um and I I'm I guess I'm also connecting it to what you said earlier, and I don't want to miss that when you said some of your newer or kind of more recent ideas around the expertise of the therapists. It's it's within that kind of realm. Is it okay if we try and see how many we get through? That some of them are quite meaty.
SPEAKER_03We're in charge of the time, so let's see how these land with you.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So the first one is is not knowing still as willfully misinterpreted as know nothing now as it was then.
SPEAKER_03I would think by people new to it, probably so. By those who have been experimenting with being in sincerely interested in what clients have to say and being able to shift some of their thinking, it's it's not because as I say, it this this the way of working that I'm talking about, or the way of thinking, requires a mindset shift. It's very, very difficult, and it requires being in conversation with other people who are in the process of making this mindset shift or have made this mindset shift because otherwise it can be very lonely.
SPEAKER_00So there's a development to understanding the idea, and people when they're first introduced can hold that misinterpretation. All right, Julie, do you want to do the next?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, my turn.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Should not knowing always be read as holding uncertainty so that there is always a space for more to say in brackets. This is what I hope you mean.
SPEAKER_03I would say yes, that life is uncertain, knowledge is uncertain, and what may work today may not work tomorrow. If you if you think totally if you think particularly, you mentioned Julie, the the alluded to kind of the shape of the world that we live in now and how quickly things are changing. Oh my gosh, just look at that. There's a lot of uncertainty there in terms of how things used to be, and particularly if you think in terms of hierarchy and power and authority, and some of the shifts that are happen happening, and how people are able to deal or not deal with those shifts. So I think there's a lot of uncertainty in knowledge and what knowledge works for you today, and I I take that on myself, yes. What works for me today, what I'm enthused about today, I may wonder sometime from now. Why in the world were you saying that? Why were you thinking that? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Harvey. Another question, this talks about the kind of expertise in the therapists and kind of managing conversations, facilitating the kind of collaborative conversation. So the question is, what are the assumptions about expert conversations that makes the difference? What are the unspoken and unexamined assumptions about this claim?
SPEAKER_03I think the biggest or broadest assumption is that if we go to university and we study this or that, anything within the mental health disciplines, we gain expertise on how other people should live their lives. And I just think that's problematic because I don't think anybody in a textbook can tell you how to live your life. There might be some things they say that you can pick up on that are good tips that help you do what you want to do, but they can't do it for you with their words, I don't think. So that's one thing that I think about. And can you say more about that question for me? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, what are some of the unspoken and unexamined assumptions about this claim?
SPEAKER_03Okay, think of some of the inherited traditions from psychotherapy over the decades, and notions like I'll just pick on some of my favorites, okay? Notions like borders and boundaries, self-disclosure. One of the things that I learned from talking with people who'd been in therapy before, and they always wondered, they wanted to know something about the therapist. And I'm not sure that this happens as much now as it did when I first started studying therapy or practicing, that uh it was not uncommon for a therapist to say, if they were to ask a very personal question, this therapy is for you, not for me. I'm sorry. My code of ethics does not permit me to tell you that, or however they might respond. In other words, it was a client knowing something about you was a no-no. Well, okay, so these ideas began to develop in Galveston, Texas, which is a barrier island off the coast of Texas, off the coast of the United States. And it's connected by a long, what's called a causeway, which is probably at least a mile long, if not longer. So you don't just end up in Galveston, you have to purposely go there, and it had a population of 65,000. So you knew people who were your clients, or it wouldn't be unusual to go to a school meeting and sit next to someone who's your client, or to be in the grocery store and someone bumps into you and they start talking with you. And it's it's like, okay, so what do you do? It's like, okay, so I once had a client who was the director of a prominent uh cultural event here in in Houston, and my husband would have seasoned tickets and we would go, and he would say, What if what if somebody starts talking with you? And do you want me to say anything? I'll just say, I'll just say, I'll just introduce you as my husband. This is my husband, and say whatever you want to say, or just stand there. Uh, but I will not say that this is a client, or I will not say anything that I know about this person. Um, so it it's like we have to do what we're comfortable doing or not doing and deal with the consequences. That's really important, whatever the outcome of that is.
SPEAKER_00But for me, what I got from that question was about this idea that the expertise that a f a therapist holds is in kind of facilitating and and creating a space for that type of conversation. Um and I I'm I think the question was around uh exploring that a bit, you know, it what's the kind of um I don't know, what's the kind of basis of thinking that that's that is the expertise that a therapist should hold or does hold when it's a kind of really a fundamental human experience, isn't it? Conversations, but this idea of expert conversations.
SPEAKER_03That's why I think therapy can be, should be, is like everyday life. And how do you want to live your everyday life? How can you one one and I may have said this in what you read, I don't think I did though, that I've often used the term good manners, it's just simply having good manners. It's not like being a nice person, because sometimes, at least where I live, nice is not always favorable. It's like kind of nice as a I don't know if you use this term, a goody two shoes, you're just trying to appear nice. But that I think a therapist must really value the other person. If they at first don't like them, they must find something about them to like. Again, I go back to this ethical thing that I just don't think it's very ethical to work with someone you don't like. That's a strong opinion I have. I hope I'm responding to the question.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We've got a few more.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think it's I think it's me. I wasn't sure if it was the moment to to come in. I think you describe yourself as a user of discourse. But how do you choose which discourse to use in any situation? Are you guided by thoughts about what might be going on systemically in the family system or for the individual? Or is there some other reason for your choice?
SPEAKER_03That's also, these are all important questions, and that's certainly one that I don't have a specific answer for. I think how I respond to anything that's happening in therapy depends on a lot on the history of that relationship, what I'm bringing to that particular day. So if you think of a discourse arena as like a topical arena, um a headline, I want to be very careful when I'm talking with someone and listening to them, and I become curious about something that's tangential or over here off to the off the sidelines, not not in the the kind of the meat of the story that they're telling or the chapter they're talking about at that point. I want to try to really quickly think, okay, Harleen, why do you think you want to know this? If you ask that question, how can you ask it? Can you ask it in a way that you're inviting their permission? So do you know while you were talking, I'm still thinking about something that you said when you were telling me about who's in your in your family or who lives in your house. And you mentioned your grandmother and how important she has been in your life. Would you mind telling me more about your grandmother right now? Or I'm sorry, I think I'm interrupting what you're telling me. So it's it's just it's like how how if you decide you want to do it, it's important for you. Know why it's important, pay attention to the timing in which you're introducing it, pay attention to the manner, the attitude with which you introduce it, and to keep in mind that if you're interrupting a flow of a conversation or shifting it, you want to be able to go back to that or ask about that. Okay, so I'm sorry before I so rudely interrupted you, but my curiosity about your grandmother creeping in. You were talking about something that happened with your meeting with a school principal. Do you want to go back to that now? So that's certainly fine. And I do apologize again for interrupting you, but thank you, thank you, Bendy. Or whatever.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Holly. There's another question that kind of connects, so I'll ask this one if it's okay. Um we can't erase the knowing we collect from theory and experience. And while we need to be conscious of not imposing our ideas as a dominant discourse, should second-order reflexivity not include reflecting on how the knowing we collect and ideas that resonate with us, not just the local knowledge generated in the room, influence our choices in therapeutic dialogue?
SPEAKER_03I think a lot of things influence our choices. And to go back to what the question was first, the first part of the question is that you cannot disregard or throw away everything you've learned officially or unofficially in life experiences. It's it's with you, it's part of who you are, it influences you. But to be able to develop an awareness of when it's influencing and how it's influencing what you're doing as a person in life day to day, but also particularly as we're talking about now, as a professional therapist. That's important, it's it's always there, and I think connecting also with the question that Julie just posed, um is that I don't think there should be anything that's forbidden to talk about in therapy, but again, it depends that the therapist initiator wants to know about. But again, it's like, where does that come from? What's the intent with wanting to know that or shifting the conversation? Whether you're thinking in what did you say, second-order reflexivity or something?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Um, so should second order reflexivity not include reflecting on how the knowledge we collect and ideas that resonate with us, um, not just the local knowledge generated in the room, influence our choices in therapeutic dialogue?
SPEAKER_03They do. I think I think this is why I think it's important to pause sometimes and step back and think about your work and what do you value? What do you highlight? Have conversations with colleagues.
SPEAKER_00Should I ask a couple more, Colleen? These are maybe smaller ones.
SPEAKER_03It's it's uh it's up to the two of you and the time. I'm I'm fine.
SPEAKER_00Maybe maybe we'll we'll ask one more and see.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Um well it's a bit of a it's a bit of a joint question, so I'll read it and see where it takes you. So is taking a not not knowing position actually assuming that you do know, but are acting as if you don't? And as such, is it an act of deception?
SPEAKER_03Oh let's say that I'm working with the mother of a 10-year-old about something, I don't know what it might be, getting her to go to school or something like that. And she might say, if this were your daughter, if you had a 10-year-old daughter who was not going to school, didn't want to go to school, what would you do? I said, What I would say, well, let me tell you some of the things that I can remember in my experiences of what some other mothers with similar mind, maybe maybe not exactly situations like yours, but very similar would do, or what some of the textbooks might say. If you want to hear some of those, I can certainly offer them. Oh, sure. Tell me, tell me, tell me. Yes, I need all the help I can get. Well, okay, the first thing that comes to my mind is, and then I would offer something, and then I might offer something else, and I might say, so I'm not sure if you resonate or connect with, or would find any of these ideas that have worked for other people helpful, or maybe there's some part of it that might be helpful, but let's talk about what you've been thinking as I've been talking. So if you I'm not saying that not knowing means that you should withhold something. As we're talking, I'm just wondering. I'm thinking of something. And as a matter of fact, I'm thinking of a research article that I read recently. Let's say I'm talking to a couple, and the theme of fidelity and infidelity has come up in forgiving and forgetting. I just read a research article not too long ago, and in thinking about my working with you, I went back and looked at it again. And if you're interested in hearing what it said, I will tell you. I don't know. Oh, okay. You don't think that fits your situation? That's fine. Or it's making you think, well, what are well, what are you thinking about then? So it's it's I hate to say it's organic, but it is. It it it comes, it comes from it comes from the soil, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Harleen. That um thank you. I've really enjoyed you giving us those little little snippets into how you were talking therapy. That's that's golden, really. So thank you so much.
SPEAKER_03You're welcome. Thank the two of you and your colleagues for inviting me.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Harleen. We we do like to end with just a small question of your future hopes, really, and where where you would like when it I say small question, it could be vast and massive, and where you would like the field of family therapy to kind of edge towards or or these ideas, and and and also some future hopes for yourself.
SPEAKER_03Well, that we can live our lives in a way that contributes to the good of mankind. That's that's a broad, a broad thing. I read an article recently, which connects to your question, I think. And it was talking about New Year's resolutions. And it said, don't make new year's resolutions, they're just made to be broken. Think about what you can do as a single human being on this earth to make a difference. Maybe it's selling saying hello to somebody today that you've never said hello to before. Maybe it's uh expressing a piece of gratitude, but it was really what can you do in a positive sense? That's my word, it wasn't in the article, in a positive sense, that would be giving something, no matter how small it is, no matter how small the relationship is, that might help a small, small piece of this world be a little bit better, even if that small piece is your relationship with that person or how you feel about yourself. It's the problems that we face in the world these days are just daunting. I'm not sure any one person has any idea about how to handle them.
SPEAKER_00What a collaborative dialical approach would help.
SPEAKER_03Well, I think there Are some things that if therapists could think about? Okay, it's it's often like Julie, you asked the question about the political, uh, social aspect, and that I think it's important as a therapist to think, okay, what is my primary mission or agenda? Is it to be a good therapist, or do I want to participate in social or political environmental change, etc.? Just to make sure you have a sense of what you're trying to do and accomplish. And I always someone has said, I've never heard you say this before. And this is someone who's been in my teaching and training for years. And I said, Oh, I think about it all the time. It seems like I say it all the time. I always say, be modest, have modest expectations of what you expect of yourself and the people you work with. Whether that's a group of teenagers on the street corner who are homeless, whether that's in a uh a meeting with people who are labeled or have labeled themselves as some kind of substance abuser, whether that's in a self-help group, whether that's in a therapy room, at the grocery store, be modest of what you expect of the person checking you out with the cash register. Thank you so much, Holly. Thank you so much, so much. Thank you. I wish the two of you a good weekend. This is your Friday night, isn't it? It is indeed. Oh, I'm so privileged you're spending your Friday night with me.
SPEAKER_04I still have my well, I guess in some ways we're getting to do what you said is a good thing to do outside of work, spending time. We haven't got the snacks, but we're getting to have that type of conversation with you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I mean, could I just ask you one thing, Holeen? Of course. Tiny thing more, I think, because well, I know it's it's something that I has repeatedly written actually, but when you it says people live, love, work, and co-explore with each other through language. And I know you mean language in such a broad sense there, because you're including the the body as well, not just the spoken word. When I was hearing your future home, I'm thinking, in a way, the language that you use, like, is that not love in a way, the invitation to to of the way of being in some way? Does that make sense? Because when I hear you saying, you know, the small difference that you're gonna make to be modest, like the language you're gonna use and the way you're choosing to be in that interaction, is it an embodiment of would you call it that or not? Because somehow, oh yeah, I was just curious.
SPEAKER_03I don't think of it as love, but I know that there are some therapists who do, yeah. Is the first person that comes to my mind, right? Because I saw him not too long ago.
SPEAKER_04Or maybe what's the difference then? Maybe that's my question.
SPEAKER_03I I guess it's just how you think about what you do, what you want to make. I I I try to think about it as trying to be respectful, not intrusive. Trying the best I can to understand what another person is saying, what they mean when they use particular words or phrases. But trying to understand the best I can the experience of the other person.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's great. That's really thank you, because I would have walked away with that in my head. So I really appreciate you taking a moment to speak to it.
SPEAKER_03Something else to think about, yeah. Yeah, love. There are a lot of therapists who write about love. And love thy neighbor, that saying, yeah, love thy neighbor, yeah, love the neighbor. Can be challenging sometimes, whatever you mean by love, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you, Eileen. Thank you so much, and hope you have a lovely weekend.
SPEAKER_03Enjoy the evening or the rest of it, okay?
SPEAKER_00Well do your weekend. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so it's we're having a cold front here in Houston. So now I'm going to disclose that I'm going to change my clothes and put on some work clothes and something warm and go outside because I see my husband begin to cover some plants up that are delicate and need to be taken care of. Okay. You do that.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. What a best time. Take care.
SPEAKER_03Hope to meet you in person sometime.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes, that'd be amazing.
SPEAKER_03If I haven't re real recently. Okay. Okay, take care. Take care.