 Aloha, I'm Steven Philip Katz and I want to welcome you to Shrink Wrap Hawaii and we have a treat today because I have a very special guest and her name is Christine Heath. Welcome. Hi, Steve. And the name of your thing in the Big Island is the Hawaii... Hawaii Counseling and Education Center, but we have offices in Honolulu and on the Big Island. Oh, I didn't know that. But let's back up a little bit. Okay. Okay, so you were telling me you were originally from Minnesota. I am. And how did you get... You betcha. You betcha. How did you get to Minnesota from here besides taking a plane, I guess? Well, I was 35 and I was learning how to be a nice person instead of an angry person and I was kind of a... We will talk about that. Yeah, kind of a feminist at the time, hot dog feminist and I was learning how to be a lot calmer and happier and I thought if I stayed in Minnesota, somebody was bound to marry me and if I married somebody in Minnesota, I'd be stuck there for life. So I looked around and I had come to Hawaii for a couple of conferences and I realized that some of the work that we were doing professionally would really fit in with the culture here. Now, who's we? At my clinic in Minnesota, the work that we were doing there, that's based on kind of an understanding of what the local culture would call living in aloha and we would call living in mental well-being. So when I noticed that, that people were talking about that and they were thinking about that, I thought perhaps it would probably be better than like saying moving to New York City or places where that wasn't as much of a value. So you came here, went or... Not the people in New York City don't have a... That's okay, you know I'm from New York, so I won't take offense too much. But I'm here, obviously, so I probably agree with you. Did you go directly to the big island or did you come to Oahu first? No, I came to Oahu first and we opened the Hawaii Center 1985, April of 1985 and we were in Kailua, was our initial location and we have been in Kailua now since 1995 and we also have now an office in IAEA and when I moved back to Minnesota for ten years and set up a satellite there again and then moved back here and when we moved back here I got to the big island and so now we're opening a couple of offices there. So your title is a U.S. psychologist? I'm a marriage appeal me therapist. You're, oh, like me? Yeah. Oh, okay. I'm a certified substance abuse counselor, I guess. CSEC. Yeah, I'm a CSEC. So what is the name of your practice, your modality, can I call it? And how is it different than a psychologist or a marriage and family therapist? And what I would do if I wasn't part of the system that you're a part of? Well, that sounds rambling. Yeah, I don't know what other people do, but all of the people that work for us are trained in the same understanding. So it's really the paradigm that we look at people and look at helping people from that's different. So everybody would do it differently. It's not like it's a set of techniques or a set of rituals or things like that. It's like looking at how people create their reality. So it's inside out as opposed to looking at how the outside world impacts people. Inside out. I know that was a movie. But what do you mean by that? Well, human beings create their experience moment to moment. And they do that with thought and consciousness. So in order to be alive, in order to have a psychological experience, you have to be alive, you have to be conscious, and you have to have thought. And so those are the things that make all human beings the same. So understanding how they work moment to moment in your life helps you to make adjustments if there's something off in the way that you're thinking or how you perceive yourself in the world with others. Okay, I learn best by example. So I show up at your office, I called you up on the phone. I said, I need an appointment like now. And you have an opening and you say, yeah, come on down, right? And I say something like I'm having a terrible problem with my girlfriend. Every time we see each other, we get into a big argument. I think she really needs to be here, but she's in Minnesota now and I'm here. And we're just fighting on the phone with text messages and emails and every which way and we just keep fighting. And I don't know, we were supposed to get married now. I don't know if we should get married. What do I do? Well, first of all, I don't know what you should do. I have no idea what you should do. But I do know that in the state of mind you're in right now, you're not going to come up with an answer. Right, I'm very stressed out and that's why I came to see you. Because I'm upset enough, but I still know I'm upset and probably not in a good position to make a decision that will affect the rest of my life, but I don't know where to go from here. Okay, well, this is going to be like the short version, right? So I have to find out about the person and everything. But what I would say to you is that could you learn, would you like to learn to live in a state of mind where you weren't doing so much thinking about it and you were less stressed? All right, of course I want to be less stressed. Okay, so that's what I can teach you. And if you get into a state of mind as a result of that, where your mind gets quieter and you're able to listen kind of to your own wisdom, your own knowing about what to do, then you'll be able to make that decision and you'll feel good about it. That sounds great. Where do we start? Okay, well, first of all, I'd be talking to you about the fact that you were born with a state of innate mental well-being. So babies, before they're able to think really very much, I mean, they have the basic program that comes with the brain. But they are in a state of mental well-being and then they get upset. They need to have their bottle, they get their diapers changed, something happens, and then you take care of that need and they go back to that state of mental well-being without effort. So there's a natural resetting ability that's built into every human being. Now, what's happening is you're doing too much processing, like you're thinking too much about all this. Oh, yeah, all the time. Okay, so as you start to see that that's not helping you, then you stop doing that. And as your mind gets quieter, you start to listen. I would say right now that you're not a very good listener because your mind is kind of going, as I'm talking, you're getting ahead of me. You're trying to think about where I'm going to go and how you're going to apply this and what you're going to do with it. How'd you know that? Because that's what we all do. All right, so how do I stop that? Okay, so right now you're kind of in information application mode. So you want to get information about how you're going to get into a state that's already built into you. Okay. So that natural state of mental well-being is already there. All you have to do is get your mind focused right now in the here and now and let yourself relax a little bit. And what? As you relax, your mind will stop quieting. Now what you're doing is as you relax and your little brain chips in and goes, hey, wait a minute, now what should we do? What are we going to do now? And you just tell yourself to start listening because inside of everybody, we have this knowing where we kind of know what to do when we're in that state of mind where we can listen to it. When we get into an insecure state of mind, and that's one of the things that we help people to see is that the state of mind that you're in is what produces your cognition. So what produces your thinking is the state of mind you're in. So when you're in a really insecure state of mind, you have a lot of freaked out thinking. And you're trying to then figure out what to do based on that state of mind. But that state of mind is what's producing that feeling of being freaked out. So the first thing we have to do is help you to kind of see how thinking works in the moment. And as you see that, you'll be able to do that for yourself more at the time. Okay. Okay, the other thing that we would learn is to understand how your feelings work. Okay, because your feelings are just your thought and consciousness is bringing that thought to life. So you're freaking yourself out literally by thinking to yourself, listening to yourself think, and then you're reacting to your own thinking. So when you're in that feeling of stress and being kind of stressed out about things, if you take a deep breath and you calm down, your thinking changes on its own. You relax and you start listening. And as your mind, and the kind of listening I'm talking about is the kind of listening that you do when you're down by the ocean and the waves come in and your mind gets still and you're just very present in that moment. That's why I go to the beach every day. Yeah. Well, see, the idea of this is that you could actually live there if you don't blame it on the beach. But if you don't blame it on the beach, then if you can't go to the beach. What do you mean blame it on the beach? Well, if it doesn't look like the beach is the one that's doing it to you. I mean, there are plenty of fights and people get crazy at the beach. So if the beach was making you relaxed, everybody would get relaxed at the beach. Ah, so I'm doing that to me. So when you go to the beach, you calm down. Your mind gets quiet and you start feeling good. That's right. But if you don't see that that's something you're doing that's happening inside of you. Yeah, but I mean, it's a lot easier to do it there than on the subway. Really? I haven't been on the subway in a long time. But yeah, I mean, because there's all this noise around you. You know, when you're in a mob and you're physically uncomfortable and your personal space is being invaded. It's very hard. Although you made me think of a man that I saw 40 years ago was on a train going from Alexandria to Cairo, Egypt. There was no room on the train. I mean, there were people on the roof of the train going through the desert, which was kind of scary because it was slanted. And it was going through the desert in the middle of the night. And if you rolled off when you went to fall asleep on the roof because it was too hot inside, you were just gone. Right? So I tried the roof thing. I was like, no, I'm not doing this. And then there was this man. I don't know. He's probably the same age as I am now or even younger, but I thought of him at the time as a very old man. And he had found this little spot in the corner of the compartment where they stacked the mail. I mean, there was really no room for people. I remember the male guy was trying to yell and scream at people in Alexandria. And don't go in their room. But there was no room. So everybody went everywhere. And this man went. He sat down. He crossed his legs. And he didn't move for eight hours. And he looked at peace. And maybe that's what you're talking about. Yeah. See, that state of mind is inside of us. Nothing that we do or don't do puts us there or makes it go away. It's always there, but we're not paying attention to it. See, when you're in the middle of the subway and you're paying attention to all the people and how many there are and how fast everybody's going. And suddenly that becomes your reality because of what you're thinking about. Yeah. But I mean, it seems to be a paradox because you're saying that you should be in the present moment, right? My present moment is I'm in the subway with all these people around me and all the noise and stuff. Right. But whether that looks like a fun thing to do or a stressful thing to do, that comes from your thinking about it. That's absolutely. Because when I was a little kid and I used to go visit my grandmother on the Lower East Side, we took three trains. It was the funnest part of my week. You know, I would go and I'd run up to the window and get my nose black from the soot on the window and look out at the tracks. So it's sometimes they call that reframing, I guess. Well, reframing is changing your thinking after you've thought it. So it's a little bit after the fact. Right. Okay. What we're talking about is just notice that it's just your thinking. Right. And then the reframing comes after that. I mean, like if I'm on the subway and I'm miserable, I could think, I don't need to be miserable. This could be fun. I need to go and put my nose against the glass. Right. So what we're talking about is that if you don't see that your thoughts create your experience, that won't come to mind. Right. Or what will come to mind is I can't change my thinking. So first I have to take responsibility for how I feel. Yeah. That's a hard one because stepping out of the role play for a second when people come in my practice, you know, especially with couples, they're all about it's his fault, it's her fault. Right. I am in the final stages of a book I'm writing on relationships and this understanding. And it's called The Secret of Love, Unlocking the Mystery and Unleashing the Magic. Hold that thought. We'll be right back after a word from somebody else. Hello, I'm Maria Mera and I'm here to invite you to my bilingual show, Viva Hawaii on Sintek, Hawaii every other Monday at 3 p.m. We are here to talk about news, issues and events local and around the world. Join me. Aloha. Aloha. My name is Josh Green. I serve as Senator from the Big Island on the Kona side and I'm also an emergency room physician. My program here on Think Tech is called Healthcare in Hawaii. I'll have guests that should be interesting to you twice a month. We'll talk about issues that range from mental health care to drug addiction to our health care system and any challenges that we face here in Hawaii. We hope you'll join us. Again, thanks for supporting Think Tech. Aloha. I'm Maria. D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. We are the co-host of Keys to Success, which is live on Think Tech live streaming. I'm Jay Fidel and I'm the host of Research in Manoa Mondays from 12 to 1 on thinktechawaii.com. Take a look at us and learn about geophysics, learn about planetology, learn about the ocean and earth sciences at UH Manoa. You'll really enjoy it. So come around. We'll see you then. Welcome back to Shrink Rap Hawaii. I'm with Christine Heath and Christine just told me that she's in the final stages of publishing a book. What's the name of that book again? The Secret of Love, Unlocking the Mystery and Unleashing the Magic. So, I mean, that's what we all want to know about. Yeah. Can you tell me, you know, give me a little flap thing of like what's that about? Well, we listen to this tape by a man named Sidney Banks and it was called Thought and Marriage. And we got inspired by that tape and decided that what we would do is have some quotes from that tape and then have stories of couples and how they have changed and people that got caught up in different things and then have a little discussion about how understanding how mind, thought and consciousness work together to create experience helps people to have a beautiful relationship. So, you actually got people to agree to let you talk about them or to change their names? It's a combination of those things. Some people were fine with it. Some people I couldn't remember their names because they're like... A long time ago. Yeah, a long time ago. And those stories I changed the sex or I changed the location. That's wonderful. I mean, that's to me, that's how I learned, as you can see by concrete example, right? So what happened to these people? What happened to those people? Is there a common thread? Well, it's seeing that love is something that's inside of all of us. I mean, really, that's kind of the answer for what's ails the world is that we all have different thinking about life. Everybody does. And depending on the state of mind we're in the quality of that thinking can be very loving or very negative. So if people, like what I see with the couples that I work with is they think the other one is making them upset. And so if they understand that their good feeling has nothing to do with their spouse then that changes the dynamic in the relationship incredibly. Like love is not something we can give away. Really, if we could, we'd both be millionaires, right? We'd make people feel love and they would change and it'd be a different world. But love is what comes in the way, it's seen, this is a metaphor, but it comes before thought. It's what turns our brain on. It's what is life, the life energy, whatever that is. That state of love is that natural state of innate health that's inside of everybody. All right, so this was a question that I struggled with before, you know, when I was a lot younger and maybe everybody struggles with. So does that mean that any two people can create a loving marriage together? Yes. So there's no, like, there's no couple that comes into you and you think, I mean of course as a therapist it's not our jobs to decide whether people should stay together or not. But we can't help but have our own opinions. And sometimes you're presented with people that are in such a seemingly toxic relationship. They both feel terrible whenever they're together. And you don't think there's ever a case where it would be easier for them to just both of them start over again with somebody new? I don't think it would be easier or harder either way. There's always going to be a struggle. But if they want to stay, I mean I think that when people come in to see me they want to stay together. They wouldn't bother to come. Sometimes, I had a couple come see me and she said, I'm not here to work it out. I'm here so that we can separate amicably as possible. Yeah, I mean I've had people that come like that too. But they're still in my office. So you think as long as they're in your office it's your job to bring them together? No, it's not my job to do that or not to bring them together. It's their job to do that. What's your job? My job is to get them into a state of mind where they're in a positive feeling about it. So if they both agree when they're in a good state of mind that's splitting up as a good idea then that's what they do. But if they're in an insecure state of mind or they're very upset and they're not thinking in ways that is very healthy then I tell them that the first thing I want to do with you is help you to get into a better state of mind because if you decide to divorce from a good state of mind you know that that's the right thing. Great, so then do you work with them individually or together or both? Both. So some of the time you see them together? I specialize in working with domestic violence and a lot of family sexual abuse when I first was a baby therapist and that's all I did. I set up a shelter for battered women I was very involved with some of the most dysfunctional people and families that I'd ever worked with and I was amazed when I started to talk to them in a different way about not trying to manage their problems or fight fair or get through their arguments when they understood how to be in a good place themselves they were able to create the relationship that they wanted. They just didn't see it. So what does that look like when you're working with the two of them together? Well, I don't put two people in the same room kind of the rule of thumb is if you come in with your spouse and by sitting in the room together you bum each other out like somebody gets in a lower state of mind one of the things we would not do in therapy is encourage getting people into a lower state of mind while they're in therapy like they come to feel better and so I would meet with them separately until they both were able to sit in the room with each other without getting into a fight or getting into a fight. Alright, so let's say that they get to that point then what happens when they're together? Well, I don't know it's different with every couple that comes in but the idea is that they start to understand where the other person is coming from and they understand how thought works for them. So once they're in this right state of mind then they can have empathy for the other person and try to understand how the other person feels. Because they don't have all that insecure thinking going on about what the other person thinks about me. What do you point your finger at me? That kind of thinking? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, when you point your finger at me it makes me really angry. See this is a good example of how when we look at life we get tricked by thought it's like creates an illusion that what I'm thinking in my head is literally what I'm seeing in my life but it looks like what I'm seeing in my life is what's creating what I'm thinking in my head. So it looks like you are making me mad. Right. But if I'm in a different state of mind and you do the same thing I think, oh, of course Steve he's so stressed out right now. Right. Well it's that old thing of, they say about couples when they first get together you know she says, oh I love him because he's so funny and then you know five years later I hate him because he's never serious. Yeah, that's right. So to me what I would say is it's an interesting how our negative thinking gets on our eyeballs and then over time that's what we start to see. Wait, wait, that's an interesting phrase. Our negative thinking gets in our eyeballs? It gets on our eyeballs. Like you're looking at through life like when you look at life you're seeing it through the filter of your own thinking. Like instead of rose colored glasses brown colored glasses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We would say that rose colored glasses is probably looking at life in a very positive healthy way. Right, yeah. Yeah, but if you're looking at it through brown colored glasses. Yeah, when you're seeing a lot of that in your life that's telling you about the quality of your own thinking. And so to change the way you think you have to learn how to relax. Well your thinking changes automatically. You don't have to do anything to it when your state of mind changes. And you change your state of mind just by being observant about how thought works. So if you start to understand that it's just a thought and not God speaking to you. That it's just a thought that you're creating and it's maybe true and it may not be true. It may be coming from fact and it may be made up. It's just a thought that you're having. It's not reality, it's just a thought. If you have a thought and it has a really bad feeling to it that's kind of a signal that the state of mind you're in may not be very good and you might want to calm yourself down before you stick your foot in your mouth. You just said something very interesting. It's just a thought. It's not God speaking through you. Is that part of the, what you call the three principles approach? The God thing? Oh no, I just meant that people frequently think they think something and it seems like it's true. It seems like it's real. It seems like somehow I have this thought and therefore it must be. It's truth with a capital T. That's right, yeah. I see, I see, okay. So it must take a while for people to change. Actually it doesn't take very long at all. It's much faster than most therapy that I've ever done before. Wow. And like people get better very quickly because they're not... But they've been thinking this one way their whole life. Right, but when you start to see how it works like when I learned this, I mean I went to a conference thinking that it would be a better place to meet men than bars. That was the only reason I went. Is that where you meet your husband? No, no. But this guy was talking about being positive and actually I found out he was single so I was thinking about lunch and I thought I should listen to him because I'd have to converse with him about it. And all of a sudden I got it. I just had this shift where I realized like, oh my gosh, I'm thinking this. That's why I'm feeling bad because I'm thinking all this stuff about myself, about life, about everything. No, wait. Which part of what you were thinking was bad? Oh, before I learned that. No, you said I'm thinking this. I'm thinking what? Well, I was very stressed out and I was very angry. I was kind of an angry feminist and so mostly men were the cause of everything in my world. I'm not? No, not anymore. Not anymore. Those were those days, yeah. I don't see it that way. But I really, it's like it looked like I was kind of the victim of the world and people were, things were happening to me and I was super stressed out and focused on negativity everywhere. My mother told me, I changed so much that my mother told me that if this could work for me it could work for anybody. Did it work for her? Yes, actually she came in. Thank you so much. She came in and learned it. Well, if you want to get your mother fixed called Christine Neath. And thank you for being another part of Shrink Rap Hawaii. Join us again next time and thank you Christine for coming on the show. Thank you. Bye-bye.