 Welcome to Shrink Wrap Hawaii. My name is Steven Philip Katz and I am a practicing marriage and family therapist here in Honolulu and in Kailua. We welcome back once again today Ken Burtness, a teacher of marriage and family therapists, a pioneer in the alcohol and drug addiction therapies here in Hawaii, a writer, a puppeteer, a consummate aficionado of the cinema. Welcome back Ken Burtness. I love that introduction. Good to have you here. How can I live up to it? Well, it's just all true. You don't have to do anything, just be, yeah. It's always a pleasure to be here, Steve. So a lot of people don't go to see therapists because they have friends, they have family. When something's wrong, they just figure they could talk things over with their friends and family. What's the difference between talking it over with those people and going to see a professional psychologist or marriage and family therapist? Yeah, the good news is that a lot of times that works. A lot of times friends and family can offer that support and help that person clear up those problems that are troubling them. And that's part of the Hawaiian spirit here is helping one's family members and one's friends. That's what we do here. And it works. It's wonderful. It's a great place to be in Hawaii. But sometimes the problems are just too big and it works in the opposite direction. As the family members try to help that person, the person rejects it, the problem is just too big. They can't grab ahold of it. There starts, you know, if there's problems in the family before that, they get bigger and if there's not, they start. And it just goes from bad to worse unless they get help. And the problem is that a lot of people are hesitant about getting help. We only reach maybe one in 10, if we're lucky one in five people who really need help actually come forward for counseling. And a lot of that's because of, well, shame, frankly, and people wanting to not think of themselves as needing help. And so we just don't see as many people as we should be. But that's getting better. There's less shame. There's less guilt about receiving therapy. People are more willing to do it. And so that's the good news about that. But we still got a long way to go. Once they come into therapy, then the counselor can do a lot of things that the family can't. But at the same token, he still has to do, or she has to do the same things that the family does. They have to be supportive. They have to be caring. They have to be someone that the person trusts and the person believes in. And then therapy works. Trust is a big deal. But you would think that why the trust within the family, why isn't that enough? Well, there's a lot of different family dynamics happening. There's back and forth, and there's a lot of different issues between families. Oftentimes there's a pecking order. There's a power order in the family. And sometimes with some families, it's less of two-way communications and one-way communications. That makes it very difficult. The nice thing about therapy is that there's always a two-way communication. That's what therapists are trained in. That's what counselors do is they set up a dialogue so that the person not only can get help from the therapist, but communicate to the therapist and tell them what they need to say. And that trusting relationship is very important for them to be open enough to tell them that. And the key thing about that trust is that the therapist is non-judgmental. And it's hard in a family to be totally non-judgmental because you're involved in that family. Right. And that's reflected back on you. If your kid says, I hate my father and you're the father, that's a problem. And of course the kid knows that's the big button. You see the movies with the big red button that starts the nukes? That's the nukes in families. You press the button, I hate you, father, I hate you, mother. That's the stab to the heart. And that's going to get a reaction. And that's one of the most difficult things that parents can undergo. Yeah, because the parents continuing to talk about parents, they want to help probably more than anybody in the world, right? Because they take it as their own success or failure if the kid isn't doing well. And that seems to be part of the problem too. Yeah. But in addition to that, there's also the enabling. Parents are great, can be great enablers. And I'm sure you see that in your practice. They want to help so much that they wind up enabling the person. And that's where we get to the split between, and I always talk about this with my students and my former clients, is you've got to encourage and reinforce the person, but not the behavior. Not the dysfunctional behavior that they're doing. If you're encouraging or reinforcing that dysfunctional behavior, you're enabling them to continue on with that problem. That's the real difficulty that parents have. Right, because they're scared. They're scared and they want to love their kid. They want to show their love. And this is the only way they know how. And so what do you do? How do you turn your kid down? How do you say no to your kid? Wow, that's a tough one. Right, especially if the kid is smart, like most kids are, splitting the parents. Yeah, oh yeah. Or blackmailing the parents. You know, like I'm not going to do my homework. It's not a blackmail, families. It's a lot of blackmail. Yeah, a lot of guilt throwing on an infant. I guess you can't really blackmail the therapist. The therapist doesn't, in the end, they're going to sleep at night whether you do your homework or not. Hopefully, if the therapist can't sleep at night, then they're going to have burnout. They're not going to be in the profession for very long. You talk about enabling. Can you give me an example of what's the difference between helping and enabling? Well, if you're helping somebody, you're helping somebody to change. You're helping somebody to change from a dysfunctional behavior to a functional behavior. If you're just helping them continue their behavior and that behavior being dysfunctional, that's enabling. What do you mean by dysfunctional? What's a dysfunctional behavior? Well, let's take a look at one of the common problems we have here in Hawaii and that's adult children at home. Today, as opposed to 50 years ago or 100 years ago, there's a lot more kids staying at home a lot older than what they were. It used to be that you got to be 18 and you left the home. Right. You flew out of the nest, so to speak, and you tested everything. But nowadays, kids are staying at home a lot longer. And part of that is economic. We have definitely economic pressures here, housing shortage and everything. So in some senses, it makes sense. But if they stay at home and they don't progress to finding their own way in life, their own home, if nothing happens and staying at home at 20s becomes staying at home at 30s and staying at home at 40s, this is not helping them move on. This is not helping clear up their problems. It's setting up a dependency and enabling sets up dependencies a lot and it's bad for the person who's being, you know, who's enabling and it's bad for the person being enabled. It's very hard. Yeah, but I mean, for some reason, I don't want to stereotype. But especially mothers, they'll say to you, so I'm supposed to put them on the street? Yeah, exactly. So that's where the whole thing comes in about clarity and about setting down specifics. And that's what counselors are good at. Counselors come up and they say, OK, I'm going to tell you and be with you and help you because I respect and care for you, but I'm not going to reinforce this dysfunctional behavior. So if you continue with this dysfunctional behavior, here are some of the consequences that you're going to face. Right. And when they continue to use that dysfunctional behavior, then those are the consequences that they have to be. And those have to be very clear. And if you're in the family, it has to be, OK, we're going to, if you continue this behavior, we can't support you to this extent financially or to this extent for staying at home or whatever it is that you set up. And the parents have to be in agreement with this. And it has to be clear that this is not something they're doing, but something that's a consequence of their child's behavior. So that the child understands that the parents are not doing this consequence, that they have brought this consequence upon themselves. And that's the big difference. Whether the kid is 16, 26, or 36. Exactly. Exactly. So let's move away from parents for a second. What if you're having trouble with your marriage? I mean, in the old days in the little village, maybe you would go to see the priest or the rabbi or the shaman or some sort of healer or yenta, the matchmaker or something. What's the difference between or even just a good friend? Again, what would be the difference? Like, we just can't get along, we're fighting all the time. And I suspect, I more than suspect that he's been communicating with someone on his phone. What happens if you go to a friend? If you go to a friend to? To talk about it with. Oh, OK. So you're going to a friend and you're telling them that we're having these problems in the marriage. You and your spouse. Yeah. And you're sort of telling the friend about it. Yeah. And the friend assumes that you're asking for advice. Right. Which may not be the case. Maybe they just need to tell it. Maybe they don't really want advice. But usually, the friend is assuming you want advice. Yes, the friend assumes this. And this can get the friend in trouble sometimes. So anyway, they share this problem that they're having. The key thing about this is that oftentimes, the friends are just adrift at this point because they probably know the spouse. And they may be close friends with the spouse. And all of a sudden, this friend is put in the middle of this. Right. Kind of forcing it to take sides. And this is a real, it's not only a bummer, but it really has the potential to wreck the friendship and the marriage when you put people in that position. So you have to be very careful. Now, if you're going to a counselor, it's a different story because the counselor is going to turn to you and say, after listening to the problems that you're having with your spouse and say, OK, let's go back to a time when you didn't have these problems. Which they put way at the back of their mind. Right. They can't even remember. Yeah. And so you've got to take them back to that. And you've got to show them that this is not set in stone. This is not a thing that's been defined by the gods that you should have trouble with the spouse. Because somewhere along the line, you weren't having trouble with the spouse. And you guys were getting along great. And you were helping each other and reinforcing each other, liking each other. You got to put them back into that space so that they can see what brought about those changes. Once you see what brought about those changes, you can start working on those changes to reverse those. The things that started to the marriage going bad are the things that started the friendship going bad. But until you know that, that's going to be very difficult. As the therapist, if you're working with a couple or somebody who's having problems with their significant other, is it always necessary to have both members of the couple there? Can you work with just one? You can. But it's highly recommended to have both. Because if you just work with one, then what happens is you affect some good changes with the one, but they go home back into that toxic environment, the toxic family environment or the toxic marriage environment. And all that good work that you've done sort of tends to disappear. You see this person one hour, two hours a week. They're stuck with their spouse or their parent or their child for 40 waking hours, 50 waking hours a week, whatever it is. And that's a lot, that's a lot more than your influence. And pretty much what you've done oftentimes gets wiped away and it gets very frustrating. But if you have both people there and you can affect changes with both of them, wow. That's good. Now, if you can't get both of them in, of course it's better working with one than none. And there's always the chance that the other person sees the positive changes in the person that's coming to you and decides, you know, I like that. I like the changes. They seem happier. Maybe I should try that, you know? With that positive note, it's time for us to take a little break. We'll be right back. Don't touch your mouse. We'll return to Shrikwrap, Hawaii. Hi, I'm Carol Cox. I'm the new host on Eyes on Hawaii. Make sure you stay in the know on Hawaii. Join us on Tuesdays at 12 noon. We will see you then. Aloha. Match day is no ordinary day. The pitch, hallowed ground for players and supporters alike. Excitement builds. Game plans are made with responsibility in mind. Celebrations are underway. Ready for kickoff, MLS clubs and our supporters rise to the challenge. We make responsible decisions while we cheer on our heroes and toast their success. Elevate your match day experience. If you drink, never drive. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, Hawaii's leading digital media platform for civic engagement, raising public awareness on tech, energy, diversification and globalism. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Welcome back to Shrikwrap, Hawaii. I'm Steve Katz with my buddy Ken Burtness, and so sometimes you were saying friends and family can help. You don't always have to go to a therapist. Absolutely, yeah. Friends and family can be the difference in so many problems that we have. Just somebody to support you and be there for you, it's incredible. But sometimes the problems are just too big and you have to get outside help. I think the key is in what I'm thinking of is that I'm thinking that a lot of people watching this show are saying, well, that's all interesting about what the counselor does. But what about something more that I can do? Something more that I can help my friends or my family with? What's something that I need to do or can do more than what I have been doing or different than what I have been doing? And I think that's real important. And it's hard. I can't even begin to tell you how hard it is to do that because when there's somebody in trouble in your family or somebody in trouble in your friendship circle, they're spiraling down and a lot of negativity is coming off of that and it's hard for you not to be dragged in that, you know? First thing we wanna do is we wanna give them some advice. We wanna tell them how to fix it. We wanna comfort them. And that's really not often what they wanna hear. They just wanna tell you the problem and they wanna figure it out, but they get tired of advice really quick. So they start, one, refusing it and then two, being very negative toward you. And we get into arguments. We get into misunderstandings and we keep saying to ourselves, gee, this is my friend. I need to stay with that friend. I need to understand that they're going through a hard time. So I will be cool, come and collected and I won't get mad myself. That's really hard. It is. You wanna sit there and you wanna shake them. You wanna say, hey, quit it. But you can't. You gotta hang in there. It's so, so difficult. And what we have, what we see in therapy is people who have burned so many bridges. They've alienated so many family members and so many friends that they come to us as a last resort and now they have no support system, no Ohana, no families to support them, no friends in their circle anymore. And they're alone and they've done it themselves. They've burned their bridges. And what do you say to them? You say, well, you burned your bridges too bad. No, what you try to do is you try to help them reestablish that, but that's difficult. And it's difficult to get them back in because they've offended a lot of people. And there's gotta be a lot of forgiveness and understanding come back in there. And that's really, really difficult. So the best advice I could give somebody who's friend or family members having trouble is to hang in there, to keep letting them know that you care and that's really difficult when you're getting a lot of negative feedback. Let them know that you care and let them know that you will support them. You will support them as an individual, but you won't support them in their dysfunctional behavior. And that's a critical difference. Don't support the behavior, but support the person. And let them know that you're always gonna be there for them and that you care about them and love them, but you don't care and love about this behavior that's dragging them down. Well, so you have a friend that keeps doing something that is not good for them. Drinking a lot or taking a lot of drugs or sleeping with everybody they meet, stuff like that. And they keep telling you about it. You don't wanna be judgmental, yet you don't wanna be enabling by supporting the behavior. How do you straddle that line? I mean, do you just listen? You listen and if they're coming to you and they're starting to repeat themselves over and over again, which is really- It's hard to listen to. Hard to listen to. I've heard this 45 times. Yeah. We're gonna go over this again. And just saying that is gonna piss them off. Yeah, it's gonna piss them off. So this is where clear goals come in. And what you do is I train my counselors to listen and continue to listen until the client starts looping until they start repeating themselves over and over again. And looping is very easy because it's just turning inside of them. And they wanna tell the story over and over again. And express that pain over and over again. So you say, okay, I've got that. And you repeat it back to them so that they know that you've got it. And then you say, let's change this up. You help motivate them to change it up and say, let's do this. And let's take somebody who's drinking too much or doing too much drugs. Well, let's stay with drinking. So you say, okay, let's stop drinking. And they say, well, yeah. Okay, I'll stop drinking. And I can do this anytime I want because I don't really have a problem with alcohol. Just sometimes it gets out of hand. So, but I can change anytime I want to. Well, okay, well, let's start this week. And they'll say, and we'll say, well, can you go a week without alcohol? And I say, and you'll say, okay, well, let's just make it easy. I mean, you don't have a problem with alcohol, right? So let's just say, let's hold yourself to two drinks a day. And we'll contract for you to drink two drinks a day. And if you can't do that, that's telling us that there's something more serious than what you're saying. That's telling us, and not really telling us, it's telling you that it's more serious. And it's telling you that you can't really stop anytime. Now, if you can, if you can hold it to two drinks, fine, and we'll see where that goes. And we'll see how that affects your behavior and how that affects your relationships with your family and friends. See if it improves it. And so you do that. Nine times out of 10, they're not gonna be able to hold it. So- Then what? Pardon? Then what? Then, you've got it down there because they've committed to this. You get them to commit to this two drinks a day, and you get them to commit to a consequence as if they can't do two drinks a day. So if the consequence, for instance, of not being able to do two drinks a day is going abstinent because you can't stay with two drinks. You gotta have that third and fourth and et cetera. Then they know that when they come in, if they haven't been able to do that, that's the next step. And they've already agreed to that step. Yeah. Of abstinence. So then you do the abstinence for a week or however long you got it between two or three days. And if they can't reach that, then your next consequence is going into therapy. Uh-huh. Maybe an- Treatment of some kind. Treatment of some kind. Maybe like an intensive outpatient. Or even an inpatient. Or maybe they even need detox. But whatever it is you set up the consequence. So they know and they're testing themselves. And it's not you telling them that they have a problem. It's them telling themselves that they have a problem. And that way, that helps get things get through. Now, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes they just don't even respond to this. But a lot of times they will. And it's certainly the way to go rather than listening to them looping and looping and driving you nuts and driving you away as a family member or as a family member, or as a friend or as a counselor. Let me give you a different scenario. Okay. So, John comes to me and he says, Mary left me six months ago. She's living in San Francisco now. We're doing our own thing. We're married. But we're gonna get back together. I got a new job in Sacramento and we're gonna find a new place together. But I'm very nervous about it because basically, even though she's living there and I'm living in here, it's like we haven't changed anything. She sends me sometimes 100 texts in a day. And when she calls me, she just calls me a liar. She berates me. And then maybe, I don't know, five days a month she's really nice to me. And it never changes. I always feel like I'm walking on eggshells. I can never say the right thing. And if I do say the wrong thing, then she threatens divorce. But I don't wanna get divorced. And she just calls me like, while I'm working, if I tell her I have to get off the phone, she gets even more upset. If I call her, she gets upset. If I don't call her, she gets upset. And John comes back every week for four months and basically tells me the same thing. Over and over again. Right. And he doesn't make any changes. And he says, all my friends tell me to just leave her. She's crazy, right? And I know, you know, I don't wanna be just another one of his friends. You know, and I try to figure out like, what is he getting out of this? Is this some sort of S and M thing? What's going on? Like, I don't know how to be there for him sometimes. Here's where drawing boundaries. This guy is not drawing boundaries at all. Oh, none. Yeah, okay. And if you don't draw boundaries, this thing is just gonna repeat itself and repeat itself. He's looking for her to change. And this is typical of family counseling, you know. Family comes in, you know, you got two people. He's saying she should change, she's saying he should change. And so she's looking to him to change, he's looking to her to change, and nothing is changing. Nothing. So what this couple needs to do is needs to, somebody needs to change first. And if he's the one coming to you, it's gonna have to be him. Oh right, she doesn't see a therapist cause she's fine. She's fine, yeah, exactly. So he needs to change. And one of the things, the first thing he needs to change is to draw some boundaries. And when he draws some boundaries, he needs to make it clear that he's drawing boundaries not to keep her out, not because he doesn't like hearing from her. One of the first boundaries should be not calling 100 times a day or texting a zillion times a day. But she doesn't follow the boundaries. Yeah, but which he can follow the boundaries. He doesn't have to respond to the phones. He doesn't have to respond to the tweets. But he needs to make it clear to her that he still wants, what he was telling you he wants, but he just needs to draw the boundaries because it's, you know, he needs to change his behavior. So that way, there's no blame. He's not blaming her for not changing her behavior. He's blaming, he's telling her that this is what he needs to do. This is the boundaries that he needs to set up. Right, but he would say, yeah, but Mary says to me, it's all about John. It's all about John. That's all you care about is John, John, John, right? What is this boundaries stuff? Well, that's when, with the help of a therapist usually, you know, he needs to come back and say, is what we're doing working? Is these 100 phone calls a day? No, it's not working because you're an idiot. That's why. Yeah, it's not working. So something has to change. And if you're saying it's, I need to change. These are the changes I need to make. If it's gonna work, and I hope it works because I love you and I care for you. These are the changes that need to happen because what we've got now is not working. Right. So, and what we really need to do is I need to do some changes and you need to do some changes, but not changes that I want you to do, but changes that you think you need to do. And if we both make some changes, then who knows, maybe we can get back to where we were, which was great and it's not great now. And all this, you know, for everybody who's watching on television, all this sounds easy as we talked about, but it's really, really difficult. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm reading my mind because, you know, I keep trying to get him to set these boundaries, right? And I don't, I can't figure out why he doesn't do it, you know? I even gave him, you know, the broken record routine because I asked him, what do you really want? He said, I just want some peace. I said, there's your mantra. Just when you don't know what to say, just say, I just want some peace. Want some peace. And so I told him then he did it and she comes back with, what's this peace crap? Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Another effective way is to have him look at the positive things that's happening in his life. Oh yeah, and lots of positive things in his life. He's doing very well. Great. And so what he needs to do is to switch, when the conversation comes up and she tells him he's an idiot, et cetera, he needs to sort of say, just sort of accept it and then say, you know what, I want to tell you a little, you know, here's some positive things that happened to me. Here's some things that I'm feeling good about. Oh, it's all about you, you, you. Well, you know, when you come back and you say to that person, you know, you set it up so that, should we say negative things to each other or should we infuse a few positive things? I would feel a lot better if we infused a few positive things. And I'd like to share a few positive things instead of sharing all the negative things. So here's a couple of things that happened to me. And I feel good about it. And I wanted to tell you that because you're important to me. And you set it up so you make it very difficult for her to use that usual retort and negativity coming back at it. And eventually the positive things are going to wear her down. Just love her to death. Yeah. And that's hard. That's really hard. Because they can try your patience for a long, long time. Well, I'm going to tell John to watch this. Get it from the master. Well, it's been a great time with you again, Ken. Thanks again for coming on. It's time for us to wrap it up. Always my pleasure, Steve. Thanks a lot. And join us again next time for shrink wrap Hawaii aloha.