Unravelling

Kurt: 00:00

The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Always consult with a qualified health care professional for any health concerns. Take care of yourself out there. Welcome to Unraveling, a podcast that sees the world through the lens of mental health. I'm Curt White, a social worker and psychotherapist.

Mary: 00:32

And I'm Mary Wilson, a journalist. And on today's episode, we're very happy to have a special guest, doctor Namdi Pohl.

Nnamdi: 00:40

Hi. I'm Namdi Pole. I'm an African American clinical psychologist and professor of psychology.

Mary: 00:46

Well, thanks so much for being here with us, Nnamdi. And today, Kurt, I sort of have you in a guest role along with Doctor. Pole, because for years now, this will be our sixth year coming up in about a week. You have both collaborated together on a Martin Luther King Jr. Event at our mental health hospital, the Bratteboro retreat.

Mary: 01:08

It's held in January about an hour long presentation where we use some text or speech from Doctor. King and relate it to what's happening in our world today. Kurt, how did we come to that?

Kurt: 01:23

Well, I think the idea behind wanting to do these events at all came out of, I think, a desire to recognize the work of doctor King in in the hospital. It it is not an official hospital holiday for us, a very few of those generally speaking. And we wanted to sort of take up the idea that this holiday has a bit of a different kind of intention than a lot of holidays. It sort of invites us into both reflection and into service in a way. And and we thought, could we look at this particular speech that I learned about from NAMDY that was a direct link between the work that we're doing and care so much about in the in the mental health field and the actual words of doctor King.

Nnamdi: 02:11

Yes. The words of the speech, you know, and the timing of all of this was 2021. We were all, like, in pandemic lockdown, but we also were, as a nation and maybe even as a globe, grappling with the death of George Floyd, what it meant for Black Lives Matter. A lot of organizations are trying to think about how to act in some way to show solidarity with that movement. And doctor King's holiday itself is in part a call to service and a call to action.

Nnamdi: 02:38

And then we we look at the actual words of the speech. It was doctor King addressing the American Psychological Association as keynote speaker at their annual convention in Washington DC, and he came to them with a message. And and the message was that psychologists had a long time for a long time had been writing about shortcomings in the black community, and he wanted more focus on racism. And indeed, he says, you know, that white America is is poison to its soul with racism, and they need to they need to know it, and psychologists need to study this and make this known.

Kurt: 03:09

Well, I I feel like we came to this project with that intention as you've described. I had no idea that this speech existed. I hadn't really known that there had been any sort of direct contact between the world of psychology and the world of doctor King's work, and I was immediately intrigued by that.

Nnamdi: 03:29

Yeah. For us, in our efforts to recognize doctor King within the context of the Brattleboro retreat and its mission, I think almost every time there's been some discovery of something that King did that we were not otherwise aware of. So I think there's a way that, like, when you think about celebrating many holidays or established traditions. Right? So, like, you know, we just came through the Christmas season, and whether you're Christian or not, we know about the Christmas tree.

Nnamdi: 03:53

We've got the things that come on TV. You know, we got the the routine. With doctor King, maybe, you know, we referenced the I have a dream speech or certain things that maybe come to mind immediately. But what's been interesting by setting ourselves to this idea that we're gonna authentically honor King through the lens of mental health, it's invited us to go find out what did doctor King think about these things, and has brought us into contact with his writings, his his speaking. And and this one would just just because the listeners may not be aware of it, doctor King was invited to give an address to the American Psychological Association.

Nnamdi: 04:22

He was the keynote speaker in September 1967, you know, the year before his, like, assassination. And his main point was to kind of challenge psychologists to get involved in the civil rights movement. I guess that's the broad way to say this, is that he was aware at the time that there was a lot of social science that had come out that basically was highlighting what was sort of wrong in the black community, you know, black fathers and other issues that were being criticized through a social science lens. But doctor King noticed that there was very little analysis of the pernicious effects of racism and the harm that racism was causing, and he saw this as, you know, as a real cancer in society that psychologists were missing an opportunity to study and bring that truth out into the public. And he was really asking psychologists to get off the sidelines and get involved with the civil rights movement in this way.

Nnamdi: 05:11

So that was something that I think many people don't know, and the text exists, and it there was no audio recording of it, but it was published after his death.

Mary: 05:19

And we took that text and that speech and then drew on that to talk about what's happening today. How radical was that idea then, and how challenging is it still within clinical work today?

Kurt: 05:33

Some of the images from the riots at the at the Capitol were ones that conjured some of the very worst moments of a not too distant racial past that would have been a present for Doctor. King also. Right? Lynchings and nooses set up on the on the capital lawn. It's a very disturbing kinds of immediate images.

Kurt: 05:59

And I think if we're to sort of seriously reflect on, you know, how how do we understand these things? I mean, to sort of say, well, there are political differences. That's not really what this is, I think. Right? This is this is something that's eating away at us at at probably both social and individual level that is pernicious and rooted in history and discrimination and in this thing that is racism.

Kurt: 06:21

And I think there has been a lot of scholarly work since then dedicated to that, although the field was kind of slow to catch up with it. But it's been a sort of ever increasing theme in it. And one that you hear about quite a bit these days if you go to big psychology conferences or social work conferences. Right? We're trying to understand the person in some of these more troubling contexts, not just as a sort of a isolated individual.

Nnamdi: 06:49

I think that's right. And I guess I can't I can't resist saying that part of what we would do in this in this effort is to always think about where we are in time. So I I feel like I need to mention that, you know, as we tape this, it's 01/06/2026. So just to say, this very first event that we did, the first MLK event, was in 2021. We did it on Martin Luther King's day, but we were just a week away from the January sixth riots that Kurt was just talking about.

Nnamdi: 07:16

And that was we we weren't blind to that. We we sort of brought that right into the presentation of where we were at that moment as we were trying to have the conversation, our very first conversation about doctor King and what doctor King was asking psychologists to do. So it was this really sort of powerful mixture of kind of reflecting back on doctor King, you know, while staying conscious of exactly what's happening right at the moment. He's always very conscious of time, and I think that's something that's worth highlighting about him that we I feel I learned.

Kurt: 07:41

It's interesting to reflect on the meaning of time in history. That's because I think it's there's a way in which king, like any figure, is time bound. He's responding to the problems that are in front of him. Right? And you see this in some of the speeches.

Kurt: 07:55

The Vietnam War is happening. And he's got to end, you know, all the wars are happening in the world now. It's a different context than the Vietnam War. And sometimes I think then on the other end of it, to sort of memorialize somebody, right, in the way you put a big statue of them and you think, well, here they are. You know, they're an ideal or something of something.

Kurt: 08:15

And I think it diminishes a little bit the way in which they were people like King. We're brilliant individuals, but grappling with very relatable kinds of problems. It and we can miss the opportunity to take some of that grappling and do a similar thing with the problems of of our day. He's talking to us across time. I really have felt that in a pretty continuous way as we've dug into more and more of his works over the years that we've been doing this.

Mary: 08:46

Yeah. Let's touch on that speech. Where do we go from here? And I know when we held that event, it was on the day of president Trump's inauguration. When we were planning the event, we didn't know at which point, you know, who would win the election.

Mary: 09:03

Election.

Nnamdi: 09:04

Right. Every year, we we've set ourselves a challenge. You know? And I should say, by the way, I mean, recollection of this is not that when we did the very first of these things that we sort of knew that we were always gonna do these things. So for the first several years, it was a little bit of a surprise.

Nnamdi: 09:17

Like, we did this last year. It was so great. Maybe we should do it again. And so then the question, well, what would we do this year? And and and one of the first things that happened was to try to make to not just redo.

Nnamdi: 09:27

Like, we could have just taken the same presentation, the one about the APA and his speech, and just done it again. There's there's new employees at the retreat. People would have missed it, but we don't do that. Instead, we say, well, what else could we do? What could we do that speaks to this to this moment?

Nnamdi: 09:41

And so we noticed right before the twenty twenty five MLK Day that MLK's day was falling on the same day as inauguration day. And so we knew regardless of the outcome of the election, there was a potential, I would say, racial and civil rights meaning to either outcome. Had Kamala Harris won, it would have been a certain kind of meaning that would have been very connected to doctor King and his legacy, and we could imagine a set of presentations that would have highlighted, you know, King's I have a drink. Just different things that would have led us to Kamala Harris and what the meaning of her winning would have been. Donald Trump wins, especially in light of what we just talked about about the January and the insurrection, the the news hanging at the Capitol, the imagery.

Nnamdi: 10:25

It was realizing that the Trump election would be perceived by many as a as a civil rights blow. We were looking for what would doctor King say? What has doctor King said? We came upon or or it was recommended to us. I did not know about this speech called where do we go from here.

Nnamdi: 10:40

So this speech was brought to my attention, and we began to look at the speech in detail. There was an audio recording available of it. We went through and dissected the audio to try to make it a a manageable presentation for the one hour that we had, but we thought it was very resonant with the moment. And then we did the sort of audacious thing to to realize that if inauguration day is the same day as King's Day and given the timing of when we normally do this event, like, unless we moved our normal placement of this event, it was going to basically be exactly at the same time as the inauguration. And we decided, to keep it at the same time as the inauguration and to basically have it be a sort of counter programming.

Nnamdi: 11:19

So it had a a great deal of significance. It was conscious of the moment. It was using King's actual words. It was asking a question that needed to be asked, where do we go from here? And it was asking it contemporaneously done live right at the moment of the Trump inauguration.

Nnamdi: 11:33

So to me, a lot, you know, happening with with all of that.

Kurt: 11:36

There is a lot to it. Sometimes it's even just remembering a historical moment a year away, I I can remember viscerally what it felt like. And I think, you know, we've always been trying to talk to the whole audience of people that might potentially be interested in thinking about these issues of justice and equity, which I would hope is everybody. Right? Which it's a national holiday.

Kurt: 12:02

It's meant for everybody, actually. And I think one of the great heartbreaks that we've had, I think I can say we, I've had at least, is just how sometimes we seem very far away from that, even as a shared goal lately. And I think part of what we were trying to get at in that event is how do we hold the heartbreak of not even being on the same page about being able to talk about our ideals anymore. Right? And part of what was so beautiful about finding that speech is that King kind of, it's as if he anticipates it actually.

Kurt: 12:39

He says there will be times essentially where things are going to be harder than you think they're going to be. They're gonna, you think this is hard, they're gonna get really hard. You're gonna, there's gonna be, there's gonna be people that don't share the values that we have and what we're fighting for. And keep moving. You know, choose is a beautiful word of it.

Kurt: 13:01

I choose, for me, I choose love actually. I choose the path of love. And I don't, you know, I get a little nervous wondering as a therapist, we move too far in a direction of politics? But then I read King and I think, I I can stand with love. Like, I can I'm I'm I'm good with that.

Kurt: 13:21

If I have to defend that to my last breath, I'll do it. You know? That's that's that's it shouldn't be controversial. Right? We should we should all be on the side on the side of love.

Nnamdi: 13:32

And I think that's true. And that speech also offers the hopeful idea about the arc of the moral universe, you know, bending towards justice, you know, the kind of that's that's where that can be found, the context for that that statement So it comes from from that, and we were able to kind of highlight that as well, you know, at a time again where people might be looking for hope about where where we go from here. I mean, that that was really sort, in a sense, one of the punch lines. You know? But giving us, as you said rightfully, Kurt, giving us an expectation of setbacks and feeling disheartened and making and and normalizing that to some degree and just giving you know, creating a space to to sort of say, you know, we felt despair before.

Nnamdi: 14:12

I mean, time is always unique, and we don't wanna be lulled into the idea that we can learn too much about what's gonna happen in the future from the past. But at least to be reminded that other people have suffered and have come through that suffering, and there have been better days, and all of that, I think, can be found in some of these reflections back at that era when King was alive and and putting everything on the line and knowing that his life was endangered. You know? At the time he sees he went to speak at APA, you know, that was around a time when he when he knew, you know, that that that just doing the things he he was doing was putting him in personal peril, his family apparel. One of the things I have been really hopeful in our work is that it would feel accessible to that it wouldn't feel ideological too ideological so that it's, you know, it's impossible to connect with it.

Nnamdi: 14:57

And I think King, as a civil rights figure, when you contrast him with Malcolm X and maybe some other people, King is is one that seems to be more palatable to many people, easier for people to connect with. So there's an opportunity in presenting something on King, that people's ears might be a little open. They might be willing to kinda hear something coming from him. So in all of that, we don't wanna squander that by alienating people unnecessarily. And I think emphasizing a message like working towards love and working towards justice, hopefully, as part of what we can do that does keep people, who might be ideologically in different places having a sense of common common purpose.

Mary: 15:32

I remember listening to clips that you shared from that speech, the where do we go from here, and thinking, like you both mentioned, that this could have just been yesterday that someone was speaking about these sort of same principles and truths. Is it almost discouraging just how much what he said rings true today, or it's also inspiring and helpful to see it through that lens?

Kurt: 15:58

I think personally, I feel like if in his imagination, if Doctor. King anticipated even some version of a world in which we're struggling more with things, that we'd made some progress and then now we're struggling more, I feel like I'm in some pretty good company. And that there's reason to hope that things can be better. Right? That the arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward justice.

Kurt: 16:31

That it's hard when you're in the low moment of those, of that arc. Right? And things don't feel very just. But it at least tempers the aloneness of it. And I say that as a person that as a white clinician, a white person that suffers much much less from things like racism, you know, than than than the black community and and other people of color.

Nnamdi: 17:02

Yeah. And I guess what I will say about Mary, you asked a good question. You know? And I feel like I'm of two minds. You know?

Nnamdi: 17:08

On the on the one hand, I think that this opportunity to look back into history, one thing about it is that it I guess I was talking about the the low points and the highlighting of the low points, but also it shows us that we have in the past come through those low points to better places. And I think there's a certain amount of holding us accountable for the future. You know, I'm particularly proud of the one that we did on the I have a dream speech in part because, again, with our consciousness of history, it turns out that the year we were giving that presentation on King's I have a dream speech was the sixtieth anniversary of his I I have a dream speech. And King, when he gave that speech, gave it on the hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. And it's given at the foot of, you know, the statue of of Abraham Lincoln, and it's given as a kind of report card to the nation of where are we on race relations.

Nnamdi: 18:01

And he goes back to what Lincoln had promised in Emancipation Proclamation. Where are we essentially a hundred years later? And so and, of course, it's a speech that has that is critical of how much more we have to do. But King would have noted the progress, the things that were that were better in 1963 than they were in 1863. Right?

Nnamdi: 18:19

And so I I say this now, and answer to your question is that one can find encouragement in seeing that combination of being dissatisfied. And in fact, the let us be dissatisfied is one of the real chants that are parts of his where do we go from here speech is that he's, you know, he's acknowledging all of the of the negative of where we are, but also noting that, you know, we've come a long way. We should expect setbacks, and and we're we seem to be in one. But there's still this idea through the examination of history of the possibility of a better tomorrow. And I think that possibility is one that I I prefer to lean into, you know, in these conversations.

Mary: 18:57

Yeah. And your presentation on the I have a dream speech, which unlike some of the other texts from MLK is very well known, but maybe people have just listened to that speech or they know the words. How did we try to invite people to, you know, not just listen, but reflect on our own lives and participate too?

Nnamdi: 19:20

Yeah. So we basically invited, you know, staff at the hospital to to sort of articulate their own dream, ascent their own sort of social justice dreams. So realizing that this language from King has lived on in for such a long time because people really resonate with this this vision for the future that he offered. And we thought a way to kinda get other people on this is to ask ask them to think about their own vision. So it was kind of this recognition about you know, to help people to feel some sense of connection to him and to articulate that.

Nnamdi: 19:49

And that that led many people to feel free to bring up social justice topics outside of race. You know, for some people, they're looking for a social justice more around sexual orientation or gender identity issues, and that that was an invitation for people to articulate those kinds of dreams for the future they'd like to see.

Kurt: 20:08

Yeah. I think it felt like a a natural development of the cycle of reflections and and action that we were promoting here. By moving a little bit into, you know, away from just admiration of the idea of a speech. I think that we if you really dig into the words of that speech, there's a lot more in it than the I have a dream line, right? I mean, there are those that have said that it's really the uncashed check speech.

Kurt: 20:38

You know, there's a other great line. And that's been a little bit dampened down by my history for whatever reason. It's sort of like I'm showing up here on the Capitol to say what is this legacy of the Emancipation Proclamation? There is still work to be done here. And it was a moment of action.

Kurt: 21:00

Right? Not just vision. Vision is important but maybe insufficient. And I think one can linger too long in passive admiration of King's work. And taking it up doesn't necessarily have to look like a grand social project for the individual.

Kurt: 21:17

It can look like a conversation among colleagues that's personal and immediate and sincerely felt.

Mary: 21:23

And can we touch on how clinicians can address racism or bias in therapy? Does it cross a professional boundary? How would you interpret doctor King's call to tell it like it is when applied to those relationships?

Nnamdi: 21:40

Yeah. Surprisingly controversial and maybe to some outside the field, but I think within the field, as part of our professional expectations, you know, we that there's a lot of things about that would lead us often not to feel free to confront signs of bigotry in in our clients. Those are things kinda what you're what you're asking about. Right? So so part of that is not therapists are often trained not to self disclose about lots of things, including our political views.

Nnamdi: 22:11

Another thing is that we are in the habit of being very accepting. And and, know, Carl Rogers and others taught us about the importance of acceptance or accepting them regardless of behaviors that they do that the rest of the world might reject them for, whether it be any number of socially stigmatized behaviors. We therapists are in the business like like priests of of accepting people and making them feel welcome, all all people. And that's dear to us. Like, you know, it's not like that's that's not just we're not pretending that that we see that that's an important part of our role.

Nnamdi: 22:39

So I think when we see bigotry or something like that, it's easy to kinda put that in the same bin with all these other things. Just one more set of behaviors that, yes, the rest the world rejects, but we we have to be the safe harbor for that. On the other hand, you know, do we miss an opportunity, especially in the context of the world that we live in, to you know, maybe we should address things like this. And and and I would say where it's come up in my own clinical work is where I see a ready connection between the clients, say, speaking of bigotry and other problems that they have presented that they wanna talk to me about it. And they may not see that connection, but one of my jobs as a therapist is to help clients see connections where they don't see them.

Nnamdi: 23:17

It's not unusual for clients to come in complaining about dissatisfactions in their social, their personal lives, relationships that aren't working, kids who don't talk to them properly or spouses, and sometimes the way that they come across interpersonally, including their bigotry. It's it's a part of a way of being that's off putting. And you as a therapist might be in a position to help them with that in a in a nonjudgmental way using the same skills that we do, but your choice to let do you let it go, or do you act on it? Always having the rule of letting it go, I think, is is not tenable. I think that we need to critically examine it and ask ourselves, is this something we should comment on, intervene with?

Nnamdi: 23:55

If so, to what end? All the same reflection we would always do in our work needs to be brought to this topic. It shouldn't be one that is just off limits, I would say, anymore.

Kurt: 24:05

You know, I was thinking back to the address to the the psychologists. Right? It was actually a group really of psychologist researchers about what are they studying and what are they looking for. One thing that we've done in the field is that we've studied these things more. How does how does racism impact people?

Kurt: 24:24

How does it impact people who are white? How does it impact people who are not white? How does it impact people who are something other than either of those things? Right? And it turns out that it's quite complicated.

Kurt: 24:36

But it isn't something that we can, that we have to shrug our shoulders about. We know that it has some effects, right? If you are in a targeted group, sort of a group in a one down position experiencing racism, you're much more likely to experience a variety of health outcomes and increasingly mental health outcomes that are really quite significant. And so if we're serious about trying to understand how does the world that we live in, how does the mind that we have, how do we take the best care of it in the body that the mind exists in, And all of those things. And we have to look at the things that are affecting it.

Kurt: 25:16

Right? And and sometimes there are these things that are easy to see but hard to point to, I guess you could kind of say. Like, they're around, but where where is it? How is it affecting the individual? But that we know that it is.

Kurt: 25:28

And we know increasingly more about how it is. And so if we if we sort of stick our head in the sand and don't pay attention to that, how helpful are we going to be for folks that are experiencing that? And also, by the way, there is some real evidence that if you are a person suffering from having a lot of really racist beliefs, that's probably not great for you either. Right? And a famous psychiatrist, Alvin Poisson, he used to make the argument that extreme versions of that should be considered mental illness actually.

Kurt: 26:01

That like if you're walking around so filled with hate and fear that you can't see straight and it makes you want to hurt other people, that's probably not a sign of health. Right? He didn't persuade the American Psychiatric Association, but he tried in sincerity to persuade them. And I think it wasn't a bad argument. Right?

Kurt: 26:23

And so this is probably something kinda in the water that's affecting all of us negatively. And I think that that that should give us permission to notice it and and talk about it with our professional hats on.

Nnamdi: 26:35

Yeah. The thing that I love of that, and I think I I'll just add the coming back to the phrase tell it like it is. Right? Just so I I very much love King sort of putting that before scientists who put a great deal of value in pursuing truth. So I think that would that would have been very good bait for them because, you know, it to to realize the if you know something is true and you're not be you're not being honest about it, you know, are you a good scientist?

Nnamdi: 26:59

And I guess we can ask ourselves something similar as as clinicians. Truth for us matters too, helping helping clients have insights. So so what does it mean if we're actively concealing an opinion about a client or something about the way they're behaving that we think is negative, but we're not talking about it because it's politically incorrect to talk about it. You in a sense, telling it like it is, you know, can be relieving for the client. How you do it and under what circumstances, with what rationale so that it feels to the client, not like your political agenda you're imposing on them, but rather a helpful shift of reference.

Nnamdi: 27:32

Sometimes in like, again, for me as a black psychologist, you know, when I work with folks who are outside my racial group, kind of the experience they have with me, might shift some of their thinking about racial prejudice and bias. So, again, being realizing you have a unique position with as a clinician, you you don't wanna abuse it, misuse it, and yet you also don't wanna fail to take the opportunity. There are lot of ills in our society, and and clinicians may be uniquely positioned to help people steer them in the direction of love and compassion, to help them work through some of their beliefs that, you know, that might be harmful to them and to society. So, again, just opening this topic up for potential clinical exploration, really getting away from the it's taboo thing.

Mary: 28:18

Nnamdi, I know that you, along with the DEI committee, have been working on crafting this year's presentation for MLK Day, and the topic is derogatory speech. Can you tell us a bit about why you came to that topic and maybe what we can learn about that topic from doctor King's work?

Nnamdi: 28:39

Yeah. So what I'll say is that we we at the retreat, you know, in our work have have been wanting to work on the problem of derogatory speech, and it's connected to what I was just talking about, like the the bigoted remark from the client. But the way I talked about it, I was envisioning an outpatient situation in private practice where somebody's talking about something and starts using, you know, slurs. What's happening more at the retreat, and not just the retreat, but many other psychiatric hospitals, is when you're in the inpatient facilities where you have people who, you know, who live there, have more serious mental illness, who may have more significant issues with, you know, reality testing and impulse control and things like that, there is use of derogatory speech from patients and clients to staff, like calling name calling, And it may be in a special concern if there are staff of color who are, say, traveling nurses who may be working the overnight shift. I mean, there's lots of kinds of situations that make this more likely to happen.

Nnamdi: 29:39

And so, again, it's not unique to the retreat. This is something I'm learning through looking at the national research as a problem in many settings. So so it's come up, and it's something that we we wanna sort of do something about. And so we wanna organize our understanding about what causes it and all these other things, but we've we saw the MLK presentation this year as an opportunity to put these two topics together. So so we were working on derogatory speech separate from MLK, but now we wanna put the two together.

Nnamdi: 30:07

And just like I've been describing to you, Mary, we went to go look to see did doctor King have anything to say about this topic? And we found that indeed, there was a letter that he wrote in about sixty years ago where he explicitly talked about his views about the n word and it the harm that it causes and why it's different than other kinds of racialized words you might use. So, you know, I won't go through all the details, but his basic point is that is that this word, you know, is harmful compared to just simply calling somebody black or dark skinned or something like that. Okay. So we wanna then use doctor King's actual words, and I'll I'll be able to show in my presentation a copy of the letter that he wrote, which we have you know, the Internet has made it made it possible for us to be able to show that letter with his signature on it, describing his his views.

Nnamdi: 30:55

And that will be how we set up our conversation about derogatory speech, what King would have thought about it, and then how we at the retreat might honor his legacy, his views, which are quite in line with, you know, what we're thinking about these days that those that language is is harmful and something we wanted we want to figure out how to minimize the presence of that language, e even acknowledging that for many clients, they've got very poor control over what they say and do. And so we wanna do so in a mentally health conscious way, and yet also not just accept it as as something that just has to be, what can you do about it?

Mary: 31:34

Kurt, is this a topic that you think will resonate with the people in the mental health field?

Kurt: 31:40

I hope so. I think it's I think it's an interesting topic because, you know, in a place where we have inpatient units or a lot of folks maybe with certain kinds of problems with disinhibition or reality testing or, you know, that where certain kinds of behaviors might be more common. You might see these things and yet there, it hasn't been talked about in people's education and training nearly as much as you might imagine, assuming it's not new problem? What's the impact of people hearing these kinds of of assaults on their basic identity with these words? And perhaps over and over again.

Kurt: 32:24

I can remember it from when I worked in long term care back in Chicago a long time ago before I went to graduate school that sometimes people would use this language in the context of perhaps having a mental health problem. And we're not always so amenable to correcting or discussing that or understanding the impact of it. And it and it created real stresses on especially my my colleagues of color that were on the on the other side of that. It was a thing that we talked about at that time. But then I also think when people use certain kinds of language in the context of a therapy session, depending on whether or not the therapist addresses it and how they address it, is what mean does and what impact does it have?

Kurt: 33:11

And is it something that we bring up and talk about proactively as therapists? You know, I think we probably should think about the language choices on the part of our patients and things like that. But it's a kind of complicated and subtle thing sometimes. So as to sort of know exactly what to do and to have I think the skill to to do it well and in a way that that is both sort of socially aware and conscious, but still sort of puts the centers the person that we're trying to help also. So I really I'm really looking forward to it.

Kurt: 33:43

I think I'll learn I'll learn a lot myself from from this.

Nnamdi: 33:47

I agree. And I think in what we're trying to do with this upcoming MLK presentation, a piece of it certainly will be about how to protect and take care of staff who are on the receiving end. So I I just wanna highlight that. So in the in the case of the so called the client who says something bigoted in outpatient therapy, you know, there's a question about, like, intervening with that person, do you or do you not. But in the inpatient situation, it's like it might be that the intervention for for the person who's saying these things may be limited given their ability to control themselves, but it's raising consciousness about the potential harm for staff and not just staff of color.

Nnamdi: 34:20

I I I just wanna say that a lot of the complaints that we've heard about this come from, you know, white staff who don't wanna be in an environment where they hear that kind of language. So seeing it as kind of something that is that creates a negative workplace environment and and and so so this is very much brings it to, like, the mental health profession. How do we take care of our staff, our colleagues, you know, when this goes on, even if it even if this is a kind of occupational hazard, even if this is something that is going to happen, how do we make sure that we that we are sensitive to it in a way that people are as taken care of as possible in this situation?

Mary: 34:53

And yet another example of finding one of these historical texts and sort of matching the moment to an issue that we're dealing with today. I know neither of you have claimed to be experts on Martin Luther King, Jr, but if you were to sort of try to enter his mind and speak to mental health professionals in this day and age, in 2026, what do you think he would urge us to do differently with our clients, with the people we serve, our institutions, and ourselves?

Kurt: 35:27

I think the mental health professions have an ability to be the possibility of being a real force for good in the world. Maybe not just at the individual level, but as we accumulate a lot of knowledge about how things really work in society, across groups, including navigating the ways that we're affected by society. That we have some knowledge that if we could get it out there in subtle ways like through psychotherapy, someone comes to us with a problem and we can help them understand their problem. Or through education about, hey, this is what the research tells us about how things work. And maybe we could have a different way of approaching things at a collective level that make things better.

Kurt: 36:28

That it has that potential for good. But I think there's also a potential for harm. Right? There's a potential that the same ills of society that are oppressive become entrenched in the field. And that we, through ignorance or through not being sort of oriented to things at multiple levels of inference, like social levels, understanding things like racism, that we trample on people's, you know, I guess on their will and their sort of ability to self actualize, perhaps even if they've asked us for help.

Kurt: 37:07

And I think that's a that's a risk that should should weigh heavy on us at the same and that if we could but I think what I've learned from the writings asking us to hold both the ideal and our failure up to this point to live up to that ideal. And that if we can do that and and live in reality, we we we might yet do some good.

Nnamdi: 37:30

Yeah. Well said. You know, I again, I think that doctor King from what again, I'm not an expert. I I I learn something new about him every year. I felt humbled at the opportunity to kind of sometimes be be his voice, and that sometimes I am in the position of sort of reading his words as part of our presentations.

Nnamdi: 37:47

And so, anyway, so so I had tried to get inside of his head in many ways, and so and I know that I am not really in the position to give you a very competent answer. But what I'll do is zoom in on just one thing is I'm thinking back to that speech that he gave to the APA where he talked about racism. And one thing he said about it, he said that that he he was speaking to his scientists, and he said to them, you know, people need to see that racism, poisons the soul of America. Essentially, that's what that that he used that phrase soul poisons the soul. And he was speaking to scientists.

Nnamdi: 38:17

We thought we're in a position to kind of reveal that truth. I would say what he might say to clinicians, coming to your point, Mary, is to find an antidote for that poison. Or, you know, in other words, like, you're the physician to you're the treating. You're the doctor. Treat the poison.

Nnamdi: 38:30

Treat the poison. You know, act to resolve that poison if you're in a position to do so. I think he would want that. I think he would see that as helping people to become better people. And, of course, you know, he might go further to say, you know, don't trample on their rights and so on, which which what Kurt and I are trying to make sure that that that's the professional boundary.

Nnamdi: 38:49

But I think his mission would be, you know, see that poison, treat that poison, try to cure this try to cure that ill if you can. That that's where that's what he wanted to see change.

Mary: 38:59

Well, this was a really great discussion, and I'm looking forward to this Martin Luther King Junior Day and getting another wonderful presentation from you, Nnamdi. Thank you so much for joining Kurt and me on this episode.

Nnamdi: 39:14

Yeah. Thanks for inviting me. It's a pleasure being here.

Kurt: 39:17

And I hope that people have a look at the show notes where we're gonna put some links to the speech to the APA that we've mentioned along with some of King's other works. And with with the the holiday just around the corner, perhaps it will inspire you listeners to do some service, some reflection, some action, some discussion with others related to mental health or whatever your passions and vocations are. Unraveling is brought to you by Brattleboro Retreat. Our producers at Charts and Leisure are Andrew Adkin, Hans Buteau, and Jason Overholzer.

Mary: 40:11

And you can find us on social media by searching Brattleboro Retreat. Bratiborle Retreat is committed to exploring diverse perspectives on mental health. While we invite hosts and guests to share their insights, the views expressed are their own and do not necessarily reflect the policies or positions of the hospital or its staff.