EP#32- Mindful Psychotherapy & Self-Compassion with Dr. Annie Chanler, Clinical Psychologist

[MUSIC] Self-compassion to me is always an embodied experience because we're nothing if we're not our bodies. I mean, what is it that makes us each unique, our bodies and our bodies, or the source of our feelings? Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Endorphins. You just heard from Dr. Annie Chandler. Dr. Chandler is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalysis in private practice in Tribeca in New York City. She specializes in anxiety and meshed relationships and mindful sports psychology. And she uses a mindful-based approach in her treatments. Dr. Chandler supervises and teaches on the interface of spirituality with psychoanalysis. And she's published papers and presented internationally. This episode is really special and close to my heart because Dr. Annie Chandler is one of my close friends' moms from high school. I don't know if I saw that correctly, but one of my really close friends, Kaya, who I went to high school with, her mom is the guest in this episode. I hope that made more sense. So I remember spending countless afternoons and nights and weekends at Kaya's apartment with her family and getting to know them. Throughout the course of high school and staying in touch throughout college, really has brought me a lot of joy. And as you guys will hear at the beginning of this episode, Dr. Annie Chandler came to my high school and gave a little presentation on mindfulness meditation. And that was a really pivotal moment in my high school experience. Just understanding the power of taking a moment to take a few deep breaths. Nothing crazy, just taking literally five minutes out of my afternoon and closing my eyes, breathing, being intentional about it, and then coming out of that meditation, I was like, wow, that is something I should do more often. So it's been incredible to have the opportunity to have Annie come on and speak on the podcast. Her work is really fascinating and her work around and meshed relationships in particular, which we get into towards the end of the episode, is really interesting examining mother-daughter relationships and looking at the parent-child relationship at large. Anyways, I don't want to give too much away, so I'm going to let you guys get into the episode, but before we do so, I have a brief message from my sponsor, Anchor. Hi, Dr. Annie Chandler. Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast today. Hi, Stella. It is my great pleasure to be here with you. I really love that we're having this conversation today. It feels like just yesterday, when you came into our high school, the Bronx High School of Science, and led a mindful meditation session for our class. For my listeners, those who don't know, Dr. Annie Chandler's daughter, Kaya, is one of my dear friends from high school. It's such a cool opportunity to have, to get to speak with you today and talk about your practice and your work in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. I do remember that day, and it was a complete joy, and while I have watched you grow, this might come as a surprise, but I've done some growing too. So, if we were to have done this interview five, six years ago. Yeah, it may have gone differently, so it's nice to be growing up together. Yeah, I love that. We're definitely going to get into that when we talk more about your practice and how you incorporate your life and your life experiences and what you do. But to start off, I know that your website mentions that you approach your treatment based off of this mindfulness based and analytically oriented approach towards psychoanalysis. What does that look like in practice and how is that manifested in the way in which you treat your patients? I think of what I do as I came up with a term of my own meta-MeTTA analysis. Meta is in the ancient Buddha language of Pali means loving kindness. An analysis or speaks for itself. It's a way of thinking that has depth and it has to do with the content and the stories of our lives, the narratives we have. And how we behave and think about ourselves. That's the sort of the analysis part. And the meta, the loving kindness, which is, I'll talk about mindfulness more in a moment, but the mindfulness and meta part has to do with how we pay attention to those stories, to those narratives, to our emotions, to our thoughts, how we witness what comes up. And it provides a gentler way of being with ourselves and with our stories, because a lot of what I do is sit with individuals in my private practice. And I hear stories and then I work with people on how they're relating to the story. I got into this integration of East and West through a mindfulness based stress reduction course that I took a John Capitz in eight weeks, seven or eight weeks course. I took with my husband actually. I stuck with it. He didn't. The practice part. And now I'm actually in a two year mindfulness meditation teacher certification program with Tar Brock at, you know, taught by Tar Brock and Jack Cornfield who are like, you know, the best in the West. I started, you know, getting into mindfulness for personal reasons. I was bringing it into my consulting room in an embodied way. You know, it was just sort of where I was at. And so it was going to be what my patients were going to get, which I felt I was the beneficiary of. And I thought that they would probably find it useful as well. A psychoanalyst talk about having a third year, you know, I hear the stories of, but then I'm listening with a third year, which is the analytic year sort of making connections and interpretations. But there's actually a fourth year, which is how is my patient sort of treating themselves in these in subtle ways that they're not aware of. How are they suffering? How are they suffering above and beyond the content, the story, you know, the story that they've lived or are living. It has a lot of me in it, you know, I learned it along my training. Some I went to hear a colleague speak and he once said. Personality is technique, which was so freeing. I think I might have been doing my postdoc and psychoanalysis and it just freed me up. It was like, oh, I don't have to keep it hearing to, you know, in any dogmatic way to one way of doing things. I could just I can bring myself into it. And if I can bring myself to my work, then the hope is my patients can feel more comfortable being who they truly are. I really like that idea around having this third and fourth year, like listening with these different sources. It kind of reminds me of the Buddhist concept of the second arrow, which I'm sure you're familiar with, you know, the first arrow that's inflicted is the painful event. So maybe it's a breakup or it's a death in the family or, you know, something very traumatic or it could also not even be as traumatic as that. Just something that's painful in your life. But then there's this concept of the second arrow is being self inflicted and that's what's actually causing more damage and that's what's causing the ultimate suffering. So it seems like in your practice where you're using, you know, listening with your third and fourth year, you're able to identify where that second arrow is hitting, whereas the patient may not necessarily have the mental clarity to do so. Because as you mentioned, a lot of it is kind of like the narratives that we create in our head about a experience or a specific incident. And that is what can cause more detriment. And it's harder to kind of abstract away from the problem or take that more objective stance or kind of have that bird's eye view of what's happening in your life when you're physically in it. And so it seems like in your role, you're able to offer that perspective and offer that insight where the patient may not necessarily have the ability to do so in that time. Yes, that's so well put. Let's switch seats right now. Like really could be answering all these questions. You've got a real handle on it. That's exactly right. And I will actually use those terms second arrow. You know, the shame, the embarrassment, the sense of defeat, the sense of badness. If you're still suffering from a breakup. You know, it could take it could take the better part of a year to sort of, you know, more in the loss of a relationship. That is that second arrow and that I'm listening to, you know, the challenge is that is not to come into quickly, not to sort of rush onto the cushion as they say. Like you need to spend a little bit of time on the couch, you know, in the sort of the Freudian psychoanalytic reference. If you go right to the cushion, then you're, you're, you're papering over your risk really papering over a lot of stuff. If I hear the second arrow, you know, being, you know, inflicted, I will say something. But then there are times when sometimes it's appropriate to feel shame if you've done something, you know, that you want to learn from. So you have to be a little careful not to be too quick to sort of rescue because you could be glossing over something that could be transformative. If it's just embraced. That's a really interesting concept that you you're sharing because I know within mindfulness, the whole idea is really, you know, round to observe the thoughts that enter your mind as you're. doing a mindfulness meditation practice, for example, observe what's going in coming out, but not attaching yourself onto it and not having any judgment towards it. Like this practice of non-judgment and acceptance and just cultivating more awareness. And I think, you know, by having this mindfulness-based approach to your therapy and psychoanalysis, through your role, you're kind of allowing your patients to adopt more of this non-judgment approach so that they can ultimately kind of be freed from those experiences, but at the same time, it also seems like, like, I'm really interested in this concept around like, embracing or leaning into some of the shame, like in those transformative experiences and identifying, like, when that's appropriate and when it's not. Would I find myself attending to, and again, this comes from my own practice, and it's really, I'm really steeped in it, and I'm about to really get more steeped in the compassion-based practice, which is really a heart-centered practice, bringing your attention back to your heart region, to where we tend to feel our emotions, pain, suffering, especially, but we can also feel, you know, full heart, you know, we can feel full of joy. So when I'm sitting with someone and someone is feeling really badly, and this is probably one of the most common themes is just the underlying assumption of one's badness is something that I encounter probably more than anything else, you know, if I'm lucky enough to sort of get to it with in the work. As a, you know, my family will tell you that like, I have pretty thin skin, I feel things, you know, that's probably why I do what I do. I feel things quite readily, and I can be moved, and I'm oftentimes the information that's happening in me when I'm working is data about my patient. So if my heart is feeling something, probably their heart is as well, whether they know it or not, and sometimes that shame could be a lot of things, but I will often check in and ask if someone can locate where in their bodies they're feeling the feeling, because the body never lies, first of all, the body is always in the present, the body can only be in the present, your mind can be in the past, in the future, your body is always in the here and now, and so I like to know what it's communicating. That's where you, that's like the portal to pain, really. That energy is often trapped inside the body. The whole person, you know, needs to be attended to, and the individual needs to sort of become, I think, in order to be free of pain and suffering, is needs to understand what's going on in their body. Like you said, mindfulness is, it's sort of like heartfulness, a woman recently said in a meditation group, I mean, and I just thought that was so great, right? Because it's not just being aware of where your mind is going, it's also awareness of what's coming up in your body, in the way of physical sensations that may be connected to emotion, or not, maybe it's just a crick in your knee or, you know, bad lower back or something. That's very fascinating because it kind of ties into this concept around like body mind awareness and somatic awareness. It seems like that's probably more of like an eastern approach to medicine or to treatment, like focusing more on the body and trusting the bodies intuition and allowing that to guide your action, or kind of as like that portal or that pathway into greater insight around your actual response to an event. I think this is a great segue also into like self-compassion, practicing loving kindness meditation. I actually took a class at Washoe, my sophomore year, on loving kindness meditation. I thought it was really cool how it differed from traditional, like, breath work, whereas in the meditation, you were like actively thinking about extending compassion towards yourself, and then it was towards your close friends and then family, and it kind of like kept abstracting away, and then towards people that you didn't necessarily like, and then it was like the final thing you were thinking about was extending compassion towards all creatures and all beings. It like started small and then expanded into this like large holistic view. So I am curious to hear more about this connection between self-compassion and cultivating compassion for oneself and how you can actually do that through the practice of building more somatic awareness. Compassion by definition is concern for others suffering, which is different than empathy. Depending on what you read, you know, compassion, it's sometimes defined using the word empathy. For me, I get tripped up on that. I feel like compassion and empathy are different and maybe I keep them separate because I have a tendency to be an over empathizer and so compassion helps me and we'll get to this later to find some boundaries to be able to empathize with more boundaries. It's easy for us to have, I hope it's easy for us to have compassion for others. It's harder to have that for ourselves, to bring that tenderness, that kindness, that care, that love, loving sort of attitude, and the tension to ourselves, treating ourselves like we might a helpless child who is suffering. So to sort of bring the body in something that was very powerful and life-changing for me in my own personal therapy years back was the moment where I had this image of holding my own heart in my hands. That was like that broke open this concept and embodied experience of self-compassion. It's like whatever pain, suffering, and I was sitting with, it wasn't, it was no longer an intellectual relationship and it became deeply personal when I had this image of just holding this hurt heart, you know, pained heart. It was just like accumulation of little pains and stuff along the way and I could sort of feel myself even though I wasn't literally holding my heart, but I was, you know, in a lot of people are talking now about holding experience, you know, we've had to hold a lot during the pandemic, hold uncertainty, hold anxiety, hold depression, a lot of things. And I just felt like I was holding myself, maybe it was a younger version of myself, I didn't really have that framework. Self-compassion to me is always an embodied experience because we're nothing if we're not our bodies. I mean, what is it that makes us each unique, our bodies and our bodies are the source of our feelings, you know, our movement, our actions. Everything begins with the body. I mean, Freud said the first ego that exists is a body ego before there's a psychic ego and we have forgotten about the body, but not me. We haven't. I should say cycle and analysts have, I think, are really starting to integrate it more. But we departed from what Freud said and we got too focused on the head and ideation. And so the body, self-compassion to me brings us really back to the body. One of the ways we can practice self-compassion has to do with an attitude, which is just accepting all that is. We can also practice self-compassion in Tara Brockwood, say in a radical way, by just sort of really loving every part, flawed and all. That's what self-compassion is, which is understanding our humanity, understanding that we're all on the pathway of making a thousand mistakes. There were all flawed, you know, that we are not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good or good enough. I don't know. It's a really beautiful thing that has really helped me in one of the first books that I had is by Christopher Girmher, who's a Harvard-based psychologist. It's called The Mindful Path to Self-compassion. I think I got that right. Keep that by my bedside. And I just when I'm like having a rough day or, you know, having a reaction and I'm upset about something and I can feel that I'm caving it on myself. I'll open the book and first write off, I'll be like, I'm not alone. You know, I'm not alone. I mean, books are written. He's told millions of copies of this book. And it just is a reminder of the importance of holding our experience with kindness and lightness and love and care and gentleness and because it's easy to be really harsh in this busy competitive world. Yeah, I mean, that's a great reminder because we are so hard on ourselves. It's so hard to be compassionate towards oneself. It's easy to extend that to others, you know, hopefully. But to treat yourself the way you treat other people, like those closest to you, is really hard. And I think, you know, I wonder why is it so hard for us to just be kinder to ourselves? I guess it's because we're in this really like competitive environment and especially in college too, like at, you know, schools like Wash You and you know, other schools similarly, like it's very work. It's in this competitive environment and we're constantly comparing ourselves to other people and what they're doing or what they're not doing. And I think also kind of with the pandemic too, because globally we've all been forced to hit the brakes a little bit and step on that pause button in a weird way despite all the negative things that have happened as a result. from COVID, we've all shared this universal experience that's in a way kind of unifying, because we're all suffering now more similar pains and anxieties and going through more less similar overarching experiences, and maybe in a way that can allow us to be more self-compassionate because we're realizing, okay, yeah, we're not alone in this experience, but it is, it's really hard, it's not easy. It's very hard and I will say, who doesn't like the sound of the word rest? And what is mindfulness, but more formally mindfulness meditation, which could be three slow conscious breaths, doesn't have to be a 20-minute seated practice? If it's nothing else, it's, I mean, it's rest, and what I have found is that the space, the quiet, the calm, that the practice brings about, creates more space. It almost has the effect of stretching time. We're always pushing time. We're always pushing ahead to the next thing, or in some cases, like I just had my youngest daughter's college graduation, I was trying to push time away because I didn't want time to progress. It was like, stay away time because I just want to stay right here, I want her to stay right here. And I was having that awareness that feeling over the course of her graduation weekend, and thanks to my practice, and I'm really not making this up. Sunday, Monday morning, the following day, after graduation, after the ceremony, I woke up, and we had no more places we had to be, and I meditated, and then went for a run. And in my meditation, a light bulb went off. I realized that I was clinging to time and place. She graduated from the same school I had graduated from. I was clutching. I was like, you know, trying to push time away, and I was pushing way the idea of being anywhere, but you know, on that campus, in that school, and the awareness, which came from my practice, helped me to be in the moment and to let go. Once I realized I was clinging, it was, you know, that Buddhist notion of attachment and clinging and craving and, you know, wanting. When I realized that, it just something opened up, and I could take in the joy, and I immediately felt less suffering. That's really profound. I mean, when we're clinging onto things, I feel like we're also kind of pushing them away in a sense, because it's just not natural to clang and hold so tightly onto things that are, you know, things are constantly fleeting. The time and place, that's fleeting. The graduation ceremony happened, and now Kaya is moving on to other things. Like, we're all graduating, we're moving onto a next phase and chapter in our life. So it's only natural that things will evolve and shift, but it's really hard to reconcile that. Like, we consciously know it's happening, but it's hard to be okay with that or to lean into it. That's something that I'm also trying to work on. Like, with my own college graduation that's coming up in a few weeks, like, nothing actually feels real, because it just came so fast, you know, with the pandemic, time has moved in such a weird way that it's hard for me to even know which day of the week it is, because everything's kind of, you know, a monotonous day in, day out, it's a blur. It's a lot to take in. Yeah, it's a lot to take in. And so something that I'm constantly trying to remember, and I think this will only help through, you know, a more consistent meditation practice at the very least is recognizing that things are constantly changing. Like, things are constantly evolving, and that's okay. And it's okay to move through that as well. Like you mentioned at the beginning of this episode, if we had recorded this five years ago, it would have been entirely different, because our lives then are, you know, more or less very different than how they are in the present moment. And that's okay. Like, that's, that's exciting, because it just means the nature of this experience itself is entirely different. And who knows how it may be in the next five years as well, just as things evolve and as things change. And I think not judging that and accepting that also ties into this concept around compassion and compassion for oneself. I want to shift a little bit into your focus and your practice and your work around enmeshment, and specifically looking at mother-daughter relationships. So can you talk a little bit about what an enmeshed relationship means and what that looks like and ultimately what would make these kinds of relationships unhealthy? Enmeshment is some people sometimes have referred to it as code dependence. For me, from a psychological standpoint, enmeshment is when you are, if you are the enmeshed individual, you are overly involved, overly concerned, overly connected to another person's thoughts and feelings and behavior. And to the point where it's almost like there's one entity, I mean, I don't mean to apologize and that was an extreme thing to say, but it's where you don't feel psychologically freed up in a confident way to lead an independent life because you're always worrying about the effect your actions are having on the other person or how the other person is just doing at all. It can hamper. So in my work, it has been a parent-child mother-daughter. That's the relationship where I have spent a lot of time thinking about done some writing and working with people who are enmeshed with their mothers, daughters and mesh with their mothers. It can compromise confidence, competence, it can create, it can be the cause for a lot of anxiety. It might even be a cause for depression if the mother suffered from depression, but there's a hyper connectivity, and especially daughters are already connected. I mean, they've done brain studies and I'm probably going to get this wrong, but there's some portion, some part of the brain anatomy that's like really identical in children who have depressed mothers, daughters who have depressed mothers. And there's just point is that there's a lot of closeness. The goal and enmeshedment is to try to disentangle oneself from being too caught up in the experience of the other so that they can grow and confidently and independently without severing the relationship. So it's like there was a dance that was happening for a long time, and then when someone sort of becomes aware, one would think with the help of a therapist becomes aware that they've internalized their mother too much, then they can begin to work on healthier boundaries. The practice of mindfulness meditation helps to reinforce those boundaries, because it brings your attention back inside you. And so when you get back into the relationship, you can do so with a greater awareness of what's happening to you, how you're feeling, what you're thinking, what's going on, and it shifts the focus where it belongs, which is with yourself. That's good self-care if nothing else. You know, my mother has heard me talk about this topic. This is very personal. I love my mother. I admire my mother. She's soon to turn. I don't know if she's going to listen to this. I'm going to say it because I'm proud of her. And I think she's proud of herself in some ways. 85. My relationship with her has never been better. And I think she would agree. And I attribute that to my mindfulness practice, because when I took that course 10 years ago, it was a few years after that that I had space to start thinking creatively about my work and about my life. And I started writing about this topic and I published a paper in a clinical journal and I presented at my international mindfulness conference on the topic of mother daughter and meshment. I think it's really interesting because when I was younger, I spent so much time with my mom. I'm an only child and I was with her constantly. And I can't honestly remember if we fought a lot when I was younger. I definitely more like middle school high school, you know, we just bicker. I also don't have siblings. So maybe that's how I, that's where my energy diverted towards like was her. But I've always been told, you know, your mom's going to be your best friend when you're older. Like, you don't realize it now, but she's going to be. And I think that over time, maybe this is like an insight I've derived just about like parent child relationships in general, but I think as kids, because we're taught to see the world, you know, through the way in which we're raised through like our parents lens, we view our parents as like these, these figures that are teaching us about the world in which we're living in. And so it's harder to kind of conceptualize that they are just human as well. Like they have the same emotions as we do. Like they're, they're just people at the end of the day who are trying to figure it out as well. And I think that was something I didn't really recognize until I know the past few years in college, especially. And you've said something to me, you know, in our previous conversations around this idea of being apart and how that allows us to actually come together stronger. And I really love that. And I think it ties in really well into the research that you've done around enmeshment and these kinds of mother-daughter relationships. So I'm curious to hear more about how does this, creating this emotional distance, how can that actually enable us to repair these enmeshed relationships? And more so, what is that nature of the paradox around distance to actually allow us to come closer together in the end? - Yeah, I mean, the simple analogy is the parents putting their oxygen masks on first before assisting any children in flight. If we're okay, if I'm okay, you're okay. I mean, don't we all know our tendency to be critical and judgmental of someone else when really we're feeling very insecure about something? We can more readily see it in others than we can in ourselves. And so if we take care of ourselves, we're taking care of others. It's that heartfulness concept. It's like a bomb for our connections, but it has to start with having a healthy, loving connection with oneself. This concept of we have to be a partner to come together, really was driven home at the beginning of the pandemic when we were all on lockdown and in our homes, and then we were zooming, and we're feeling all this love. And we knew who the people were. We really wanted to be connecting with. And we were coming together. Like, I mean, my college friends, we were meeting more frequently online and saying some really profound things about our experiences. And so it's and sharing feelings about each other. And there's something about when you can be in your own skin, I don't even, it's sort of like magic. You can be present in your relationships and in your life, more authentically in a truer sense, rather than defaulting to habits and condition responses. And my kids are really into science. I ran from physics, but there's one law of physics. And maybe you know it. I think it's, I don't know which law, but it's like, like if one atom changes direction, the other-- I know, I don't know the name of it, 'cause I haven't taken physics in high school. And that was one of the hardest classes I've ever taken. But I know what you're talking about. I'm sure Kaya knows. She's definitely had to take physics in college, so we can ask her, but I know what you mean. I mean, I think also growing up, I've always seen my parents as people who just took care of me. But even through this conversation, it's becoming more apparent that parents actually have to take care of themselves. Like, we don't think about that as kids. Because we don't have a concept for that. But parents are not people. Like, they have to take care of themselves. And when they don't, that is when in mesh men, that sort of makes can make for in mesh relationships. You know, I mean, my mother struggled with depression most of her life, or certainly most of my younger life, the extent to which she was suffering became sort of the extent to which I suffered. You know, the person who's supposed to be supposed to count on who's there to take care of you is not doing well. You know, you're going to internalize that. You know, you're going to both have some empathy, but also just maybe even identify with it. Really, that's why it's important to sort of parent to be as conscious as possible so that you don't sort of park your unprocessed issues at the feet of your children. I know earlier I mentioned that my mom and I fought a lot growing up, but disclaimer, it was all in good fun. So I think it's I didn't do that with my mother because I knew she was fragile. Yeah, I could have fought with my mom. I can do that now. I can pray exactly. But I do agree with the, you know, the absence makes the heart grow founder and distance. It does allow you to come closer together. So if mom, if you're listening to this, I love you very much, basically the thesis. But it's very fascinating to have more of like an intellectual understanding of these kinds of relationships, especially, you know, just parent child. And I think as I'm now graduating college in like two weeks, just so soon and a lot of my listeners are young adults who are in college or recent graduates, there's kind of like these mini epiphanies that just randomly happen. I think it's so important to take the time to listen to yourself go through that and have conversations about these kinds of things because it just allows for more, you know, enriching insights to come away from that. Your practice and your approach and the work that you do is so inspiring and really wonderful. And I'm so thankful that we were able to have this conversation today. I know I learned a lot throughout these past 40 minutes. And I am so appreciative of you taking the time to come onto the podcast. - Thank you. And I want to just add a post script, which is, and a friend of mine said this when I was doing a lot of work on the enmeshment, she said, we're all a little bit enmeshed. And that is true, you know, like it's about connection and caring, it's just a matter of degree. - Right, yeah, that's a good way to think about it. On that note, there's one final question that I have for you that I ask every single guest that comes onto the podcast. What is something that brings you a bit of endorphins? - It's my mariage-faire, jimaira tea in the mornings. Either I had the loose leaf tea because I've traveled to Paris to the shop and picked it up or as I had to during the pandemic, I had it shipped to me from the store. I had like a kilo of black tea sent to me, but it's like armchair travel every morning. I get to feel transported to my favorite place on this planet, which is Paris, and enjoy my tea. Yeah, and I guess my meditation practice brings me a lot of joy, but that tea just, I look forward to it every morning. - I love that because I mean, taste and smell are so powerful, being able to kind of transport you mentally into a different emotional state or experience. And also, it's nice to have something to look forward to every morning. So it's nice that you have that as part of your morning routine. My mom also drinks tea every morning. She really likes green tea, different types of black tea. So I think it's a nice way to start the morning and kind of ease into the day. - I would agree. Omplifmo. - Thank you, Dr. Annie. It was so wonderful having you as a guest. - My pleasure. Thank you, Stella. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Thank you for listening. If you liked what you heard, please follow rate review every day in Dorfins on whichever listening platform that you use to stream my episodes. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time. (upbeat music)