#5 - Matthew Arguin and Michael Sersch

Welcome to the Mad and Crip Theology Podcast, hosted by Miriam Spies and Amy Panton, which comes out of the Canadian Journal of Theology, Mental Health and Disability. We both live and work lands that have been homes and remain homes to the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Haudenosaunee, the Huron Wendat, the Neutral and the Ojibway/Chippewa peoples and other peoples who have cared for the land. We are grateful for the opportunity to live and work on this land and are mindful of the need to repair broken covenants.

On today’s episode of the Mad and Crip Theology podcast we talk to Rev Matthew Arguin and psychotherapist Michael Serch who both wrote creative pieces for our first issue of the journal. Matthew's poem "A Prayer in Time of Pandemic" was written in October of 2020, reflecting on Exodus 33:15, as Moses pleads with YHWH to go before the people of Israel as they make their way to the promised land.  The COVID-19 pandemic means that many of us are in the midst of a new and unknown reality.  What does that mean for our mental health? In particular, what does it mean for those who find themselves leading faith communities?

Michael's reflective piece "Mad to Be Normal: Thoughts on Psychiatrist R.D Laing and Connections to Liberation Theology" uses the film Mad to be Normal, about R.D. Laing, as an opening into the liberation psychology approaches of Martin-Baro. Examples from Michael's clinical practice as well as personal experiences from life in a Catholic Worker community are  included.

This podcast is an opportunity to model how faith communities can engage in theological and spiritual conversations around madness and cripness. If you need a full transcript you can find videos on our Youtube channel and here is the link:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRUW9z5hoqP_WK74hg3N8bQ 

We want to say that topics and conversations we are raising throughout our time together are often hard!  They are hard for mad and crip people ourselves and hard for our families and loved ones. So, do what you need to do to take care of yourselves, your bodies, minds, and hearts.

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Transcript

Welcome to the Mad and Crip Theology Podcast, hosted by Miriam Spies and Amy Panton, which comes out of the Canadian Journal of Theology, Mental Health and Disability. We both live and work lands that have been homes and remain homes to the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Haudenosaunee, the Huron Wendat, the Neutral; and the Ojibway/Chippewa peoples and other peoples who have cared for the land.. We are grateful for the opportunity to live and work on this land and are mindful of the need to repair broken covenants. If you need a full transcript you can find videos on our Youtube channel. We want to say before we begin that topics and conversations we are raising throughout our time together are often hard!  They are hard for mad and crip people ourselves and hard for our families and loved ones. So, do what you need to do to take care of yourselves, your bodies, minds, and hearts. And now, here is our episode. Hello it is so great to be with all of you this afternoon on this Friday afternoon again we thank you so much for giving up your some of your day to come and be with us here on the podcast and today we are we're doing double duty we have two podcasts today so it's been a great day and we want to introduce our guests today we have Michael Sersch and Matthew Arguin here with us so welcome to you both and before we dive into our conversation we wondered if you could introduce yourself  what Amy put that in the chat your pronouns, where you work or serve and your connection to disability and mental health as well as a journal and since we're a podcast that appears also on youtube I wondered if you could give a visual description  of yourself for those who are hearing instead of watching so Michael can you get us started? Happy to thank you for inviting me to be here and for letting me be part of the first edition my name is Michael Sersch I use he and him pronouns I am joining you from Lacrosse Wisconsin in the United States where I work as a psychotherapist I kind of focus on helping folks who have chronic mental health conditions and substance use issues I identify as an individual in recovery myself both with mental health and substance use I'm from the Wisconsin area I'm also the the child of a person who had  psychotic experiences and I'm the father of an individual who's on the autism spectrum visually I think I look like a hobbit kind of curly reddish hair beard kind of short kind of round wearing a cardigan and joining you from my basement which isn't as scary as it sounds!

I think that's maybe the best visual description yet I totally agree that was awesome thank you for that we're a bunch of geeks here oh totally

I'm not sure if you can beat that Matt but please introduce yourself oh that's a tough act to follow for sure I'm not sure I can top it but so I'm in London Ontario which is in Canada it's about a two hour drive from Toronto and I am an ordained Anglican priest I have been ordained for about nine years although I'm currently not involved in parish ministry my main gig right now is actually at some pop-up shelters here in the city  we've gotten some coverage here in Canada but in case you don't know as a result of the covid-19 pandemic a lot of the shelters in and around the city are like half capacity because they can't be do full capacity because they have to ensure social distancing and all of that so the city approved a plan to make temporary shelters out of trailers  so it's just like a bed and like a lamp and that's pretty much it but then there's a bunch of trailers that have been put together to form a common trailer which is where the residents come to eat they come for social time and it's also designed as a harm reduction area so they can come and and take their medicine as needed and then so I've been doing that for the better part of eight months or so because we started around Christmas so that's what I've been doing for the majority of the pandemic and then the visual description of myself basically I look like a hot mess right now because 
 I haven't had a haircut in about three months so my hair is a little bit messy it's brown in colour I have some facial hair right now because I'm too lazy to shave and I'm wearing a green t-shirt with the rock paper scissor lizard Spock hierarchy on it so yes we are all NERDS here for sure i feel i feel very at home man I can't see this shirt I just see the the top of it can would you be comfortable showing more rock paper scissors because this sounds awesome that's the best I can do because I'm on my phone right now but yeah that's amazing amazing yeah you I think you managed to meet Michael and this is this option well it's a good group all together so I'm pretty excited to be here and to help out with the journal um it's something that i didn't necessarily expect to be involved in but i got a invitation from Miriam to write something up and that's that's how i got connected to the journal itself

For me it was good old facebook I saw a post about it and I don't even remember where I saw it and I was just like this is the coolest combination because like I totally will geek out on these three topics and the intersection of these and I was like oh I hope they'll accept someone from down south you're your loud and not always friendly neighbor down south in the United States and oh we've got a friend yes you may if you're watching this on youtube or if through any visual medium you might see a cat walk by the camera at any good point I loved them yeah we love cats here too so

Michael you made me happy because I'm in charge of facebook for now so so it is working which is awesome it is over to you Amy thanks Mir so we prepared a few questions for Matt and Michael today that we were able to send them a little in advance so hopefully that prompted some and that will prompt some interesting conversations for this afternoon so Michael we're going to start with you so the piece that you wrote for the first issue of the journal was so interesting and for me it was very captivating because you were able to write about history and also film and as a total film nerd who went to film school the minute i read it i was like this is so cool so i was able to do my geeking out around film and mental health which is the other thing that i nerd out about so it's a very good combination for me so i was wondering if you could tell our listeners who may not know about the person that you wrote about in the paper R.D. Laing would you be able to tell our listeners a little bit about who he was and why he was important for you to want to write about? Sure so I'm kind of new to Laing you know and I think you know a fair amount of the paper like laying is sort of in conversation with Dorothy Day and as far as I can tell they've never met in real life i could find no record of of them even though they were contemporaries Day i'm really familiar with and those who aren't familiar with her she had founded the catholic worker movement which really was based on this like iIm gonna take personal responsibility and connect to my fellow humans and and there's another cat there love it This is Oliver say hi! Yeah mine's just behind me i don't know if she'll join us  so she created these like shelters and and soup kitchens but also like some real intense  public protests about issues and there's some parallels between what Dorothy Day's talking about and I like I swim in the Dorothy Day world and then what Laing was talking about and I kind of came across Laing because of this movie Mad to Be Normal which stars David Tennant and those who are Doctor Who fans will be familiar with with him as the Doctor so Laing was a Scottish psychiatrist he ended up kind of being outside the norm in the 60s and 70s in the psychiatric world and saying that people with mental health issues like what they're saying has value and that we need to be respecting folks autonomy and he helped create these communities where people caregivers and those who needed care for whatever reason we're living together and trying to be as non-hierarchical as possible as you can imagine there's a level of like chaos that then ensues as i'm sure Matt is experiencing in his current work like you know and so that was very similar to Dorothy Day's life and in the movie you see that like this community of people and they're trying to you know work together as human beings each with their failings. Laing definitely was a very "human" person and in some ways he's a little bit more relatable than like Dorothy Day she's in the process of being sainted and you know she didn't like that at all but like she like she's a pretty good human and lange is a pretty human human he I think he was married four times he struggled with substances he had 10 kids he wasn't involved in their lives he he's writing all these books about family dynamics and his kids are like what about us dad  and in some ways like it's both approachable and a little hard you know because you're I feel a little judgy at times about him like I was reading a I love old paperbacks and so I found this paperback and it was article articles and someone's writing about Laing and they're like "when I met him he was blind stinking drunk and he didn't make any sense" and I was like wow you know he did kind of work his own recovery as time went on but he was never a never a perfect person and I don't think anyone's putting him forward to sainthood so that i mean that's a little bit about laying and sort of what I was trying to do with the paper and like as a therapist how do I bring these strains together you know in my own work in this weird covid world where we are virtual and cats are on our laptops and you know like your phone is pinging at you with like oh there's an instagram post and like for both Laing and dorothy day like trying to be attentive to the other was like one of the key pieces of their insight and it's like man that's that's that's a challenging discipline I try to do whether it's with my kids with my cat with my patients so a little bit of what what the what the essay was attempting to do

Wonderful I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about how either Day or Laing or both of them have influenced your therapeutic practice can you see any ways that  they may pop into your mind as you're working with clients? Yeah for Laing you know he was at the time they called it the anti-psychiatry movement which is I think a misnomer I think now we would be talking about like this is the early stages of the disability rights movement you know he was saying what what what are you trying to say how can I connect with you and trying to break down this higher hierarchy so you know I try and do that as well like how do we get off of this power trip thing you know what is it that you want what is it that you need and is there something I can do to help with that? And not be too directive for Day both Laing and Day were really quite critical of the the existing system you know and that's something that I continue to like

have as this tension in my life because like I have this official adult job that is officially paying me money and I'm doing work that's meaningful but like I'm also participating in systems that don't seem fair or just and how do I make peace with that in a in both a Laing and Dorothy Day fashion because I'm not living with folks that are unhoused or experiencing homelessness at this point you know it my practice is kind of removed in that sense so you know glad to be part of a conversation with you Matt because you're like right in the midst of it! Yeah although when I wrote the poem for the journal I wasn't at all like I was in a completely different place and so it's interesting sort of how any articles that we write or any poems that we compose are always snapshots of where we are right? I always find that part of it interesting as well what were you doing at the time, at the time I was an unemployed so my my whole thing was right at the end of 2019 the contracts with the church that I was at ended so I was going into 2020 sort of applying for different jobs and sort of looking at different things and then two three months into it covid hits and all the churches close and I'm like what do I do now? So from about January to well December because the shelter started around Christmas I was completely sort of not attached to any parish not to any particular ministry  we did have short periods maybe two or three months in the summer where Ontario opened back up but overall the lockdowns were pretty pretty intense and so there wasn't a whole lot in terms of job prospects either and so when I wrote the poem it was reflecting on some of the experiences that I have had of like what do we do now in this church where we're meeting virtually? And like you said like not having that personal one-to-one interaction that changes the worship space as well and it changes our mental approach and like so all of that was feeding into my writing at the time and  it's really interesting looking you know at this point about eight months in retrospect  sort of how and of course now we're moving into a different, different phase of the of the pandemic here too so it's going to be really interesting to see how that develops and I think that's one of our later questions so I'll save some of the reflections for that as well

That's awesome I love how we're already connecting each other's work I wonder Matt if you could read your poem for us and then I have a follow-up question to dig into. Sure just let me pull it up in the chat here it's a really beautiful piece. 

Here we go so this is the poem here: Lord if you will not go before me do not send me up if I go alone I'll be lost I'll lie to those around me trying to find a way out if I go alone I'll be afraid of the desert of my people of myself but if you'll go with me Lord I might be able to make sense of all of this I might be able to enjoy the manna and not fear the snakes if you go ahead of me Lord I'll see waters rise and armies crushed I'll see the sick heroes and the people chosen if you'll go ahead of me Lord i will strive to hear your voice and speak to you of what's in my heart we may even fight get hurt but I won't let go until you give me a blessing.

Oh wow Matt that was wonderful to hear it spoken! Oh glad to share for sure. We are wondering

you you talk about writing this in a different era of covid and how we're moving to this new phase that I think also feels a bit unknown to us to us in the world, to us in practice and in the church and in leadership so I wonder if you could talk about what this next phase is looking like for your mental health and for the mental health of the people you serve with?

yeah for sure so i'll start off with that first half of the question of what is it what does it mean for mental health for me? It definitely I think the pandemic for me and not only for me but for a lot of people has forced me to think about and reflect on what's actually important right? To sort of not get or try not to get overwhelmed by some of the stuff that's coming at you and to realize that I'm not in control of the situation which if you're a member of the clergy at all that tends to be a struggle with me and my colleagues right we like to know what's going on how it's gonna get done you know exactly how it's gonna unfold but that doesn't really happen in the middle of a pandemic and so that I think is the biggest aspect of trying to figure this whole thing out is how do we give up control without losing our minds? And I mean that quite literally because sometimes when you when you don't have that sense of control it becomes a little chaotic right? And I think for for myself it's being able to let that go and in my current context of those that I serve when I show up at the shelter I have to show up being open and ready to talk about what they want to talk about the struggles that they're dealing with it's interesting right now because we're actually in the middle of transitioning the project so right now it's a bunch of trailer trailers that are at the back of the men's mission here in London we're actually in the process of transitioning them over to an apartment building complex the organization that runs the project has signed head leases for 24 units within a building and so we're going to be moving over there within the next week or so and that's a whole other kettle of fish it's it's moving people it's getting all their stuff over it's trying to to allay some of their fears and anxieties because as everybody knows moving sucks I hate it I hate putting stuff in boxes I hate sorting through stuff and it's a stressful thing and it's even more stressful when you're going from a solution that was sort of haphazard and put together at the last minute and now we're at being asked to change again along with the residents so it's it's been a time of being able to try to try to be present try to let go of the control and just to sort of go with the flow as hard as that is and in the midst of it try to pray try to be honest with with how I'm feeling and how the people might be feeling as well because again when when we're dealing with lack of control that can be difficult and so for me one of the grounding things is to pray and that was part of what came out of the writing as well because again when I don't know what to do or what I don't notice how I don't know how to react I tend to just write things down so whether it's just a rant on facebook or a poem that I compose that's usually how I process so yeah. Thank you Matt and you touched on a key thing that I'm struggling with in my own work and we didn't give you this question ahead of time so you can definitely pass, but

as a disabled clergy I know we talked about this before and how the church or congregations like to  control who's 

in leadership or who's able to serve in leadership and what bodies are desired to be in the pulpit so you don't have to go there but if you want to I would love to hear how that that invitation to ease up on control over what's going to happen or what should happen aligns with how you and I are called to serve. Yeah I mean one of the things that I think that that's really contingent upon is whether we go back to normal after covid whatever normal is because i think there is an openness now to recognizing that people whether disabled or not can't do everything they can't do all of the things that are always asked of them and so there's been an opportunity to for people to work from home which hasn't really been an option before there's been an opportunity for people to contribute in ways to their community that they might not be able to I'm thinking specifically here about online worship right being able to give a sermon or something where you couldn't get up to the pulpit but you can get on a zoom call and do it from your couch that's like a really important thing right and just having access and accessibility in terms of an online service to begin with I mean I know from my denomination the Anglican church has struggled with an online presence and doing live streams and facebook stuff and zoom calls and all of that but it has opened up a new avenue of accessibility and so I think there's an opportunity to keep that accessibility growing and as something that is continually improved but it's also a temptation to just say oh we're just going to go back to normal and it's going to be all the same yeah so we could definitely go in either direction I don't know I don't know which we're going to choose but i hope it's the more accessible one. Yeah thank you Matt I know at the beginning of covid we couldn't imagine being online for a year or more and yet that has happened and people have worshiped and created different kinds of communities which demonstrates

a lot of possibility even though I love I miss people I miss being in the same room with people at the same time yeah and it's it's going to be interesting reclaiming that in-person piece because I think and I'm thinking Michael can probably speak to this too it's getting used to those social norms again it's what do we do now do we shake hands? Like there's a whole relearning process that has to go along with it. Yeah and that relearning process is a chance to rethink what our norms have been and how they might be changed

Michael do you...? 

That moment of greeting or saying goodbye and you have that awkward like what what do we do now like do I shake your hand do I bump your shoulder do I just wave like yeah what happens and here in Wisconsin the mask mandate has ended so suddenly folks I mean you'd see a few individuals without a mask and you immediately knew their political orientation before and now you're seeing all sorts of people without masks it honestly it feels almost revealing like oh yeah I'm not used to seeing the bottom of your face and I was gonna ask and I don't know whether you want to put this at a further part in the podcast so feel free to edit after the fact there Miriam and Amy but Michael how has that affected your practice like because again even though you're dealing with psychotherapy and there is a lot of talk involved there's also that in-person connection right like how how do you how have you found that it's changed your approach or even the approach of your patients or clients or whatever the proper term is that you use?

Yeah it's changed in so many ways so i'm before the pandemic you know we were told that our health care system like that you know there's no way that anyone would work virtually and then all of a sudden we came up with a virtual system overnight and now we're slowly coming back in person and it's this you know in the States you don't have to wear a mask but in a healthcare setting you still do and so then there's this dance of you know some want to wear a mask and some don't want to wear a mask some never want to take it off some insist on taking it off. I've had some clients who love virtual visits because of accessibility or some people with like agoraphobia like they've been able to say like I feel so much more comfortable I can do this from home and I'm not very disregulated and other people are like this is weird and I don't like it and I want to come in and I only have so many spots in person and our state has very clear rules that cert certain populations have to be seen in person like if you're on a methadone program you have to be seen in person so like there are only so many spots I can give to the in-person folks we're right on a border of another state our states are much smaller than your Canadian provinces so then we can't cross state lines anymore for virtual visits so like I gotta get my Minnesota people in in-person it's like right it's creating new challenges and new headaches. I really do like the virtual visits and a number of people do like them but it means you have to have internet and you have to have a computer and not everyone does yeah so yeah it's accessible and inaccessible at the same time it's just it's wild. Yeah I bet.

Yeah i was thinking as both of you were talking I hurt my back recently which is like a whole other story but I had to go and get physiotherapy and also I've been seeing a chiropractor to help with that and like I've been seeing them for months and I was thinking to myself the other day I literally have never seen either of their faces even though they've been taking care of me for months and it's so strange like I imagine what their faces look like under their mask but it's such a strange time when we really we really are having I mean for me anyway I think about it's like a different kind of relationship that I have with these people and I don't know if we're gonna have like a party or something once they're able to take off their masks but it's just yeah what what a strange time we're in right now. And well I'm sure you've had this experience too as people are starting to sort of ease up on the mask restrictions a bit I mean I've had instances where people have taken off their mask and I don't even know who they are because all I've seen is ever a masked face like it's very strange right very strange yes that's funny because my mom said to me the other day we had we're doing a few renovations here at our house and we had an electrician coming through the house and he always had his mask on and then he came by the other day without his mask my mom turned to me and she said who's that I'm like mom that's the electrician who's been coming here for like three months you do know him!! And anyway sorry I digress so yeah it's a very very strange time. So we wanted to ask both of you if you would speak to each other about each other's work and we just wondered if you had any questions as you were reading each other's pieces or if anything struck you as interesting that you might want to tell the other person so Michael I might ask you to begin. Sure yeah you know Matt I enjoyed that intertextual piece of you know you're offering this personal reflection on this piece from Exodus where Moses is asking the Lord like go ahead ahead of me and this is the right around where you know God is like you can't see me but you can see my backside this like really weird story super weird yeah it is yes and I was like I was wondering what was it about that particular story you know I had imagined like oh was this like this was liturgically this is just when it came up in the readings of the day but I wasn't sure. Yeah so it did it did come up in the lectionary so that that was sort of a set piece and and this poem was in conjunction with preparing a sermon although the poem sort of went off and took its own course as poems often do but a lot of it is especially in the Torah so Genesis through Deuteronomy Moses and the other patriarchs are extremely upfront with God I mean Moses basically says before this in in chapter 32 when he finds the golden calf he's like look God I know they screwed up I know that they deserve to be punished but please have mercy on them right and Moses is just very bold about that same thing with Abraham in Genesis you'll find him at least two or three times like ask God be like are you sure this is what you really want you know sure the people are not behaving in the right way please please forgive them and I think the whole idea that the prophets of the of the Torah were bold enough to like be honest with God about their feelings and and what they wanted for their people that is really I always find that interesting and so part of the poem for me was tapping into that conversation if you will does that make sense? Oh yeah

Yep and I do have a question for you as well because I just actually before we came on I actually finished watching the movie and I apart from the fact that I kept on waiting for Doctor Who to just like zip out of that timeline and go to a new one right I was fascinated by by the movie itself and also by your article because as you were going through and talking about sort of his approach to psychotherapy and then you worked in Dorothy Day and then you worked in a little bit of the Brothers Karamazov when you were talking about Father Zosima I was like wait a minute this sounds a lot like spiritual direction like just in terms of pastoral presence and sort of being an attentive other to to the person that you're with so I'm wondering like in spiritual direction there's a very specific sort of aim right it's to help the other person see where God is active in the events and active in the conversation so I'm just wondering for you as a psychotherapist how does that change like what is the focus does that make any sense it does yeah it's really interesting my mother is a spiritual director and so yeah i mean there's a there's a ton of parallels between psychotherapy and spiritual direction while at the same time they're they are different but i think that you know trying to be present particularly accepting loving presence is one of the uniting aspects of them even though the spiritual director is asking where is God in this and the psychotherapist is a bit more focused on like what's the problem and how do we help you solve it you know we're working on a treatment plan and because it's the medical model we have to have a diagnosis and you know bill insurance and all that

so I mean yeah but but there are a lot of parallels I know my mom will be very clear in saying you know when when they start seeing clinical problems they're saying oh you need to see someone else for this you know my job is not to help you with anxiety or depression right but you can still be in direction and be depressed or anxious or struggle with substances or you know what what not and we as psychotherapists as a field we're becoming more comfortable with religious questions certainly you know the bad old days with Freud who viewed everything religious as a sign of neuroticism were you know no it's really a sign of people's strength and and their wellness and you know in the same way that we want people to have good nutrition and engage in exercise and have social situations like what is your spiritual expression and allowing folks to be different with it there is a generational divide like some of my older peers in the field are like no I don't touch spirituality at all and it's like I don't understand how you could do that

It's a whole dimension of the person right right? Yeah yeah or it's sometimes like just held to the addiction folks because of AA and the higher power but even then that that tends to be kind of surfacy you know give it up to your higher power you know but like I enjoy delving in folks spirituality if that's part of their life and if it's not then that's totally fine and we don't have to go there I guess that would be a difference too like folks who are going to spiritual direction inherently are interested in spirituality where folks coming to therapy are not necessarily. Yeah that makes sense!

Sometimes with folks who are experiencing some psychotic issues we have to like help figure out like what seems authentic spirituality and what is like oh that that might be part of the illness you know that that God didn't actually call me to do that so that's an interesting piece that I actually quite enjoy that's so interesting Michael and you know this summer I've had the - it's been a real joy - I've been teaching a course on mental health and Christian theology and one of the questions that the students really keep bringing up and keep wrestling with is this idea of spiritual experience versus or and psychosis you know how do we know what's going on and I've had a lot of the students talk about especially the students who are studying to become psychotherapists still have these questions around how do I know you know Amy when will we get to the point where we feel confident enough to be able to

guide our clients one way or the other and I mean from I guess for myself from a theological side I think it's really interesting that the students are they're not dismissive right away they always say well there's there's something here maybe God really is speaking and I like to have that that openness and create that space where they can we can we can all ask the questions together so so thanks so much for for talking about that that's really helpful I guess we just have one more question now as we're kind of finishing up our our time together today and one question that Miriam and I are just interested in and we always ask our guests who come on the podcast is around this whole question of self-care so we were wondering if both of you could talk a little bit about your self-care both of you are in helping professions at this time it's really hard all over the world with the pandemic and also I think Miriam and i talk a lot about you know doing this work in disability or mental health it can be very hard a lot of the times it feels like you can kind of go under as you're reading a lot of these stories of abuse and and other things so would you be able to tell us what does your self-care look like right now if there is any? That would be really great. Matt would you be able to start us off? Sure so self-care for me has a different couple of of looks to it so the job schedule that I'm on now at the shelter is 10 hour shifts both day shift and night shift we do two weeks of days and then two weeks of nights and typically in a week you'll have about two or three days off and so the first thing is to be really protective about those days off and to make sure that if somebody's calling on you to to take another shift that you have to be comfortable with saying no if you're not good to go that's been really important for me because like you said it it is a helping profession and any helping profession will sort of have this impact whether positive or negative you can have really positive emotions one day and really negative emotions the next and so being able to safeguard your sabbath time is really important so that's the first part of it the second part of it for me is also the teams at the shelter that I work on are always teams of five and so being able to bounce off other things with your colleagues and the people that you work with whether they happen on the shift or whether they happen outside of the shifts having that as an outlet for discussion and reflection is really important because I haven't really been able to do that in the context of a church lately because the churches have all been closed and even my spiritual director is only now getting comfortable in terms of meeting in person so having a group that you work with that you're comfortable with talking to about what comes up and what bubbles to the surface that's really been my self-care at the moment and you know just trying to get enough sleep and trying to eat well which doesn't always work the best when you're living on your own the temptation to order out is very very strong but trying to be attentive to those needs as well I would say that would be what my self-care looks like right now. Thanks Matt yeah I think I struggle around the student thing of defaulting to too much ramen noodles so I can understand exactly what you mean about trying to eat well so thank you so much for giving us some insights there yeah and Michael would you like to to tell us about your self-care? yeah in the in the before times there was some discipline in the schedule because like you know you could see folks from this time to this time and then you know reception was gone and you know it was like you couldn't bring anyone into the office and now if your office is at home you can schedule people whenever and that has it's been good in that like suddenly we're more available and accessible and it's been bad because it's really easy to just be like oh sure i'll add another person oh yeah i'll just start a little early so my days just keep getting bigger and bigger so for me i've decided like okay like I can work with that but there are when I'm off I'm off I'm not checking email I'm not checking my voicemail like if it's a vacation day I really try and be disciplined and like being off as being off and I sometimes cheat and then I'm like okay no no this is about self-care and yeah just echoing what Matt was saying of like what are my basic needs you know have I eaten have I slept you know really trying to be disciplined on my my bedtime and making sure dinner is like something with the whole family has been really important so yeah I just came back from vacation and it was like huh this is really refreshing and rejuvenating even though it wasn't like a relaxing vacation because we moved and boxed everything up and you know but as Matt was saying moving really really sucks but it was it wasn't work it wasn't it didn't have emotional labor in the same way so yeah trying to balance that out I think has been helpful and for me being able to do something like writing and submitting stuff to a journal like this has been like oh you know like it's it's connecting to another part of myself that is not just doing clinical notes because because those are really dry well that would be a follow-up question for me as well as you were writing this article what made you want to contribute to this particular you know journal was it theology and mental health and disability something you were always interested in or I know you had spoken a little bit about your personal connections in terms of mental health and whatnot but sort of what was the impetus for for putting it in? Yeah yeah exactly I think that that intersection of those three topics and like yeah I was just literally on fire when I had seen that Facebook post it was you know I got to come up with an article for that and my now wife my partner at the time you know she works in ministry and I was helping her out do something at her church office and I remember sitting there in her church office being like what am I going to write about?

I sure hope they'll accept it and I'm so glad you did because yeah it's a it's a great intersection I think it's just it's it's an exciting space to really wrestle with topics. Yeah that's cool and so had you seen the movie and wanted to write about the movie or was this something that you had already seen and we're just like I'm gonna put something down on paper? I think I had just seen the movie as both the David Tennant fanboy and someone who was like exploring Laing a little bit and i was like who is this guy do I like him do I not like him he seems kind of out there and yet he's got a he's got some good stuff and the actor who had been in Mad Men she plays Angie the the composite girl girlfriend I can't remember her name offhand but I really like her she's in Handmaid's Tale as well so yeah there were some interesting actors in the film and one thing we didn't touch on but I gotta ask you about it because I am curious I mean one of one of the things in the movie i'm not too sure about his writings but in the movie he advocates or at least portrays an advocacy for the use of LSD in terms of treating mental illness so i'm just wondering as a psychotherapist whether you had any thoughts or reflections on that yeah and that is true to his uh lived experience and yeah I mean I find there is a real place for psychedelic practice you know I mean we're seeing tons of evidence that you know it could be helpful with PTSD end-of-life care addiction care et cetera you know I think some of the early advocates pushed it too far in the sense of their marketing and weren't doing good clinical trial you know i'm thinking of Timothy Leary as a you know a good example of that I think there's a limit like any tool you know Leary's compatriot Ram Dass Richard Albert has a I think a wonderful memoir I just finished Being Ram Das where he was like you know LSD kind of took me to a place but like you know what you get the phone call but after a while you want to actually like talk to the human or you know talk to the person and LSD for him was the phone call like it didn't take him far enough spiritually and so for him he really delved into a like a real practice that he worked on for his life so yeah I think it's a tool it's a it's exciting that it's becoming a tool that's available in the toolbox in some places not in Wisconsin yet right you know I'm connected with some organizations like the MAPS who does psychedelic research so I think yeah it's it's an exciting place to be and we're kind of coming at it in a little bit more of an adult attention adult focus than we had with the 60s counterculture where it was just like "everyone take acid!" and we got we got to be careful there you know and you know Laing had a point that there is a place for it that's really cool and I'm with you I think it'll be interesting to see what happens as it becomes a tool because it won't work for everybody but it might be useful to some.

Yeah I'm in love with this whole conversation can you two come on every show? When Amy and I were pairing people together we had no idea what would come out but yes so amazed by the way...

It's been a fun conversation I'll be happy to come back any time - your engagement and I wonder just to end off this whole idea of "insider knowledge" and how do we how do we communicate about this to wider church, wider hospital practices by their society so that it becomes

commonplace to talk about mental illness and disability? I think a lot has happened and a lot still is needing to be done and so maybe we'll start with Matt how you see you see this conversation getting further than the choir who's already singing the same hymn Matt? Right so I will say that I think the conversation is becoming broader and I think it is becoming more well known to get away from the insider knowledge to outsider know it I think it's a lot about exposure because I didn't know disability and theology was a thing until 2014 and I'm somebody with CP right so it's a fact of just letting people know that these venues for discussion and for writing exist I think that's a big part of it and I also think that people knowing that the definition of disability and what that means is a lot broader than what it used to be the whole idea that I mean one of the interesting things in my own work right now is contemplating at what point does addiction become considered a disability? And I really think that's a central question because some of the people that I work with and that I serve there's definitely avenues in society where they're left behind where they don't have access to resources and so broadening out the definition of what disability is I think is also an important step

Thank you Matt that's helpful so helpful and Michael?

It's a great question and I'm still kind of like thinking through it all

you know but part of that question is like

when as you mentioned the choir when are we preaching to the choir and when are we turning and preaching to the you know the congregation and the choir needs preaching too but with that said like I agree with what Matt is saying that that really that we are seeing a change a change in how theology is engaging in disability studies and disability studies engaging in theology how the disability movement is itself broadening out you know I've been involved with a center for independent living and here in La Crosse and they you know they've really embraced a lot of mental health and addiction care to the point where some of the other centers are kind of pushing back and they're like hey you don't want to lose track on folks who are experiencing physical stuff too and it's like that's a fair point you know we gotta try and keep our balance so yeah I mean this is one of the areas where we're seeing social change and I think in many ways a good way and yet we still have so far to go you know I don't know how the these pop-up shelters are are in your end but like on our end here you know our shelters are you know many of them are not accessible you know many treatment centers are not accessible are we you know are we really thinking on ways to make things

accessible to a wide variety of folks and I mean clearly the two of you have thought about that very intentionally with this podcast sometimes we come upon it unintentionally like covid has suddenly we've popped up all these ways and you know there is something to be said for accident but can we do it intentionally as well?

Well thank you Michael that's very insightful and we really appreciate your thoughts there and Miriam and I just want to say thank you both so much for coming and giving of your time today to share with our listeners and we hope that you'll come back too and part two it was fun to nerd out with you very true so thank you so much and thank you for having us yes it really was a pleasure I'd love to be back!

and a pleasure to meet all of you indeed!