We Need to Accept People with Mental Illness

November 29, 2022
61. We Need to Accept People with Mental Illness

The Therapy Twins, Jane and Joan have come up with their own diagnoses and are on a mission to shine the light for everyone on mental illness and make it easier for those suffering.

Here are some important moments with The Therapy Twins from the podcast: 

At 4:35 What is the problem you have identified and what are you doing to make it better?

At 8:14 Is mental illness overdiagnosed?

At 13:26  Mental illness is such a big problem, how do we make this better?  

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LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/therapytwins-joan-and-jane-7842a241/

Website: www.therapytwins.com

Buy the Book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B7KFP5B4/ref=tsm_1_tp_tc

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Here's the link to the trailer for the documentary film I'm making: Built to Last: Buyer Beware.

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Transcript

George Siegal: 0:00

I saw a statistic the other day that said almost 20% of adults in this country have mental health issues. Nearly 5 million children in this country have some type of serious mental illness. If you were diagnosed with mental illness, do you think it would be something you'd keep to yourself or share with those around you? People are often afraid that if those around them knew about their illness, it might affect how they are treated or become a problem for them at work. My guests today dealt with mental illness for years in their work, the therapy twins, Jane and Joan have come up with their own diagnoses and are on a mission to shine the light for everyone on mental illness and make it easier for those suffering to live a normal life. I'm George Siegal, and this is The Tell Us How to Make It Better podcast. Every week we introduce you to people who are working on real world problems and providing actual solutions. Tell Us How to Make it Better is partnering with The Readiness Lab, the home for podcasts, webinars, and training in the field of emergency and disaster services. Ladies, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me.

Joan Landino: 1:03

Thank you. We're so happy to be here.

George Siegal: 1:05

Yeah, I really, I really appreciate it. Now, this whole twins thing is throwing me off. I, I, I knew, uh, some twins in high school and, and that was it for the rest of my life. I never really, um, ran into them. So I had some questions for you. Okay. Um, the first one is how did you decide whose name went first? Why not Joan and Jane instead of Jane and Joan?

Joan Landino: 1:23

Well, Jane will tell you, but she's the older twin. I just ruined it. Go ahead.

Jane Landino: 1:28

So, Well, because I came out first, it was very much noted that Lori was the oldest sibling and when the twins came along, I came out first. So I'm Jane. And so it naturally went Lori, Jane, and Joan. And then what we did decide though, if you look at our website, we are trying to change it to Joan and Jane. It doesn't, and there's people that will argue, especially over A, becomes a comes before O in the alphabet. And they're fighting it, but we're trying.

Joan Landino: 2:00

That's another thing we're attempting, trying to do. Yeah.

George Siegal: 2:03

No, that's always tough. Whose name goes first on the marquee? Okay. What is the dumbest twins question you've ever been asked before something I might ask you today?

Jane Landino: 2:13

Oh, the dumbest was the dumbest one. Just one. It was um, I thought you, are you twins? Because I thought you all died when you were children. Cause we were teenagers I think at the time. I thought that was the dumbest cause you're not the only one that hasn't seen twins since high school. Yeah. And maybe it's because being under a microscope during that time, high school, you run like hell and you don't wanna be with each other cuz you don't wanna be under the microscope anymore.

George Siegal: 2:42

A fun. Yeah, I mean, you know, I, when my wife, uh, was pregnant, they said there's a chance she could have twins. And I said, I'm, I'm leaving the country if that's, I don't need that many more children. But, uh, it looks like a lot of fun. Um, okay. And what is the funniest twins story that you had? The, the last one wasn't so funny. It was just the dumbest one.

Jane Landino: 3:02

Ooh, that's too bad. Yeah. The funniest was, um, it's not the funniest,

Joan Landino: 3:07

the funniest i the funniest for me was when the love of her life before he broke her heart, um, came up from behind me and picked me up. Nothing sexual, but what he whispered in my ear, I went, oh, you've got the wrong twin here.

Jane Landino: 3:25

Gross. That is gross.

Joan Landino: 3:29

Wow. The one that broke your heart. Okay. She's like, who did that?

Jane Landino: 3:35

I've had many broken hearts. Gee, okay,

George Siegal: 3:38

join the club. So now you two, are you exact identical twins? I mean, you.

Joan Landino: 3:43

Um, some people say they call us mirror twins, and we, I, I remember we both had a mole on one side of our nose that everyone made us look, turn, and look. And so we both got those removed by a smaller,

Jane Landino: 3:57

uh, maybe the mouth droops a little on one.

Joan Landino: 4:01

The difference is,

Jane Landino: 4:01

is, uh, we are the exact height, but Jane has a longer torso and I have

Joan Landino: 4:08

longer legs. Yes, that is, that's a. There's a difference other than the weight issue. Oh, gene, Jane Landino: the weight difference, If I could just master that. But yes, I have a longer torso. Joan has longer legs.

George Siegal: 4:24

That's a question I wouldn't have touched, uh, in a million years, is the weight question. All right, so, oh God, I know. What is the problem that you are working on and what are you doing to make it better?

Jane Landino: 4:36

The problem is, is it's an ongoing stigma within the profession and outside of the profession. In psychiatry, a doctor has no problem saying, oh, I broke my arm back in, whatever. And the patient's all excited or they talk heart attacks or whatever. And as soon as it's mental illness, oh, and even in within the profession, substance abusers, they all get to come out

Joan Landino: 4:59

with their substance abuse history as professionals.

Jane Landino: 5:03

In psychiatry, they frown upon that. And I think it was Vve Murphy that said it's excellent if sports people and actors and actresses and people with billions of dollars come out with their mental illness. Cause they have trampolines to fall upon if something happens, but the average person doesn't. And he said, I could be misquoting him.

Joan Landino: 5:24

He said, if professionals could just come out, the stigma would go away.

Jane Landino: 5:29

And so we. We came out with our own diagnoses in an ADHD friendly pamphlet that you will laugh your ass off. Well, we call it a book. Book. Yeah, we do

Joan Landino: 5:38

call it a book. It's considered a book, but it's really a pamphlet. We don't want anyone to and currently free, which is excellent, free, free.

George Siegal: 5:46

That's the best part. So what is the pamphlet about? What are we trying to get people to to, to mainstream this? So when somebody famous says they have mental illness, when an actor says they have stage fright and, and, and certain things, people give them some space and they go, ah, that's, that's terrible. Right? But if the guy sitting next to you at a cubicle in your office, you think people run from that person because they're afraid of them?

Joan Landino: 6:08

Yeah, people do. People do. I was just looking up, um, the actor Gerard Butler yesterday. Huh. And, um, you know, I was reading down, you know, whether or not I would date him and I'm reading down and he had some substance abuse issues and I, I, I kind of just through it and I felt the shame. I felt like somebody should have edited this. You know, it was shameful. And that's what we're trying to do is to say, yeah, I had mental illness, but what, what was it, you know,

Jane Landino: 6:41

and, and also was happening about Anne Heche, I mean, she's dead and yet people, um, that I have heard so far. Oh, wow. She had a lot

Joan Landino: 6:49

of problems and, you know, issues.

Jane Landino: 6:51

And they separate mental illness as if your head is already decapitated. We're not Henry VIII's wives. We all

Joan Landino: 6:59

have.

Jane Landino: 7:01

It stuck to us, but we won't connect it. So we thought if we would come out with mental illness, with ours were,

Joan Landino: 7:08

which is kind of comical. Yeah. And what we're trying to do is just make it so it's not so scary. Yeah. You know, um, with Anne Heche, somebody said, oh, you know, you know she used drugs. Well that just cut the conversation right off. And what happened to that saying where every saint has a past and every sinner's got, you know, a future. A future or that thing in religion where he's, whoever has that whatever, who hasn't sin past the stone stones, he who was without sin cast the first stone well what we do, at least here over in America, and I think we kind of did it in our own personal relationship is one bad thing. You wear that scarlet letter, you are done. Don't ever try to get back into that club again. Called society even. Yeah, you're an outcast. Oh, you know, she's got mental illness.

George Siegal: 8:03

Do you think mental illness today is overdiagnosed? Do we use that as an excuse for people? Yes. And say, well, they can't just be an asshole. They have to have something wrong with them.

Joan Landino: 8:13

Absolutely. Yeah.

Jane Landino: 8:15

Plus most mental illness is a. Uh, reaction and a response to human trauma? I have, I can't believe I just learned this. We're retired and have been in the business since 19, early eighties, and in the first dsm in the fifties even schizophrenia was a reaction to human trauma. And we were just commenting on being able, privileged to be able to work with Yale University when it was an amazing psychiatric facility. All the psychiatrists back in the day were, were exploring trauma. So what they had back then worked. And in 87, 88, healthcare changed, and the business suits took out what worked. That's it's, wait, they took out

Joan Landino: 8:58

that, that word. Oh.

Jane Landino: 9:01

And in the next dsm in the sixties, um, it wasn't a reaction to human trauma. It was just labeling label, label label. Distance, distance, distance. You're nuts. I'm, oh, thank God I'm normal.

George Siegal: 9:14

Well, you know, one of the things that I've read, and, and so you don't think it's a problem that's getting worse over the years, like between the, the kind of processed foods people eat, the kind of problems they're facing in the world. So you thinking maybe it's the same as it's always been, but now we're just putting people in categories?

Joan Landino: 9:30

What's getting worse,

Jane Landino: 9:32

that food is, what's getting worse is kicking people out of this club called the Human Race. We're, we're kicking people out and pretending that we are including everyone. Society does not do what Joan calls the Zebra effect.

Joan Landino: 9:53

Yeah, I mean, have you

Jane Landino: 9:54

been to Skid Row? I actually was there unfortunately, when I broke my foot. And the guy, the Uber only knew that way to the emergency room. And I actually started to cry that my fellow human beings were that exhausted, hot, no water, no facilities to go to the bathroom. And it, it made me cry. It was horrible. And the other

Joan Landino: 10:15

thing Joan and I were honored to do in the eighties was to see what, what people don't do anymore in a longer term psychiatric hospital. It was Yale University and what they would do is bring people in, take them off all of their medications and they call it a washout. And to see, you know, let's, instead of having 10 meds on board and I'm exaggerating, let's see what's really going on, and, you know, decrease some of this. And I'm walking through Skid Row to get to the pharmacy, to get her, her, uh, medication. And I am feeling like I'm back there with all these unmedicated people. Suffering. Yeah. Suffering. Whether they were substance abusers or psychotic. It's just, it was horrible. And so what, what is getting worse is, you're right, we're over diagnosing, but we're picking and picking and teasing out. Talk about, we grew up under a microscope, which twin had the mole on the right versus the left? Who has um, I was called the fat twin my whole life. Fat when I was, I have always been of normal weight. And it does a number on you. And so we're picking people out. Oh, he's just a narcissist. Oh, she's borderline. I mean, we're, we're really separating instead of bringing people together. And it's all about intolerance of something different. Hmm.

George Siegal: 11:38

So it's just, you, you, you think we brand these people just so we can have an excuse for their behavior?

Joan Landino: 11:44

I think it's out of fear.

Jane Landino: 11:45

You know, you're so fearful that somebody could actually react that way. When, when we wanna say that the sickest back in that day, I mean the stories, you couldn't even put this in a movie because people would say, well, that just isn't true.

Joan Landino: 11:59

One

Jane Landino: 12:00

young boy was passed around, politicians, I'm not gonna say what administration, but it was back in the day. They're all dead. And he was passed around, um, just for sex and as a, as a young boy into being a teenager for so many years. And I remember running down the hall with him while he wanted to kill people. And, you know, it was

Joan Landino: 12:21

really hard to be around them

Jane Landino: 12:24

because of what they went through. You know, but I fell for the chemical imbalance as well. Yeah. I mean we all did. I mean, it's research science. You know what I wanna say to people? I'm a realist, I'm a this, you know what science is? It changes. What about the hypothesis? Until you get it. Until it doesn't. So we have the identical dna, but different fingerprints of yet, you know, it could be in the future that somebody's gonna find out that twins actually have identical fingerprints one time in 800 million. So that's what science is to me. I laugh when people say, yeah, but whatever.

George Siegal: 12:59

Well, we see with mental illness, um, extreme examples with mass shootings now with, um, with homeless people as you were bringing up Skid Row. Uh, the amount of people that, I mean, there's something obviously if you don't have the means and you have to live someplace, but a lot of these people are suffering with mental illness. Um, a lot of people walking around the street. How, how do we make that better? It seems like a, a, an impossible thing to accomplish.

Jane Landino: 13:27

It is probably impossible short term, but one guy in our lives that we actually speak with almost every day because one of us had him as a husband. As a husband.. Yeah. He has three degrees from Yale University. He's one of the most humble persons I have ever met When we were first married, uh, Yale would call our house the landline and beg John, sorry, beg him to finish his degree because he would not finish his business degree at Yale University because they took out the humane part of a corporation. And I remember he wanted to go on and actually be an aprn and he was gonna go be a nurse at 50 and then go get another degree. And, uh, he finished that master's degree in business. But what he said was, uh, other parts of the world have a system in effect that you can't be. You can't have a certain amount of billionaires or millionaires if children are still starving. So he said if he were in office, he would get the hundred most rich people in the room and say, we have to solve the childhood abuse, neglect problem. They're dying. And ask them how you're gonna take it. Cuz you're gonna have to give a little to actually get a little respect because we will shame you that your wealth is sitting on all children. And that's unfortunate that we don't care about adults because children are resilient is the most false statement I have ever heard in my life because we may be allive

Joan Landino: 15:04

but you don't like our behavior

Jane Landino: 15:06

anymore. And I am a professional and I have had two arrests in my life. And you know what a guy said to me? You've been arrested. I, that's why I trust you. I've never trusted somebody who's never been arrested. Cause they've always followed the

Joan Landino: 15:21

rules.

George Siegal: 15:22

What'd you get arrested for?

Jane Landino: 15:24

One was larceny and the other one was unfortunately a DUI. Very actually, fortunately so. So I don't even have one glass anymore and get behind the wheel. It's actually fortunate. Both experiences are fortunate. Every experience is fortunate. Really, even my most horrific, my most horrific sexual assault is a fortunate incident

Joan Landino: 15:48

because, Truly

Jane Landino: 15:49

you, you do have other passions in

Joan Landino: 15:52

life to help others. Once you

Jane Landino: 15:54

have been through trauma, you can not only recognize it, that's a gift that you can now recognize that in another, you have the opportunity to help somebody else. And there's where the domino effect is.

George Siegal: 16:06

Well, so a lot of the things that you're, that you deal with or talk about are coming from experience. When we see people protesting or, or, or rioting or, or arguing about things are some people just doing it because they think it's something they need to do, but they have no life experience to really back it up?

Jane Landino: 16:25

Oh, well, I, I've never actually probably picketed, but um, unfortunately, I'm sure a lot of people have experience and then the rest of the people are like, oh, that looks like a good idea. I think I believe in that today.

Joan Landino: 16:38

But Jane, Jane talks about DNA a lot and when you've had a child, cause I've never had one, you're passing along dna including emotional dna, anxiety, all the way to a strong person who constantly gets back up. Jane, don't you talk about that. Well, yeah, . Yeah. Yeah.

Jane Landino: 16:56

You know, it's in those articles that children, again, the mother child bond is, you know, you know, more scientific than we thought because, you know, you know what, man, and I'll include women. What, what we humans have to do is say, why don't we do an experiment on these bunnies? This lady, this bunny just had six little bunnies. Let's take those, those, uh, bunnies, hook her up to some so we can monitor her respiratory rate and her heart rate. Let's take every baby one by one farther away than she can sense. And let's murder those bunnies and see if she knows it from a distance. That's what we have to do. But, cause you know what came outta medicine?'cause we're so old. We're so old. Can I just tell you wearing gloves was an insult to the patient. Unless that person had something like leprosy or covid, highly contagious,

Joan Landino: 17:55

then you would have to do those kinds of things. But we take out the human touch or the mother that spent the last two weeks were her two year old and noticed that Jesus, two year old is usually wired, looking like they're on meth, running around, exploring everything, and then exhausted. And why is he lying on the couch so much and he's not really eating? Well you take him to the doctor? And the doctor says, you are a brilliant mother. You diagnose pneumonia. Well, no I didn't. Well, I guess I did but, you know, people forget to pay attention to that person. We hear mental illness, what do we wanna do? We wanna run away, you know, we, what, what they did. Um, a big disservice to psych when they came out with a statistic that a certain type of, of schizophrenic, which I, that's not even, we don't call them paranoid schizophrenic anymore, I guess, but that particular type of person, Might have been 1% more violent than the rest of, or 3%, you know, and, and it just scared a nation. And most of the school shootings are done by people that have been neglected from the system or in a lot of, in my opinion, I'll speak for myself and people that I've spoken to in the wrong system and, and right now society has left psychiatry to sort of deal on their own, and we have a hierarchy. Substance abusers are the worst, so we give them less care. Mm-hmm., when they're symptomatic, we give them less care. Absolutely. When a diabetic is symptomatic with a high blood sugar or a low blood sugar, they get more care. Yep. Not a substance

Jane Landino: 19:45

abuse. I just wanna say that sometimes people don't realize how bad the one woman who used, which it means she was symptomaticwent to get back into her shelter and they said, oh, you, they took her urine and she used, and it happened to be a horrible snowstorm in Connecticut. She died. They kicked her out. She, her sweatshirt over her wheel behind a dumpster. She froze to death trying to warm herself with her sweatshirt. We kick them out. We, we tell patient, we tell people to kick their children out of the home. Yeah, and it was a man from Poland when I first started. I was so honored. This man was a Holocaust survivor. He grew up in Poland. And he was a little boy when the Nazis took his mother, he and his mother to Auschwitz, I believe, and he, I learned something I never knew. He actually went to school for a little while. Every day he had a little schooling. He was like a kindergartner in the, in the, in the camp. But what he, he said his, his, his son was a substance abuser. And what he said was, what you people told me to do does not compute in my mind and my heart, that you would never send your child out the door. You would get more care. But our entire society mm-hmm. gives less care.

Joan Landino: 21:16

You know, I wanna say something. This is Joan. Um, when I went to school, I had the privilege of somebody I, from another, uh, country to come and talk to the substance abuse classes cause we were gonna be prescribing. And he mentioned about five different substances, you know, alcohol. Think post-traumatic stress, but depression, anxiety, insomnia, cocaine, depression, or ADHD or some type of learning. But who cares about marijuana? It's so helpful. Like let's get rid of the negative. But when he said opiates, he said, I don't want you to repeat this to anyone. And I'm thinking, I probably misheard that because if you don't repeat this, how are we gonna move forward? First think anger. You never wanna say that to a patient anyway. Well, you seem anger that's like, you know, did you wanna get hit, Joan? These are the things you should say. Calm down, relax, or whatever you. What he said about HA heroin after the anger. He said, remember, it is something that person needs to forget. And again, I'm gonna say in therapy, you please say that, but also please say, do not tell me this. You can still heal from this because when somebody says it out loud and another human being hears it, unless you're both veterans and have been in that war, You feel judged. So I didn't wanna hear what they needed to forget. Unfortunately, quite a few told me. So I do tear up a lot. Anyhow, it was that, and that's crazy cause it's just crazy.

George Siegal: 22:51

Years ago I was playing in a golf tournament with a doctor, um, who dealt with a lot of substance abuse and we were talking about Darrell Strawberry, the baseball player. And I said, boy, I have no sympathy for this guy. He had everything in the world going for him and he just threw it all the way on drugs. And he said, That's why you should have sympathy for him. That is the power of addiction. Addiction is so powerful. He was willing to throw his career away or through his career away because he couldn't control it. So when people are dependent on drugs, when people are alcoholics, when people are, are into, uh, amphetamines or opioids, are we saying that that's a mental illness that we need to understand? Or is it an addiction? Are they the same thing?

Jane Landino: 23:30

I wanna say first and foremost, it is a, a reaction or a response to something? Nobody. I mean, okay. I, no, I wanna say nobody just goes and says, I'm gonna be an alcoholic. A lot of alcoholics, I treated their father brought them to the bar when they were infants and there was beer in their baby bottle. So I don't think it's an, an. You know, some people are, um, physically yes, some people get addicted faster. Some people have a higher tolerance to pain. Some people have a higher tolerance to life and they don't, you know, need to reach. But what we're reaching for, there's a

Joan Landino: 24:03

reason for why we're reaching for it. But the other part was, and then, and there's also been a study, of course, we, you know, I don't know if anyone knows this, but Mice and rats, right? Considered like the best mothers ever. You know, they probably put all us humans to shame. I've heard that too. Everyone that's worked with them, from scientists to the people that are the caregivers and have to gas them at the end of the experiment and kill every last one of them had in our, but these, um, one of the experiments was done, you know, you mentioned the word, you know, addiction and do we label, should we label it or what is it, a mental illness or disease? The first of., every living thing out there has some form of addiction and if you back it up to may all be fed and let nature work itself out. I don't know if you know trees apparently communicate with each other and one of the things trees will do, let's say there's a little a row of some trees and bushes. Well, when somebody didn't get enough water, the one that got a lot of water is gonna give. Not, is not gonna take a drink so the other one can survive cuz they know like Native Americans knew here. Yeah. That if you don't have a cooperative society going on, none of us survive. So all things, living things, including humans, can suffer from an addiction. And what I believe is so much fun is finding out which one that is for you. Because I would never have guessed in a thousand years that it was cigarettes for me. It was the hardest thing I had ever had to give up. And. I have a funny story that I'm not gonna tell right this second about why I started, but I lied straight to my son's face and that was probably my most shameful moment of my life. But that little space, so the experiment with the mice is get them all addicted to something, right? Right, right. That def that also has a physical withdrawal. Yes. As well. And then let's see what happens. Yes. They all loved every drug. They loved it, they loved it. Which animals knew what exactly when to stop. Cause you know, once again, they're brilliant because they have nurtured that, uh, intuition, that sixth sense that we pretend doesn't exist. Oh my goodness. We think everything is science and anyway, state of like human touch, right? So anyway, the one thing, so. Keep them locked out. They make them go through withdrawal. They feel the pain of withdrawal and some, some medications a withdrawal kills you. Some. It's so uncomfortable. And the one thing that each, um, mouse chooses over that substance, as painful as it is to give away mm-hmm. is freedom. Yeah.

Jane Landino: 26:57

Freedom. So

Joan Landino: 26:58

we're not free. Our society, this one especially. Could you use that word, socialism? Oh my goodness. The negative connotations that all humans could have access to healthcare will start a war they

Jane Landino: 27:14

give to the police, socialism, you know, the library, all these socialized. Wonderful things. The parks and everything, they

Joan Landino: 27:23

love it. Specialized but medicine. Oh my God. You see? Is anyone sick? You see how great America is? We are now. We're the young ones and we love being these young John Wayne proud. And I'm gonna do it with all. Oh, Mike. Oh, that's important. What you said, anyone who is sick. Did you hear what she just said? In nature. That's all we're acting like actually, actually being normal is we're leaving them. If you have an albino duck, that albino is gonna risk the, the, the, the squad of ducks to get noticed in nature.

Jane Landino: 27:54

He's not blending in. We saw it at one of those parks. Our parents kept trying to, we were so negative, we were drawn to negativity. She kept trying to give us vacations and I saw. Horror in it. And I was like, the duck. And they're leaving the duck and she was screaming. She wanted to be, they had to peck it until she stopped following them. Oh my God. So that's what it is. That's why survival of the fittest. Everyone is afraid to speak. Cause there's of that thing called cancel culture. So we have these brilliant people that are loved by millions and they say something well and they do something. You know what? You know what we have to, I believe, could we please get back? I mean, I am the mother of a son. I'm the mother of a son. Oh boy. And if my son, if I heard what I heard years ago, there were a group. I did not have a child back then. There was a group of mothers of sons and daughters that were friends since let's say junior high. So these guys and girls are friends, buddies, and sometime in high school at a party, a couple of the guy friends are, I don't know who some of the boys raped the girls.

Joan Landino: 29:12

Now that came to me and that was my son. This is what you might not hear from me. Those mothers were defending their sons and calling the other girls the names that just like we do in the courtroom. What were you doing out at two o'clock in the morning and what, I'm sorry, you had on a skirt? And how short was that? You must have been asked. You had a few drinks, you let the boy kiss you, you must have been asking for it, . Well, first of all, I would've kicked my ass, my ass, my son's ass. And my son knew this, um, one day he, uh, he was junior high, I believe, and the word slut came out of his mouth. It was like, it was like I was on a radar. I stopped what I was doing. I said, whoa, whoa, whoa. Time out. I said, first of all, that word, I will never, you cannot say that word ever again. If I hear about it, you're dead. And I also said, now you remember you're judging someone that you have not walked in their shoes. I mean, Joan and I being therapists, we have heard some stories that are so humiliating that these people, that some people say, my God, no one's ever admitted that to me. Mm-hmm., they're humiliating stories. And one of the things that's gonna go right up to us being so passionate about breaking that stigma, and it's not just mental illness. Mm-hmm., the girl says to me three things. That's what brought her to my, uh, chair. They were, one was, um, I think she slept with someone the first date maybe she had an abortion and there was something else she did. And she was very embarrassed and I just looked up from my, my pen and paper and I said, tell me something I haven't done. And now through the grapevine, she knew Joan was working in a place and this girl was there and she said that was the only reason she continued with therapy because every other therapist judged her for that immediately. How? I don't even know, but you feel it. Because I've gone to therapy and felt judged. I wanna get back to what Jane said that is so important. Any person, male or female, that spoke of hypersexuality and things they weren't proud of and what is wrong with me, every single one of them was either. They were traumatized as a child.

Jane Landino: 31:36

I don't know. You're not gonna judge that. It was just

Joan Landino: 31:39

often sexually, it was often a family member or,

Jane Landino: 31:43

and they keep saying, no, I wasn't raped. No I wasn't raped. You had the, did you feel sexually assaulted by that person touching your thighs? Your, there are ways to feel sexual and raped by somebody's eyes, and as a child you don't understand that. So it's way worse. I've been sexually assaulted as adult. An adult, and I always told my female clients and male clients that yours was worse. You were a child. That's how much more confusing it was. I knew exactly what was happening.

George Siegal: 32:16

Well, let's try to bring this back around so there's some hopefulness here. Cause a lot of this is pulling me right down into the ground. I'm going, wow, okay. This is a huge

Jane Landino: 32:25

problem. Do you see how dark we can get? Mm-hmm., it's a touch

George Siegal: 32:28

dark, but, so let's bring some light to it. What can people do as an action item to try to, to help with the problem?

Jane Landino: 32:36

To help with the problem because everything seems to be a reaction to human trauma. What we did back in the eighties, and it should be done today, it is the zebra effect When something happens, like the lion goes in or tiger to get the one of those zebras, if that zebra dies bye, we're outta here. But if that's zebra doesn't die, the herd brings that zebra back and allows for regression, allows for acting out behavior, allows for the reaction and still feel you're part of the herd. What we do is separate, so what I, what I'm saying is whatever you like to do, Okay. You don't wanna do it alone, find somebody to do it with because when

Joan Landino: 33:16

you go out in public or

Jane Landino: 33:19

exercising or to eat to movies for music, silence, you, if you do that with another human being and you feel accepted and safe, there's therein starts your healing process. Therapy comes in, you can come to therapy. Jane has very funny stories about how long you can vent for. But yeah, eventually it turns into vomit and you can aspirate and get worse. So there is a limit to how long you're gonna stay. Us, for example, we stayed in it for too long, as you can see. Give us a microphone, we'll go negative on it. You need to stop that negativity. Thank you. We will leave our copay at the door for you. Thank you for that. To turning us around to laughing. Before we labeled everybody with a mental illness, we had things called compassion tolerance and forgiveness. Look 'em up if you need to. But one of the ways we healed our relationship, because I know for myself, I was extremely intolerant. And who do you take things out on as the person you trust the most? That would be my identical twin. And it wasn't until I learned a little compassion, a little tolerance, and. Boy, I didn't realize forgiveness was quite important. Um, where then things started turning around and I'm the, no, not the funny Twin Joan, the funny twin, but I actually have more of a sense of humor. The more I use those three words, I mean, act them. Um, life is a little lighter rather than I feel I programmed my brain with the glass was half empty. And at, at the exact same time as it's half empty, it's half full. Because what's on my list to watch by myself is I never saw it. It was, uh, won the Academy Award for best foreign film at some point. It's life is beautiful. Mm. It was the Italian man that, uh, gets in the concentration camp with his child or the Nazis invaded and he has to make it less horror, horror like for his child. So they make it into a game. I, I saw it at the theater, but

Joan Landino: 35:22

anyway, everything heed my. It's light versus dark, and we're tipping the scales. I mean, one small thing and people are going dark, but I'll tell you how it

Jane Landino: 35:34

won't work. If you're me, I used to be atheist, um, a realist.

Joan Landino: 35:39

I'd call myself scientific,

Jane Landino: 35:41

I'm not gonna lie. Methodical. Yeah. Whatever. And, um, what, what unfortunately works. You have to lie to yourself at first. If you wanna have a self-esteem, you actually have to say, I'm beautiful, and I inside and out, and I did this and that. It was

Joan Landino: 35:57

a social worker who said that. Why? Why can't you lie to yourself, Joan? I thought, okay, I can try. And then the other thing is we have such a hard time with Yeah, but past, present, and future. Once a loser, always a loser. No sir. Native Americans knew that you speak of the present only, and if you want rain, You envision that it's already raining, those two things, the Native American way and the social worker saying lie to yourself, that really jumpstart you into positivity.

Jane Landino: 36:26

Cause at first we are negative and we have programmed our brains to be that.

George Siegal: 36:31

And also maybe just start being nicer to other people.

Jane Landino: 36:33

Yes. Yeah. And a little tolerant that, you know what people don't realize and we're identical twins. And Joan sometimes would walk around like, huh, I don't get it. Same dna. How did she come up with that thought when mine was the opposite? And I'm thinking, Joan, different life experiences. Different viewpoints on things that would be normal. And we don't even have freedom of speech anymore. No, because once you disagree with the other person, now you gotta shut them up rather than saying, wow, I never thought of it like that. Tell me more about why you feel like that. Oh, cuz you'll get a lot more, sometimes you don't want all of it,

Joan Landino: 37:10

but you'll get it. I mean, just . It's right. Be a little nicer.

George Siegal: 37:15

Yeah. So how do people get your book slash pamphlet? What's the best way to Uh

Joan Landino: 37:20

oh,

Jane Landino: 37:20

it is, um, on Amazon. Unfortunately right now it's a Kindle that's for free. So it's an ebook. Ebook and it is, uh, under the hood, but also put in therapy twins because we didn't realize how many people have a book called Under the Hood. And um, Joan can tell you why, but. Even easier if you start with, uh, .UK because for Sweet Oh, amazon.uk. Yeah. England. Really? Woo. Did they give us a chance at first, you know, some bridal magazine, a celebrity magazine, but

Joan Landino: 37:52

a lot of the mental health arena, and one of the, the reasons is it's if, if Americans could just, um, look up and around and see that there are a few countries, Switzerland, Denmark. Portugal. Portugal. Portugal. And how they changed the whole substance abuse theme from, um, criminal to a public health thing, which basically opened up services and attitudes decreasing. Um, and by the way,

Jane Landino: 38:27

there were zero deaths out. I don't know, with the last check there was zero, if we could just look at that and see how they solved their crises of death, what Joan was saying. But no, instead we would rather come after the prescriber and watch their children die. I dunno how many, hundreds of thousand pretend

Joan Landino: 38:47

we're going after drug dealers. We're going after the low to mid-level drug dealer that's just trying to negative. But anyway. Mm-hmm.. George Siegal: Yeah. I wanna end on a happy note. So how do people follow you on social media? How do people consume what you're about?

Jane Landino: 39:02

Here. Everything is just therapy twins, one word, two words at therapy, twins, whatever. It's the twins. We, we, what do you call that? Patented with the, the name only because a physical therapy group wanted that for a chair, and I thought Uhuh we're, well, actually, we were the rappy twins on Twitter. A lot of rap artists started following us and they thought we were, yeah. They thought we were the rappy twins, not therapy twin. What we promised and we're what we promised is

Joan Landino: 39:29

the book is a lot funnier than what we were. Yeah, we just probably, if you gave us another hour, I think we could have gotten more, but we are very passionate about those, the disservices. But we promised the book is funny. Yeah. And there's a few solutions

Jane Landino: 39:41

in there as well, and therapy twins versus the rappy twins are spelled identically. So there you go. Different perspective.

George Siegal: 39:48

Awesome. And I would never wanna dismiss the things that you're emotional about. I mean, they're obviously things that really matter to you and, and I think that's great that you have that kind of passion. Thank you. Thank you. So, hey, thank you for coming on. Um, I, I appreciate your time and, uh, continued success.

Jane Landino: 40:06

Thank you. We appreciate that. Thank you. Your copay is at the door. Okay,. George Siegal: Very good. I have good insurance, but uh, it may take me six to nine months to pay you. Thank you so much for stopping by and listening to today's Tell, Us How to Make It Better podcast. If you want to get more information about Jane and Joan, the therapy twins, you can find it in the show notes. And if you have any questions or comments for me, there is also a contact link in the show notes and I'd love to hear your questions or thoughts about what you'd like to hear on future episodes. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.