Dr. Caroline Fleck
speaker
364 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Dr. Caroline Fleck’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
There was a great example of Jon Stewart actually talking to Congress on behalf of the 9-11 first responders. And he's advocating on their behalf. I remember that. And he's Jon Stewart. He's incredibly articulate, very eloquent.
But as he's talking, he starts getting choked up.
He just gets so mad and it's just such an injustice. And like, holy cow, you can feel how much like he just so swiftly validated their outrage, their sorrow, the injustice of it simply through his emotions. Right. He broke character from his like standard, you know, like that was not who showed up.
It was a person who was deeply vulnerable and it was clear that he was deeply affected by their experience. And that's kind of what it can show. It doesn't have to be negative emotions. Like I'm a big one for jumping up and down and like high fiving and hugging. It's just like it's breaking character, I think.
Like self-disclosure. Okay. So that would be, for instance, I struggled with depression for about a decade.
Yeah, yeah. From when I was 15 through about 26. It's one of the reasons I wanted to become a psychologist.
I mean, I'm kind of a jerk. Yeah. Like, I wanted to see if I could treat depression on some level. In part because so much of what I received felt damaging. In retrospect... I felt invalidated by most of the mental health providers I saw. There was this, and I can see it. I was high functioning. There was this disconnect between like, you look fine.
You know, and the fact that I'm saying like, no, I'm really struggling, really struggling here. And so I felt dismissed. I felt I doubted if this was even real. A lot of the time there was this whole narrative of like, what's wrong with me? I've got everything like poor you. You know, it's just. Yeah, it was just swirling around my head big time. And fortunately, I got treatment and got better.
And now when I work with clients, and I've got someone who says, you know, like... You don't possibly, you couldn't possibly understand. You're sitting here and you're like, you're with your degrees behind the wall and you think you've got it all. And I say, yeah, but I had ECT for depression. That's electric shock therapy. Wow. Okay. That's a big deal. I understand suffering.
I understand being at that level of pain where you would do anything to
to relieve it and it kills me that this person I care so much about is in this exact same situation but I got through it and I won't quit I will do whatever I can to see how to get you through it okay there is a connection there there's you know you can feel that um again it's I see myself in you I'm not better than you we're in this together that's what disclosure can do
Remember when I said the higher you go, the harder it hurts. Oh, right, right, right. Right.
Yes.
Yes. Yes.
That's right. That's right. And I have all sorts of tips in the book around how to kind of repair if you think you've screwed up, how to avoid making some mistakes there. But the fact of the matter is, I can't emphasize this enough. It's a skill. All right. And so if you want to get good at this, you practice it. you practice it.
I wasn't coming on podcasts saying that I had had ECT and major depression. I figured out a way to communicate that in a way that feels effective to me and focused on the topic.
Well, you don't have to wait to the last moment. So that's an important point. With validation, you want to go as high as you can. authentically and effectively. So if I get it right away, I could go for it. Yeah. But if I don't have rapport with the person and I don't know, so I have, I've made that mistake actually once with emoting.
But I remember with a client whose mother, this mother had come to see me. Her daughter had gone to one of these like wilderness programs, which are just a complete scam. She was there for eight weeks, came back and attempted suicide and was in the ICU.
And mom was devastated. Mom's seeking treatment for her. And she's telling me about this and I'm allowing myself to just kind of tear up a little bit.
Okay. Because I am feeling like just, oh, I hate the system and this poor kid. I'm just having all this stuff. And I just, I lost control of it. I work with suicide and self-harm day in and day out, but I just got worked up. I like lost control.
Showing 101–120 of 364 · page 6 of 19
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