This is the first of a three-part series on mental health, hosted by Alex Murra. This week, she talks with Dr. Anthony Mielke about men’s mental health, masculinity, and gender norms. You can listen to Dr. Mielke’s podcast here. 

Alex Murra:

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to From The Front Row, brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. My name is Alex Murra and I am joined today by Alexis Clark. And if this is your first time with us, welcome. We are a student run podcast that talks about major issues in public health and how they are relevant to anyone, both in and out of the field of public health.

Alex Murra:

Today, we’ll be chatting with Dr. Anthony Mielke, who is an assistant professor of marriage and family therapy at Mount Mercy University. As a marriage and family therapist, he has worked with individuals in a wide variety of settings, including in-home mental health and family therapy services and outpatient settings. Dr. Mielke’s academic work focuses on developing a systemic approach to masculinity studies by integrating existential and systemic theory. Additionally, he is developing an approach to promote therapist wellbeing and facilitate meaningful client therapist relationships, and is the primary faculty member for the leadership track in the Mount Mercy PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy program. He completed his doctorate in marriage and family therapy at Argosy University, a master’s from St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, and a bachelor’s in philosophy from the University of St. Thomas. Today he is here with us to discuss men’s mental health. Welcome to the show, Dr. Mielke.

Anthony Mielke:

Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Alex Murra:

So to start us off, can you tell us a little bit about your path to becoming a professor in marriage and family therapy?

Anthony Mielke:

Sure. So my undergraduate was in philosophy and I was always really interested in particular around any class or topic that dealt with human relationships. It’s maybe a natural inclination or something like that, I just was always really attracted to that. And so in addition to the general classes and my philosophy classes, I was able to take two psych classes and they were the first psych classes that I had ever taken. The first one was general psych, which my mind was just blown. Because in philosophy, we’re talking in the clouds all the time. And then all of a sudden it becomes real and practical and real change as possible. And real human relationships can be addressed, pulled apart, changed.

Anthony Mielke:

So general psych hooked me. And then I took psychology of marriage and family from the same professor at St. Thomas. And that was my first introduction to marriage and family therapy. And I was just, again, completely sold. I absolutely loved it, but I didn’t know that I could get a master’s in that without having an undergrad in psychology. So fast forward, I graduated, I was engaged, I didn’t really know what I was going to do. And my then fiance just offhandedly said, “Well, what if you were a family therapist?” I was like, “Oh gosh, that’s a great idea. I’d love that.” And then right after that, I ran into an old classmate of mine from undergrad who was studying marriage and family therapy at St Mary’s. And so I interviewed on the last day possible for that to start in the fall. Started, and as soon as I landed, I knew I found my niche.

Anthony Mielke:

And so probably within my first few months of getting my masters, I was asking about a doctorate and I’d always been passionate about education and teaching. And so fairly early on I had my sights set on teaching. And after I finished my masters, my wife and I also had our first child and we were saying, “No doctorate, definitely no doctorate. We barely made it through the masters. There’s no way we can do this again.” And then I got really depressed after my master’s program was done. I was like, “This is it? I have the same job. I’ve got a tiny raise.”

Anthony Mielke:

I was just really restless, and I remember vividly sitting on my bed in our first apartment, holding my daughter. And my wife was like, “What is wrong? Like, you’re depressed. What’s going on?” And I felt like I was admitting to her that I was having an affair or something. I was like, “I want my doctorate.” And she’s like, “Okay, we can.” And so we agreed, it’s something that she got on board with me pursuing it. And then once I started my doctorate, it was just off to the races. And I really felt like education was the place that I belonged because I could do clinical work, supervision and teaching. And then I just got incredibly lucky to find Mount Mercy because their program is just a really, or I guess our program is a really wonderful fit for my training. So yeah, I feel very lucky to be there.

Alexis Clark:

Yeah. I think it’s interesting how you said you had run into an old classmate that was also studying at St. Mary’s and sometimes it just feels like the stars are aligning and everything just fell into place.

Anthony Mielke:

Yeah. Yeah, it’s wild, I stumbled in, but as soon as I landed it felt like home. I remember sitting in my first master’s degree class learning about Freud and I was like, “This guy’s wild, but also I cannot stop, I’m so fascinated.” I described it as falling in love. I just got fascinated with the whole field and it hasn’t stopped, it’s wonderful.

Alexis Clark:

So when we were looking into you, Dr. Mielke, we learned that you will also host a podcast. The podcast is Becoming a Man. Can you tell us a little bit about this podcast? How long has it been around? What was your goal in creating this podcast?

Anthony Mielke:

Sure, slight correction on the name. It’s Becoming Man, not Becoming a Man. Which is, it’s kind of a nerdy correction because, so my co-host Marshall, he also works for me at my private practice. And I almost sheepishly was like, ‘Okay, we have to have it not becoming a man, but becoming man.” And it really is this idea of, I guess, being a man is a lot more ambiguous maybe than it was when, when my parents’ generation and especially the generation before. So it’s trying to capture this idea of the path towards quote, unquote, being a man is much, there’s just a lot of ambiguity. And I think we’ll probably get into that a lot more, but anyway, that’s the title. We started it in March, and the basic idea is I wanted to bring my academic and clinical work into a more accessible venue so that the ideas, the theories, the academic work that’s been done in the world of masculine psychology, there’s a problem in academics where we talk to each other about these great ideas and it’s always, how do we disseminate it so it actually helps change lives?

Anthony Mielke:

And so this was, this was sort of my way of doing that. And like you mentioned in the introduction, I’m working on a continuing development theory of masculine psychology that tries to take into account what it means to belong to a community where your identity of who you are as a person is connected intimately to how you see yourself as a man. That’s something we’ll probably get into in a little bit too. There was a problem I was trying to solve, which was why some men in the course of either couples or family therapy would make progress for a while, and then there’d be an opportunity for them to dive into emotion or become vulnerable or risk violating what they thought of what it meant to be a man, and they would pull back. It’s like they would regress back to the earlier stages of therapy. And it was really difficult for them to take that step into vulnerability or step into emotions. And that was a problem I kept seeing over and over in my early clinical work. And so I got fascinated about how do we deal with that?

Anthony Mielke:

So back to the podcast, the idea, the goal is to bring all of the research and our personal stories, both Marshall and I have our own personal stories of growth, we’re both parents, we’re both married. We both lived in the masculine milieu, we continue to. And so we try to blend our personal stories with research and my academic theory, clinical experience, to tell a story of exploring what it means to be a man who is suffering from mental, physical, relational health issues, and how to overcome the barriers that might be in place to accessing help. We talk about violence, we have a four part series on men and violence. Relationships, our recent episode that’s coming out today or tomorrow is on men and work. We’ve talked about depression and suicide in men, it talks about cultural factors in influencing masculinity. The tagline of the podcast is to help men access the full range of human experience and address the barriers that are involved in that connected to masculinity.

Alex Murra:

Thank you so much for talking about your podcast. I think that the ideas that you and your co-host are trying to bring up and discuss are incredibly important. Especially when we think of these ideas of masculinity or in general gender norms, we don’t really think about them. They’re so hidden within our society and the way we conduct ourselves. I didn’t really think about them until I took a gender and sociology course. Tying off of that, masculine norms and psychology or sociology they’re defined as the culturally grounded expectations for men’s roles, behaviors, the way they interact in relationships. In your expertise, what effect do these norms have on men’s mental health over time?

Anthony Mielke:

Sure. So there’s two layers to that question. The first one is, us three are having a conversation where we essentially accept what the field accepts, psychology and marriage and family therapy about the definition around cultural norms in gender and masculinity. Which is it’s culturally created, it is a social construct that then gets interpreted as objective truth. And so this is what men do, but really, if we look at it nested in a social context, it’s well, okay, these are kind of arbitrary things. The discussion becomes much more difficult when we’re talking to people, men, or women, or communities that see that as a threat, that see that as wrong. Traditionally, that traditional idea that sex and gender are intimately connected, sex determines gender, and that masculinity, to be a man involves certain ways of being in the world, certain attitudes, certain relational behaviors.

Anthony Mielke:

There’s a hope, I say it arbitrarily 50-50, but you lose half of the people that you need to talk to. If you lead with these are culturally constructed norms because for a lot of men. It’s who they are as a person. So I think one of the issues is we in the helping professions need to be aware that leading with that piece and treating these things as if they’re socially constructed right off the bat before there’s a relationship between the health provider, whether it’s physical health, emotional health, relational health, there has to be that relationship first. Otherwise, it’ll feel like a threat. I so often get couples and families and individual men in my practice where they feel like they’re walking into a threatening situation because therapy itself represents some sort of challenge to how they see themselves as men.

Anthony Mielke:

So anyway, your question, what effect did these norms have on men’s mental health over time? So the stats are really bad for men’s wellness. I don’t know if you’re familiar with any of them, but essentially we die sooner, we’re more addicted, we’re lonelier, isolated, we complete suicide at a much higher rate, it’s alarming. It’s one of the highest causes of death in men right now is suicide. Our relationships are more struggling or more violent, we’re more often incarcerated. It’s not good. On the other hand, our cultural dialogue says things like women feel too much, or women go to the doctor too much, or women are too sensitive. So there’s this disconnect, this dissonance between the culture narrative and the lived experience, and that culture narrative can keep men isolated, trapped. It’s like they can’t move past the story that we share and look at the lived experience.

Anthony Mielke:

Which is in large part, women are accessing the services that they need more and are more connected, more healthy, all of these better outcomes. But the standard norms can be oppressive to the men, or not oppressive, that’s the wrong word, can be limiting to the men to, it’s very difficult to get over. The solution to that by the way, is a relationship. So we’ll probably get into that later, but there’s a lot of research that says, if there’s somebody, if another guy who recommends a guy to therapy, they’re much more likely to go.

Anthony Mielke:

But the last thing before we move to the next question is that idea that the culture narrative of women do this too much, but the lived experience is that they’re actually doing it enough, in general terms. That can be seen as evidence of this term patriarchy is really thrown around quite a bit these harmful norms are embedded in systems. And so even the system of healthcare or therapy and how we talk about it, that’s evidence of these norms being nested actually in a system, not just in individuals. So that’s a big idea, but I wanted to make sure I mentioned that.

Alexis Clark:

So looking at the flip side of those cultural norms with sayings such as, “Real men don’t cry,” or, “Man up.” That are related to those harmful stereotypes of masculinity, how can we as future public health professionals in whatever capacity that may be, or even just for the general public’s knowledge, how can we help eliminate that stigma surrounding men’s mental health care?

Anthony Mielke:

Yeah. Sure. I’m really interested in the power of the meaning of words and how words used in certain contexts can mean different things, and the different meaning can bring a whole different experience to people depending on what it means in that context. I’m bringing that up because there were a series of studies done, I think in 2017 in Minnesota, on mental health in the military. And of course masculine norms are big in the military. And there was one study that looked at group therapy for veterans who were, I think they’re dealing with trauma like PTSD, either from their service or just abuse before their service, like childhood. And what they found was that it was incredibly effective, first of all. And second of all, the men in the group used it, the same language that they would have used outside of therapy, but it meant something different.

Anthony Mielke:

So a phrase, “Never leave a brother behind.” In the battlefield that means if somebody is wounded or is a casualty, you save them, you turn around and you get them. In the therapy room, it meant be vulnerable and don’t leave us hanging because we’re all vulnerable. So if you’re refusing it, you’re violating this disagreement that we all have. And there were other examples like this. So, “Be a man,” it changed from the traditional norms into, be vulnerable, be open with us, provide feedback, show up, all of these different things. And so the names didn’t change, the names of the norms didn’t change, but what they meant changed. And I think that’s a really important point. And then of course the relationship, which social norms are created in a relationship, social norms don’t exist unless we talk to each other about them and live them out.

Anthony Mielke:

The solution is in relationships as well. In that therapy group, these men had a relationship and I’ve had this experience personally leading men’s anger management in domestic violence prevention groups. The relationship opens the door. It’s like, “Hey, it’s okay. You’re not going to be shut out. You’re not going to be rejected if you do these things that are against the norms.” I think the relationship is really key and I have a long list. So I’m trying to go through it quickly.

Anthony Mielke:

And another thing that that can be really helpful, you were talking about future professionals. I always encourage my students and myself to be aware of whatever experiences you have with men. There are particular types of men that are triggering to you or narratives in the area that you’re working involving men. It can be so easy for us to meet men with assumptions and stereotypes based on the harmful men that we’ve known in our lives.

Anthony Mielke:

Early on I had to notice and address my strong urge in therapy when arrogant men were present to just crush them. I wanted to break them down. And I, doing my work in my own self reflection was like, it’s very clear that I have arrogant men, there’s a lot of pain there from that. And so I was trying to play that out in the therapy room and it was limiting me. On the professional to individual level, a lot of social services, communities and therapy, there’s the general stereotype like, well, the guy’s not going to be involved anyway, so we’re not going to invest. Or he’ll be here for a little bit and then go, or the capacity for feeling isn’t there, I’m thinking therapy now. So we’re not even really going to try that much, we’ll just accept that story. And it’s important to really, two, believe that the capacity for healing and the full range of accessing services and the human experience as possible for the men we’re working with, it might just take a while.

Alex Murra:

Yeah. Really, I thought that point that you made about language early on was really interesting. I guess I’d never really heard of that. I’ve always heard of those sayings in a very negative context.

Anthony Mielke:

Yeah.

Alex Murra:

So it’s kind of nice and refreshing to see that maybe it can be used in a positive way as well.

Anthony Mielke:

Sure.

Alex Murra:

Alongside what professionals can do and there’s advocacy efforts, I think there’s more discussions nowadays surrounding mental health in general and how important mental health is in addition to just maintaining your physical health. Has society maybe become more accepting of men’s mental health? And if not, what are ways that we can actually really continue to advocate and really push the importance of this?

Anthony Mielke:

This was a question we got from a listener early in our podcast, and it made me think about it in a different way, discussing it a few months ago. I think the dialogue is changing. And I think the stigma is going away, if you will. Some athletes are being much more open, male athletes are much more open about their mental health struggles. I think recently, Marshall, my co-host told me Ken Griffey Jr. came out recently, he’s a legendary baseball player from when I was a kid. That he had either suicidal thoughts or even made an attempt early in his career. And this guy is a legend, right? So anyway. And there’s advertisements on some very stereotypically masculine podcasts now, Better Help is advertising on the Joe Rogan Podcast, which has sort of become the the quintessential male gathering space online.

Anthony Mielke:

So I think in a lot of ways, there is a changing dialogue. What I’ve noticed clinically is a lot of men want to change, they’re bought in. They’re like, “Yes, I want to break the stigma.” But their habits of living and their family experience and their social experience has set up barriers that it’s almost like the stigma is embedded in us as men. And even if we are willing to change it intellectually, when you start doing the work, we bump up against, we rub up against the way of being that we’ve been living up until that point. So it’s changing, I think it’s a difficult change. I think there’s a lot more room to grow, but I also have hope in, I’m a millennial and I like it, which is sometimes a controversial statement. But I, in a lot of ways, I really love the more holistic approach that a lot of millennials are taking for parenting. And I think we’re hopefully raising a generation of boys that are more open to their experiences outside of these traditional masculine norms.

Anthony Mielke:

Sorry, I’ll say one more thing, it’s controversial this too, to put a new way of being a man in contrast to quote unquote traditional masculinity, because that still means so much to so many men and to so many families. And so it’s important to know that when I talk about it, I almost mean more the harmful impact of behaviors that are attributed to masculinity. Does that distinction make sense? Because it’s an important one and it’s one that can be difficult to articulate. Go ahead.

Alexis Clark:

I think with being, it’s 2021 and hopefully everyone is going towards a more accepting mindset. Can you provide any clarification on, we keep using very, some people would think controversial terms using the word boy and man, and men.

Anthony Mielke:

Yeah.

Alexis Clark:

How do you offer an inclusive space when providing these services, especially since you do specialize in masculinity, and some people are dying to be more masculine where others, there’s difficulty with that. How does that work?

Anthony Mielke:

I really appreciate that question. So clinically I always launched from the place of following the person’s lead that I’m working with. And everybody has a story with these concepts that we’re talking about, man, boy, male, masculinity. And I’m much less interested in, oh, I’m actually not interested at all in pushing out a definition of male or masculinity. I am interested in human experience. There are aspects of a healthy human experience that therapy can help with. And as the client attributes meaning and labels to their version of that healthy human experience, I follow their lead. And so if terms like male, man, boy, come into play. Okay, what does that mean to you? Help me understand that. And that’s I think, one of the areas that I’m aware of, that it’s a blind spot for me that I continually address, but it’s just, it’s the case is I’m a white male, I’m a physically able white male.

Anthony Mielke:

Marshall and I have talked about that on the podcast. I’m very skilled at following all of the things that I’m supposed to do, quote unquote, according to the traditional male script. I was an athlete, didn’t go to therapy until I was on my doctorate, there’s a lot there. And so that’s a constant place of awareness to understand, this is my experience and it’s helpful in a lot of ways in the work, but it’s also limiting. My answer to your question Alexis is growth. I maybe wouldn’t have answered that, that way five, six, seven years ago, because I just wouldn’t have the language to talk about it, but that’s the most important piece.

Alexis Clark:

Yeah, that’s great. And I think the willingness to grow and continue to learn and realize what people are comfortable with and what they want to be identified is key in any industry.

Anthony Mielke:

Yeah, yeah.

Alexis Clark:

Honestly. So when looking at barriers and a man’s experience, whether that’s in mental healthcare or what have you, we had noticed when looking at mental health specialists or psychiatrists or psychologists, whatever it may be, there was a very lack thereof of individuals specializing in men’s mental health. Why do you think that is?

Anthony Mielke:

I think there’s a lot of complexity to that answer. And so this might be a little more informed conjecture rather than, this is exactly what’s happening. I think some of it is the function of what I was talking about earlier with the impact of patriarchy on health care systems. There’s a really interesting history of masculine psychology that started in the seventies and really started blossoming in the eighties that jumped onto this larger change trajectory in a lot of disciplines. Anthropology, sociology, informed by feminist theory that the male experience isn’t the default human experience. So even identifying masculinity as a specialty or men’s psychology as a specialty involves breaking away from this idea that the male way of being is the standard. So I actually think that’s one of the things that’s involved.

Anthony Mielke:

I think another thing that might be involved is most often it’s men, male providers, male mental health providers that are interested in working with men and there just aren’t as many male mental health providers. And so I think that might be a built-in barrier to that. It’s not taught very much in training programs and I don’t think that’s on purpose. I think it’s a specialty among many. And so, if you’re interested in any sort of phenomenon, you can find your place, but there’s just not a ton of focus on it in training programs. So yeah, it’s just not spotlighted at a ton. I think people bring in, I came in with a passion to help men access more of the human experience and overcome these barriers. And so I sought it out, but I’d never heard of masculine psychology before I started looking. I think those might be some of the reasons.

Alex Murra:

Yeah. A lot of that seems to tie into that one idea that you mentioned earlier with how these are deeply ingrained in a lot of the systems that we currently have.

Anthony Mielke:

Yeah.

Alex Murra:

Kind of switching gears, trying to talk about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Anthony Mielke:

Sure.

Alex Murra:

Oh, obviously this has been an incredibly stressful time for a lot of people. It’s impacted people in many ways, having to deal with loss and extra stress. How has the pandemic affected men’s mental health as well?

Anthony Mielke:

Maybe it’s just because I’m in the academic world, but I feel like I always I’m having to caveat, these are generalizations and I haven’t seen research on it, but this is what I think based on my clinical experience. So many, it’s standard that identity is tied intimately to work. And that historically that’s been, especially the case for men. And whether or not it’s especially, more men than women, that doesn’t matter nearly as much as in that traditional vein of understanding masculinity, work is so intimately tied to self-worth and the ability to provide is so intimately tied to identity for men that can plug into that way of being male, I guess. And I think, not to be dramatic, but I think the pandemic has brought on a meaning crisis for a lot of men, especially men who weren’t able to work anymore or provide in the ways that they’re used to.

Anthony Mielke:

I think also, again, based on a lot of my clinical experience, the resources that a lot of men have to do relationships just got tapped out with the changes that happened in the pandemic, being home more, the emotional complexity of the stress involved in pandemic times. A lot of the guys coming in for work with me are like, “I don’t know what to do. I’ve never felt this way.” Or, “It’s worse than it ever has been.” So I think maybe some of the response or not responsibilities, but the stressors outstripped their capacities, which is not unique. That’s kind of the story that all of us got tested, how deep our resources, emotionally relationally, and for a lot of people, economically as well.

Anthony Mielke:

One other piece to that, that’s sort of been interesting that I just started noticing it clinically recently, is boys and men have shared with me that they are struggling to feel as if their pain is real because they look at their situation and the privilege that they experience and then internalize this feeling like, “But I shouldn’t have this. I’m the best off of all the groups.” And I think the pandemic has, I’ve noticed it after the pandemic started, has escalated that feeling, they’re having isolation, depression, meaninglessness, anxiety, conflict in the family, not being able to connect in ways that they want to. And then also still having a job. So having financial resources and struggling with where to put their pain, which is, I don’t know, it’s kind of a weird thing to try to talk about because of the damage that’s been done by the abuse of white male privilege too. So that’s a big topic, but it’s important to at least tease.

Alexis Clark:

Building upon that with COVID.

Anthony Mielke:

Yeah.

Alexis Clark:

How did you and your practice deal with COVID-19 and what does your practice look like moving forward as people are more likely to be vaccinated and it seems like we’re heading towards a more normal?

Anthony Mielke:

So in the therapy world. We have this term called countertransference, which is the idea that the therapist sees something in their life experience in the story of the client. And we’ll start to relate to the client as if they’re relating to the person or experience that happened in their own life. So if you went through a divorce and I was going through a divorce at that same time, the risk of countertransference would be, I might be bringing my, let’s say I’m going through a messy one. I might be bringing my thoughts, feelings, and attitudes towards divorce and my divorce into your work. Even if it didn’t apply to your divorce story, you might be having an amazing divorce and doing co-parenting awesome. And if I’m not, the risk is I’ll blur the lines between your experience and mine.

Anthony Mielke:

In normal times, therapists run into this in a very serious way occasionally, there might be one person in a week that you see that really hooks you, that brings them something from your past. The pandemic though, we were all going through the same thing. So everybody was dealing with the stress at the same time of the pandemic. And so therapists like everyone else, were scrambling how to provide services and still dealing with their own losses, struggles with the pandemic, and everything like that. So as we reintegrate, for me, I’ve been following the CDC guidelines. So for a while, it was only telehealth. We’re talking over Zoom, this is how it was. Then as vaccines started rolling out, it was come in, but we’re doing masks no matter what, or stay telehealth. Now as more and more people are being vaccinated it’s, thankfully I have a big office so social distance is still easily accessible.

Anthony Mielke:

So it’s masks in the waiting room and then you can take them off if you want in the room once we’re separated. Though, it’s still, it’s precarious. But I think we’re doing okay as a profession. And actually I think just today, Governor Reynolds is signing an important bill that will involve keeping telehealth payments the same rate as in person payments. So usually they were less. And I think that’s wonderful because that will ensure that mental health services can still be accessible to people that are still incredibly vulnerable to COVID-19 and might not be able to reintegrate. And I worry about them being forgotten. I think we’re all eager to go back to quote unquote normal. And I think it’s natural to turn away from reminders that maybe it’s not, things aren’t as they were, it might never be. So anyway, that’s good. That’s in place which will help service access.

Alexis Clark:

Yeah, that’s great. I did not know about that passing with Governor Reynolds.

Anthony Mielke:

I don’t know if it happened yet, but it’s coming. From my understanding.

Alexis Clark:

Yeah, good.

Anthony Mielke:

Yeah.

Alexis Clark:

Yeah, yeah. That is good. There is a couple things you mentioned this podcast, the first being your past trauma or whatever it may have been with arrogant men. And then you just had also mentioned, there might be a case that sticks with you because you’re going through something very similar. How do you deal with that?

Anthony Mielke:

So a buzzword or a buzz phrase in therapy training is every good therapist has a therapist. And I take that incredibly seriously. I quipped before, I didn’t start going to therapy until I was in my doctorate. It’s true. And the reason was I wasn’t ready to face whatever was waiting for me on the other side of therapy, which was my past and my present. I had real struggles, but I wasn’t willing to look at them. And my efficacy as a therapist, my fulfillment in my work, everything started turning around when I started looking at myself and doing my own work. And I didn’t realize the incredible amount of energy that was going in to keeping my past at bay and my present at bay when I was working with people, it was keeping me distant.

Anthony Mielke:

And so when this, there’s two options, I think that people do. Either they try to cut off their thoughts and feelings in the therapy room. There’s this, you have to leave our feelings at the door, which is so impossible, we can’t do that. We can cut off from them and then they just stay there and then they seep out in weird ways, or we can turn around and face whatever it is that comes up for us and integrate it. So it’s not scary, we’re doing our own work. That’s the best way is to take care of yourself. And that’s so cliche, but it’s so vital. And also there’s supervision. I supervise all of my students, you’re not alone. I think isolation is probably the single most damaging thing for what you’re talking about. If you’re isolated as a therapist, you’re just sitting with your stuff. So having good colleagues, getting mentorship, essentially tending yourself in a way that can turn your difficult, your struggles, your past pain, your current pain into a point of empathy for clients.

Anthony Mielke:

If you lost somebody from COVID and I lost somebody from COVID, one option would be for me to either ignore your pain because mine is too much. Another could be for me to process my pain with you as my client, which is completely unethical. Or a third, is to access my experience as empathy and say, “I think I might know what that’s like.” And I can ask you questions. “Do you feel powerless?” And I don’t even have to tell you that I’ve lost somebody to COVID. I can just draw from my experience and see if that fits with yours. I think I answered your question.

Alex Murra:

Thank you so much for sharing your personal experiences.

Anthony Mielke:

Sure.

Alex Murra:

And I think it’s so important, I’ve heard a lot of times, a lot of people who get into any type of healthcare, “We want to help out people.” Sometimes there’s this feeling of selflessness and I had a mentor, tell me pretty early on, you have to take care of yourself to be able to take care of other people really well. So to try and finish this off, we always like to ask this question to our guests, but what is one thing that you thought you knew, but were later wrong about?

Anthony Mielke:

Okay, that’s an awesome question first of all, and it’s so big. I probably thought about this one the most. I was like, all right, what do I tell them about that’s relevant? I think, because it’s happened a lot, but I think the one that’s probably most relevant to what we’re talking about today, like the impact of traditional masculine norms and those sorts of things is I had a deeply held belief that I could think my way into and out of anything. And I don’t just mean problem solving, I mean feelings. I really thought that if I just thought hard enough, what was making me sad, wouldn’t make me sad anymore. Or if what was making me angry, if I could just think my way out of it, I wouldn’t be angry anymore and that would be okay. And that that wouldn’t negatively affect me in life. That was such a deeply held way of being that I had that I had to go through some pretty rough experiences to realize that was a lie, that is not possible.

Anthony Mielke:

We can’t think our way out of feelings. And so I think maybe that’s the best answer for what we’re talking about today is coming to the realization that I can’t think my way out of everything. There’s this super cute kid’s book called We’re Going On A Bear Hunt, it is one of my, have either of you heard of this book? It’s a really cute book of a dad taking his kids through an imaginary bear hunt. And they keep hitting barriers, like a swamp and grass and a blizzard. And the repeated line in the book is, “We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh no, we have to go through it.” And there’s wisdom in that, can’t think your way out of this stuff. Sometimes the only way to do it is to go through, there it is.

Alex Murra:

Well thank you so much for that. That’s a really nice way to wrap it all up. Overall, just thank you so much for the work that you’ve been doing. I think it’s really interesting, it’s very important, and it’s very much needed. And thank you so much for coming on this podcast with us today and chatting with us.

Anthony Mielke:

Absolutely. I really appreciate the invitation. Thank you for having me.

Alexis Clark:

That’s it for our episode this week. Big thanks to Dr. Mielke for coming on with us today. This episode was hosted by Alexis Clark and Alex Murra. Written, edited and produced by Alex Murra. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. If you enjoy this episode and would like to help support the podcast, please share it with your colleagues. Our team can be reached at cph-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode was brought to you by The University of Iowa College of Public Health. Stay happy, stay healthy and keep learning.