Art Heals All Wounds
Do you think art can change the world? So do I! We’re at a pivotal moment when scientists, medical practitioners, and creatives are coming together in recognition of the ways that art plays an indispensable role in our well-being, as individuals, communities, and societies. In each episode we hear from artists and creatives who share their inspiration for their work and its wider impact. These conversations about transformative artistic practices show the ways that art can be a catalyst for healing and change.
How do we change the world? One artist at a time.
Art Heals All Wounds
The Power of Vulnerability: How M. Brady Found Courage In Creativity
In this episode of 'Art Heals All Wounds,' I explore the transformative power of vulnerability with guest Michael Brady, a psychotherapist and newly emerged musician. Michael, whose performance name is M. Brady, shares his journey from suffering a panic attack during a crucial audition in his youth and abandoning his dream of becoming a musician for two decades. Inspired by the courage of his clients and his desire to confront his long-held fears, he began writing songs, culminating in the release of his first album. This episode delves into the interplay between vulnerability, creativity, and personal healing, highlighting how Michael's experience not only fulfilled a lifelong dream but also enriched his psychotherapeutic practice. Listeners hear about the deep emotional and psychological impacts of unprocessed trauma and small ‘t’ traumas, and the healing potential of creativity.
00:00 Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds
00:35 Chasing Dreams and Facing Failures
02:35 M. Brady's Journey from Psychotherapy to Music
05:00 The Therapeutic Power of Music and Vulnerability
18:12 Creating an Album: A Therapist's Musical Exploration
23:14 The Impact of Art on Personal Growth and Therapy Practice
26:41 Exploring Identity, Shame, and Creativity
33:27 Conclusion and How to Discover More About M. Brady
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[00:00:00] Pam Uzzell: Do you believe art can change the world? So do I! On this show, we meet artists whose work is doing just that. Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds. I'm your host, Pam Uzzell.
[00:00:35] Are you brave enough to go for your dream? I'm talking about your real dream, that secret dream. I mean, sure, being a neurosurgeon is a dream for you, but wasn't there some time in your life when you dreamed of being a rock star, let's say? A lot of us have more than one dream, with some of them, like being a rock star, seemingly out of reach.
[00:01:00] My guest today, when he was a young man, went for that dream of being a part of an indie band and failed in a way that embarrassed him so badly that he decided that trying to be a musician was a big mistake and definitely not in the cards for him. M. Brady went on to have a thriving psychotherapy practice and was living a dream.
[00:01:25] Or was he? As he watched his clients being vulnerable and taking risks to find fulfillment in their lives, that old dream of being a musician nagged at him. Was he courageous enough to try something that he had failed at before? One of the things that inspired him the most among his patients was their courage to be vulnerable.
[00:01:50] Could he do the same? He wanted to find out. So, he started writing songs. After so many years of believing that he would never be a musician, M. Brady has released his first album. Pursuing this creative side of himself has helped him to not only achieve his lifelong dream, but has given him insight by revisiting old traumas around failure.
[00:02:19] He's been able to learn from the pain of these old losses and gain greater insight to himself and to what it really means to be courageous.
[00:02:35] You want to know how you can really help me keep this show going? Follow me on your favorite listening app. So easy, right? And if you really want to give the show a boost, leave me a five star rating or review. Hi, Michael. I'm so glad that you're on Art Heals All Wounds today. Can you share your full name and what you do?
[00:02:58] M. Brady: Yes. Hi. First of all, really wonderful to be here. My name is Michael Brady. I'm a psychotherapist in private practice in Western Massachusetts. And I'm also a musician.
[00:03:10] Pam Uzzell: Yes. And so your story is really fascinating, this combination of a practicing psychotherapist and a musician. But I think that musician part of your identity is a little bit new.
[00:03:24] Can you talk about that?
[00:03:26] M. Brady: Yeah, you know, as I was thinking about the introduction today, I was trying to decide whether I'd introduce myself as a musician or someone that had just been able to claim themselves fully as a musician. I decided to sort of step into the, yeah, I'm a musician. But the truth was, uh, for a long time, that was not an easy identity to hold onto.
[00:03:45] Had a lot to do with maybe what we'll get to today, but, uh, for a lot of years, I had to sort of fight the sort of an imposter fantasy, if you will, that, that would, that sort of wanted to tell me that, well, you're not really musician because of this or that. And even though I was writing songs. Um, for reasons we might get to, I sort of had a critic voice that or in a comparison voice that would say, well, you know, your songs aren't like, uh, you know, Leonard Cohen.
[00:04:12] So, uh, you know, um, I wasn't quite that bad, but, uh, but the, the point is, is that, uh, that, uh, the, this voice would say, oh, your songs are too moody. They're too dark. They're too this or that. And, and really, you know, what I learned over the years that that was just sort of a way for me to avoid being vulnerable.
[00:04:29] That's what it came down to. And, uh, my system, the way I sort of, sort of protected myself from going through some events that we'll hear about again, uh, was just, was just sort of, uh, minimize, uh, that. So I didn't have to be exposed enough to be vulnerable. So that's how that went. But as a part of this project, one of the wonderful things that happened is that in making this album, and hopefully we'll hear about is, is that really disintegrated and, uh, I can now say that I'm a musician, so that feels pretty good.[00:05:00]
[00:05:00] Pam Uzzell: Well, you're bringing up a lot of words that, for me, really inspire some follow up questions. You talked a lot about feeling like an imposter, comparing yourself, and that those comparisons, did you say that they were a way to prevent you from actually being vulnerable?
[00:05:22] M. Brady: Yeah, you know, if you, you know, there's lots of versions of what safety is, and when someone's gone through a difficult event,
[00:05:30] often, they unconsciously create ways to not be vulnerable again, to not be hurt again, whatever the thing that was happened. And so I'm always amazed at what the protective system will come up with to try to protect you from sort of recreating something difficult that happened before. If you don't put your stuff out, then you're not really vulnerable and therefore you can't be disappointed and hurt again.
[00:05:50] So by comparing myself, it's like, well, I'm not yet. At the level of this. And, and in my case, I have a brilliant, a brother musician who's just fantastic. And, and growing up in a family where he's identified as a musician, I'm the tennis player and shrink. He's the musician and the advertising guru. So that added a whole nother layer of having to get beyond sort of that identity of, well, that's not really my role in the family and he's so, he's truly so skilled and so talented, just like, Oh man, I can't write a song as well as he can.
[00:06:19] So all of that kind of inhibited me. But. Also just was a way to avoid being out there, which thankfully I finally challenged after many years.
[00:06:27] Pam Uzzell: Can you back up a little bit and tell me a little bit about, you know, you talk about family roles and I don't know how much that played a part in this habit of comparison, but can you back up a little bit about some of your experiences that made you feel like both you couldn't be a musician and secondly that it was scary to be vulnerable?
[00:06:52] M. Brady: So this goes really back to the roots of, of, of kind of why I was in the state to begin with for a number of years. And to tell the story, we have to go to a couple of places. Um, and one is a ramshackle garage in Charlottesville, Virginia. When I was 25 years old. And the second place is Washington National Airport when I was sixteen. And these were two really formative events that sort of influenced
[00:07:18] my relationship to sort of staying open, staying vulnerable, taking risks. And, and so they served as, uh, the roots, if you will, of, of a decision that I made, you know, in response to these, to step away from music for 20 years. But, but let's maybe start in Charlottesville, Virginia. I was 25 years old. I was, uh, Taking a break from the professional tennis tour where, cause I had an injury.
[00:07:43] And so while I was healing up that injury, I was sort of debating, you know, do I return back to the tennis tour where I had only marginal success, or do I go to grad school? And about that time, the bass player in my brother's indie rock band announced he was going to grad school and my ears perked up and I said, Hmm, let's see, return to the tennis tour, grad school, or sort of my lifelong dream of playing in a band.
[00:08:09] And that's like, I'm choosing that one. Adulthood can wait, you know? Uh, so I obsessively started practicing bass for four months and I really had gotten it down that I could play everything pretty well and felt really quite confident going into the audition. And as I was driving over to the audition, I was listening to the radio and The Birds' song
[00:08:28] 'So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star' came on the radio. And I thought, ah, this is an omen from the gods portending my success later that day. And so what was funny is that I really felt really comfortable. And so when I walked into the audition space and looked around, I noticed the space for the bass player was vacant waiting for me.
[00:08:46] And, and I was like, At that moment, I started feeling this wave of anxiety starting building up in me. And I thought, okay, wait, this is just normal anxiety. And I've experienced this on the tennis court. This will pass. Well, it didn't pass. And in fact, what happened is my limbs started shaking uncontrollably to the point that I literally had to sit down because I couldn't, my right leg literally wouldn't stay on the ground.
[00:09:07] It was so out of control. I was like, what's going on here? Am I having an epileptic seizure? And of course, as you can guess, and as your listeners, I'm guessing, this was a full fledged, full on panic attack. I'd never had one before. I've never had one since. And, uh, you know, I left that audition without ever playing a note.
[00:09:24] And as you could imagine, that was pretty humiliating. It was embarrassing, not only for me, but I felt badly for my brother, who was having to witness all this, you know? And so what was interesting to me is not so much that it happened, because you know, this happens, people have panic attacks, but what's interesting was that my, my emotional response was actually to walk away and to put my guitars in their cases for 20 years.
[00:09:45] And in the interim, I went and became a psychotherapist, went to grad school. And of course I started thinking, you know, what the heck was that all about? And I was really, really embarrassed. And, and one of the things we'll learn here is I think that the very fact that I [00:10:00] avoided it and didn't really deal with it, sort of kept it in place and I'd been able to take it on and sort of deal with it, but instead I, my, my protective strategy was
[00:10:08] to avoid like, no more music, thanks very much. And so one of the things I learned in grad school, of course, you know, we teach therapists to go back and understand early developmental issues and things that influence how we behave and how we respond in the world. And this brings us to Washington, DC, where I was a 16 year old on my way to Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is the site of the national junior tennis championships.
[00:10:32] They're held every year. And I was fortunate enough to be one of 120 people that were invited to compete in that event and the event, honestly, it's kind of a big deal. If you show up, you get a national ranking, most likely, and national rankings leads to scholarships and coaches and blah, blah, blah, all that stuff happens.
[00:10:48] And, uh, what happened that day was my dad was calling up the tournament director and said, Hey, my son is here. I just want to make sure you're going to pick him up. And the tournament director says, you know, we've been calling your son's name for the last two hours and, uh, he was just defaulted and. We were all shocked.
[00:11:03] My dad started tearing up in the airport, which was its own experience, but for reasons we don't need to get into, I, I had, the dates had gotten somehow wrong and I won't go into all the reasons why, but the bottom line is I did not show up to the national championships and this was a big deal as you can imagine.
[00:11:22] And I think with the bottom line here is I just did not have the emotional bandwidth to know how to deal with it. And, uh, my response was in some ways not dissimilar to my response to panic attack. And, Instead of continuing on this path of ascension that really I was on as a tennis player, I started late and made really great progress in a short time.
[00:11:40] And so, but amazingly, I just, I couldn't deal with it. And, and unconsciously I sort of made decisions that I was going to sort of be cool instead of continue to be a serious tennis player. And so I started drinking, drugging. Um, smoking cigarettes and even had the audacity to try out for the football team to be cool, which didn't end well, pretty quickly, 150 pound guy playing running back didn't work out so well.
[00:12:03] But anyway, so that was kind of my response. And so this, this became. really quite a difficult event as you might imagine. And so the good news is it spurred a lifelong curiosity of like what happened. And ultimately I'm really grateful for this because it, it, it turned me into thinking about mind body stuff and, and lots of different things.
[00:12:24] And maybe we can talk at some point if we're, we're talking about that sort of what happened as opposed to the recovery, maybe we can, you know, maybe at some point talk about what came out of that.
[00:12:33] Pam Uzzell: So when you say, talk about what happened as opposed to the recovery, is there any way that these, this is like, What happened leads into the recovery or is the recovery something that happened for you years later?
[00:12:46] M. Brady: Well, it's a great question. I didn't, in terms of the tennis part, and there's two stories here is the music story and recovering from that, that's where the music thing in that resulted in me making this record. And maybe we can get that in a moment, but the tennis part was, I basically sort of went from being one of the top ranked juniors in my region and probably would have been nationally ranked if I had showed up for the tournament.
[00:13:06] To basically being washed out in a year. I went from this big ranking to no ranking. That's how extreme the drop was. And when I was 18, I sort of finally got reorganized. I didn't have any scholarship opportunities anymore, but I walked onto a team, eventually got a scholarship. But what was important was that I became really fascinated with mind body stuff.
[00:13:24] I became fascinated with how to get into a state of consciousness that produced the same kind of mindset I had before my bubble burst, because... and this is part of the, you know, the creative process. Cause what I didn't realize is that when I was playing so authentically naturally beforehand, I was living in a really creative state of playing tennis, playing my senses.
[00:13:46] Uh, I really wasn't attached to winning. I was, it was play. It was joyful. It was really creative. And then after my bubble burst and returned to tennis, it got much more mechanical, like it was in my head, more than my senses, I was overly attached to winning to sort of reclaim my identity. And what happened was I, I began to realize that and sort of explored all sorts of interesting things like sort of Buddhism and learning about non attachment and I studied Zen archery to try to kind of get into the state of consciousness that would bring me back to that place.
[00:14:16] And I spent almost 10 years sort of chasing that. But along the way, I learned a lot of stuff, certainly influenced my decision to become a therapist and really a better therapist, having gone through the loss and sort of being on this quest of learning about loss, how to deal with loss and how loss happens.
[00:14:33] And then I think one of the things I'll sort of maybe segue into that might be helpful is that if we don't process losses, they tend to get stuck and they don't, we don't learn from them. And I think with my panic attack, that was one of those, what I would call a sort of a small T trauma. that many small t traumas don't get dealt with.
[00:14:51] They don't get, they don't get sort of honored because they're sort of minimized. And when we minimize something like that, A, we missed the chance to learn from it, but B, [00:15:00] it kind of gets stuck and it can get sort of scarred over. And then we develop a lot of compensatory strategies. To avoid getting hurt again.
[00:15:08] Um,
[00:15:09] anyway, that that's sort of my, um, three minute version of sort of the psychological process of kind of what can happen when we don't pay attention and honor sort of wounds, it becomes trauma by omission almost. And so the wounds themselves often are negotiable and we can really deal with them if we can label them, work with them.
[00:15:25] And I see this every day in my practice.
[00:15:28] Pam Uzzell: Okay, that's really interesting. In a certain way, by pursuing this career as a psychotherapist, you did not avoid anything because it forced you to really think about these things. Even if you weren't yet applying them, you were probably applying them Intellectually, to yourself, but you weren't practicing them in any real way.
[00:15:54] So I do want to skip forward in the story to where you're practicing. You have these patients, you're giving them advice, and what started coming up for you about yourself and who you were as you were giving, I'm sure, really great advice to your patients.
[00:16:17] M. Brady: One of the events that resulted in me deciding to create this album was that when I was working with folks, I began to feel like a bit of a hypocrite, honestly, that I was encouraging folks to be vulnerable, to go back into old material that was difficult, to take risks.
[00:16:36] And yet I was not taking on the skeletons in my own musical closet. And that created this cognitive dissonance in me that just kept building and building. It's like, I can't, I can't do this anymore. I'm not, I'm not being true to what I'm doing. And so that really motivated me to say, you know, Brady, you got it.
[00:16:53] You've really got to just take this on. And what occurred to me was that the way I was going to do this was just kind of do the full Monty's like, I'm just going to make a record. Damn it. I'm just going to do this. And the other thing that sort of come up around the same time was that, you know, as I was getting older and I thought to myself, man, I really don't want to get to my death bed and that somehow I've not only ignored something that I'm really passionate about.
[00:17:15] And avoided it because, but also not to be run by fear. You know, it just became a sort of a mantra. And the other thing that happened right about then is that, you know, I've been writing songs for a long time, but it occurred to me that the stories and the kind of the honesty, the courage that I saw every day.
[00:17:31] in therapy were not only fascinating, but sort of endlessly interesting and truly inspiring. And I thought, you know, I'm not writing another confessional love song. Like I want to write stories about sort of these, these journeys. And, and I decided to write from the, actually from the perspective and the, from the voice of my clients.
[00:17:50] And of course I never write about any real clients or cause obviously that would be inappropriate, but, but I was inspired by the stories and said, these songs are. There's sort of fictional accounts of what really does happen in therapy, universal themes in therapy along a lot of different topic areas.
[00:18:08] So that's kind of the backstory of how it came to that.
[00:18:12] Pam Uzzell: I want to hear more details about this process. I mean, it's one thing to make this decision, but then how did it feel to actually record it? It's an album, right? Or is it, how do you refer to it?
[00:18:26] M. Brady: No, it's an album. I mean, honestly, I guess it would be called a concept album, right?
[00:18:30] Because it's, it's about psychotherapy written from the perspective of clients. So yeah, it's just, and it's all storylines of what folks deal with, intrapsychic struggles that people have, all sorts of different topics. And I mean, some of your listeners may be like, Oh, great. This sounds like a cheery little record.
[00:18:46] But in fact, it's in the folks that have heard it, it actually said, you know, it's actually not a really depressing record. There are some songs that can be kind of moody and, but you know, there's almost always in every song sort of a conflict that is being resolved and sort of as an old version of how one might take it on.
[00:19:03] And then a new version that appears and people struggling with that process, but ultimately there's sort of openings that people can follow. And that I hope gets. communicated across the record. And there's some that are just straight storylines about different topics. And some are just interpsychic conversations people are having with themselves, so to speak.
[00:19:22] Pam Uzzell: So when you were actually putting these tracks down, getting them ready to be, go out into the world, what was that like for you? Was it scary? Was it like, Oh, I got this. I mean, wait, what was that process like?
[00:19:35] M. Brady: Terrifying. Um, I'm not someone that's sort of a look at me person necessarily like, Oh, I'm so special.
[00:19:41] It is terrifying. But you know, part of my commitment to being vulnerable was like, no, I'm not going to just throw some songs out on Spotify that no one will hear. Um, still no one may hear because it's, it's tough to, to be found out in any form, but that's irrelevant. What became [00:20:00] important was just like, no, I'm going to, I'm going to put myself fully out there.
[00:20:04] And it just felt like that was really the way to go. And. And I just sort of became committed to the path of vulnerability in all different ways. And, you know, it's inspired by the psychologist, Brene Brown, who you may be familiar with, who really preaches the power of vulnerability and that really to be joyful in this world, to be fully alive, you actually have to be vulnerable to do it.
[00:20:25] If you walk around with your arms crossed in the world, you may be safer. You may protect yourself in certain ways, but there's, you know, it really causes your emotional bandwidth to get reduced and life isn't quite as full and alive. And I have a song called 'Learning How to Fall' which is, you know, about that.
[00:20:41] And if you can learn how to fall, it's not really a problem. You can bump into problems. You can be vulnerable. And if the record gets panned, I don't really care. It's like, it's, it's I've done it, you know, I can feel good about that.
[00:20:51] Pam Uzzell: Right. I wanted to ask you, I like your music, but I think I gravitated, of course, to one of the ones that you might be referring to as moody.
[00:21:01] I like the song 'Slow'.
[00:21:03] M. Brady: Yeah.
[00:21:04] Pam Uzzell: What is the story of that song?
[00:21:07] M. Brady: Well, I mean, there's a couple of things. It's so funny that here I am talking about small T traumas and, you know, unprocessed loss and vulnerability and, and you, you, you picked this song wasn't me. Um, and it's actually probably the most vulnerable song on the record.
[00:21:23] And so, you know, I consider that sort of a beautiful synchronicity that here I am sort of full out in vulnerability and you pick the most vulnerable song on the record. So I'm actually delighted that it manifested that way, but this is a song. And first I need to tell you that this is a song that I actually did not play on.
[00:21:42] Um, I wrote the lyrics and I sang, and there's a couple of songs on the record like that. I played on most of the songs, but there are a few songs that, I basically asked a friend to borrow and a very, very good friend of mine, Steven Mays, sadly has left us and was throwing some tracks at me. And it was like, Whoa, what is that piano song?
[00:22:01] Can I have that? Can I have that? And he's like, sure. I'm not going to use it. And, uh, so this is, as you folks get this far in the interview, they'll hear the song. I just thought it was stunningly beautiful. And right away, a melody kind of came into my mind and sort of mood that got created from the experience.
[00:22:18] And I kind of went into the mind of sort of the all sorts of clients that I've worked with over the years that, you know, fell in love with someone had gone through some really hard stuff and maybe been through their own trauma history, but they loved them dearly. They saw the best of that person and didn't get sort of thrown off by how their own personal history might've manifested in the relationship.
[00:22:38] So this song is kind of a song from one person. to someone who's been kind of wounded and it's just sort of reaching out saying it's okay I'm here and so that's kind of the theme of that song is kind of what I was trying to get to and it's also worth noting that uh that my brilliant brother that I first actually took the song and said it's a little short let's lengthen this a little bit and he chopped it up in the middle and There's some beautiful strings in the middle that he's responsible for and some electronics that he threw in there as well that I think really made the song.
[00:23:08] And so that's kind of how that song came to pass musically and lyrically.
[00:23:12] Pam Uzzell: Yeah, it is really beautiful. So I'm wondering, has this whole experience changed how you practice as a psychotherapist in or deepened your practice in any way? I'm really curious to know what the overall effect of this has been for you.
[00:23:31] M. Brady: Yeah, I mean, I think I would start with just honoring This notion that what your podcast is all about, you know, art heals all wounds, it certainly healed this core wound I had around what happened musically and tennis piece and all my strategies that really didn't work with music avoidance. So that created, in the process of making the record, was just an incredibly expansive experience.
[00:23:55] So exciting. Every morning I'd come down. and take my cup of coffee and put my headphones on and see what I did the night before. Was it any good? The thrill of waking up and finding out what was going on was amazing. And I might also add that as I was going through this three year recording, um, I ran into some medical issues.
[00:24:12] And normally, you know, I can, might be anxious about, gosh, what does this mean? What's going to happen? What are these test results going to be? And it might be like me to sort of wake up in the middle of the night, maybe be sort of anxious in some capacity. And actually when I woke up in the middle of the night, I was really interested in like, am I going to put a string section in that instrumental part of electric guitars?
[00:24:29] I was, it just took over my, my whole being, if you will. And the thrill of having headphones and, uh, on 30 hours a week and creating and trying new things out. Yeah. It was just thrilling. And so in leading to your, I use it as a lead into your answer about how it changed therapy, because it did make me more sort of open, more alive, more empathic, not only from, from me and sort of my old storylines, but for everything and allowed me to be sort of more empathic.
[00:24:57] And then theoretically, and as a therapist, I became more [00:25:00] and more aware of just the power of creativity to kind of help people who are struggling. And in my mind, you know, creativity should be sort of, we should think of it the same way we think about exercise in terms of what happens and I know you've had a wonderful guest on your podcast that wrote the book Your Brain on Art and you know one of the things they talked about is the power of creativity and so many things happen that are positive not only when you're making art in any form but also when you're just witnessing art and you're experiencing art, and we sort of know that our body produces endorphins, it produces dopamine, um, you know, it, it boosts your immune system.
[00:25:37] There's reductions of anxiety, depression gets reduced, and there's just so many benefits. And it really should be sort of prescribed, like we prescribed exercise, you know, um, it's that powerful. So in terms of my practice, I, you know, there, there's certainly ways that, that I might sort of encourage folks to sort of look at other ways
[00:25:55] uh, to think about healing and it's not that, you know, listening to music every day or learning to water color is going to necessarily resolve all issues, but it creates an opening and it creates a kind of vulnerability that I think can help move things along, if you will.
[00:26:11] Pam Uzzell: Yeah. I had a, another guest on my podcast, Dr.
[00:26:14] Tasha Golden, who helped put together, was the main person behind, this Arts on Prescription, which I feel like you should join them in, in kind of this cause, because it sounds like you understand it in a deep way, not just in an intellectual way, but in a very heartfelt way through your own experience.
[00:26:40] M. Brady: Yeah.
[00:26:41] Pam Uzzell: So on your website, you've written an essay about this experience and there were two things that really struck me. The first one was, is that part of that, the result of that panic attack was that you had a fear of letting go of a certain identity. Was that this dream of being in a rock band? Was it, what was that identity you were afraid of?
[00:27:07] Because it seemed like you were making this comparison between doing that and then going to the quote unquote adult world. And I'm just so curious about that. If you have any thoughts looking back. You are inarguably an adult now, and you are going back and recording music.
[00:27:30] M. Brady: You know, what I was referring to when I talked about sort of losing my identity, and this is true both of the tennis incident and that, is that I hadn't bumped into that many difficulties along the way.
[00:27:42] And I, and it's part of the reason I wasn't prepared to handle them, is because I kind of had an idyllic childhood, I had great parents and so, but I also sort of lived in a little bubble. I wasn't really exposed to a lot of difficulty and, and arguably that's kind of a problem. Um, we sort of need to get knocked down a little bit and learn that we can handle it.
[00:28:02] And in my case, I think my identity was. as a kind of a golden boy, sort of stuff. That sounds really...I don't mean it quite like that way. But safety for me was being sort of competent, was being on top of things, was, and because things came relatively easily to me, it's like I didn't bump into a lot of times when I fell down.
[00:28:22] And so when I say identity, I mean, suddenly it's like, Oh, I'm capable of kind of this kind of, you know, shame, this kind of panic attack. And it's sort of like, wait a minute, what's this all about? This doesn't happen to me. And so I don't mean it in any way other than I just wasn't prepared to have my identity including a guy with a panic attack.
[00:28:43] And I, and then, and if I'd stayed with it, it would have been a learning experience. And so, you know, unfortunately it didn't. And this is kind of what I mean by just not sticking with losses and really understand them and, and I think this is relevant for people that maybe be struggling with creativity or maybe they're struggling to have a voice, show their voice, share their voice, start an art project, feel like they're not very talented and they can't do it.
[00:29:07] I would argue that, you know, just make sure there's nothing sort of left in your personal history that may be minimized. And a lot of times it's just labeling. It's just going, Oh yeah, this happened. And for example, I'll tell you a story. When I was 29, I started therapy and my therapist asked me to write an autobiography.
[00:29:22] I thought, I can tell you everything about me in 15 minutes. Why do I need an autobiography? But of course I did it. And one of the things that was shocking was that I discovered that I was in a different school every year from kindergarten to seventh grade. And then another school a year later, and I was kind of a shy kid, you know, as I grew up in a bubble.
[00:29:40] And so, you know, one level, you know, going to different schools over the years is not traumatic. This is not a PTSD event. And yet events like that can really register in your emotional system. And in my case, it immediately became apparent like, Oh, so this is why I was socially anxious in high school, why it was hard to go to a dance
[00:29:58] and talk to people and ask, you know, women [00:30:00] out on dates, that kind of stuff was torturous. And I realized I just didn't get in the sort of my shyness resulted in me sort of pulling back and being new school every year. So those kind of events aren't big deals, but they register, right? And a lot of little things register.
[00:30:13] A lot of clients that come into therapy and like, I They took them a long time to get in because, like, I don't know why, I don't know why I don't feel great. I had a great family, I had an education, I got somebody I love, and yet, when we really dug into the material, there was something that happened. That was really, that they just didn't honor, they didn't pay attention to.
[00:30:30] They didn't know how to grieve, we don't do loss very well in this culture. Um, so even something, not even something, something like bullying, for example, a lot of times people minimize it and it's like, oh, a lot of kids get bullied, no big deal, but this can have really far reaching effects with people in a lot of different ways.
[00:30:45] We won't get into here, but so anyway, my point being, if anybody is out there listening that is struggling, you know, it might be worth a little dive in and a lot of times just labeling it. is enough. It often is really just enough.
[00:31:00] Pam Uzzell: Wow. That's so interesting. Well, this kind of segues into another term that really caught my eye because I think it's a big, it's definitely a big one for me.
[00:31:09] It's a big one for a lot of people. This idea of how many high functioning people have a lot of shame threaded through who they are. And it's so interesting because I think that story. It really illustrates how, how dismissive we are over certain things in our past. And the crazy thing about shame is that, or for me at least, that I feel ashamed to have shame.
[00:31:39] Does that make sense? And so you're asking people to not minimize these things that really affect them long term and I think for a lot of people the result of some of these things is shame and not to project on to you but you talk about your identity you know everything is come easily for me and oops why did I suddenly fail at something and that that was a really difficult thing for you to integrate with your
[00:32:10] identity of who you were.
[00:32:11] M. Brady: Correct.
[00:32:12] Pam Uzzell: Yeah.
[00:32:13] M. Brady: It is still shocking to me. 30 plus years as a psychotherapist and it shouldn't be shocking to me, but it is how many really decent, kind, intelligent people are just are carrying all kinds of shame. And a lot of it is they just, they just can't understand what could be wrong with me.
[00:32:30] Right. And, and shame is just an incredibly toxic thing that just can keep people imprisoned in a lot of ways. A lot of times just being able to label it, name it, and then be able to kind of go back and maybe there's some unprocessed things people need to get to. But a lot of times it's just honoring it and that is, kind of can often release it.
[00:32:47] And there's, sometimes there's work that needs to be done, unfinished work that needs to be done. But yeah, that's, it's, it's really noteworthy that you picked up on that because it's, it's something I deal with every week.
[00:32:58] Pam Uzzell: Yeah. Yeah. This has been such a fascinating conversation. I love that you have the psychotherapist training and that you're willing to share a story about your own vulnerability when it comes to creating music, which you felt like was a failure,
[00:33:20] you were going to keep buried in your past and never dig it up again. And I'm so impressed that you did. I'm wondering if you can tell people how to find out more about you, especially more about your music.
[00:33:32] M. Brady: Sure. I'd love to. My artist name is M. Brady, not Michael Brady. You will not find me. Um, there, there is a Michael Brady on Spotify.
[00:33:41] That's not me. Um, there's also some other, if you look, if you do a Google search of me and you put in M. Brady, you will not find me either. You'll have to write M. Brady music. And that will get you to my, my website is where you can get connected to sort of all my music, uh, mbradymusic. com. I am on all streaming platforms as well, but you'll have to put an M.
[00:34:01] Brady with the period after M. Um, and you'll find my essay on my website as well. And that by the way, is also due to be published in. The journal of expressive writing, which I think will come out by the time this podcast airs. So I'm sort of excited about that and it's exciting to be out there and sharing music.
[00:34:18] So yeah, but it's been, it's been quite an honor to be here and, and, um, it's been time to thank you for having me as a guest.
[00:34:26] Thank you for sharing your story.
[00:34:34] M. Brady music 'Slow': This is the.[00:35:00]
[00:35:14] I will raise and recant Can't Just a
[00:35:55] little more Tell What you've been fighting for If this, if this, if this is The one Then let us start Release me
[00:36:39] So you can take me where you want to go.
[00:37:08] Pam Uzzell: You're listening to Art Heals All Wounds.
[00:37:34] Thank you so much to M. Brady for sharing this story. I love you. That he took what he was learning from his psychotherapy practice to pursue a long buried dream. And what he learned by doing that also informed his practice. I'll put a link to M. Brady's website in the show notes so that you can find out more about his music and download some of his songs.
[00:37:58] Do you have a story about the ways that art and creativity have impacted your life? I'd love to share them on the show. Just go to my website, arthealsallwoundspodcast. com and leave me a voicemail. I'll take your voicemail and share it as an episode.
[00:38:16] If you feel so inclined, you can support this podcast by leaving a small donation on my website too. This show is completely independent, and anything you leave helps me to pay for the expenses of producing it. Thanks for listening.
[00:38:33] The music you've heard in this podcast is by Ketsa and Lobo Loco. You also heard M. Brady's music in this episode. This podcast was edited by Eva Hristova.