Christina McKelvy: 0:14

Welcome to Obology. Stories of hope, healing and resilience. I'm your host, christina McKelvey. Today we're going to be speaking with Zach Mucha. He's a social worker and a psychoanalyst, and also the president of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysts. Welcome, how are you doing? I'm doing good.

Zak Mucha: 0:30

How are you?

Christina McKelvy: 0:31

I'm doing well, thank you. And I realized that I butchered the school's name because I always butcher psychoanalysts, psychoanalysis I always get those two confused, and I am a psychotherapist, so you think I shouldn't, but here we are.

Zak Mucha: 0:46

You should have the words I butcher.

Christina McKelvy: 0:49

So thank you so much for you know coming on to Hopology. I looked through your books Swimming to the Horizon and it's fascinating, just the different stories that you share about you know, working, as you know, the supervisor for your ACT program in Chicago and I just, you know I found a lot of them really inspiring, some of them sad, you know, and I just thought that again, with my podcast being about hope, it would be really great to dig into this, and so thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. So let's start off with just telling my listeners a little bit about yourself and a short synopsis of your book, swimming to the Horizon.

Zak Mucha: 1:31

Okay, first synopsis of the book is I ran an ACT team Assertive Community Treatment Team which I don't imagine a lot of people know what that is. It's in a community mental health program where the ACT program is for all of and I'm going to go back and forth between clients and patients, because back then it was clients and now I use the word patients. But back then all the clients were suffering severe psychosis, substance abuse issues, homelessness, multiple incarcerations, hospitalizations, extreme poverty, people who had really been burned or let down by the mental health system and also by the society around them, including families. The people we were working with had no social supports at all. So our team really was. We were 24-7 wraparound services.

Zak Mucha: 2:39

Idea of a sort of community treatment was we'd be like a hospital unit that ran around the neighborhood because our patients were not going to be coming in for appointments. So we were responsible for helping people get housing benefits, meds, food, going to court, hospitalizing people every medical issue. And we had our own psychiatrist, our own nurse, hospitalizing people every medical issue. We had our own psychiatrist, our own nurse, our own therapist, our own case managers, peer specialists, substance abuse specialists and everyone had a caseload and a lot of our work was done outside of the office, which is part of the title of the book, because a lot of our work was done in the street or in SROs or Flophouse hotels.

Zak Mucha: 3:23

What are SROs.

Zak Mucha: 3:24

I'm sorry Single resident occupancy where the rent is just under what a benefit check for someone who would get for their SSDI. So you know, back then you'd get $700 a month and the rent would be $550, $560. Then you're supposed to live off the rest of that, plus whatever you might get off your link card, which is not enough to live off of. So a lot of people have to commit petty crimes just to survive, and so there was a lot of what we were dealing with and the neighborhood we're in Uptown Edgewater. In recent years it's gotten very gentrified. All this housing has disappeared.

Zak Mucha: 4:19

I don't know where people have gone to, but it was really. There were Black House hotels which is a non-clinical name for them all over the neighborhood and there was one called the Wilson's Men's Club, which was literally like a nine by 12 cubicle with a bare light bulb hanging through the chicken wire ceiling and it's just a shared bathroom on every floor. It's a very dangerous place to live. So this is what our team was doing, and our job was to keep people safe in the neighborhood.

Christina McKelvy: 5:00

And was it centered just on that particular neighborhood or did you go into, you know, other neighborhoods within Chicago?

Zak Mucha: 5:08

We were mostly in this neighborhood, just because you know this was our area. Every once in a while we would have to go out, or I would have to leave the neighborhood to go do an intake assessment. Part of my job was going to hospitals and convincing someone on the unit to work with our team.

Christina McKelvy: 5:25

Okay, and I imagine you know, being in the same neighborhood, you start really establishing relationships and seeing the same individuals and seeing their growth or demise, depending on what direction they chose. And some of the stories and I know the names are changed right and so when I mentioned names they're changed. They're not actual names of the patient's clients that you saw, but there's just stories about Manny Bobby Leonard. Those were some of the ones that stuck out, charles, you know that one was yeah.

Christina McKelvy: 6:02

So I don't know if you want to, and for I forget that my audience, my listeners can't see me, but I, when I mentioned Charles, I just my heart broke because of that story. So I don't know if there's any particular ones you want to kind of delve into and share. You know that maybe impacted you the most, or you know that.

Zak Mucha: 6:21

I'll talk about charles, because he truly was heartbreaking, yeah, and he was infuriating, and you know, and people really you know true ambivalence loved and hated him at the same time. He was a former NGRI client, not guilty by reason of insanity. He had committed some real violence in the past, which he wasn't a violent person, but by the time we got him he was you know, he was throughout schizophrenic but he was also, you know, very addicted to crack.

Zak Mucha: 6:59

He was hiv positive, he was a chronic, chronic shoplifter and but he was also really brilliant at teaching new staff. And when I first took over the team, you know the the original staff, it was very much meds and money. That was it Because the agency was the payee for a lot of our clients because the state had deemed them too quote unquote disabled, unable to handle their own finances, which was not untrue finances, which is not untrue. The state assigned the agency to be the payee, which meant we would take care of the rent bills and also have to dole out that little bit of money that was left throughout the week. Charles had a fierce, fierce addiction and his money was very important to him. The staff that I inherited was very much this compliance model, which is really really ugly, and it is not about, you know, independence and subjectivity of a person. It's you take your meds, you get your money.

Christina McKelvy: 8:16

Not very person-centered either. It sounds like you take your meds, you get your money.

Zak Mucha: 8:19

Not very person-centered either. It sounds like no, no, it was compliance. Compliance always crumbles. If we had an audience in front of us, I would ask, raise your hand if you like being told what to do. And Charles was brilliant.

Zak Mucha: 8:33

I remember when I started hiring my own staff, a young woman was learning and I was telling her do not tie meds to money. Just throughout the team, throughout the years, if someone takes their meds, that's not as important as building a relationship with that patient. And we had to build a relationship. They had to be able to trust us relationship. They had to be able to trust us. We had to be able to do what we say we're going to do and it was. That was the only way anyone might have a reason to listen to anything. You have to say, as a therapist or case manager, that you had earned that trust. I know we could say we could never say trust me because that doesn't do anything. Therapist or case manager, that you had earned that trust. I know we could never say trust me because that doesn't do anything. It's just another instruction. But this young clinician was working with Charles. Charles was incredibly street smart, he was brilliant and you know she's saying oh, take your meds and I'll give you your money.

Christina McKelvy: 9:41

He says no One thing. You told her not to do.

Zak Mucha: 9:43

Yeah. And he said, no, give me my money, then I'll take my meds. And she said, no, it's the other way around. And they went back and forth like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd until he finally said I have AIDS, you're withholding my medication, you're killing me. And of course she, you know, crumbled right there and you know he walked out. It was very much a power play and he knew how to switch it around on her. But Charles, I mean, he was an amazing survivor.

Christina McKelvy: 10:23

Those skills. Like you mentioned, he was very street smart. How did he? What kind of growth did you see? Cause when I was reading a story, it sounded like there was a lot of ebbs and flows with with his growth.

Zak Mucha: 10:40

Sure, I know a lot of Sure, a lot of our clients. We weren't going to be sending people to college. We were really trying to keep people housed. We had to track progress With a lot of people. We could say, okay, this person was hospitalized less this year than he was last year and you know he only got evicted once this year, rather than three times last year. And progress would be, you know, having some stability, some safety in the community.

Christina McKelvy: 11:21

Progress would be building relationships yeah, you say in chapter 22, that act was designed to be a campaign of full press, intensive services aimed at clients who faced steep recovery challenges and were almost certain to progress slowly if at all yeah yeah, and and even even the bureaucratical of ACT.

Zak Mucha: 11:50

You know just the full fidelity ACT, because we'd be audited every year. You know the requirements, even said you know one clinician should not be seeing the same client every day, Like, if Charles is a client, I would see him on Monday, this person see him on Tuesday, this person see him on Tuesday, Another person see him on Wednesday. And the official reasoning from the state was that well, we don't want them to get attached to anyone.

Christina McKelvy: 12:26

And.

Zak Mucha: 12:27

I disagre. You know we really built a team so that, like if you were a clinician, you would have a caseload of you know four, five, six, seven, eight people that you were their connection to the world. You were the person they had to rely on. You were the person they saw every day, and because they they, you know we have to have those relationships. I mean, it's this is where you know what we're doing was very psychodynamic. The relationship is everything. I mean that that's the only thing that that was.

Christina McKelvy: 13:07

That was where we saw progress, when someone actually, you know, was able to start making relationships and that relationship, and I'm trying to I had a mark, but for charles it sounded like it was that he, he acknowledged his. There was a. There's a part where it says that like he was talking to someone, that's when he realized he was dying. And I don't know if that realization came because of that relationship. I'm trying to find this particular I had it marked scene. Um, do you I don't know if you recall, or of course you do you wrote the book, but um, there was a part where it says and then he realized he was dying and that support he got from his clinician and the team was probably huge, especially during that time, and didn't he also? He also moved from the street to jail in the last part of his life.

Zak Mucha: 14:08

Yeah, it was real, it was a real shame. I mean, it was everything the guy had done. A judge got him for just chronic shoplifting. He had so many shoplifting arrests and he was, he was very sick when he went into, when he went into jail. But even before that he was in a hospital, a medical hospital, a medical unit which, unlike the psychiatric unit, you have a phone at your bed. So Charles was calling our office every two minutes, ten minutes, and you could just see the phones lighting up around the room, with him calling and demanding a beef sandwich or a combo fries, and someone had to bring him something sounds like he was trying to connect in some way in his turn.

Zak Mucha: 14:55

Yeah, yeah, and it was infuriating, but this was.

Christina McKelvy: 15:00

This was also how he connected yeah, like you said at the beginning, your work with an act was infuriating but also, you know, inspiring. You know I don't think that's the word you used, but it was both of those points it was.

Zak Mucha: 15:17

I mean we talk about hope. I mean it was always stunning to me how much people do want to live right, how much. I mean there are very few suicides, which was amazing.

Christina McKelvy: 15:34

Yeah.

Zak Mucha: 15:36

And that people. It's amazing what we can suffer through with. You know the idea of all right. There's something I want on the other side of this. I had some brilliant clinicians on the team. One guy was more than him, but there are some people who are so amazingly dedicated and when we built this team, we created a lot of stuff just because the agency wasn't really too concerned about what we were doing. We were making money for them. Act reimburses at a high rate.

Zak Mucha: 16:30

I'm sorry, go on oh oh no, I was saying so they weren't concerned, but they were in a way yeah yeah but, you know, thank you, they gave us room to do, to create a lot and we had, okay, we had our own clothing closet, we had a food pantry, we had, you know, one therapist actually convinced the city gym in the neighborhood to give free memberships to his caseload and he was. He was marching his guys up Broadway into the gym. You know, it was great and it took months and months, and months but we actually truly saw a difference and, just you know, people were able to. You know, you know what the Thorazine shuffle is, just the sort of disconnection to your own body, part of meds and part of symptoms. He was able to actually start combating that. We could see guys walking very much with a purpose and walking with an awareness of their bodies. It was amazing and we had that.

Zak Mucha: 17:31

We had, you know, we created, uh, emergency apartments because we were dealing with a lot of homelessness and I convinced, you know, one landlord if I could raise the money for two apartments for a year, just give them to me, let me use them, I'll move people in as I need to and you don't do any background checks that are going to take three to five days. If I'm pulling someone off the street? Where am I going to put them while we're waiting for a background check? And we needed a place where they wouldn't have to pay rent for the first couple months while we get their benefits started and all that. So I told the landlord and we threw parties and raised the money. I told the landlord I thought I was being really magnanimous. I told him I promise you no murders. And he said I don't care about that, I don't want any arsonists.

Zak Mucha: 18:29

That's a good point.

Christina McKelvy: 18:32

That's a landlord point, but that's a way, that's a that's a landlord. Okay, yeah, our, yeah, arsonists wouldn't, you know, would not be a good thing for sure. Um, you know, speaking of housing, I was as I was reading this book and I even had it. I have a note next to it. Food and housing come first, and I put maslow's. I'm curious how does Maslow's hierarchy of needs play into the work you did, or you know? Did it? You know, did you see the? You know how? What Maslow spoke about like what you need as the base and moving on up, did you see that working in action? Or you know what did that look like?

Zak Mucha: 19:09

Oh, totally, I mean mean housing. That was why we had the emergency apartment and housing housing comes first. It's impossible to do anything if someone does not feel safe. You know, just it's like the, the homeless shelters. It's really a dangerous thing if you're being prescribed heavy anti-psychotic meds. It's really a dangerous thing If you're being prescribed heavy antipsychotic meds.

Zak Mucha: 19:31

It's really a dangerous thing to go to a homeless shelter Because those meds, if you take them, they're going to knock you out. You're near unconscious. If you do that in a homeless shelter you're going to wake up with all your stuff gone at the very best. So you know, safe housing is such an important thing it still is. So that was. You know, that was always a fight to have housing for our people. And you know, I remember when we had one man who was a cab driver. We had one man who was a cab driver but his symptoms, his hallucinations, delusions, were so severe. He would be driving, driving a cab, but he would hear someone saying horrible things about him and he thought it would be the fair in the backseat.

Christina McKelvy: 20:30

And he would pull over and get violent.

Zak Mucha: 20:31

Something terrible was going to happen. But he had these very real delusions that there was literally someone fused to his back, coming out of his back and yelling at him and excoriating this really ugly, ugly commentary about him just 24-7. And he couldn't keep driving a cab. He was going to hurt someone.

Christina McKelvy: 20:56

Yeah, yeah.

Zak Mucha: 20:59

So you know, when we had petty cash and subsidies for not apartments but hotel rooms, I made a deal with him that we'll get you, because he was sleeping in the alley behind the cab stand. He had nowhere to stay and I said, all right, I'll put you in in a room, I'll get you a place, your own bed, your own bathroom. But you know, like like any, like any apartment, I need down, I need a deposit. You'll get it back when you have your own place. He gave up his cabbie license as a deposit on his apartment, which is great, which meant he wasn't going to kill someone driving, and this is weird, it was a lot of on the fly problem solving well, it sounds go on oh sorry, I was just gonna say it sounds like the shelter was more important than the income for him at that moment, and that kind of proves maslow's needs yeah, the income was not doing anything for him.

Zak Mucha: 22:07

Yeah, he needed.

Christina McKelvy: 22:09

He needed to be somewhere where he could rest, sleeping in the alleys it's not good for psychotic symptoms and did you notice that once the you know the base need of, you know food, water, shelter, like when that was met, were they able to climb the rung to the next need, and then so forth?

Zak Mucha: 22:35

Yeah, but the rungs were very close together. I mean it wasn't huge progress. I know there was progress, but it was hard. It was a lot of. These are people who had been years and years without real intense care, without any support systems. Some of the staff I don't know if you remember the case of LaFleur, but the case manager that was working with him. I had to show him how to wash his feet, how to you know it was.

Zak Mucha: 23:16

I mean you talk about? You know a lot of talk about Christianity, I mean and I don't I'm not religious in that way but this was truly compassionate work this therapist was doing. I mean going there showing him how to clean the toilet, how to clean the tub, how to wash your feet and just stuff that this man had not done in years and years and years. There are several points where we would have to go to Home Depot and buy full-on disposable hazmat suits just to clean someone's room, disposable hazmat suits just to clean someone's room when we start with them, because it would just horribly horrible and just in human conditions people are living in and that that would be often.

Christina McKelvy: 24:10

I mean, I can imagine that can kind of do something, that one's beliefs or um outlook like how, how would a clinician, um case manager, social worker, like how, how, what would you recommend that you know, especially those that might be working in act programs, can? Where do they find their strength? I guess it's the question you know, and how to move forward and see the hope in their work.

Zak Mucha: 24:40

Yeah, well, it's like the, the title of the book itself, right swimming to the horizon. If you give it a thought for a moment, it's not a hope, not even a hopeful vision, right?

Zak Mucha: 24:54

I'm swimming to the horizon, we're not going to make it that makes sense, yeah yeah, and and it's from a conversation I had with a really amazing therapist who was she was was working too hard and, you know, just literally staying way too late typing up notes long after everyone's gone. And we were, we were on call 24 seven, but still, you know, I think at one point I literally did have to threaten to unplug her computer while she was typing, she wouldn't go home. And she was very upset because there was always always more to do. I mean, every day you come in there'd be something else that fell apart. Someone else who was in trouble, someone else, you know, threw their meds out, someone got arrested, you know, whatever there was always, you know, always something new to take care of. And I was telling her she was very upset.

Zak Mucha: 25:48

You know, in my office I said we are not going to cure psychosis. I mean, we are swimming to the horizon. Our job is to help our patients, you know, move their lives forward in these little little bits, lives forward in these little little bits. And I think the valuable part was for the staff who did, who were energized by the work, were the ones who valued the relationship themselves.

Zak Mucha: 26:31

One thing this is a little bit of a sidebar, but not terribly. You know, when we're first setting up in our offices I had a buddy paint a big banner for the team and it said if you can't be counted on, you can't be counted in you can't be counted on, cannot be counted in.

Zak Mucha: 26:47

Yeah, like we are a unit, we have to support each other. As you know, as co-workers, this wasn't, you know, it was a big team office. Everyone had to be able to support each other. Everyone had to be able to back someone else up. If I'm hospitalizing someone, I need someone. I may need someone to come with or at least someone to watch my back while it's happening. You know we were in a lot of not safe situations, yeah, or just you know we had to.

Zak Mucha: 27:16

If someone couldn't get to patient mary for her doctor's appointment, someone else had to grab it and take care of mary you know, we had to support each other in supporting our patients, and the banner was a good litmus test, because if a staff member was annoyed by that thought, it told me a lot about them. That they didn't want to be counted on and didn't care about being counted in.

Zak Mucha: 27:43

But with this, I mean, and those also often were not the clinicians who were energized by or valued the relationship with the client. I mean, it was hard, hard work, and I wasn't thinking of this back then because I didn't know of Emmanuel Levinas, the philosopher who lost his entire family in the Holocaust.

Zak Mucha: 28:26

And I think of his work, about our irreducible responsibility to the other, that we have to. We have to be responsible. Basic rule to not to not kill the other person. And you know so. You know that we have the responsibility to not look away from the sort of devastation. We have to acknowledge it. We have to step in and do something. And I think the people on the team who really love this work, I think they just inherently had that sense that we just have an inherent duty to other people.

Christina McKelvy: 29:08

Yeah, the humanist, yeah, humans, Mm-hmm yeah.

Zak Mucha: 29:16

And just stepping in because we were dealing with, you know, severe psychosis. It's very scary. It's scary to you know. Try to figure out what is this person talking about and over time we would see that, all right, a lot of these symptoms were about their trauma histories. I mean, we could rarely get like a full intake out of someone, a full, you know, full social history, just because the disorganization was so great. But over time we would see, all right, the narrative of the symptoms would hold a lot of pieces of very traumatic past, traumatic childhood and a traumatic adulthood, and one guy who I really, you know, really love this guy.

Zak Mucha: 30:04

The only way he would work with me was if I could step into sort of half a delusion he had that we were like cops working together in a buddy movie and I don't know if you remember him from the book. But during the intake interview he would do nothing but scream at me I'm Stephen Scull, you're Bruce Willis, remember when I kicked you the gun when they kidnapped your daughter? And you know it was all this very hyper-masculine stuff. But okay, there's something he needs to prove in this and I can't. Well, it's a point of reality if I say my job is to get him housed and safe in the neighborhood. So you know we'd have to drive around the neighborhood. He got evicted from places a lot. He was deeply offensive and threatening to a lot of people but he was able to work with me because I wasn't challenging him.

Zak Mucha: 30:57

It's like all right, I didn't say I was Bruce Willis, but I just went on and said all right, this is what we have to do, and that was the way he could conceptualize the relationship so it was acceptable to him. Yeah, and, and you know, we kept him safe in the neighborhood as much as we could.

Christina McKelvy: 31:33

Yeah, there's, there's so many, you know just lovely like and I'm using the term lovely stories, even though it was hard and hard work and grueling work, and I highlighted this part. I did, however, understand the therapeutic aspects of work. Some of us are like dogs. We need responsibility, something to do, something to define our value and purpose. But not all job searches were therapeutic, especially when the odds of success were frustratingly minimal. And I'm connecting that to like with the houses you know you mentioned. You know he were getting him housing and he continued to get evicted, getting individuals jobs and maybe they were continuing to lose those jobs. But the big thing is that they needed to have value and purpose and that's what you're also helping and I know that.

Christina McKelvy: 32:27

Again, back to Maslow's needs. That's like I don't have it pulled up, but I think it's like three or four, you know, but I actually kind of think it runs up and down the side of the triangle. You know, for those of you that don't know, maslow's hierarchy of needs is a triangle and you know there's the basis food, water and shelter, but shelter, but having that value and purpose and hope, I think goes back and forth and when you have that hope you have that purpose and value. You want to move forward and it sounds like that's what you guys were doing, despite knowing this individual may not hold this job for long or may not have this house for long, but we're going to keep getting them those resources yeah, and I I totally agree with you.

Zak Mucha: 33:12

The idea of having a purpose is a life-saving thing, whether you're at this level of you know severe mental illness or, you know, any patient who comes into your office. I mean you could see that sort of without a sense of real purpose in the world, how depressing and disheartening it could be. And yeah, that even you know because it defines us right Even to have a terrible job. I mean I've done it before. I went to social work school a little later and much later in life.

Zak Mucha: 33:50

So I had a lot of rough jobs that I did not like, but I can at least define myself by saying I hate this job. This is not what I want to do for the rest of my life, and that defines us as much as a job we love. So, and that's also a big part of the work and it was a part of, you know, building relationships with patients, because you know we were having, you know we did have the 50-minute hours with our patients and this crowd was deserving of therapy as anyone else, and therapy should not be only for middle class and up and just to have that. One thing we would talk about is what any patient, no matter who or where they were in the team everyone needed to feel safe and be heard.

Christina McKelvy: 34:57

They needed you know, actually have what they're saying be taken in.

Zak Mucha: 35:00

Yeah, be safe and be heard, even when there was, even when there was violence in the office and I would have to intervene. I remember having someone and we ended up on the floor, but I remember telling him no one here is going to hurt you and I'm not going to allow you to hurt anyone else either. And that was like the basic rule for when people are in the office.

Christina McKelvy: 35:28

Yeah, I'm not not gonna let anyone hurt you either, because a lot of times, individuals are fighting because they're feeling threatened and they're not feeling safe totally sharing them yeah it was.

Zak Mucha: 35:39

It was all affective violence rather than predatory violence right affective violence is just. Just, you know, get away from me so I don't hurt. Hurt anyone to in order to feel safe yeah, oh well.

Christina McKelvy: 35:57

well, zach, we're gonna um switch to the instagram live portion, uh, but before we do, I want to, just in case it doesn't transfer over, because I'm going to try and somehow record the Instagram live session. But I wanted to ask, before we switch over I ask this question to everybody that's on my show what brings you hope? What gives you hope?

Zak Mucha: 36:19

What brings me hope is I think that I've you know back then doing that work and now you know I'm a therapist in private practice. I mean just, I have seen people do amazing things, make real changes.

Zak Mucha: 36:43

I have seen people just sort of come to life. I have seen people just sort of come to life and just personally. Stuff that gives me hope is poetry. It's just such an amazing thing reading books. Books are always hopeful.

Zak Mucha: 37:00

I'm never going to get through everything I want to read in life, I mean and I think I've said this to you before you know. And also one thing that's been very hopeful for me is and this is totally counterintuitive and paradoxical, but that's how it is but like Zen Buddhism, I'm practicing Zen Buddhism, which is the only thing I've gotten out of all of that is to see that, to see that my own thoughts are not that important. Everything I worry about it's me doing it to myself, and it's just this very strange way to find hope in how horrible everything is, even like we were talking about today. You know, before we started, we were talking about the weather and I'm in Chicago and it's the end of February and it's 70 degrees, which is not how it's supposed to be in Chicago in February. This is supposed to be when we're all depressed and miserable and it's a lovely day, but it's also a horrible sign for the climate.

Zak Mucha: 38:12

It's like we're taking out a payday loan on the planet and it's about this awfulness at the same time as it's also lovely. And there was a lot of like you're describing in the book. It's not, you know, it's a ton of very sad, sad stories, but there's also a lot of joy in those little bits of interactions. Some of these people had an amazing you know clients and staff an amazing sense of gallows humor that got us through this. Remember I was training a new staffer at one point and we're working with a man who had really severe delusions and hallucinations and I'm trying to teach a young staffer how to respond differently between delusions or hallucinations.

Zak Mucha: 39:07

Hallucinations you could reality check. Delusions you do not want to challenge because you end up part of the conspiracy and we see that with you know American politics right now. So this man is being chased by an entire family that are delusional and we're in a room somewhere and he's saying I could hear they're pounding on the door. Right now it's yelling. And I said you know responding to the delusion, something like you don't get a moment's rest. These people are always after you. You can never relax. He said that's right. I said but I got to tell you I don't hear anyone pounding on the door. What do you think that means? And he said well, it means one of us is fucked up, and all right. He had a little bit of awareness there it was good, yeah, hmm, it's that.

Christina McKelvy: 40:11

it's that hope within the darkness yes, that's exactly. He summarized me going on endlessly perfectly well, zach, let's, um, you know, switch to instagram live, and I'm gonna pause okay, okay, all right.

Christina McKelvy: 40:32

Well, I don't know if I'm going to have this in the podcast or not, but we tried to go live and it didn't work, but that's okay. So I'm going to ask the questions to you. That, but we tried to go live and it didn't work, but that's okay. So I'm going to ask the questions for you, um to you. That I was going to ask live and, of course, if anyone has questions for Zach, if you were like, oh you, we can't, you, I didn't get to meet you live, that's okay, cause in the um under my podcast on Spotify, you can provide feedback. You can send an email, send Zach an email through Instagram. You know, contact us if you have any questions or feedback, and I'll also put that in the little sorry note on Instagram that um. So one of the other questions I had was what did your experience and this might be the only question to ask actually working in that team, teach you about resilience and healing?

Zak Mucha: 41:44

I think the one thing I really did about resilience and healing was that working with ACT, I saw that I had so much more to learn.

Zak Mucha: 41:54

Was that working with ACT, I saw that I had so much more to learn, and it's why I ended up, I believe, why I ended up a psychoanalyst and there was so much happening that I could not understand, and you know that's just about symptoms, symptoms, and that people were so resilient I think it was, you know, there was so much that I was not trained in. I mean, there was no psychoanalytic training, there's barely any supervision at all, anyway. But I realized, all right, there's so much I don't know, there's so much happening here that I had a sense of something that. But I really had to go learn, and you know, and I started.

Zak Mucha: 42:39

You know, I started going to lectures at the Chicago center for psychoanalysis.

Zak Mucha: 42:46

The first lecture I went to was a Lacanian lecture. I didn't even know who Lacan was and I walked out of there so angry because I couldn't understand a damn thing that was said. But it sort of set me to all right, this, this is this was like taking over the act team. I had no clue what I was doing, I had no business probably doing it, but there was literally no one else who wanted to run that team. I mean, I was promoted into supervising that team when I was maybe a few months out of social work school.

Zak Mucha: 43:20

It wasn't because anyone recognized this amazing talent I had, it was that no one wanted to do this filthy, violent, you know, thankless job. But I was willing. I was willing to because partly because I didn't know any better, and but that that always fascinated me, that, all right, there's walk into this thing where it was a total mystery and a total mess and, I think, going from act into psychoanalysis and very much a total shift in, you know, perception of my own responsibilities. But in all of it, the same thing that is there and it's the thing that keeps me hopeful just how resilient people are you know and how much potential there is, or for people to you know, keep growing.

Zak Mucha: 44:13

It's an amazing thing to find out. All right, I could do much more than I thought I could. I am much more than I thought I was.

Christina McKelvy: 44:21

Yeah, I am much more than I thought I was. I love that and that's that hope. Hope breeds resilience or healing. It ties into each other. When you have hope, you can have that resilience. Hope breeds resilience or healing. It ties into each other. When you have hope, you can have that resilience and then you can heal.

Zak Mucha: 44:38

Actually I think it's for me at least. I sort of see it the other way around that resilience sort of breeds hope Okay.

Christina McKelvy: 44:46

I like that.

Zak Mucha: 44:47

Say holy shit, I just survived this. Okay, I didn't think I would.

Christina McKelvy: 44:53

Okay.

Zak Mucha: 44:54

That changes my own boundaries as a person, that changes my own self-definition. I can survive a thing that I did not think I could before yeah, I like that reframe.

Christina McKelvy: 45:08

Yes, yeah, that makes sense too. Well, zach, thank you so much for you know being on my podcast and you know your flexibility is trying to figure out the instagram live, but I will go live on instagram in a minute and apologize to my three, three followers. Um, but, zach, where can people find you if they want to learn more about you and where can they find the book, if they would like to buy the book? Swimming to the horizon?

Zak Mucha: 45:34

uh, I'm very easy to find at my name zachmuchacom z-a-k-m-u-c-a-jcom. Uh, I'm easy to contact. My information is there. The book is. Wherever you buy books, you can get a copy of it all right well yeah, nice well, thank you ah, thank you. This was fun and all right. We tried instagram. It didn't work big deal. If half the things I tried worked out, things would be very different.

Christina McKelvy: 46:05

This is great yes, yeah, no, it it was. It was really fun. I definitely definitely enjoyed it. And to everyone listening out there no-transcript.