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Lens of Hopefulness with John Passadino

Lens of Hopefulness with John Passadino

Written by: Arts mental health and spirituality: perspectives on the human experience.
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 Lens of Hopefulness with John Passadino delivers compelling insights on self-awareness, mental health, and spirituality through in-depth interviews with international authors, performers, educators, and philosophers.

lensofhopefulness.substack.comPassadino Publishing LLC Hygiene & Healthy Living Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Spirituality
Episodes
  • You're Not Broken — You're Protected

    You're Not Broken — You're Protected
    May 6 2026
    She Called It the Process of Unbecoming — And It Changed How I See EverythingLacey Kelly is a licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, and author of three books — The Process of Unbecoming: A Different Relationship to Being Human, Already Human: Why the Culture of Self-Improvement Is Making Us Feel Broken, and God Is a Dirty Word: A Cultural Reckoning with the God We Left Behind. All three are available on Amazon.I went into this conversation a little uncertain. I told Lacey — and my listeners — exactly that: “I was tentative... what am I going to say today? I’m not sure if I’m ready for this.” By the time we wrapped, my shoulders had literally dropped. A weight I’d been carrying for a long time quietly lifted.The Premise That Changes EverythingThe process of unbecoming is not another self-help system. It’s a response to what Lacey kept seeing in her therapy practice — people arriving with the underlying belief that something was fundamentally wrong with them and then finding that all the effort they put into fixing themselves only reinforced that belief.“The core that I see in this is the premise that people go into self-help or therapy with is that it makes sense, it’s this way, but there’s something wrong with them, they’re not good enough, or that they’re somehow broken,” she said. “And until we address that premise the work itself can become rather fruitless because it tends to set up a pattern of effort that often reinforces that premise they came in with.”The starting point — the base of her entire framework — is this: wholeness is not something you earn. It is inherent to every human being. You were born with it. No experience takes it away. You will die with it.“When we operate from that place,” she said, “everything starts to change on its own.”Six Principles That Reframe the Whole PictureLacey built the process of unbecoming around six core principles. She was careful to call them philosophical, grounded in what she considers fundamental truths about human beings. Here’s what we covered:1. Wholeness is inherentWorth and dignity are not conditions to be earned. They are built into every human being. “When we believe that we are whole and complete as we are,” Lacey explained, “and within that wholeness holds our worth and our dignity as human beings, it holds the vulnerability that reaches and can feel and connect with other people.”2. Identity is adaptive.Human beings are exceptional at adapting to their environment. The problem is that during childhood, identity is forming at the same time we are adapting. The patterns and behaviors we developed to get our needs met — in whatever environment we were raised in, functional or not — later get labeled as personality flaws or pathology. “Adaptation isn’t necessarily who we are,” Lacey said. “It’s just what we needed to do in that environment.”She also pushed back against putting too much weight on the family unit alone. Biologically, she pointed out, we are designed to be raised in groups of 25 to 150 people. Today, we’re lucky to have two parents in the house. That mismatch puts enormous pressure on parents — and on children.I grew up in the 1960s with relatives up and down the block. I told Lacey about my cousin who took me under his wing when I was a heavy, uncoordinated kid who couldn’t pay attention in school. He put me to work alongside him, bought me lunch, took pictures of me holding a tool in front of a car. That relationship built something in me. I think back and wonder: without that kind of community support, where would I have ended up?3. Capacity is inherent.This principle challenges the common therapy-world idea that capacity — the ability to tolerate and meet experience — is something you build or develop through work. Lacey disagrees. “Capacity is always within us,” she said. The issue is not that it doesn’t exist. The issue is access. When we don’t have enough co-regulation — the steadying presence of other nervous systems around us — we lose the ability to reach our own capacity. The goal in her work is not to develop something new. It is to reconnect with what is already there.4. Protection precedes pathology.This gave me a long pause. The behaviors and patterns we most hate about ourselves — the walls we put up, the ways we push people away, the cycles we feel trapped in — are not evidence of brokenness. They are protection. “We are born vulnerable,” Lacey explained, “and humans have the instinct to protect what’s vulnerable.” When that vulnerability felt threatened, protection came online. What we often call personality problems or disorders are adaptive protections that got locked in.“When we relate to them as protective rather than something wrong with us, the intervention changes, and the protection tends to soften through the relationship that we build with it.”5. Change happens through ...
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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • What Your Therapist Is Really Thinking | 50 Years as a Patient Meets 50 Years as a Psychiatrist

    What Your Therapist Is Really Thinking | 50 Years as a Patient Meets 50 Years as a Psychiatrist
    Apr 22 2026
    I’ve been in psychotherapy, on and off, since I was 16 years old. That’s 51 years as a patient. My guest on this episode, Dr. David I. Joseph, has been on the other side of that equation for just as long — 50 years as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. His book chronicling his journey in the mental health profession, Listening for a Lifetime: The Artful Science of Psychotherapy, is available on Amazon, including Kindle Unlimited.When I read it, I recognized my entire mental health life on those pages.Know Who You’re Talking ToBefore we got into the book, I asked Dr. Joseph for a primer — one that I wish I’d had 50 years ago. What exactly is the difference between a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and a psychotherapist?His answer: “A psychiatrist is someone who’s gone to medical school and then done specialty training in the field of psychiatry,” which means training in both the brain and the mind, including the ability to prescribe medication. Psychologists focus on how the mind functions. Their training centers on providing psychotherapy, not pharmacology. And not all psychiatrists are equally equipped to do deep psychotherapy work — some are, some aren’t.That explanation paralleled my experience. In my time in the system, I found that psychiatrists often moved quickly to the prescription pad. Dr. Joseph, to his credit, agreed — and contextualized it. He was trained in the late 1960s and early 70s, when psychiatrists still received serious education in psychotherapy. Today, many don’t. And the economics make it worse. As he put it, a 15-minute appointment and a prescription generate more income than a 50-minute conversation. Knowing that matters when you’re choosing who to see.A Book Built on AphorismsListening for a Lifetime grew out of Dr. Joseph’s decades of teaching and clinical practice. His students and colleagues kept telling him he had a gift for distilling complex psychological truths into short, memorable phrases. After the third person said he ought to write a book, he did.He spent about a year and a half collecting these aphorisms — phrases he had developed over the course of his career that condensed the essential experience of both therapist and patient. “I decided that I would organize the book around these aphorisms because I wanted to make it understandable, readable, substantive. I didn’t want to dumb it down.”The cover of the book, by the way, is a photo of his actual office. His story is that real.Being a Patient Is Hard WorkDr. Joseph said it plainly: “Being a patient is hard work.”He’s right. And the hardest part is opening up about the things you’d rather leave buried. I told him I’ve been in situations where I refused to go there — where something was too painful to bring to the surface and I just covered it over instead.His response was not what I expected. He doesn’t coax anyone. “I never coax anyone to do anything,” he said. And he reframed the whole thing for me. It’s not that talking about certain subjects is painful. “It’s risky to talk about certain subjects because you’re going to make yourself vulnerable.” That distinction matters. Risk is something you can evaluate. Pain feels like something that’s just happening to you.What a Bad Therapist Looks LikeI’ve had a lot of therapists over the years. Some great, some not. I gave Dr. Joseph two real examples.The first: after my brother passed away suddenly in January 2024 — he was 66, they found him in his chair — I found a telehealth therapist through my insurance. I told her my brother had just died. She had me fill out a questionnaire. Session after session, we went through the questionnaire. She never once said she was sorry. When I mentioned my brother again — the details, the shock of it — she moved on to page two. I had to drop her.Dr. Joseph’s reaction was unambiguous. “I would say that this is a lousy psychotherapist. I would no more give a patient a questionnaire before I’d met them and talked with them a long time. I never have given a patient a questionnaire and never would.”The second example: a psychiatrist who started avoiding me — not returning calls, not available for appointments. When I finally got in to see her, she told me, to my face, that I had been “so draining.” I later found she was going through something herself — possibly a divorce however her approach had already hit my psyche hard. My first thought was that I was actually that bad — that I had broken my own psychiatrist. Dr. Joseph’s take: she couldn’t make herself available in the way I needed, and the professional thing would have been to say so and refer me to a colleague. The failure wasn’t mine.Where the Problems StartI brought up my own tonsillectomy — I was four years old. My parents turned and walked away. Someone put a mask over my face. I remember smelling and tasting the anesthesia, and then it went black. I’ve always believed that...
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • What a TV Reporter Turned Media Coach Taught Me About Showing Up on Camera

    What a TV Reporter Turned Media Coach Taught Me About Showing Up on Camera
    Apr 15 2026
    Most people think communication is just talking. Susan Siravo proved otherwise.Susan is a former television reporter and anchor who spent roughly a decade in local news as a general assignment reporter — covering crime stories, water main breaks, political hearings, whatever the day brought. She later became a public information officer for a water and flood protection agency in California, transitioned into corporate communications and social media for a regional bank, and eventually built a media and communication coaching practice. She joined me on Lens of Hopefulness to break down what it really means to communicate effectively on camera — and along the way, I made some discoveries about myselfJournalism Taught Her More Than She ExpectedSusan traced her path back to where it started: a genuine love of storytelling.“I was always attracted to the field of news and journalism. Since I was a kid, I loved watching the news and the idea of storytelling.”That love turned into a career, but the most enlightening part came when she crossed to the other side of the camera. After years of interviewing people as a reporter, she became a spokesperson for a public agency — and discovered something humbling.“One of the hardest parts of it was being the person who speaks to the media. I thought that would be so easy because I had been in the media for so long interviewing people and I know what makes a good interview and all that. But then when the camera was on me and then I was supposed to be articulate and succinct — that was very hard. And so now when I work with clients, I know what they’re going through.”That experience is why her coaching connects. She’s not teaching from theory. She learned it the hard way herself.The Pandemic Changed EverythingWhen COVID hit and the world moved to Zoom, Susan saw a problem most people didn’t even have language for yet. Professionals who were competent, knowledgeable, and credible in person suddenly looked and sounded uncertain on screen. Teachers were trying to reach kindergarteners through a webcam for the first time. Executives were running town halls from kitchen tables.“So many people had no idea how to communicate well on Zoom with a webcam in front of them. It started out with me helping people with the look and feel of how they presented themselves. And then the next part was to be able to help them understand how to speak to the camera effectively.”The challenge she identified goes deeper than just logistics. When you’re speaking to a live audience, you get feedback — nods, laughter, visible engagement. On camera, none of that is available to you.“It’s so different when you are speaking to a camera. You’re just looking at the lens. There’s nobody laughing, there’s nobody smiling at you, there’s nobody nodding — but yet you have to give the same performance as if you are seeing all of this in front of a live audience.”That gap between what feels natural and what the camera requires is exactly what she trains people to close.Camera Presence Became a Business SkillI shared a story about a financial consultant my wife and I interviewed on Zoom during the pandemic. He was highly recommended. He never looked at the camera — he was positioned in the corner of the screen, looking up at something off-screen — and despite his credentials, we didn’t hire him. We couldn’t get past what we were seeing.Susan wasn’t surprised.“If you’re selling some sort of service and you have potential clients, they’re looking for reasons not to hire you. So you want to remove all of those. And if you can show up on camera, you’re looking at the camera, you look professional, your background looks organized, you look like you know what you’re talking about — at least that’s a good start.”She also made a point I hadn’t fully thought through: the camera has to be at eye level. Not on a desk looking up at you, not tilted down. Eye level — so the person watching feels like they’re in a conversation, not looking up at a ceiling or down at a head.And the background matters. Not because it has to be perfect, but because every element sends a signal. “It’s just a matter of making sure that it’s the right message that you want to share and that you’re deliberate about it.”The Four-Week and Eight-Week ProgramsSusan’s coaching isn’t structured as a one-day seminar. She offers four-week and eight-week programs — one hour per week with assignments in between. Clients record videos on their phones, upload them, and she reviews and gives feedback.“I have found that working with people over the course of four weeks or eight weeks, that’s when they make the most progress because they have an opportunity to apply what they’ve learned week to week to week.”The intensive one-day model doesn’t stick. I know this from personal experience with self-improvement seminars — you walk out energized, and two days ...
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    57 mins
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