Embracing Vulnerability and Connection with Dr. Randy Hyde
Listen to the Episode Here
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ZBdG1iVzGJ2JghGX0UaMw?si=84c40e65e8274376
Topics discussed in this episode
Randy’s unfinished projects - Free mental health trainings for the community
Randy’s background - How he ended up in the field of psychology
Getting into a psychology program because of failure
Compassion and Connection as keys to success
Episode Summary
Dr. Randy Hyde, a practicing psychologist and owner of Preferred Family Clinic in Provo Utah, joins Ryan today on the Fail It to Nail It Podcast. Ryan interviews Randy about his journey to finding success in the field of psychology, but also what he learned in all aspects of his life along the way. He shares a quote that he keeps on his door - If you aren’t failing, then you aren’t sufficiently challenging yourself. He ties everything together by talking about how love, compassion, and deep connections with others is incredibly important for our fulfillment in life. =
References and Resources
Episode Transcript
Ryan: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the the Fail It to Nail It podcast. This is your host, Ryan Roberts. I have with me a dear friend and colleague, Dr. Randy Hyde. Randy, how's it going today?
Randy: It's great. Great day. And it's Friday.
Ryan: Yes. Yes. Love it. Happy to hear it, man. Okay. We love having you here. We're going to be talking about some awesome things.
We'll be talking about you. We're talking about your career as a psychologist. We're going to be talking about failure a bit today, but to begin, I want to do an ice breaker question. Okay. Okay. What unfinished projects do you have right now that you would like to get back to and finish sometime?
Randy: Um, I. I'm a little older and so I want to do, I want to do, um, a few trainings for the community for free.
So marriage, ADHD, depression, happiness, um, parenting, uh, younger kids and teenagers. And so I've, I've gathered a lot of information. There's a lot of science about all of those and I'd like to be able to share that. And so I'm looking for a venue. And I'm looking to partner with Provo City. So that's, that's on my agenda.
Ryan: Okay. Are there a lot of steps that you need to take to finish these projects?
Randy: Yeah, there's a few. Okay. I've got them pretty well done. It would only take me a week to be up and running.
Ryan: Oh, wonderful. Well, good. All right, man. You've been a psychologist for how long now?
Randy: A while. 40 years. 40 years. Longer than I've been alive.
Ryan: Okay. How'd you end up in this field? How'd you get here?
Randy: Um, it was interesting because I had this scoutmaster that I absolutely adored and he was a dentist. And so, all growing up, I wanted to be a dentist. I wanted to be like him. And then I went on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.
And when I got back, my mom had enrolled me at Rick's College. And that first semester, I'm like, you know what? I better find out for sure. So I took a career development class. And took the strong interest test. And explored. And I thought about it. And, oh my heavens. Psychology hit me like a ton of bricks.
I just knew my first semester of college, that's exactly what I needed to do and wanted to do. So ever since then, I've been studying psychology.
Ryan: Okay. Interesting. So like, what's, uh, what's your story? What storms did you have to weather to get to where you're at now?
Randy: Like how far back do you want me to go?
Ryan: Like, as far back as you can remember. Yeah. Gall, it was interesting because I loved elementary school and my first grade teacher was Mrs. Henderson, but you know, my first year I really struggled. I could read a word one minute, 10 minutes later, I couldn't read it. And so at the end of the year, Mrs.
Henderson pulls me aside and she says, Randy, um, I've looked over my whole class and I'm going to need a teacher's helper next year. And I'm like, oh my heck. And then she's like, I want you to be my teacher's helper. And I'm like, really? Don't ask anybody else. Don't ask anybody else. I'll do it. And she said, well, you ought to talk to your parents.
Okay. But don't ask anybody. I ran home. I run into my mom and I'm like, Mom, guess what? Mrs. Henderson wants me to be a teacher's helper next year. My mom's like, Oh, that's wonderful, honey. But what about your friends? And I'm like, I'll make new friends. And she's like, you don't want to go through first grade again, do you?
I'm like, I really do. I really want to be Mrs. Henderson's helper. And so What a sweet teacher. Okay. Let's wait. Let's talk to your dad. I begged. I begged them both and they said, well, let's think about it for a couple of weeks and then we'll decide. I went back and I said, Mrs. Henderson, they want a couple of weeks and she says, that's okay.
And so I said, don't give it to anybody else. I really want to do this. So a couple of weeks later, do you still want to do this? Oh yeah, I really want to do this. Okay, so I went back the second year and Mrs. Henderson introduced me as her teacher's helper and that I'm going to help kids learn how to read.
Oh man, I nailed it. I was the best reader and ever since then, I was always top of my class in spelling and reading. I mean, it just came to me. And so I'm walking home from school in the eighth grade, I'm walking along and I'm like, Hey. So I go walking into my house, mom, I flunked the first grade, didn't I?
She's like, honey, you didn't flunk. Oh my heavens. But wasn't that sweet? Wasn't that a sweet way? Yeah. To approach a kid. So I go through, um, And I got straight A's. Junior high and high school. Straight A's. Graduated 3. 89. Grade point average. Except for math, and I have ADHD. People say my wife, my wife will tell you, and I took this introductory algebra class and great teacher.
Good guy. I worked my butt off. I have never studied so hard. I didn't even come close to a D minus. I flunked. I flunked. And so I'm like, okay, well, well, we had our ACT's, you know, our college exams. And living in Rexburg, I remember so well, my friends and I were going to go skiing at Targhee, um, uh, ski resort.
Oh my heaven. The most beautiful place you've ever been. And that day, it was 50 below zero. Without the windchill. Sheesh. Well, I didn't know anything about the ACTs. I heard and hurried and took it, and I'm like, you know, ready to go skiing, and I'm like, Ah, it's probably too cold, 50 below, yeah, maybe. Anyway, we didn't go.
Later, in my senior year, my counselor, our high school counselor, pulled me inside, and he says, Randy, uh, what do you want to do after you graduate from high school? I'm like, I want to go on a mission. He's like, oh, good, and then what are you going to do? And I'm like, I'm going to go to Rich College. And then he said, then what are you going to do?
Then I'm going to go to BYU. And he's like, yeah. About that, the best you can do at RICS is C's and D's. The best you'll do at BYU is D's at best, and you'll flunk most of your classes. My heck, I was devastated. I'm like, I knew it. I'm an idiot. I'm stupid. And went on my mission, got back, my mom enrolled me at RICS college.
Scared to death. I went in my suit because I didn't have any other clothes. Ha ha ha. Really? I'm kind of a dork, but ha But after my first semester, I had straight A's and I'm like, Oh yeah, who's stupid now you let me pass. But I really enjoyed school. I went to BYU and Maxine Murdoch
became my mentor and she didn't become licensed until she was 60. But she was a dynamo just awesome, and she was teaching this Psychological testing class and she said I want everybody know what it's like take psychological tests, so they're gonna take all these tests I'm like, ah, that'd be awesome. And she says okay.
I want you to take an IQ test I'm not taking an IQ test. So I go up to her and I'm like, I can't take an IQ test. I'm not taking it. And she says, that's okay, I'll just give you a C. Well, it's harder to get into clinical psychology than medical school. I'm like, I can't take a C. She says, okay, take the test.
Ha ha ha. She, she knew I had issues. Anyway, I took this stupid IQ test. And I had a graduate student and she was awesome. Just so tender hearted, she could tell I was scared to death. And just so great. And I took this IQ test. And, oh my heavens, I got it back. I'm like, I'm not as dumb as I look. I, I, I got a pretty high IQ.
But there's, there's about 12 different tests, an IQ test. And some were very high, some were low. Auditory, short term memory, yeah, not so good. Math, yeah, higher a CPA. And so, I went through BYU and I got straight A's. Except for my introductory algebra class. And, you get three chances, three chances to take the test.
First, first time, blew it. Didn't even come close. To passing. Second time, I memorized the book. Memorized the book. Knew it. They hand me the test and I'm like, ha, this isn't the test, this is for some other class. And they're like, no, this is the, this is the test. No, it isn't. There's nothing in here. No. Yeah, failed that too.
So I got a tutor. Failed it the third time. People are like, so are you going to retake the class? No. I hate it! And so, um, I handed in my transcripts, and my letters of recommendation, and all of that to apply for the clinical psychology program. I was up ag They take eight. They took eight. And hundreds applied.
And I was up against 4. 0 students. And in college I had a 3. 89. So,
they looked at my, my material, and they looked at my transcript, and they're like, He failed introductory algebra. And he never retook the class. Call him in. So, I'm standing in front of this committee, and they're like, Hey, you did great on everything. You know, your experience, everything's great, but You failed introductory algebra.
Why didn't you take it again? I'm like, I hated it. I'm not good at it. I'll hire a freaking CPA. And they're like, oh my heck, he's going to make a great psychologist.
It wasn't my A's that got me in. It was my F. I failed. It was my F and my attitude. Sometimes we never know. We never know. I asked, I asked my patients, I'm like, because they freak out about failure. I'm like, spell pneumonia. Very few can spell pneumonia. And I say, okay, spell egg. And everybody spells egg.
I'm like, okay, what'd you learn? Nothing. Spell pneumonia. They fail. So I show them how to do it. I erase it. Okay, now spell pneumonia. And they do it. And I'm like, see? You only learn from failure. That doesn't make you a failure. It makes you a student. It makes you able to learn. And that's, that's what got me To where I am.
Good parents.
What a rollercoaster.
Randy: Good
parents, great parents, great teachers, great coaches. I was an athlete and, you know, yeah.
Ryan: It was a great mix of failures and successes that got you there, wasn't it? Yeah. I mean, you had situations where you were doing really well. You really did do really well in a lot of ways.
Yeah. But it could have been very easy to focus on that and ignore the failures. And just for the failures, it could have been very easy to focus on the failures and just justify the successes. Those were flukes, whatever it could have been. It sounds like you could have done, gone either way, but you took it as a whole.
How were you able to do that? How were you able to stay optimistic? How were you able to kind of look at it as data points in your life?
Randy: I love my teachers. I love my parents, and I love my coaches. And they love me. And so, everybody fails. But they were always in my corner. They always believed in me.
Couldn't have done it without them. Had good friends.
And I'm stinking good looking. That's what got me through, I think.
Ryan: Oh, man. Yeah, it's my luck. You're well loved. Oh, yeah. You look good for what, 70? You're 70 now? You're doing pretty well. Yeah. You're doing pretty well. You're staying young. You're staying connected with people. These are people that care about you. Despite whatever's been going on, you've been able to be consistently successful in your field.
Specifically. Let's talk about psychology. So we talked about your lifestyle and psychology. Um, I imagine there are people that are listening that are like, man, I want to be a psychologist or I want to be a counselor or a social worker, but what would it take to be successful in this field specifically?
Randy: You got to love it. And I love it. I can't wait to go to work every day. And I'll tell you what, I'll tell you, because I probably supervise more doctoral and master's level therapists than anyone else in the state. I love giving back. And I love surrounding myself with sharp, bright interns. Ryan. What it takes is it takes knowledge.
You gotta study. You gotta read. You know, you got to learn as much as you can, and just, just be a sponge, just take it in. Knowledge. Um, you've got to be socially and emotionally intelligent, and you're born with that. That's, that's something that you're born with, and so you've got to be socially and emotionally intelligent.
But, there's one thing that supersedes everything else. I've only known just a handful of therapists who haven't burnt out. And they often ask me, How can you do this every day and, and hear all these problems and not take it home? I take it home. Two things. One, you've actually got to love Your patients you've got to love people and I'm not using that with a small L a Capital L.
You've got to love your patients Well, how do you keep from burning out not taking home and carrying their burden number two? You have to have optimism I see somebody that comes in for the first time and and they've got horrible horrible experiences or they're massively depressed. I don't look at that.
I look at, okay, if we're starting here, we're going to go here. And I, I optimistically look at the end result. Oh my heck. I can help you. You're depressed? I know exactly what to do. I had a young woman come in yesterday and she and her mother were in tears. She has an eating disorder. She's been hospitalized three times.
The pediatrician referred her to me and we turned it around. But she's like, this is so hard. And I'm like, that's life. Life is hard. It's not meant to be easy. That's what helps us grow and develop and develop courage and confidence and, and relationships. And so, for everybody, life is hard. It's hard. But, I was a track star.
So was running the 400 meters, I'll tell you what. That's a killer. Life's hard. Life's hard. Failing the first grade is hard. Having ADHD is hard. You know, being an idiot in math is hard. Life is hard. It's hard for everybody. That's why we need each other, and that's why if we truly, genuinely love other people, that's what builds us and makes us strong.
That's, that's what I think. Love and optimism. I hear a lot of answers when it comes to burnout. And I think I'm okay that people have different answers. Um, I think that's fine. But for me, I feel like when people start to disengage to prevent burnout, these are the people that start to really struggle when it comes to emotions and therapy, because they're not immune to the emotions and therapy.
They do feel and they do connect, but they turn away from it. But when we face that and we connect with our clients. Can I tell you a story?
Ryan: Yeah, I want to hear it.
Randy: So I had this woman come in. And she was a young woman, 22. And, oh my heavens. Her dad was a sociopath. I mean, he was really a piece of work. You know what I mean?
And her mom was schizophrenic. And, but she was a sweetheart. I mean, and she had, she had ambition and intelligence and just, just a great attitude. At the end of our session I said, Do you know what? I just love you. I, I feel free in being able to share. I'm, I'm pretty open and she comes back in the next time she said, Randy, I'm really not comfortable with you telling me that you love me.
I saved that only for family and for best of friends. I said, I'm not comfortable with you being uncomfortable with it. If I feel it, I'm going to tell you. And she's like, really? I'm like, yeah. So you're going to continue to tell me? I'm like, yeah. If I feel it, I'm saying it. Okay. As she was leaving, I gave her a big hug. She comes in the next week. Randy, I'm not comfortable with you crossing my boundaries. I'm not comfortable with you hugging me. I'm not comfortable with you me not hugging you. Randy. Are you serious? I'm paying you. Yes, you are and that's for free And I'm like if I feel it, I'm gonna give you a hug now.
There are people that I won't hug There's a lot of people I won't hug but for her I just felt it and I'm like you got to deal with it Touch is very very powerful It's a miracle worker, in fact. We need touch. In our society, we are not touched enough. And there's so much science behind that. And so, she's like, well, two years later, she meets this wonderful young man.
And they date. They get engaged.
Guess who walked her down the aisle? Yeah.
I guess the secret is we're all therapists. You know, we all love, we all need each other. We all help and support. I guess that's the bottom line. Yeah.
I feel like a lot of therapists feel like they need to be in a different realm, almost, in terms of how they feel and how they interact with people. Yeah, that's insecurity. Yeah. That's a therapist's insecurity. They have to be something other than what they are. Doesn't work. You're right. I think this translates over to the medical professionals I work with sometimes as well.
These nurse practitioners feel like they have to be in a different realm and they're humans. They're working with the most vulnerable humans like we are. I just met with a nurse today and she's like, and it was my first session. She's like, what do I call you? And I'm like, Oh, people call me all kinds of things.
He said, well, you know, and I said, it's Randy, if you call me Dr. Hyde, that's just weird. And so she said, well, as a nurse, there are doctors who want me to call them by their first name and there are doctors who absolutely. I insist that I refer to them as Dr. So and so. Yeah.
Ryan: Oh man, I hear about that as well. There's a nurse I worked with. I didn't know about this until recently. But, um, there's a male nurse and he was telling me about how they wear different lengths of lab coats to show different Yeah, and so they're like he grabbed the wrong lab coat. It was too long and got in trouble for it I'm like, oh man, there's things I didn't even think about.
Randy: Oh my heavens.
Ryan: It's like they're thinking all the time about Yes, and so I and so they're having a hard time Uh, being human sometimes, I think happens in every industry, right? In every industry, people have a hard time being human. My father, he works with money, and money is a very vulnerable thing for a lot of people.
And so people withhold information. But when you can become human with people, people can finally work with money. And so, it's the same thing across all industries. But yeah, in the mental health world, oh, it is tough. It is very, very tough. I like money. Yeah, but it's a big pain point for a lot of people.
Yes. Well, good. Yeah. And I think there's another point here in that, um, while it relates, we talk about the medical world and the mental health world. Um, there are other industries where people feel like they're not necessarily helping humans. They're solving tech problems. We had someone on the show a couple of weeks ago.
Same as Mike Armitage. Um, he's an IT and we had talked about. Uh, some of the things that he wasn't expecting in the field and he said one of the best skills for him is communication and he's often working with frustrated people and people's skills are one of the best things that helped differentiate him from other people is just how can you work with people really well doesn't matter the field he's interested in technology but working with people's what propels them further in the field doesn't matter it's awesome okay All right.
So as we start to wrap up, I want to ask this last question. What advice would you give to someone who is struggling to overcome a recent failure or who is scared of failure in this field?
Randy: I would say we've all been there. You know, it starts when we're babies. When we first start walking, we stand up, we fall, we stand up, we fall. We stand up, we fall, um, reading, we learn our letters, we learn multiplication tables, we learn, and you know, it's never easy at first. There's always failure. We, we're not progressing if we're not failing.
Oh, I got something on my door. It says, if you are not failing, then you are not sufficiently challenging yourself. And people love that because we all fail. And we all need support. We all need to be kind to ourselves because people translate. If I fail, then I'm a failure. If I succeed, then I'm successful.
That's not that. Nothing is further from the truth. You're never a failure until you give up until you quit. Um, and I would just say, keep going, have fun, make whatever you're doing fun and be happy. You know, make yourself happy. That's your job. Create a great life. Um, for me, exercise is my therapy. I exercise every day except for Sundays.
Um, be healthy and have great relationships. Marriage is the most difficult thing we'll ever do. Raising kids is the second most difficult thing we'll ever do. And so I see a lot of people who struggle. They just need to know. Love is the answer. We're all very, very vulnerable, more vulnerable than we think more than we know, everyone, and everyone needs to know that they're loved and that's research.
That is, that is compiling all that John Gottman has researched. And that's what he would say. Those two things.
Ryan: Hey, wonderful. Then as we wrap up. Yeah, absolutely. I want to share the biggest takeaway point for me, and then I want to hear afterward the biggest takeaway point for you, whether it's in preparation or in the discussion here, whatever it may be.
For me, the biggest takeaway point I think would be probably that the biggest contributor to your success, or one of them. Is that you were connected with the right people that you establish healthy relationships with people that you were good looking enough or whatever that people like liked you and it was mentors, it was teachers, it was family, and that kind of helps whoever.
Is listening to this, figure out that if they are not sure how to proceed in life, whether it's like a career choice, getting promotion, academics, if they don't know how to progress, enhance relationships or establish new networks, connect with people. If you're not sure how to progress, just connect, connect with people.
That's the biggest takeaway point for me. What about for you?
Randy: Be the most loving person, you know, and what good is love if it's not expressed? Be the most affectionate person you know, and that doesn't preclude yourself. You've got to love yourself first. You got to be kind because our world right now especially is harsh and cruel. Mental health has never been lower in recorded history than it is right now.
So much criticism and aggression and hostility and, you know, and a lack of real connection and relationships. I would say, if you're going to be happy, be the most loving person you know and express it.
Ryan: Awesome. Well, thank you for meeting me through, Randy. I appreciate it. I had fun today. Sure love and appreciate you. Oh, and may I say, you are, you are an outstanding therapist. Oh, thank you. Oh, it's good to hear. Thank you for saying that. Oh, and have fun. Have a good one. For all of you. You too, man. For all of you that are listening.
The show notes will be in the description. You can check out the blog newsletter that will be attached as well, and you can follow us on social media. So, take care everyone. Take care. Bye, Randy.
