Men, Madness, and Mysticism: Jerry Hyde Explores Reality Like Never Before!

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Hi there, welcome to Grief to Growth Podcast. Your host is Brian D Smith, spiritual seeker, bestselling author, grief survivor, and life coach. Brian believes that the worst tragedies of life provide the greatest opportunity for growth. Brian says he was planted, not buried, and he is here to help you grow where you've been planted by the difficulties in life. In each episode, Brian and his guests will share what has helped them to survive and thrive. It is his sincere hope this episode helps you today.

Hey everybody, this is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief to Growth. And today I've got with me a fascinating man. His name is Jerry Hyde. And Jerry, I'm going to read list of who he is. He's a mentor. He's a bestselling author. He's a filmmaker, a podcaster. He's a psychedelic integrator. He calls himself a denim freak. He's a coffee fiend and a provocateur. He's the bestselling author of Bladesville, Dream Machine, Play from Your Fucking Heart, The Book of Sin, and the forthcoming book Empathy for the Devil, which Jerry tells me he's going to be at about the end of this week. I'm recording this on October 26th, 2021. Jerry is a shadow therapist with 25 years of clinical experience. He rejects many of the conventionally held views of the mainstream psychotherapy world, which I do too. So this should be an interesting conversation. Jerry works with couples and individuals and leads the largest men's group practice in the UK. So with that, I want to welcome to Grief to Growth, Jerry Hyde.

Thank you, Brian. It's nice to be here.

Yeah, Jerry, it's really good to meet you. I'm looking forward to our conversation today. I know you're a psychotherapist, But you say you reject many of the mainstream thoughts of the psychotherapy world, and why is that?

When I say reject, I don't mean I reject them. They can do whatever they want, and I'm sure they will. Uh, I mean, in terms of my own practice, yeah, I mean, my, my background training is as a psychotherapist, but I don't— I think I might have even removed most of that kind of terminology from my website. I try and distance myself. Maybe it's a little bit like Groucho Marx, you know, I don't want to be part of any club that would have me. Yeah, it's, you know, it's a complex thing when you, when you get into plant medicine, for example, then, you know, I think, I think, our medicine and psych, you know, psychotherapy are going to become more and more entwined. Over the, you know, the next few years. There's already this thing called the psychedelic renaissance, you know, this phrase that I hear more and more. I must have been involved for almost 10 years, so it's been pretty underground. And I think there's a lot of people being very underground. But if you want to call yourself a mainstream psychotherapist, then you can't, you can't be involved in what's at the moment seen as Class A narcotics. You know, there's no distinction between crack and ayahuasca. So in that sense, I reject it. I'm also not a big fan of ethics. And I don't know what it's like in the rest of the world. In the UK, if you go to any of the kind of directories or places where therapists list themselves, you'll almost always have a little foot thing saying, you know, I abide by the UKCP's, you know, a code of ethics? Well, I don't. Not because I don't think people should be ethical. I think it's really essential that at the core of your practice, you be an ethical human being. But if I follow a rulebook, I think there's a danger there. Because if the rulebook says thou shalt not hug your client, then what if they need touch?. And there are people I've worked with 15, 16, maybe 20 years, I've never touched them, probably never will. I, I'm, I can read that off them. There's other people I hug at the end of the first session, and occasionally I get it wrong, you know, but not very often. But that's called being human and doing your best, as opposed to— like, I was listening to a doctor, all right, different field, but I was listening to a doctor on the radio, and he said, when I go to someone's bedside to tell them they're terminally ill, my human impulse is to sit down and hold their hand. And that's illegal. I'm not allowed to be within 4 feet of that person. So I have to shout across the room, you're dying, rather than be human. And I think when we take these, you know, whether it's health and safety or boundaries or ethics or whatever, to that extreme, we've lost our humanity. So I think it's very dangerous to operate without code of ethics. I understand why people operate with a code of ethics. And I would understand if someone called me arrogant for not choosing to do so. But I do my best to be human rather than to follow orders. Following orders can get us into all sorts of trouble. But you've got to be a little bit more alive. I mean, Osho— I'm a fan of Osho, the Indian lunatic guru. And he said morality is so that people don't have to think for themselves. So you go, okay, what does the Bible say? Or what does my culture say I should do rather than what if I listen to myself. Psychotherapy is about having a relationship to yourself. So how can I possibly follow a code of ethics? So in that sense, I'm— I would be—

I'm—

I hope I'm considered outside. Maybe I'm fooling myself. Maybe everyone thinks I'm just conventional. But, um, that's really my point. It's not meant to be a kind of screw you to them, because hopefully they're doing a great job. But that's, you know, I've been doing this 27 years. I've made mistakes. I've upset people. I imagine if I was a plumber, I would've upset people and made mistakes and flooded people's houses. You know, hopefully it's not that bad psychologically, but you know what I mean? You just try and say sorry when you screw up and you try and be alive.

Yeah, I totally agree with everything you just said. It's really interesting. My daughter just graduated this year with her master's in psychology, psychotherapy. And she's— she sees me doing the work that I'm doing. And she's like, well, Dad, you're not really a psychotherapist, which I'm not. I, I help people through grief, but I'm not— I'm not trained in that. But I, I watch, and she says, well, we're not allowed to do this. We're not allowed to touch our clients, you know, for example. She's working with children. And, you know, but, you know, she's got to follow the rules because she's, you know, as you said, ethics and stuff like that. And, you know, you're not supposed to talk about yourself as a psychotherapist, you know. And she's like, well, sometimes, you know, occasionally we can. I'm like, well, then you're not being a human being. Because you're— I think your clients want to be able to relate to you. It's like, I want, I want to feel like I'm talking to someone who can, who's experienced what I've experienced. So I think that as we grow, we kind of realize humanity is more important than that set of rules.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I, I'm not, I'm not hung up on right and wrong and who should do what. I think there is for some people, there's definitely value in having a completely blank canvas in who they talk to. That's never been my thing. From day one, the first time I ever once went and saw a therapist, I felt very reassured by the kind of what, as you're saying, the human contact of that person being willing to share their experience with me. And again, in terms of rejecting conventional therapy, I've kind of made you could almost call it a brand. That sounds a little bit cynical. But I've made a career out of being the fucked up therapist and being very transparent. Because I don't like the guru model. I always say to people, you have to be my teacher. I'm not your teacher. I'm not the leader here. I'm your companion. And I have my issues. And you really want to work with me on something that I haven't completely resolved. Because then I'm going to be very alive to that struggle. If you work with me on a subject, an issue, like drug addiction, you know, I had a drug habit in my 20s, I'm in my late 50s now, it's not an issue for me anymore. So I'm probably not the best person to talk to as a drug addict, because I'm like, just stop, man. You know, yeah, as if it's something I'm really grappling with. Ideally, you want me to be like 2 steps ahead of you. So I can say, yeah, I mean, this has been something I've really struggled with. But this is what I've learned. And I'm very kind of alive and passionate about it. I I think that's the best way to work with me. Um, but you know, it's, it's whatever your choice is, really.

Well, I, you know, I, I'm speaking as a layperson, but, uh, I did go see a psychotherapist several years ago. I was going through a crisis, and, um, it— to me, I love the fact that she was human, that she, you know, she could relate to what I was going through. I don't want to talk to a blank canvas, and frankly, nowadays we've got computers that can do that. You know, I could get on— I can get on with an AI and have someone words and says, yes, I'm listening, you know. But I want to work with someone who is, who is human, who, who knows my struggle, who can relate. I love what you said also, you know, someone that's a couple steps ahead of me, you know, not that's perfected it. And, you know, when I was going to church, I remember there was a pastor, I really liked this guy because he would stand there and say, I've, you know, I've got the same issues as you do. I'm ADD, ADHD, you know, I've got this issue, I've got that issue. I'm like, that's the guy I want to, I want to Yeah, I was—

I run a lot of groups, and, um, I was running a group the other day with a bunch of guys that they must have been working with together with me for about 18 or 19 years. And one of the guys, I can't even remember now what he said, he shared something quite painful. I couldn't honestly tell you why there was silence, but no one responded. There was like a pause, and his fucking watch went, 'I'm really sorry to hear that, John.' Oh wow. And everyone burst out laughing, which is that, you know, it was like, oh my God, these watches are listening to us. And then they're kind of responding, oh, I'm really sorry to hear that, John, before we got a chance, you know. So God knows where it's going ultimately. But yeah, I totally agree with you, you know. It's, it's, if that's your, what you're looking for, but you want someone to share, then there's plenty of us out there that do that. And if you— I tried the blank canvas thing for a few years. I thought it would be a good thing for me to do. I went, saw a Jungian psychoanalyst, and I think I broke him, actually. He started sharing stuff with me. It wasn't for me, you know. I'm glad I tried it just to see what it was like. It made me understand, but it's not for me.

So, um, I do want to ask you about this. It's a little bit off subject, but I read a book called Lost Connections, um, if you're familiar with it, um, by a guy named Johann Hari. And he talks about basically, you know, a lot of— not psychotherapists, but psychologists, psychiatrists they're like, everything's about brain chemistry, you know, so all we got to do is fix your brain chemistry, you'll be fine. So we'll just give you these antidepressants, and you'll be okay. What are your thoughts on that model? You know, where it's like, you know, we're like, our medical— our mental health is pretty much like our physical health. We just fix it mechanically, then we'll be okay. Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief Most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up, so you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it: the community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing— listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there.

So really good question. I'm not a fan of the terminology mind, body, and spirit. I don't hear it so much these days, actually. I don't know if people use it in the same way as they used to, and, you know, when the kind of whole New Age thing was really exploding. But mind, body, and spirit suggests to me that there's three things that are kind of traveling in one vehicle somehow. I, I don't say it like that. I think our mind is our body, our body is our spirit, our spirit is our, you know, we are one. Um, and As far as kind of brain chemistry, I'm not a biologist. I don't know enough about it. I just think that again, the splitting of these, you know, medical from psychological, even— I mean, I know very, very little, if anything at all, about quantum physics, but when I've tried to understand it, I've thought this doesn't seem very far from spirituality or religion. So I'm not very interested in splaying it out. My explorations with plant medicines, which have been incredibly powerful and healing for me— if someone were to come to me and say all of the spiritual stuff you experienced is merely a chemical reaction to this plant and the alkaloids and or whatever in this plant, and it's giving you hallucinations and it's doing certain things to your neural pathways. Okay, I don't care. And if someone comes to me and goes, no, that's God, okay, what's the difference? Who cares? You know, it's— I'm not a fan of indiscriminate medication of people, especially, you know, you mentioned ADD or ADHD. I, I've had ADD my whole life because that's what you, you don't get it just for a little bit. I was prescribed Ritalin when I was a kid. It's not a medication that I feel did me any good at all, uh, and I hear from some people that it helps them. Even that one I'm a bit sketchy on because I'm thinking, who's it helping here, the kid or the teacher, the kid or family, you know, who's actually getting helped. So I'm, I'm a bit more cautious around the way these things are prescribed. You know, I know someone who was prescribed very hardcore medication about 25 years ago, for what I see as his sensitivity. I think if his sensitivity had been embraced a bit more, rather than 'No, you're oversensitive, so we need to shut you down.' That would be my approach. I understand that a psychiatrist approaches— 'We have these pills and this will solve your problem.' Yeah, who doesn't want a pill that's going to solve their problems, right? I mean, that just sounds great. Does it exist? For some people, if you— if you're going to go out and you're going to stab someone to death unless you're medicated, I'm all in favor of that. You know, if it's about safety, if it's at that extreme Even that, I think if you gave people a bit of love, it would probably, you know, you might need to medicate them while you give them the love. But so, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, so much of this is cultural. So much of this is, is because of our culture that we inhabit that people don't get the care that they need, and so they do develop mental health problems. And then I'm not sure that pills ultimately are the answer to a cultural problem.

And, and that's kind of the point of, of the book that I was referring to. It's like, you know, we have— I think we have a cultural problem in the West. And people are— that's why the book's titled Lost Connections. We feel lonely, we feel separate, we feel isolated. And, you know, I'm not a biologist, and I'm not a psychotherapist, even, but I think there's a— I think it's a feedback loop, right? So people look at the brain and say, oh, it's because you're missing this chemical in your brain. And all we have to do is pump up this chemical, and you'll feel fine. What if it's the other way around? What if it's that our thoughts and our emotions are driving our brain chemistry to a certain extent? And, and these, these drugs that we're giving people aren't very effective. Um, they've— they're effective for a few people for a short period of time, but over a long period of time, they're not really, you know, really helping. So that's just my thought on— I just wanted to— curious what you know.

You know, the whole— I mean, I remember going, uh, to see my doctor when I was 28 and being told the classic, you have an imbalance in your brain and you need to be on antidepressants for the rest of your life. I think I tried them for about a year and then thought, this isn't the way for me. But I always think of the chemical imbalance thing, again, as a layperson, I'm not a doctor, so maybe they could dismiss this analogy. But for me, I think about when we had to do sports when I was a kid, and you're, you're all in a line, and you're going to run 100 meters or whatever. And you gotta, you gotta try and be first. And there's some teacher there with a pistol who fires it and you run as fast as you can. And I'm cranked in that moment, I'm full of fear, anxiety, adrenaline, cortisol, that because I've got to be the fastest in this race. Is that a chemical imbalance? Or am I responding to my environment, which is particularly stressful in that moment? And then I think about growing up in a domestic violence household with an alcoholic parent, a mother who was medicating to deal with that situation, and the stress and anxiety that I lived with perpetually. Is that a chemical imbalance? Well, at some point it might be because you're, you know, again, very basic understanding of brain chemistry, and that your brain starts to almost crave these, these, these releases of cortisol and adrenaline. So you can get hooked on, on fear and anxiety, and maybe a short-term burst of some kind of correcting medication can redress that. Personally, that never worked for me. As I've said, I've I've had Ritalin, I've had SSRIs, uh, magic mushrooms and ayahuasca helped.

Yeah, well, let's, let's talk about that. I want to explore that a little bit because I actually went on an SSRI for a while. I would— I actually did a couple of them, and I told my therapist I would as long as, you know, my doctor prescribed them, and she agreed I need to be on. But I, I said I want to plan to get off of them, so I look for ways to get off of them. So I— and I was having major panic attacks which I very rarely, if ever, have anymore. And this was like 20 years ago. But I decided I want to work with my mind more than working with this, this chemical that made me feel basically like a zombie. It's like I wasn't depressed anymore. I just didn't care about anything. And I did not like that feeling. So how are plant medicines— how are they different from, say, the SSRIs and the Ritalin and stuff like that.

I mean, I don't know, I guess if you go, you go see a doctor, you get a pill, you go away, you try and live your life. I guess if you gave people plant medicine in the same way, it might be— that might not be so effective. I think part of it is that it's ceremonial, uh, or, or all the times I've been involved, it's been, it's been ceremonial. There's been a ritual to it. There have been a group of carers there who will take care of you, will guide you through the experience, will help you integrate it. You know, that's something that I'm involved in myself. I occasionally run ceremonies with ayahuasca, and, uh, I do a fair amount of preparation work and integration work with people to help them make sense of the experience, which is often very difficult to comprehend. You know, it's, um, it's a big download. You know, people— there's this kind of myth that ayahuasca is like 10 nights of therapy, 10, 10 years of therapy in one night. I think there's some truth to that. But if you imagine getting 10 years of therapy in one go, you can't process that immediately. You need quite a while to digest that. But I think it's the whole way that it's administered that is is much more profound and deep than giving someone some pills and saying, here, this will make your anxiety go away, whatever, you know.

Yeah, yeah, from my understanding, I, I totally completely agree, you know. And it's interesting because I've looked into plant medicines and it's funny, I mean, many years ago, guys, uh, I do a lot of reviews on Amazon, so guys said, would you review my book? And he sent me a book and I'd never heard of ayahuasca. And he had gone on experience down in South America and gone through the ceremony and everything. And I thought, this really cool. And I'm hearing more and more about it. And then looked into it for a little bit. And I know people here in the US, like, oh, yeah, I took magic mushrooms, I took psilocybin, you know, and the thing is, but it's not the same as the experience that you talked about. Like you said, you do the preparation, you've got a guide there to go with you, you've got someone to help you integrate it afterwards. So it's kind of like both things, right? It's the, it's the thing that opens up your mind, but also someone to guide you through it.

Yeah, and you know, I'm— I've got some, a couple of ceremonies happening middle of next year. I'm already talking to people, I'm already getting people ready. And I, I kind of use the analogy of running a marathon. It's like, this is very challenging, and you and I could do it, but we couldn't do it tomorrow. You know, we can't say, let's get our running shoes and go out and run a marathon, but if, if you take X amount of time and build up a program and prepare yourself for it, in 3, 4, 5 months' time we could probably run a marathon. So when you embark on a big psychedelic experience like that, I would always recommend— you know, the only time I hear of real problems with these things is when, again, people are indiscriminate with it, when they don't prepare. Um, there was, uh I'm laughing, not because of what happened, but, um, a lot of people started sending me this awful story of a guy who stabbed someone to death in a— at a retreat in South America. Um, you know, I, I think if you look into the back— background story of that, those— the ceremony wasn't held very well. I did hear someone saying that these guys had been doing a lot of cocaine beforehand, so that's really contraindicated. Yeah, but at the same time, you know, I don't mean to be defensive, but people send me messages going, see, ayahuasca is dangerous, someone got stabbed to death on it. Yeah, how many times a day in your country, in my country, does someone get stabbed to death because they've drunk too much vodka? It never makes the papers. How many times because of crack or cocaine or meth is someone murdered? Every day, God knows how many people. So this is, you know, the events like that are phenomenally rare, and it's, it's when the whole situation is mismanaged. And you, you know, you alter your consciousness, there's always risks. So it needs to be done with huge respect, a lot of humility.

So how did you get into, um, shamanic plant medicine?

Did—

was it first, as I, I assume, as experiencer first?

Yeah, uh, I hit 50. I'm 57 now. I hit 50 and I recognized there were issues that, even though I'd been in therapy as a client for most— half of my life at least— I couldn't seem to get access to. And my instinct was, this is something so buried in my unconscious that talking therapy isn't going to get there, or maybe it will, but I haven't got another 25 years to you know, hope. And I think, you know, we've got— we've all got defenses, we've all got blocks. Talking therapy, which I practice, is a fantastic tool, but it's not the only one. And it's not very good at dealing with pre-verbal trauma, because you don't have language for pre-verbal experiences. So ayahuasca was something I'd known about for maybe 15 years or more. And always thought, yeah, maybe I'll do that one day. And it just became clear that I needed to do something that would take me into my unconscious rather than talking about what might be in that, to actually have the— well, I was going to say the courage, that probably actually driven more by desperation than courage. But, you know, I, I can't keep living like this. I need to try something different. So with, you know, all the respect I really do have you know, for talking, talking cures, if you want to call it that. They don't do everything. And sometimes you have to jump in and see what's really down there, you know, in, in the abyss, as Joseph Campbell and many other people have rightly put it. It's terrifying, you know. I'm not— I got no bravado with this stuff. I find it very frightening. I'm a control freak. I want to cling on to my sanity and I find letting go and tumbling into that experience where I just don't know what's going to happen, I find it really frightening. And it's been, you know, some of the most healing experiences of my life.

Yeah, you know, um, I have a friend that did ayahuasca, and I was telling her, I'm a control freak. I was telling you already, I have— I've had panic attacks, you know, I've got anxiety and stuff. And I'm like, I'm scared of like, you know, letting go. I don't know what's— I don't know what's gonna happen. It could be really bad. What if I have a bad trip? You know, one of those kind of things. And she tells me, yeah, I had a major, you know, panic attack when I did. I'm like, well, there you go. I'm not doing it. She said it was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I'm like, wait a minute. So it's interesting for us that are like scared to let go, you know, what, what that experience would be like, or what might happen. It can cause a great deal of fear.

Yeah, again, I think there's cultural beliefs that need to be navigated. I mean, I, I had a panic attack 2 days ago. That's still something I have on occasion. I, you know, it always takes me by surprise. Uh, I was with my family, I was with my children, I was in what probably what you could call one of the safest places in the world, and I had a panic attack that came out of nowhere. And there are times when I'm running around holding an ayahuasca ceremony with 30 people or doing retreats with, you know, 25 guys doing extreme anger work. I'm fine. I'm rock solid. So it's a strange thing. But by reframing the cultural beliefs, I mean, you know, there's, there's certainly, I think, it's important to challenge the idea of a bad trip. You know, what is a bad trip? A bad trip is an unpleasant experience. Well, why is that bad? Like the title of your, your podcast, Grief to Growth. You know, we have a terrible, terrible, uh, relationship with grief and sadness and pain and death in our culture. And I think that kind of quadruples the pain if you say this is a bad thing rather than no, grief, grief is a natural process. If you give people permission to grieve, I think they have— it's hard to find language— it's not an easier ride, but acceptance is hugely important. If you say to someone, you shouldn't be grieving, that's not going to help, right?

Right.

So, so if you, if you, if you allow someone to go through it, and same with a bad trip, if you say this is a bad trip, bad experience, it's going to be bad. If you say, I'm into some really difficult, painful, scary stuff here, I'm confronting my control issues, and I'm panicking because my ego doesn't want to die, and I'm being presented with an opportunity to really transcend my ego, but my ego is going, no, whatever you do, don't do that, because I'm— I want to be in charge. Is that a bad trip? So if you educate people and prepare people, and they still might have a really challenging time, but you take away the idea this is a bad thing happening to you, and I think it helps. Like, I worked with a Mexican shaman, and he was always saying to us, because a lot of these medicines make you vomit, he was always saying, don't talk about getting sick, talk about getting well. You're purging, you're releasing the things you don't need. And I still throw up, uh, but it helped because I didn't feel like I was ill, right? You know what I mean? So there's the subtle, or not so subtle, things you can adjust, I think, that help.

Yeah, everything's a matter of how we look at it. Everything's a matter of perspective, how we frame it. So as I love what you just said about the, about the throwing up, because get— none of us wants to, wants to throw up, right? But if we say, well, this is a purging experience, this is, this is the things that need to come out of you, then it becomes a different, different way of looking at the same thing that makes it more palatable, more acceptable.

Um, and appreciate it, appreciate the system, man. You know, it— no one— you're right, no one— none of us wants to throw up, but it's an amazing and effective system. So you eat some bad food that's gonna really poison you, your stomach will reject it as quickly as possible to make you safe. And if you go, okay, my body's on my side, rather than, oh my God, I'm so sick that I ate that oyster and it made me really ill— yeah, but your body got you through it, right?

Yeah, your body knows what you need. So in terms of the, the plant medicines, I'm just curious about your beliefs, because I've heard people refer to ayahuasca, for example, as Mother Ayahuasca. And it's almost— they think it's a spiritual experience, and they're actually experiencing another dimension. I know you as a psychotherapist, you talked about earlier about unlocking the unconscious. So is it either, is it, or is it both? When we were having these trips, are we seeing real realms? Or are we just going deeper within ourselves? Or is that the same thing?

We'll get back to Grief to Growth in just a few seconds. Did you know that Brian D Smith is an author and a life coach? If you're grieving or know someone who is grieving, his book Grief to Growth is a best-selling, easy-to-read book that might help you or someone you know. People work with Brian D Smith as a life coach to break through barriers and live their best lives. You can find out more about Brian and what he offers at www.grieftogrowth.com, www.grief2growth.com, If you'd like to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/grieftogrowth, www.patreon.com/grief2growth to make a financial contribution. And now back to Grief to Growth.

Like I said, if some neuroscientist explained it to me, I'd be like, okay, I'm not opposed to that. All I can say is my experience, which is all I have to go on, uh, is that I encountered another higher intelligence. Now maybe it gave me access to— you know, people talk about higher self in 12-step programs— maybe it gave me access to my higher self. But my personal experience was I met a feminine deity or feminine intelligence. And I'm really— I quite like all this questioning of gender and social conditioning. I accept a lot of that. But I tell you what's interesting is some of these plants have gender, and that's not social conditioning. Maybe it is. Maybe I experienced it as a feminine because of my own social conditioning, so I could accept that. But I've taken a boga, which is from Gabon, uh, in West Africa. Everyone says it's a very male— it's, they, it's, uh, what, how do they describe it? It's like meeting your stern father. Totally my experience. Very male, very direct. Not cold, but, but strict. Uh, ayahuasca, it kind of conformed to the stuff I know about Kali, you know, very wild, very, very powerful feminine energy. And I think, you know, anyone's got any misogynistic issues they want to deal with, go and take ayahuasca because you will come out with huge respect for that feminine, you know, presence and wildness.

Yeah, it's, that's really fascinating. So, um, yeah, and I, I asked the question, I realized I'm asking this from a very, you know, I guess Western maybe, uh, perspective. You know, we talked about culture earlier, and I was, I was interviewing a woman who's done several plant medicines And one thing about her experience that really jumped out to me, she said they looked up and they saw these beings like coming down the mountain. And so, but not only did she see it, but the people with her saw it. And the guide said, yeah, that's what people see when they do this. So I'm like, oh, well, this is great, because this makes it objective, right? Because multiple people saw it in different places and stuff. But and so we, I am saying sometimes I judge that as more valuable, right, than just the, just the subjective experience, because people can just say, well, that's just the, that's just the medicine messing with your head, you know, that's just it controlling your brain chemistry. So it's not really real. But I like your perspective. It's like, what is the result, you know, what do you get out of it? So what can someone expect when they do something like a plant medicine? What, what type of changes can, do people see?

I mean, I must have— I, uh, look, let me, let me just bracket this with saying I'm not an experienced plant medicine person, uh, compared with a lot of people I know. You know, I've taken ayahuasca 7 times, I've taken iboga once, I've taken peyote once, I've taken DMT a few times, I've taken bufo toad, which is 5-MeO-DMT, one time, and, and quite a lot of psilocybin and LSD. So compared with people that I'm involved with, I'm very much an amateur and a lightweight. So I, I said Say it with that kind of caveat. I've, as a psychotherapist, I must have guided, I've got no idea, maybe 200 people through these experiences, uh, maybe more. So there's 200 completely different responses from being operated on by alien cultures somewhere, you know, on the other side of Jupiter, to people falling asleep and getting nothing. Hmm. I had a friend— I went with a friend once. She was a dancer, and we went into separate rooms, and we came out the next day, and I was really excited to hear what her experience— I was like, wow, you know, that was amazing. I had all the anacondas and the vomiting gargoyles and all the kind of time travel. How was it for you? And she went, I just fell asleep. And I was like, oh really? Shit. Oh, I'm really sorry. And she went, no, I woke up this morning and it's literally the first time in years I didn't wake up in physical pain, because as a dancer she was constantly managing the pain of that. She's like, I felt amazing this morning. So the old kind of cliché, if you don't get what you expect, you get what you need, I think is pretty valid. And the people who go to sleep probably just need a good night's sleep and for it to work on their, their physicality. Personally, I, I do get a lot of time travel, um, And by time travel, I mean what feels like— it's not like a dream or a memory. It feels like talking to you now, and I've been taken back in time, which I know is quite common. I've heard other people have it. To the most mundane— I mean, honestly, this is one of my favorite ayahuasca stories because there's no anacondas or dragons or anything. It's the most mundane, boring ayahuasca story I could possibly share with anyone, and definitely one of the most profound, which I was taken back to about probably 1969, 1970. I was sitting in the bath as a child. Nothing bad happened. No one came in and abused me or shouted at me or shamed me or anything like that. I was just sitting in the bath. And I saw the cracks in the tiles on the wall. And I saw the wooden boat and the rubber duck and the carpet and the sink. Nothing happened. But it was amazingly transformative because I could feel the atmosphere in the house. I could— I knew my mother was downstairs doing the washing up, crying, hiding from me and my sister, that she was trying to hide that she was so upset. I knew that my father was in a hotel with his secretary, you know, in bed with his secretary or some other lover. And the atmosphere in the house was so incredibly painful. And in being taken back there, I was told this is what was going on between your parents. They were doing their best to protect you from it, but they couldn't. The, the pain that you felt, that you absorbed from that atmosphere— you know what it's like, you walk in a room and someone's been having an argument, they pretend that everything's okay, you can feel that vibe, right? But this, this atmosphere that you absorbed as a child and thought it was your fault was not your fault. You know, this had nothing to do with you. The fact that you thought, oh, it's because my mum's upset my dad's not here, it's because I'm a bad kid. That wasn't the truth. And that was amazing because, you know, back to our conversation earlier about talking therapy, it's very hard to remember an atmosphere from 45 years ago, 50 years ago. You can remember, oh, I lived in this house, this is what car we had, this is what we did. But to remember the feeling of being in that house is not so accessible. Sometimes I might get it, I listen to a piece of music, you know, the Beatles comes on the radio and I'm, I'm back for a moment. But that kind of prolonged being taken back and shown this is how it was. I never thought that would be the kind of thing, you know. I, I would expect the alien abduction shit with, with ayahuasca, but sometimes it's the really simple stuff. And that was, that was a whole load off, you know. That really changed me.

Yeah, I, I, and I, I compare it from the little bit I know about it. It seems it's kind of like a similar, or similar to what I found about NDEs. People have NDEs, and they're all different. And I always say to people, you don't, you don't necessarily get what you want, but I think you get what you need. And some people have what we call negative NDEs. And they'll say, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. And I've heard of people that have positive, what we call positive NDEs, and then they come back and they have trouble integrating because they don't want to be back here. And it's like, this place sucks. And they just realize how bad it, how bad it does suck.

Yes.

So there is, I think there is something to, you know, getting what you need from, from the experience, or there seem to be some parallels. And I want to talk about the integration that you talked about earlier, because again, I've interviewed PMA Atwater, who's the biggest researcher there is on near-death experiences. And she says the average adult takes like 7 to 14 years to integrate an NDE, they come back, they've got this download, and it's like, what do I do with it? So it sounds— do you think it's like it's a parallel maybe there with some— with the ayahuasca trip?

Yeah, I mean, I, I try to be non-judgmental, but when I see people going to ayahuasca ceremonies every weekend, I kind of, I question the value of that. Because for me, the amount of time that I'm older— when I was younger, I would be running around doing every therapy workshop I could, you know, trying get knowledge and, and healing and all these things. Yeah. So I think that there's, there's advantage to getting older in that sense, in that I've slowed down and I really appreciate, like, just taking the time to digest a meal before you eat another one, you know. That's what it feels like to me. And I have not drunk ayahuasca for 5 and a half years now. I'm kind of feeling like I might be ready next year. But I've taken that time to really process, you know, the Dalai Lama was asked this, you know, are these new psychedelics, do they offer instant enlightenment? Anyone? Yeah, they do. But unless you've done 15, 20 years of preparation, meditation, therapy, whatever you do, you won't be able to process that download. So there's no bypassing, there's no shortcut, really, you have to have done the work. And I certainly felt much more equipped as a 50-year-old to manage the experience than when I used to mess around with LSD or mushrooms when I was a teenager, where I just didn't know what the hell was going on. So I think that to have the respect to really digest and process— to me, again, I'm veering into judgmental territory, but if, if you keep going back because you want that high, you want that intensity. That's a little bit like being given a Christmas present, saying thanks and putting it to one side and asking for another one before you've unwrapped the first present. You know, take your time, unwrap it slowly, explore it before you go asking for another present. Otherwise, I'm not sure, I think you'll lose as much as you get. And, you know, I still have revelations from experiences I did 5, 6, 7 years ago.

Yeah, that sounds wise to me. Again, never having done it, it seems like something— and I think even the— the— and I'm most familiar with ayahuasca, so I think about— but even them, they weren't— they're not doing it every day, you know, they're not doing it every weekend, and it's— and it's certainly not a recreational thing. And, you know, in America we've got this, this problem with drugs where, you know, we, we use them recreationally. So we look at something like plant medicine, and it's— I, I think I'm, I'm young for the '60s and '70s, but I remember, you know, hearing about LSD and stuff, and people were, I think, reaching these levels where they could have been enlightened, but they were just doing it for fun, you know. They were just, they were just having trips. And we— I don't think we've learned to respect the medicine yet. Hopefully we're going to get there.

Yeah, I mean, you know, when I say I, I'm not sure that it's a good idea to do it all the time, if you're from Peru, if you're from the Amazon, if you've— it's your culture and you've been raised in drink as much of that stuff as you want, you know, because you know, you know how to navigate that and you know how to integrate that into your life. But I totally agree with you, and because as Westerners, we're newbies with this, we don't really know what we're getting into. This is, this has recently emerged into a, you know, it's not mainstream still, but it's, it used to be, you know, when I first heard about it, you had to take a plane all the way to, to Brazil or Peru, then you had to get another plane to somewhere in the jungle, then you had to take a boat for, you know, up the, up the river, and then I had to walk for 2 days, whereas now, you know, I could get on a train and go and do it this evening, you know, very, very easily from London. Um, it doesn't mean we know how to navigate those experiences. They aren't ours, they've been gifted to us. You know, some people talk about cultural appropriation. I'm not sure that it's actually cultural appropriation. I think the indigenous people are going, you people are messing this world up really badly and we're gonna bring this shit out to you. So it's not a coincidence that ayahuasca and these different things are emerging as the world is kind of burning up, you know, around our— and we've done it. They haven't done it. We've done it and we're doing it to them. So I think it's a last-ditch gift from, from them to us.

Yeah, I don't know how you feel about this, but I'm going to put it out there because for me, I think that there's a reality that we as, as especially Westerners have forgotten. That we're all connected, that we're all one, that we're spiritual beings. And I view the plant medicines as kind of opening people's minds to that and nature, like, you know, and I love because this term plant medicine, I just heard pretty recently, and I love that term. It's a, it's a, it's a medicine. It's not, it's not something to be recreational. It's something to help us heal. But it's helping us heal our lack of connection with each other and with the land.

Yeah, it's an important distinction, I think, because I think it was Michael Pollan, the author Michael Pollan, I was listening to recently, and he was saying, you know, back to ritual and ceremony, when you use something with that kind of respect, with a degree of ritual or ceremony, you rarely get problems. It's when you use plants or narcotics or anything recreationally. Yeah, which I'm not against. I think it's— I had great times. I think people, people can have great times, but once it becomes avoidance, once it becomes shutting yourself down, once it becomes self-medication, then you get into problem areas. And so we need a lot more education and a lot more support for people for it not to be problematic. But plant medicines are potentially a very, very powerful healer. It's also really dangerous. So know what you're doing. Don't, don't just rock up because you heard something's going on and you want to go and see if it's, you know, if it's going to be fun, because it probably won't be.

Right, right. Well, it's kind of like the exact opposite of recreational drug use. Like, that's, that's like you— I love— it's avoidance, it's, it's shutting down. And sometimes we need that, right? Sometimes we need to numb out and shut down. So I'm saying that I don't— I don't just— I disagree with that. But that's the opposite of what this is— this plant medicine is about. It's about opening up, right? It's about going inside and, and having revelations and, and confronting all that stuff that we might not be able to confront on a conscious level.

Yeah, I always say I'm, I'm pro-drugs, I'm anti-drug abuse. So, you know, you can—

you—

I'm not so sure about crack or meth. I've never You know, I've never seen any great benefits to that. You can use a lot of things to heal yourself, but it's about your attitude and it's about having respect for yourself and, and what you're doing. You know, the whole set and setting thing, I think it's very valid that Timothy Leary and people like that used to talk about. You know, be careful.

Yeah, I do want to talk to you. I want to shift a little bit because I don't get to talk to many men on the podcast. And in my world and the work doing spiritual work and grief work and stuff like that, it's mostly women. I find that men tend not to open up. My clients, very, very few men, mostly it's women. So you being a male and leading the largest male group in, in the UK, what's your experience been with the differences between men and women? And I know we're getting into stereotypes and stuff here, but we've talked about about some gender things before. So what's, what's your experience with that, and why do you think it is?

I remember a tantra teacher years ago saying tantra is teaching men what women have always known. And I like that. Um, you know, there's— you don't need to— I'm not very interested in gender, that's not my thing. But I, I'm interested in culture, and like you say, I'm interested in those stereotypes. I'm interested in how we're all stereotyped. I'm interested in the messages that we're, we're given as children, uh, that form us and define us. And I would say that, you know, again, back to rule-breaking, my men's groups feel quite rule-breaking to me because there are unspoken rules about what you can and cannot show as a man in our society. And in my groups, those rules don't apply. So you can cry, you can ask for support, you can show your fragility and your vulnerability without being shamed. And that's not so easy in mainstream. And I do it because I've learned how to do it. But I understand it's very risky, you know, for a lot of guys to do that. So they feel very limited in how they can connect. And that then has knock-on effects in their relationships. So I have plenty of women clients, but my, my groups are men, because I think there's more urgency with needing to address some of these things. You know, women have all their shit that they have to deal with, but I think they're better on the whole at getting, you know, exploring that, asking for help. Men, because of the, the rules we live with, are told to man up and manage it on your own and, you know, suck it up, push those feelings down. And that's dangerous, right? That's— if, if there's such a— I don't believe in that masculinity is toxic, but I do believe in toxic masculinity as much as if you squash those feelings down, men will become dangerous and they will act out in toxic ways. And this, it's really fucking simple. Just give them permission to talk and share their feelings. You know, you could say that what I'm doing is offering a feminine space for men to inhabit because Men will— again, this might be, I don't know, I think it's probably social conditioning, but men will tend to isolate, women will tend to commune. So I'm encouraging men to commune in order to change their behavior. There's no program, there's no structure, it's just we get together. I've got 4 groups that meet every 2 weeks for an evening, every other week. We sit down and we talk and we share and we talk about the things that are touching us and the things we're struggling with, which is mostly relationships. That's what most, most guys are struggling with. How do I be in a relationship that's healthy and fulfilling for all of us?

Yeah. So why do you think it is that men— because you're running this, this large group— why do you think men are attracted to, to your group or to you?

They haven't got a lot of competition. You know, it's not much of this in the UK. Very, very little men's. Yeah, it's growing. Um, people hear about me. I, I mean, I've got a film about my work that's out that people can check out. I can give you the link to that later if you want. Yeah. Um, so that, that alerts people to what we do. Um, but I don't think that's the source of it. I think word of mouth, you know. Uh, I appeal to a certain kind of person, as another therapist will appeal to a different kind of person. You know, I've— I come from music and film business background, and I work with a lot of people in the arts. And in that sense, I guess I stand out compared with, you know, more conventional therapists. But yeah, you know, it's just not much of it.

Yeah, you know, and I think for, for my experience, you know, the differences between men and women are, um, they're cultural. I don't, I don't— I mean, there's obviously their biological differences too, and we could talk about the effect of testosterone testosterone versus estrogen. But also, men are not given permission to show their feelings or even to have feelings. And I've, you know, I find talking a lot of times to men, you ask them how they feel and they're like, hot, cold, you know, it's like, yeah, I understand what you're talking about. You got— first you have to kind of frame the question for them. So I think it's really needed. And in our culture, I don't know how different it is there, I think it's similar to how it is in the US, to just give men permission to, to open up. And even calling it that, calling that feminine, is going to trigger a lot of men because they're like, feminine's bad, you know, I can't, I can't be feminine, I can't have a feminine side.

Yeah, I mean, I don't want to go back to plant medicine, but I'm going to just for a moment. I smoked, um, Bufo toad venom, and that took me— most people that I talked to, they haven't— it's kind of like a near-death experience, very, very similar by the sound of it. I've not had a near-death experience, but Sounds pretty close. And most of the people I've spoken to go to a kind of state of oneness with the universe and a very blissed-out experience. I didn't. I went to an incredibly painful, very, very, very dark place where I experienced my emotional pain at its most acute. And a voice said to me, you are very fragile, you are very delicate, you are very sensitive. These are not feminine traits. Even though, even though that's what culturally we will say, if you're sensitive, you're very feminine, if you're delicate, it's very feminine. I think that's actually quite a misogynistic way of labeling those things. They said to me, these are not feminine, these are the qualities that the men have denied for millennia, and these need to be reclaimed as masculine qualities also. So I think there's something to that. And that was really good because I was raised with a very kind of John Wayne macho image of what a man was that I instinctively knew I wasn't and didn't want to be. And therefore I felt like I didn't really qualify as a man. So I just accepted, well, I'm not a real man, but, uh, and felt ashamed of my fragility. I felt ashamed that I can have panic attacks, uh, of my, the level of sensitivity that actually is very useful in my job. Um, so I think, you know, reframing of that is really, really important. And to— we have to learn to celebrate these things and honor these qualities in us, otherwise we will keep pretending to be Rambo or John Wayne, you know, even if it's on the outside.

Yeah, and that's, that's toxic, not only from a personal view but also culturally. I mean, we're destroying the planet because of, because of that that view that we can control everything and we need to conquer everything. Um, so I— we're running out of time, but what— there's a few questions that you had I just had to ask you because you— I asked you for some questions earlier. I just want to hear your answers to them. So, um, you talk about the misogyny of climate change. What is— what does that mean?

Well, if you go with the idea that, you know, we— or if you accept that Mother Nature, you know, this planet we inhabit, we have gendered by calling her Mother Nature. The fact that we're raping the shit out of her, abusing her, you know, beating her, surely that comes from a misogynist— our cultural misogynism, misogyny. I mean, you know, that, that's a no-brainer to me, that, that attitude that we can just take what we want and not give back and not consider the impact. I'm, I'm making an argument that that comes from a misogynistic attitude within us. I'm fine if people would disagree with that, but it was just an interesting, you know, the ADD mindset. I can go off on kind of little, you know, kind of jazz improvs in my brain. And sure, I thought that that works for me, that makes sense. I think it's a very masculine thing, or male thing. Maybe masculine is, is tripping into the, you know, man-shaming thing, but it's that destructiveness, that violence we're doing, uh, I think is coming from that place within us.

Yeah, I would not argue with that at all. Um, so you also mentioned the, the agricultural revolution and, and what a mistake you think that was. So what's your— what are your thoughts on that?

I was listening to— do you know, um, Gabo Mate, his work? I was listening to him yesterday and he was saying put it very, very beautifully. He said the minute that we started to farm and moved away from a kind of egalitarian hunter-gatherer existence, which we have, you know, the agricultural revolution happened about 8,000 years ago, and we've been around in some kind of human form for about 2 million years. So it's a very small amount of our existence. He said that we essentially became like zoo animals, we became caged, And the guy who wrote Sapiens, I can never pronounce his name, um, he said we didn't, um, we, we didn't domesticate animals, they domesticated us. Suddenly we had to be there to tend to it. We thought, oh, this would be easier if we put some cows in a pen, we can get free milk every day rather than have to chase them around the desert to try and catch them. But then you've got to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to milk them, and you've got to feed them, and you've got to look after them, and you've got to make sure that the fence is intact so they don't escape. And you've got to make sure that your neighbors don't come and steal your cows. So that, that changed the world. And then you got— you had 4 cows, then you had 8 cows, then you had 12, then you had a whole load of cows, then you had a lot of wealth. So suddenly people had more than other people, you know. So then you needed police forces to catch the people who stole from the people who didn't have so much. And then you had cities to, you know, spend all our wealth. And I think it's really It's not reversible unless, unless that's what climate change is for. Yeah, who knows.

Reset.

But we, we have lost an awful lot, you know, and we've caused massive problems. You know, hunter-gatherers have massive problems. They didn't live very long and it was an incredibly hard life. I'm not romanticizing it, but I think with every major change you have to look at What is the impact on us? And have we really used this change, you know, in the best way for us? You know, there was a million people on this planet 8,000 years ago. There's now 7.5 billion, right? That's the fuck-up of the agricultural revolution. We have flourished because of this. So very few people would see that as a negative. We have flourished, we have blossomed as a species. But it's not sustainable. A million human beings on this planet, yeah, we're all going to get on fine with all the other species. 7.5 billion?

Yeah, yeah. I, I would say sometimes we're almost like a cancer on this planet. We're growing out of control. And, you know, and I was reading about capitalism, and, you know, the whole, the whole model is built on growth. And they're like, we have to keep growing, we have to keep growing. And even like the United States, there upset because our birth rates are down and, and we need more. I'm like, why do we need more people? I don't understand why we think we need more people on the planet.

Yeah, capitalism is a direct consequence of the Agricultural Revolution, you know, and we are consuming this planet. Bill Hicks, the comedian Bill Hicks, said we're a virus with shoes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, in a very real way. So I, I have to ask you, I love the, the title of your upcoming book, Empathy for the devil. So what's that about?

I, you know, to put it simply, it's, it's self-compassion, because we all have dark sides. So if you demonize your dark side, chances are you're not going to want to look at it. And until you look at, you know, we're back to talking about toxic masculinity, unless you're willing to look at your own toxic, toxic behavior, you're not going to change. But if you're committed to the idea you're a nice guy, which most of us want to be a nice guy, then how are you gonna look at your darkness? And I think to be a whole human being— you know, it's a fantastic quote, it's actually written on my wall in chalk over at the end of this room— that Carl Jung quote, he said, 'Do you want to be good or whole?' So I think it's, you know, the, the, you know, I'm obviously riffing on the Rolling Stones song, but for me it's, um, having that empathic view of your own darkness and developing curiosity and befriending your demons. So, you know, I like to be the boss. And so if I have a demon that, let's say, uh, the demon of obsessive compulsiveness that can take me into addictive behaviors that are very self-destructive, I can also harness that demon and I can write a book with it. Because you can't write a book unless you've got an obsessive drive. You can't, you know, you must know this with your podcast. There will be days when you don't really don't want to do it, but you do it because it's— you have that drive to create and produce, right? I, I'm just using that motif of a demon. It doesn't really matter what you call it. You could call it a subpersonality if you like. You can call it a side of yourself. I'm just using that image because I, I find it quite, you know, a vivid image to work with. And I think of my— I think we're all Again, I think it was Michael Pollan's new book, uh, he, he's— it's called Symphony of Selves, and he explores— he dismisses, which I, I also do, the idea of the true self, and says we're all a cast of characters. And within those characters, they're going to be ones that are going to be more attractive and appealing to us, and they're going to be ones that you go, I really don't want to look at that guy, you know. Um, but you need to know yourself in order to be safe, in order to be whole. So if you do have a murderer in you, which most of us have the capacity to kill, I think it's better if you know that part of yourself and are the master of that part of yourself, rather than going, no, I want to be a nice guy, and then you flip out in some kind of road rage thing because that part of you has been denied.

So this is what, uh, just what people are me when they talk about doing shadow work is facing these internal parts of ourselves that rather say don't exist.

Yeah, but you know, there's another book called Sex at Dawn where— by a couple of anthropologists, and they make a brilliant point in the first paragraph. I think they say we are not descended from apes. I mean, what an incredibly arrogant thing to say. We're not descended from apes, we are apes. We are one of the 7 ape species, and we're very kind of pleased with ourselves that we're so much better than all the other, you know, animals on this planet. But if we stop being so fucking smug and accepted, you know, we got some very dark sides, and most of that is because it's denied. If we could just accept it a little bit, you know, and go, yeah, on a bad day, I can be positively dangerous, or certainly mean or cruel or nasty or selfish. That doesn't make me the worst person that ever lived. Just means I need to look at that. And by acceptance, I don't mean go, oh, it's okay to be selfish. I mean, accept yourself enough to have the willingness and the courage to look at your selfishness and what might that might, you know, be driven by what life experiences have created, that how you might become a little bit more generous in yourself.

Yeah. Well, it's kind of brings us right back around to the beginning with, you know, I think this is one of the things we can do in psychotherapy, we can figure out who we are, why we are the way we are, which I always talk about, people who listen to the podcast are going to get sick of hearing this. But I took a course many, many years ago called Who You Are Is Where You Were When. And the guy talks about the fact that we're all a product of our environment in a sense. And this was 35 years ago I took this. And when I look at people now, I'm like, okay, who was that guy? What happened to him? I don't see someone as a 50-year-old man or 60-year-old man. What happened when they were 6 years old? You know, what happened to them when they were 20 years old? Because we're all composites of all those things that happened to us. We have to also look at ourselves too and say, Yeah, I'm like this, and I don't like this about myself. But maybe it's because I was taught this as a child. Or maybe it's reaction to something that happened to me, and then I can accept that it's there. But it doesn't mean I have to give into it, right? I don't have to just go with it. Well, I'm just an angry guy. So I'm gonna go run around and yell at people.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is very pertinent, especially with, you know, the kind of woke movement that's happening at the moment, which, uh, you know, there's good sides and bad sides to everything. I think if you get woke to the point where people are frightened to talk about their darkness in case they get canceled, it's almost collapsed in on itself. So in most of my writing, certainly this new book and, and the Book of Sin, which was the one before, I do a fair amount of exploring my own misogyny, my own racism, my own sexism, you know, the hatred that I've absorbed. And, you know, part of this was I was woken up to by a brilliant friend of mine who's, um, was raised in the bosom of feminism, and she said to me, well, of course women are really misogynistic. I was like, whoa, whoa, back up a minute, what the hell are you talking about? I mean, if I said that, you know, I'd be—

yeah, you'd be canceled.

Yeah. And she was like, well, the minute a woman says to a man, man up, uh, you're so sensitive, anything like that, that's a misogynistic view, a misogynistic attack on his feminine, what we see as feminine, right? So, and I was like, oh, okay, so Okay, that makes sense because I remember when I started work as a psychotherapist being shocked at how homophobic the gay guys I worked with were. And then I was like, but of course they've grown up in a homophobic world. It's just their homophobia tends to be turned in on themselves rather than outwards, but they're still homophobic. Why wouldn't a woman who's been raised in a misogynistic world have internalized that? And I think to have the courage, like I, in, in the last book, I was I was sitting on this couch writing one day. I was really, really getting into— I was on quite a rant about Nazis and what, what had happened in Nazi Germany. And then I got in my car and I drove down the road to go and get some lunch through a very, very Jewish area. Uh, I'm not sure which, uh, if they're Hasidic Jews. They wear quite flamboyant hats and robes. And I remember driving through going, you look fucking weird. And it's like 'Oh my God, 10 minutes ago I was writing about the Nazis and I just found my Nazi who's alive and well in me,' you know. So is it—

I'm sorry, your sound just cut off and just came back on. I'm sorry, go ahead.

Um, yeah, we have to somehow find, you know, ways that we can talk about these things. Otherwise, they get buried, and then they get acted out.

Yeah, I'm so glad you said that, you know, because it's interesting, because being a Black person in America, you know, we deal with racism all the time. And there are times when I find myself saying and doing, you know, racist things, and I hate that about myself. But I have to face it, you know, I have to admit that that is, that's in me, you know, and that's the only way I can overcome it. And that's the difference between, you know, someone that just goes with it and someone that says, I don't like this about myself, I'm, I'm gonna, uh, find a way to work on this.

Yeah, no, it's, it's, you know, I, I'm very good at pointing out the problem and I have no idea how we bring about these changes, but I guess the first thing is to highlight the issues and try and work together to come up with, you know, that's what my groups are about. And these are the, um kind of discussions I'm trying to have. Yeah, someone's going in and out. My audio—

can you hear me? You still there?

Yeah, it's good. Yeah.

All right, cool. All right, well, Jerry, we're coming to the end of our time anyway, but I, I want to tell you, uh, I have really, really enjoyed our conversation. It's been great meeting with—

meeting you.

You're, you're a fascinating man. So tell people where they can find out more about you, about your book, books, about your work, uh, where can people contact you?

Yeah, I mean, it's, uh, yeah, just Jerry Hyde, my, my name, which is Jerry with a J, Hyde as in Dr. Jekyll, H-Y-D-E. Um, it's quite a good name for a shrink, really.

Absolutely.

Who works, who works with shadow stuff. jerryhyde.co.uk, uh, and links to films and books and things are all on that, that site.

Okay, and I will, I will link to that in the show notes. And you were going to send me a link to one of your films, I believe, so I'll put that in the notes also.

Yeah, lovely. Thank you, Brian. I really enjoyed that. It was great.

Thanks for being here. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Thanks, man. See you again. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Grief to Growth. Brian hopes that you find this episode helpful, and will come back for future episodes. Brian's bestselling book, Grief to Growth: Planted, Not Buried, is a great resource for anyone who is coping with grief or knows someone who is. If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support it. There are 3 things you can do to help. The first is to share the podcast with someone that you think it will help. The second is to go to iTunes, rate and review the episode. The third way you can support the podcast is by becoming a patron. Head over to www.patreon.com/grief2growth. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/grief2growth. Grief, the number 2, growth, and sign up to make a small monthly donation. Patrons get access to exclusive bonus content and knowledge that you are helping to spread the message of Grief 2 Growth. For more about Brian and Grief 2 Growth, visit www.grief2growth.com.

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