Bonus interview - Jake Wiskerchen from Walk the talk America

Like, well, you know, I told you can eat in front of everybody, it's all good. Um, so this is the intro, ready? Just like that, bam. Um, so, uh, here's the deal. My name is Brooke Cheney. I am the owner instructor here at A Great Start Shooting School, which is all the stuff you see behind me. Uh, Jake has agreed to come on on a Wednesday instead of Saturday for Suicide Prevention Saturday because life does not always go according to plan. Um, and we are here because every time you hear the term gun violence, 2 out of every 3 of those deaths are suicide. So as a gun owner, my job is to help you all understand these things and have conversations around that. Now, we are early, and every— everybody who watches me on a regular basis knows I'm never early, but because we're on an off time anyway, because it is not 9 o'clock on a Saturday night, I have no idea if anyone's going to show up today anyway. So even though this is live, it may just be you and I talking the whole time.

That's okay. I'm fine with that. I do a lot more for a lot less throughout the course of most of my days. So if this is productive at all and anyone gets touched, I will believe that we've made a dent. So.

All right. So it says we got 3 people watching already. So who knows? They're going to be surprised, like I said, that I'm early. So let me— now that I've introduced myself, Uh, let me introduce Jake, and this could take half the show, quite honestly. Um, Jake studies penguins down in Antarctica on a regular basis as social, uh, subjects.

I try to go at least 3 times a year.

Okay, and so he's the only person I know from Antarctica who's been there.

We almost got out with a straight face.

And this is how we start rumors on the internet. You just watch, next year at SHOT Show, if you make it, people will be asking, you're the penguin guy, you're the penguin guy. Um, so, but no, so Jake is pretty amazing in my eyes. He is one of those dudes who does 5 million things. I'm not even going to talk about all his accreditations as far as what kind of doctorates and all of that, but you don't have any.

Okay, now they're all master's degrees.

No, okay, my bad.

No doctorates.

All right, so, um, we had his partner in crime on Walk the Talk— from Walk the Talk America on this previous Saturday, Suicide Prevention Saturday. And, um, so I met him through Walk the Talk America. However, he also runs a practice called Zephyr Wellness. And I am sorry, but I have to read this off of your page. If you go to Zephyr Wellness— and you know what, I'm even going to allow people to go check you out via the chat here once I get into the right thing that I can actually do stuff. Oh look, I got people talking to me and I was ignoring them. All right, so Zephyr Wellness. I, I went to, uh, his site and I love this so much. We are a philanthropic mental health practice that aims to preserve the healthy, heal the broken and wounded, challenge the daring and bold, guide the lost and vulnerable, inspire the hopeless and sad, and instill faith in the sacred and empty. We offer mental health care to those from all walks of life. I think I can just do a mic drop at that point as far as introducing you.

Thanks.

Because that's totally awesome.

I'm proud because I wrote that myself 7 years ago when we first opened. I thought, what's a cool mission statement? And I just scrawled that out and seemed to capture everything that we wanted to do. And we've grown from there. The really important thing now is the innovative and philanthropic part. Of, uh, of what we do. So, uh, historically, if you're familiar at all with, you know, the therapy community, we typically hide in the shadows, and I don't really appreciate that. So what I wanted to do was, was make Zephyr into an active, vibrant, well-integrated small business in the community, you know, attending events and fundraisers and sponsoring Little League and that kind of thing. It's, you know, it took a few years for us to get profitable to the point where we could do that, but now we're doing it. But before that, the, um, the, the innovative slash philanthropic part of it was we wanted to be in on social media and we wanted to do things like podcasts and radio shows and that kind of thing. It's just something that the counseling community has traditionally never done. And a lot of that, I think, is simply because our professors in, in grad school tell us specifically not to. They tell us things that are just totally, uh, off-the-wall untrue. Like, if you do a podcast, then that can be considered treating without consent and you can get sued for it. And it's like, no, it isn't. That's not true at all. So as a result, it scares us into hiding, and as a result, we end up perpetuating a lot of the stigma. So what we try to do is, you know, get out there and do fun, cool things and do things that have never been done before in the counseling community. And one of those things is hosting graduate students. So for example, at our agency, if you come in and you've got some insurance that we don't accept, or you don't have insurance, we don't have to turn you away. We can, we can let you see one of the graduate students who's, you know, covering their hours in order to graduate and then get licensed. And that serves a lot of people. First of all, it's a benefit to the community. We don't have to turn anybody away. It lets me play professor without actually having to be one. And it gets the students, uh, an experience that maybe they couldn't get elsewhere. So, you know, that's what probably the proudest thing that I've done in my career. And that's part of the the philanthropy, because if you're hosting graduate students who are not really generating revenue, you could otherwise fill that space with somebody else who is. And we just chose not to do that. We decided that it was more valuable for us to make sure that we offer that service and then also create a little farm pipeline of talent that we can then promote through and hire when they graduate and get licensed. And that's worked out really, really well for us. So, yeah, that's, that's kind of the down and dirty. I do wear a lot of hats. It sometimes sounds a little cartoonish when I start talking about all the things that we do.

Oh, wait, hold on. Are we going to guns and mental health?

Uh, sure. Yeah, you want to go that direction?

Well, I'm just— I'm going down my, my list of all the different things that I can share about you. So that was just the, the next one that I'm gonna throw out to everybody. Um, for Walk the Talk America health, uh, guns and mental health. Because for those of you who didn't see Saturday and haven't heard of Walk the Talk America before, uh, the whole idea is to take gun owners and bridge that gap between owning a gun and being able to be comfortable getting mental health. And I'm guessing that might be one of the things you talk about on Guns and Mental Health.

Yep. So I actually host two podcasts. One is called Noggin Notes. I've been doing that for about 5 years, and that's, that's actually international. There's, there's two more Noggin Notes out there now. One's Noggin Notes Africa and the other is Noggin Notes Cambodia. That's because the founder is from South Africa and he lives in Cambodia. But that one is strictly mental health. Guns and Mental Health is a Walk to Talk America podcast. And I think that one's actually— it's definitely more, um, raw. It's more powerful because the guests are— they are super vulnerable. They always have some crazy story to tell. And the idea behind it is that through interviewing these people, we're trying to normalize the conversation. Now, I want to counterbalance this because I know that there's been a stigma about getting mental health care for, for for many, many years across all different demographics, not just gun owners. And I think in the last 2 years, because of lockdowns and disease and all sorts of things, what's happened is more people are struggling. And through social media, especially TikTok, we've gotten the pendulum swung so far away from we want to destigmatize to it's now cool to be sick that I think it's caused a problem. And I want to make sure that I'm delineating We are not interested in telling everybody that they're all mentally ill and they all need help. In fact, quite the opposite. I sound a little bit like a heretic when I say this in my professional community, but I go, I don't want you coming into my office. I want you solving this stuff on your own. Now, there are times that you need professional care, just like you might need professional care for your car that you can't do yourself. That's fine. Go to the mechanic, right? I'm like the mechanic of the mind. So what that's All that's to say is like, I want to equip people so that they can do this on their own as best they can and not come into my office. But you have to acknowledge that you need help. And sometimes people are struggling. They don't even need to know that they need help because they've grown up in a culture that doesn't promote that kind of discussion. So that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to say, hey, let's, let's make it normal to talk about your mental struggles without some of the overarching um, barrier-creating rhetoric that we've heard over the years, like, you know, don't acknowledge that you're depressed or they're going to come take away your guns. Like, no, that's not true. Um, I, I could talk forever about that, but that's essentially what we're trying to do with these conversations, right?

And, um, Guns and Barbecue has a study that, you know, if you don't already have a YouTube channel, he thinks that Guns and Mental Health would be a great channel name. So yeah, I don't know, do you guys already have— I didn't pull that one up, so I don't know if you have a YouTube channel.

So, so the The podcast has that name and, and, uh, we have the Walk the Talk America YouTube channel, but what we probably should do is create a Guns and Mental Health YouTube channel. That's a brilliant idea. Uh, I'm gonna bring that to our marketing guy. Yeah, that's, that's a great, great idea. You're right. So instead of WTTH, it'd be Guns and Mental Health. You're right. And then the packing organization, two different brands. Yeah, that's honestly, it's brilliant.

There you go. See, voilà, we're barely, we're not even officially started at noon. We got a minute and look what you've already got, something to take away. So we're doing good.

It's lunchtime. Oh, I forget you're on the East Coast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it's earlier for you. Um, oh my gosh, there's so many things. We were, uh, before we went live, we actually talked for a couple minutes and we're talking about how, how can we save the world? And Jake told me we save the world every single day. So there's so many things we could talk about, and I, I do want to just throw in here On top of all the stuff that we just talked about, you do a suicide prevention, all of that. You also are the one of the founders of Reno Dads.

I didn't found it. I do. I am very close to the founders. We all were in the same fraternity in college, which is Sigma Phi Epsilon for those of you. Okay. But yeah, it's been a while since I've written a Reno Dads article. I really need to do something again. But Reno Dads is cool because it's a bunch of dads trying to create resources for other dads. Moms Group has been around forever.

Right?

But dads, um, dads I think get a little bit left out. And what we're trying to do is, again, create a commonality, a community. And, and resources can be, you know, what's, what's the latest thing that's going on in the community you can take your kids to, all the way up to— and we have written some stuff about firearms, you know, take your kids shooting, teach them proper gun handling and, you know, responsible gun ownership, uh, to, uh, you know, how do we get together as dads and validate what's going on in our worlds, especially single dads. Single dads really tend to have a rough time because they tend to get overlooked a little bit by the culture. And in fact, related to that, I just— I pinged Psychology Today, is a big publication in our world. They have a website where individuals like me can advertise their practice, and you check— you can check these boxes of your specialties. Well, I just emailed them. I was like, hey, how about firearms owners? Because they've got— they've got all the the acronym specialties, you know, the letters, you know, the LGBTQIA+ and all that stuff. But there's no— there's no firearms owners, there's no law enforcement, there's no first responder, there's no medical professionals. And I was like, hey, you should include these. But what was curious to me is I was scrolling through looking for holes. They have single moms, they don't have single dads. I was like, what a crock. So, um, I asked them to include that too, and we'll see what they say.

Yeah, good luck. I hope it works. I mean, and that's just— it is like a lot of times it's just they don't even think about it. It's like not even— it's like, well, single moms, well, you know, oh, poor single moms and single dads. It's like our court system is generally set up so that it becomes a single mom thing. Um, my dad's gone, went through two divorces, and both moms got the kids. And so I think part of it is just, well, of course the children go with the mothers because that's what mothers are supposed to do. And so they don't even think about the single dads. But I, I do love the fact that if you guys all check out the Reno Dads, they have the Griswold Award. So if you ever want to get into like— I mean, it does— it get crazy, the whole light thing.

I, I spent 2 and a half days putting up my Christmas lights this year. Um, just take that for what it's worth. Were you an honorable mention? Yeah, no, I didn't, I didn't get an award, but But it does go into like a database where people from the community can just kind of search where people have listed their houses to, or streets with lots of lights. And it's always a point of dad pride to watch cars driving by your house in the middle of December. We live on a little lake way off the beaten path, little loop, and we did get no traffic. And so in December when the lights are on, there's like cars driving by. I'm like, yeah, that's for me. Nice.

Nice. Because we all need that pat on the back from time to time.

That's right. That's right.

All right. So Guns and Barbecue absolutely agrees with you. As a single dad raising 3 kids on his own, he gets the shaft all the time. And I'm guessing that was supposed to be all the time, not all the tune, but he's, you know, he's blind, so we can't give him too much crap about his typos. So, all right, so, uh, mental health. Now here's the thing, I'm a gun owner, I'm a firearms instructor. I was having a conversation yesterday with someone and, um, on my crutch, because I'm, I'm recovering from knee surgery right now.

Oh, that's fun.

It says— you can't really read it, but— I am the gun lobby. And he— and the person says to me, oh, you must be a Second Amendment supporter. And I'm like, yes, but I'm more an anti-violence person than anything else. I'm like, oh, you mean self-defense? I'm like, no. I don't carry a gun. It's not my thing. I, I really mean self-defense. I, I mean really anti-violence, and mental health is super important. And he's like, well, won't background checks make a difference? And I'm like, not really. There's plenty of people that have guns, um, that passed all the background checks and have still committed horrendous crimes. And if you look at it, if you believe some of the studies, like 99% of gun owners are good law-abiding citizens regardless of laws in which countries, uh, states they live in. And he's like, really? And I'm like— and I said, the 2 out of every 3 gun deaths you hear about when you're talking about gun violence are suicides. So mental health is, is really what we should be focusing on. And he still wanted to go back to the, well, shouldn't they get background checks? I'm like, well, to me it's the same as when someone says, why don't we just ban those black rifles? And it's just like, well, okay, but if you want to actually make an impact, we should work on something else. And they're like, what do you mean? It's like, because more people are killed with hands, feet, and hammers every year than those black rifles. So if we're going to do something, how about, you know, do something that makes an impact? And he was just like, oh, I didn't know. And so it's just like, first, that's like my conversation from yesterday. And then I had a 2A conversation and I'm just like, they're like, oh, we have to stand up for our Second Amendment rights. I'm like, Yes, but until we start focusing on the mental health stuff, it's really hard to, to, to get people to realize that. But we want to do something about guns. And I'm like, really? Don't you want to do something about violence? So Jake, I tell you this long story because I want you to help me figure out how we have that conversation and try to help not change people's minds, but at least possibly influence them to understand that working on mental health really is addressing gun violence and really is addressing the problems we have. It's like, how do we, how do we massage that message so it's easy to digest?

It's, it's hard because people have inverted the, the structure by which we attack these things. So let me, there's a lot packed in there. I'm gonna try to remember as much as I can to cover it. The first thing that I wanna address is something that Laura Smith from Liberal Gun Owners would call, or Liberal Gun Club, sorry. Sorry, Randy is Liberal Gun Owners. Um, would say root cause mitigation. And so in my field, I, I view that as problem treatment rather than symptom treatment. So you can have a problem and the problem is not something that's, uh, recognizable sometimes, or, and it's usually not even diagnosable. So it might sound like, you know, lack of self-esteem or self-efficacy, or don't know where you're going in your life, or, you know, existential crisis. Those aren't, those aren't labels that we can put on somebody with a diagnostic code and send insurance billing. The symptoms, however, are— the symptoms can be anxiety, depression, addiction, you know, personality disorders, whatever. I'm not interested in treating symptoms because when historically I've done that and colleagues have done that, you can get rid of one symptom and another symptom pops up. We take care of your drinking, now you're anxious. Take care of anxiety, now you're depressed. Take care of depression, now you got an eating disorder. You know, so you end up playing therapeutic whack-a-mole with the symptoms. So I'd rather unplug the whack-a-mole machine. And make them all stop popping up. And that takes deeper work. Usually it has to do with emotional functioning, how one sees the environment, how they process what they're seeing, how they respond to certain stimuli. Um, that's why emotional functioning is my bailiwick. If you go to the Zephyr Wellness website and you type in under, you know, uh, education, you type in emotional functioning, it'll pop up with a series of videos. Um, I start there. So we're addressing the root cause. Now let's pull the lens back a little bit and we look at systemically across society or across a family system where—

Hey, we just lost your audio, dude, right in the middle. I don't know, you were right in the middle of something. Still not there. I see you're up now. It says you're muted, so try unmuting again, see if that works.

How about now?

Now we have you.

That's so weird.

Did you move again? Your thing went out. I didn't hear anything.

Everything was light. All the lights were going. Um, it's just one of those fun and excitement.

It's all right. At least I'm not the only one who has technical difficulties, so I'm okay with this. It's that trombone.

Uh, so, so if we pull the lens back and we look, uh, systemically, um, and we're not dealing with, say, an individual in a vacuum anymore, we look at the family system, we look at the structure, and we look at things like boundaries and consistency. And so when we're talking about violence mitigation, there's certain things you can do individually in the face of a person who's, um, you know, frothing at the mouth and flapping their arms, and you can de-escalate that person. But how do we do that on a population level? And I think that's the real question, is like, how do we get rid of violence on a population level? And it— and honestly, there, there is no easy answer because it's it's all up to the individuals individually to decide to take action in their own lives. And that means restoring what we would call the executive dyad to the home, the parents, in other words, so that the parents are parenting well, they're communicating properly, they're setting good boundaries for their kids, they're being consistent, they're being compassionate, they're not yelling at them. And eventually it changes over generation. We change the culture into politeness and deference and honoring others ahead of self and that sort of thing. Right now, I think we've got a lot of inversion going on. Certainly, you know, hold up my phone for the listening audience who can't see it. We're device-driven. Instant gratification has taken over. We've lost a lot of our ability to tolerate distress, to be patient, to be patient with others. And so that's created a lot of conflict. Now, you overlay that again with some societal messaging from media,.gov, you know, wherever you get your messaging that says there's a they and then there's an us and then there's an us versus them. And then from there you get an emotion called contempt. And contempt is is very, very bad if you want to live in community with somebody. It's not good to be looking askance at other people as though they're not like you, because that's what creates conflict. Well, out of that conflict sometimes comes violence, because you have to win, right? And you have to prove yourself. And, and violent— I'm not a big fan of like the whole words are violence thing. I don't— I'm not a fan of that. But people can certainly express violent tendencies through words on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, especially if they're anonymous and there's no accountability. So it all comes back to the individual. It all comes back to Recognizing that they have to, they have to want to make change. You know, there's an old joke in my field about how many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? One. But the light bulb has to want to change. So if you don't recognize that your own, your own tendencies are toward negativity and bitterness and violence and that side of thing, you're not going to be interested in making change. Nobody's going to make you change because usually the way that it goes is, hey man, you want to, you need to change. And then they get defensive. They go, no, I don't. And then a fight happens. So that's not the way to do it. The way to approach that kind of thing, if you're a boss, if you're a parent, if you're a colleague, a coworker, literally anybody walking the planet, is you want to meet people where they are. And there's a great book for this called Walking Through Anger, and it's by Christian Conte, who's a friend and mentor of mine. C-O-N-T-E is the name. The book Walking Through Anger is really about his life's work in yield theory. And yield theory is something you have to practice. It's like a martial art.— or anything you want to do that you get good at, you do it over and over and over again. It's a way of interacting with people. And my experience in teaching this to people, not only my clinicians but also— so I taught the law enforcement academies around here for a number of years— is that when people use these techniques and they start to view others as greater and deeper than just their outward behavioral, uh, behavioral presentation, it de-escalates things. You can do this online. You can, you can refuse to engage in an ego battle. You can refuse to be snarky and sarcastic, right? You can be kind and compassionate. So learning to do that on an individual level then eventually has a ripple effect out. So, you know, that's, that's kind of how I would look— I would attack the violence problem is I have to model it. I have to teach people through my own words and actions that I don't, I don't need to be snappy and snarky and argumentative with people.

And that's so much fun. We have so much fun being snappy and snarky and argumentative.

Yeah.

To that we're right, right?

Until it— right, until it becomes, uh, everyone's doing it, then it's not fun because then it's just I'm flooding my brain with cortisol all the time and I'm stressed out and, you know, hypervigilant because I'm worried about who's going to attack me next. And, and that's not good. And you make a great point there, you know, like, would you rather be right or would you rather be at peace? And being right doesn't, doesn't necessarily have to be detrimental to your cause. Uh, I'm sorry, be not being right, I should say.

But it goes both ways, right? Because once you're right and you're expecting to be right all the time, then like I can think of some people who like when things don't go their way, forget about it. They become a useless individual. It's like one of those things. And while I have your attention just for a moment, I'm gonna just double check to make sure that— is this the book that you're talking about? Out if I can get this to actually work. That'll be exciting.

Black cover, yellow triangle. Yep, that one.

Okay. All right, so I'll drop the, the link.

That's really inexpensive. Where is it? Wow, that's a Walmart.

That's a Walmart.

Oh, it's like $17 on Amazon.

It just like— it just happened to pop up. That was the first one, so I figured that's it.

Yeah, it's a great book. Anybody can read that. It's not just for clinicians, it's for— it's for anybody. Um, and Christian's doing great work. He's, um, he works in the prison system in Pennsylvania in the Department of Corrections, and he's teaching yield theory to all 18,000 staff members of the entire DOC, and he's working with the inmates. And his, his stuff is evidence-based. It's— they've shown statistically significant reductions in violent acts between and among inmates and staff in the control groups where he's introduced this yield theory. So we know it works. And it's— he's got a TED Talk on it too called Why I Chose to Go to Prison. You can watch him talk about it from a few years back. Um, but getting back to your point about, you know, the controlling the guns and whatnot, um, that's a symptom treatment. Uh, that doesn't do anything. That just keeps the honest people more honest. Uh, the people who are going to break the law, people who are going to run afoul of social norms and social contract constructs, they're going to do it anyway. And to Guns and BB Keys' point about, you know, the majority of firearms-using crimes are stolen, it's—

sorry, because some people are on Facebook, some people are on— so I'm like, so people can see.

Yeah, post that. And that's something that we at WTTA are pushing real hard for is, like, let's change the language from safe gun ownership to responsible gun ownership. Safe can mean whatever you want it to mean. It's highly individualized, highly subjective. And especially over the course of the pandemic, it's kind of become a watered-down term, right? Stay home, stay safe, wear a mask, stay safe, whatever. Right? So let's change the word to responsible and let's define it this way. Preventing unauthorized access. So that could be somebody in a time of mental health crisis. It could be somebody who's an angsty teenager who's, you know, wants to go shoot stuff inappropriately. It could be the neighbor's kids who come over. It could be the, the person who smashes your window and steals your stuff. Like, those are all unauthorized access, and guns won't be stolen if we're storing them responsibly. That's it. Like, We, we as the gun owners have to be more responsible so that the guns don't get into the hands of the wrong people. And that's a little bit of a magic wand thing. If I could wave my magic wand over the gun community and everybody's storing responsibly, poof, no more stealing. Right?

So, so here's where I, I disagree in that. Yes. Every— to me though, everything in my home, in my car should not be okay to steal. Well, yeah, so it's one of those things too. Well, right, but the thing of it is, is like, as a gun owner, I am in trouble because let's say I was cleaning my gun, I walked away, the guy walks in, steals my gun. It's, it's on the table because I was doing something with it. And, um, now because I'm a gun owner, all of a sudden it's my fault that my gun was stolen because it wasn't locked up properly. I'm like, it's in my home, it's in my car, why do I have to be more responsible in that— no, how about crime is bad and criminals should actually get punished? And why do I have to get different treatment because of that? I, I'm not against locking up guns or any of that. It just drives me crazy that here in Connecticut we have a thing called Ethan's Law, and if someone comes in my home and there is a gun that is unlocked and they take it, I am now a felon. Yeah, they make me into a felon.

Yeah, I think that's, that's garbage.

Responsibility, yes.

Yeah.

Um, making it laws and making, making it punitive to me as a gun owner because someone stole something from me, I have a problem with that.

I do. I do too. I have a big problem because we would call that blame shifting in our profession where you're, you're evading or avoiding accountability, uh, and putting it on the wrong person. And, uh, stated otherwise, you're victim shaming. Shaming, right?

Yes, that's another popular phrase.

You're victim shaming the people who got, um, who got victimized in the theft or the burglary or the robbery, and, and that's somehow okay. Yeah, right. That, that doesn't make any sense. So no, I, you know, when I say responsible gun ownership, this is not under legal compulsion. That's something else. If you're, if you're, if you're compelling people through force of law to do what you want them to do that, that actually takes autonomy away from them, and it's no longer a responsibility thing. It's a compulsory thing under threat of penalty. So responsibility has to do with individual personal decision-making, not because you're coerced into it. Um, and I'm not moving off that. That has ethical roots in my field too. There's 5 ethical precepts in our field, one of them, one of which is autonomy. And I— they're all supposed to be equal, But autonomy, I think, has to be— has to reign supreme because it's the easiest to violate. We want to act on behalf of other people without their consent so often because we just want to help them, right? It's like, I just want to do justice, which is another ethical precept, but you're stepping on autonomy when you do that.

And that's what Bernie's saying. It's like, no one should tell you how to keep your property in your own home. It's— it is definitely overstepping. It's like, are there going to be irresponsible people? Yes. No matter how many laws there are, no matter how much education we throw up there, any of that stuff. It's just like people are going to do what they learn and what they believe is right for them.

Yeah.

And if we're trying to be inclusive and say, okay people, let's all do good things together, we're all going to find different ways to do good things because we're not all going to do the same thing.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's the, that's the gun violence thing, right? I'm not, I'm not a big fan of saying that people taking their own lives or attempting suicide is a form of of self-violence just so we can categorize it under all violence because there's a political agenda. I don't, I, we could have a hair-splitting debate about whether or not self-harm is violence. Okay, fine, sure. But that's for philosophers. That's, that's for academicians. That's not for practical people on the, on the street. What is important is that we're losing, like you said, it's about 64%. So roughly two-thirds of all firearms deaths are suicides. Well, you wanna move the needle on firearms deaths and, you know, i.e., gun violence. Well, we have to address suicide. Well, what's the link between suicide and guns? It's mental illness. And I understand that there's diagnostic criteria. I understand that suicide is sometimes impulsive and there's not necessarily a diagnosis and we can't categorize it as mental illness per se. However, if you're living a calm, tranquil, peaceful life and you're getting what you want and you're enjoying things, there's no reason to take your own life. And so how do we intercede there? We have to make an invitation to people, say, if you're struggling, get help. Don't leave this trail of destruction behind just because you thought you saw no way out. And then my job as a practitioner is to communicate that message to the firearms community, say there is no bat phone in my office that I can pick up to tattle on you to the government and have them come steal your property. That's not a thing. Even if I'm allowed to, like, say, by the New York SAFE Act or some certain red flag laws in New Jersey that say any person can red flag another person. Um, I have ethical precepts, I have ethical guidelines, and most of which are embedded into law itself that say that's not the first step we take. The first step we take is not to steal somebody's crap, it's to get them a higher level of care. Like, I don't care what your property does. Like, you have lots of dangerous things in your home. I'm not going to send the sheriffs over to lock up the Clorox. Um, So our community, our community needs to recognize that. And most of us are pretty good at trying to, to get somebody the help they need if they just refuse to come out of the crisis they're in while they're right in front of us. Um, but some people overstep and they go, nope, you got to go straight to the hospital. It's like, I don't know if that's helpful or harmful, but we definitely should not be red flagging people.

Yeah. And just so you know, your volume just went way up, but so, you know, you moved again anyway. Um, so yeah, you never know. And this is the thing, having been at the legislative session over and over and over and over again, um, and especially when they're talking about mental health, because when Sandy Hook occurred here in Connecticut, they did one day on mental health, and you had someone come up and say yes, if we should be able to forcefully, uh, not— it's not incarcerate, but commit someone to like a mental ward in a hospital against their will. He's like, the, the gentleman came up and said, yes, I am, because someone did this to me and it was the best thing ever. And then, you know, 5 guys down the road, next one comes up, it's like, no, absolutely not. I was not ready for this. It put my treatment back at least 3 to 5 years. We should never do this ever again. So it's like, there is no easy yes/no answer when it comes to mental health, and everybody wants there to be. And I think this is why they keep going after gun stuff specifically, because like, but it's a thing that we can put black and white on. Oh, but wait, I have to— before it disappears, it's, it's a— I think it's good. Yeah, so hold on because, um, thank you.

I'm glad you— great.

I was gonna— yeah, so gun rights, civil rights, actually, or I could support— well, I have to pull out my little DC Project, um, little thing because, uh, DC Project let's see, where can you see the whole thing? Other side. But anyway, DCProject.info. Uh, I am the state director here in Connecticut, so I'm a little bit biased. Depending on where you are, I would highly suggest that you check out whatever your local Second Amendment rights, uh, group is. In Connecticut, we have CCDL, which is our Connecticut Citizens Defense League. And just check them all out. There's so many. Jake, what is your suggestion for, uh, Domo's, uh, question?

I was going to offer some, some individuals who are connected to certain organizations. So, um, uh, the first one popped in is Guns for Everyone. Uh, Edgar in, uh, Colorado does Guns for Everyone. Uh, it's more targeted toward the Latino community. And then, uh, Locked and Loaded Latinos, Rolo and Johanna, they're great. Um, Kevin Dixie has No Other Choice. And he's in Georgia now. Maj Toure with Black Guns Matter is a great one to follow. And, and then Argo J is also a big, you know, gun rights or civil rights guy. I think it's actually his t-shirt that says gun rights equals civil rights. So Argo J, it's 3 A's, A-A-A-R-G-O. And then the DC Project.

Well, because I say we've got the gun rights or women's rights, and apparently we are changing that to be gun rights or Civil Rights or People's Rights or something. Yeah, I'm not sure. You know, we're still growing as a DC project, so things change all the time.

Yeah, but so, um, so, uh, with regard to the, uh, to the, to the binary there, the, the quick, the quick answer, right? Uh, that goes back to, again, instant gratification, but it also, it's also political, right? So it's, if you can demonstrate to your constituents that you did something in the last session they're more likely to vote for you again. And that's irrespective of what the topic is. It's just to say, look what I did, right? I passed these bills, I did these things, right? And election cycles are not friendly, much like fiscal or financial reports quarterly are not friendly to long-term vision and goals. If all you're seeing is the next election cycle, we lose patience for the 20-year plan because the 20-year plan won't be realized before the next election. And it doesn't win over the voting public to say, just be patient and wait. I need 3 more terms. Uh, kind of like a corporation doesn't say to its shareholders, just be patient and wait. In 8 years you're going to get some really big dividends. Let's not step over dollars to pick up dimes. Uh, so we've got that going on. And when we're talking about root cause mitigation, we're talking about cultural change, we're talking about all sorts of stuff that take longer time. It's not gonna— it's not gonna go over super well in legislative sessions. So what do they do? They, they grab at the thing that's convenient and easy and low-hanging fruit so they can go talk about how they did something, even though doing that thing doesn't do anything as a result. It feels like they did. And yes, I, I'm not a big fan of feelings. Tony Simon, yes, the diversity. Sure.

Yeah. So I'm like, yeah, there's a whole— and so here's the thing, Jake, I think you can click on them and add them too if you see something you want to throw up. Um, I think so. If you, if you put your mouse over the top There should be a plus sign that says show. Does it do anything?

No, I don't have the permission.

All right, well, so back to Bernie. Education is the key. And also, he also says down below that he's got a DC project thing because our other tagline is education— oh my gosh, I forgot it right now while I'm trying to think of it— but education is the key to safety, basically. Um, it is.

Yeah, yeah, that's why I'm a big fan of teaching people too, and counseling. Like, I want you to go away with more information than you entered. I don't want to give you my answers for your life. I want to teach you ways to engage your own life so that you can do the things that you want. I'm always going to propose education over restriction. I mean, I don't know that there's a time that I wouldn't do that. And, if there is a time for restriction or mandate or laws or whatever, then education needs to go along with it so that the people who are going to fall under the law understand the intentionality behind it. I mentioned something earlier I wanted to get back to is we've inverted the path to intercession. So in my field, somebody walks into the office and they come in, I go, "Hey, what brings you in today?" And hopefully they don't say, "My vehicle." Or maybe that'll be an interesting conversation. Yeah, no. "My teeth." You're a concrete thinker. So they say, you know, whatever's bugging them. And that's a problem. We have a problem at the top, and then right below that we'll have a goal, presumably to solve the problem. And then we have objectives to the goal, and those are, uh, you know, how we'll measure that we're making progress to the goal. And then we have the intervention strategy. I think what's happened recently, and it has really been accelerated by COVID, we have interventions—shots, masks, distancing—but we don't have a goal. And I think that's That's the same thing with this gun stuff is like nobody likes violence, nobody likes death, certainly not premature death. And so, it's like, well, just throw a bunch of interventions at it. It's like, well, how do we know that we're making progress? Well, don't care, just throw interventions at it. It's like, no, let's establish a goal first. And then, we get to the things like delayed gratification with if we can educate everybody on knowing their own emotional functioning and improving their speech and communication such that they don't resort to violence, then later longitudinally we can look and see that we made a difference. But with throwing all the kitchen sink at it, everything, there's too many variables. We don't know which one worked and which one didn't anyway. So all we know is that suicide numbers continue to increase. So these legislative matters are not effective. I don't care what they happen to say. We got to try something else. Education is my favorite. Yeah, I know.

And I'm sorry, I just want to throw it up because like I said, So the Facebook people can see what the YouTube people are saying and all that. Um, Tony Simon also has a diversity shoot as well. So one more, uh, resource, but yeah, it's, it, what you were saying as far as there's no delayed gratification when it comes to anything they're doing. And I will tell you, which I may have already told you when I talked to you last time, but it's like, I was the girl who never voted. I thought there was one election every 4 years for president. I knew nothing about Congress or representatives or state or what— your town has an election too? Really? I didn't know any of that. And I thought our politicians are doing the best they can because they've got the most resources available and we're paying them to do the best job to serve the most of us. And I believe that was how it went. And then I got involved. Yeah. So true is the statement ignorance is bliss, because I was much happier thinking all of those things that they know what they're doing. And then I found out, no, we are resources. So that's where the DC Project comes in, right? Because as a resource for the DC Project, our goal is to say, hey, my name is Brooke Cheney and I know about guns and firearms, and please talk to me if you have any questions so that I can help you understand what you're doing or how it's impacting these groups in your, um, that you're legislating over. We're not there to beat a stick and say that Republicans are good, Democrats bad, anything like that. We're nonpartisan. Um, and it's just one of those things where it's just like they need lots of help. They're only in Connecticut, they're only here 2 years. They spend 1 year trying to fix stuff and they spend 1 year trying to get elected, and it's awful. And the fact that they're— Elon Musk put it the, the best way ever. I think my favorite tweet from him was regarding politics is there's no garbage collection system. Like, they're always going forward, they're never looking back and getting rid of all the stuff that's not working. They just keep piling stuff on, piling stuff. I just had the RTC meeting yesterday, last night, which I'm a member of, and it's just like, um the stuff that gets put forward every year, it's like, wait, we already have that law. Like, people talk about red flag laws, right? Well, we already have protective orders that do exactly that. And I remember like 3, 4 years ago when we started talking about them again, like, oh, we didn't know that already existed. So that's the other problem, is they're putting laws on top of laws on top of laws and not looking at, well, how effective is this? How long has this been here? How do we measure this? So yeah, if I were president, I would say, you know what, we need 4 years of just repealing crap that doesn't work. Let's not put anything new. How about we evaluate some stuff and get rid of things?

Yeah, that would be ideal. I'm not impressed with the slow creep into people's lives. I mean, we go back to distracted driving laws. Why did we need a hands-free device law? We already have distracted driving laws. Well, hands-free device manufacturers have some money to make off that. And yes, I am that cynical. I do believe that there's, that there's money behind everything. If there's not money, there's ego and people just want to see stuff done to toot their own horn. Uh, that I don't think there's a lot of analysis or logic that goes into it. I just got solicited a week ago to write a, um, a modification and amendment to our current red flag and transfer laws in Nevada. So I did. I'm good at that sort of thing. So I knocked it out. Thank God it only took me like 45 minutes. And, uh, and the very people who asked me to do it said, yeah, you know, we're not going to go this direction. We're going to just rely on enforcement and, uh, and prevention. I was like, okay, I guess we're done here then. It's, it's so mind-bending.

Yeah, it's like, oh, what are the optics on this? Because I showed it to someone who's like, oh, what are the polling numbers on this? So on and so forth. If it's not sexy, if it's not cool, if it's not immediate. And again, my biggest challenge talking to people is the mental health issue is not a gun issue in anyone else's mind. They are looking at the guns saying, hey, this is the bad thing. And it's just like trying to figure out how to break that, that, that what they've got bonded is like gun equals violence. And it's just like, no, violence equals violence, whether it's a gun, my water bottle, The stapler, you know, there's, there's a, there's a, a construct in our field called, uh, the content versus process.

Content.

This statement always cracks me up though.

We've got to do something for the children.

It's for the children. It's like every time it always makes me want to throw up every time I hear it. Not that I don't love children.

Well, on that, on that point though, I, I just authored a 2,800-word article for our, uh, state's nonprofit newspaper called the Nevada Independent talking about about, uh, you know, mask mandates for children. And it's like, yeah, for the children, right? Well, did anybody bother to examine the harm that befalls them by wearing masks? And I have 70 years worth of literature that say that the way we develop socially, emotionally, psychologically is through facial expression. And I'll send you that article. You can read it. But, um, I just dismantled everything that the American Academy of Pediatrics was standing on this very thin study that wasn't even very good. Um, and from there the CDC got its guidance, and then from there the state issued its guidance and its mandates. And I was like, this is all built on a pile of sand, you guys. And oh, by the way, let's presume that they work, the masking works, right? Which it doesn't, but let's presume that it does. Where's the harm? Where's the studies on the harm? That's where I'm saying, like, I'm coming from this to say we need to look at the harm. It's like, for the children. It's like, yeah, for the children, but that you're crippling like, for the children, right? Okay, well, how many guns prevent death? How many guns prevent violence? We're not going to look at those data, right? NSSF tracks that stuff. Like, use that. But back to content versus process, I just, I won't engage in the back and forth about the, the, the surface level topics. I want to go to what's underneath it. And so what's underneath a statement like that is, I'm afraid. Okay, that's cool. Cool. You got legitimate reasons to be afraid. I'm never going to take that away from somebody, right? Let's analyze how we can mitigate the fear. You think that mitigating your fear is by restricting somebody else's access. Well, what if by doing that you just created a different fear elsewhere? Now we're having a debate. Nobody's doing that. I'd love to get into one of those debates, but unfortunately I don't, I don't hear that. I hear thumping, you know, on talking points and, uh, but more research. And it's like, yeah, your research isn't very transparent and you created it out of your own organization. And, you know, it's like, it's dubious at best. Um, but let's, let's have a conversation about why you want this thing, not what you want to accomplish. Let's talk about why you want it. And the why is you're afraid of watching other people die. I don't want to see other people die either. My solution happens to be something very different, which is teaching people responsibility. And accountability. Yours happens to be restriction. All right, let's talk about which is going to be most effective. But nobody's having that conversation. Uh, we're having it in our little echo chambers and saying they're not doing the right thing, and then the other side's going they're not doing the right thing either. It's like, can we have a real robust debate about this, or are we just going to be intellectually dishonest the whole time? Um, you know, and maybe that's just where it breaks down and we, we leave it to the people to decide and say, what would you do you prefer? Do you prefer restriction, or do you prefer education and liberty? And I mean, people just decide.

And like Guns is saying, it's all about the emotion, right? It's, it's like, it's emotion, emotion, emotion. And so it's just like, no, we don't want to hear any of the facts. We don't— oh well, of course, nothing that anyone says that disagrees with what you first learned is going to do anything but support your existing belief And so it's just like the emotion side of it. And this is like— and to me, it's, it's in both sides. Like, for me, because it's like I have gun owners who want to stand on the Second Amendment, like, they shall not take my rights. And I'm like, okay, but how about we help them understand how we actually help solve some of the problems? Oh, by the way, that's mental health. Oh, but that's not Second Amendment. And I'm just like, oh, okay.

Yeah, you can hold two ideas in your head at the same time.

The anti-gun people are like, it's the guns, it's the guns. I'm like, no, it's really the mental health side of things, but it's not the gun thing. And I'm just like, okay, for a moment, could we just pretend that we actually want to save lives? And that's really our goal.

Did Mike mention the San Jose State thing that we did? I don't know. Refresh my memory. So we got invited to a Students Demand Action event at San Jose State. And I'm really glad we went.

But oh, for the Moms Demand Action, yes. So tell us your side of the story because he actually specifically said I should get your side of the story.

Yeah, um, I was glad we went, um, but a couple, a couple of major things stood out. One is that the gun community thought that by simply attending the event we were granting credence and condoning the philosophy, and we got blown up on social media. And Mike and I took the time to, to ping each of these people who made these comments and said, I really don't think you understand what we do, maybe you should check out the website. And we flipped quite a few people. They're like, you're right, I jumped to conclusions, sorry, which was cool. And I think there's this like weird belief that if we just like show up in the presence of these, these Moms Demand or Students Demand or Bloomberg people, that like they're going to like touch our arm and like infect us. Like it's, and we're going to become like anti-gun or something.

You're going to put their red shirts on. You're going to put their red shirts on or you're going to be part of Moms Demand's actions. Look, we've got another one of the gun owners. That's it. We're done. Yeah.

Yeah. It was going to be be the big, you know, drag in the, in the public square or whatever. Well, so turns out, to their core, I honest to goodness, they don't believe they're anti-gun. Oh yeah, they don't believe it. They believe that they're anti-violence and therefore, quote unquote, um, you know, common sense in America. That is gun control. And you— and, and the conversations I had with several several people there, I was like, they're not interested in changing their mind on it. It's like, no, this is not gun control. It's like, um, but you're controlling guns and access to them and how— what you can do with them. But that's not gun control. It's like, they, they want— no, it's not. We have lots of gun owners in our group and they support what we're doing. I was like, yeah, I don't, I don't know that we're ever going to turn this corner. But, but to call them anti-gun is highly offensive. I mean, I would be offended if somebody called me, um, I don't know, uh, mental health for being a part of the gun community. It's like, no, no, these two things can coexist. And in their minds, they do coexist. And, and I, I didn't understand that until I had the conversation. They're like, no, no, we got tons of gun owners in our organization. And in fact, they, they had the, the, like, the local city councilman who was a former police officer. He's like, I, I don't ever think, you know, I'll never need to own an AR-15. I carry my pistol sometimes, but I, I think that nobody needs more than 10 rounds in their magazine. He's going off on the podium and it's like he really believes it. Yeah. And, and all I'm hearing is, man, that's a hell of a lot of privilege. Yeah. Like, to think, to think that you, you would never need, um, for any purpose what you decree is not necessary. Like, no one anywhere should ever have what you decree is not necessary. It's like, that is a, that is an an incredibly privileged position to be in, and it's incredibly tone deaf because you're essentially saying my way or the highway. And, and I don't, I don't think they hear that. I, I really don't think, I don't think it's pernicious at all. There are certain people who, who are doing it perniciously. A lot of them control the money.

They're this big, like, the group, the people who follow have the hearts. They're like, yes, this is, I want to save lives, this is it, and this is how I'm told that This is how we're going to save lives. Just like, uh, the gentleman I had the phone conversation with about background checks, I'm like, do you understand how discriminatory that is? It's way— they don't until you tell them, right?

And then they— and then they learn. They go, oh my gosh, I was— I could—

how wrong could I have been, right? Yeah, it's like that $35 for that background, that federal background check, is not something that single mom— sorry to pick— oh, I'll make it this time, the single dad in the ghetto who can barely feed their kids, and they've got a crazy woman after him, which is a very psychological possibility. And he just wants to protect his children, but he doesn't have the $35 just for that one background check, much less the $750 for the fingerprinting, much less the $35 or the $85 for the whole thing. And it's just like, people like, well, constitutional carry is ridiculous. And I'm like, No, it's the only way to actually be non-discriminatory. Yep. And, and it's just like that here in Connecticut, they tried to make just the pistol permit, not the whole process, cost like $250. Yeah. It's like, how do you not see how elitist these, these gun laws are?

Well, and, and, and this, you know, let's be honest, like a lot of the people who are for restrictions tend to be left-leaning. Left-leaning people tend to be, um, all about, you know, battling confirmation bias and so forth. And, you know, wanting to be non-discriminatory. And that is your comfort. That is your bias. That is your implicit bias is to not see all as many angles as possible. You see your one angle and you're, you're blind to the other stuff. And so I think it's our job, you know, people like Tony and Argo and, and Katie and Maj from minority communities, people from the liberal gun owners and the liberal gun clubs say, look, the Second Amendment is agnostic. It's politically agnostic. This is not, it's not up for debate. It's not a political thing. It affects all people, all stripes. And, and we need to, we need to help educate the people who need education so that they're fully informed. If you want to still go back and be like, well, I don't really care. I still think that we need background checks, but I understand the economic hardships. Let's at least fund them for people who are, you know, economically disadvantaged. All right. Well, now at least we're talking. We're at least acknowledging that there's another angle to this. We, we have— we've got to, to make a better effort. And this is where I go back to the, to the binary, the us versus them, the contemptuousness. Our, our 2A people cannot afford to keep wagging a finger and saying them, because them are you. At some point you look in the mirror and you go, I don't know that all there is to know about the world. Maybe, maybe there's something else I'm missing here, including Tony Simon's diversity shoot, right? It's like, oh wait, What do you mean all gun control is racist? I didn't know that until 2019. And I had a conversation with KD, and he's like, no, all right, let me break it down for you. As he takes a cigar out of his mouth and he looks me straight in the eye and then launches into a 30-minute soliloquy. I was like, oh my God, I had no idea. So if we have our own blind spots, that means they have their own blind spots. We got to stop doing the us versus them thing, come together and say, hey, politely, um, would you mind if I teach you something? And for me, this is great in psychotherapy, it's great in the counseling profession. You do a little straw poll and you say, hey, who among the crowd, uh, thinks that they have more to learn in life? Everybody's going to raise their hand, right? Nobody's going to be so dumb as to not admit that. You got more to learn, right? Yeah. But, but as long as they're putting their hand in the air saying, yes, I have more to learn, you go, let me teach you some stuff from my perspective. And then we have to be humble enough to listen to that, you know, the quote-unquote other side too and say, what is your perspective? And you might be shocked, like I was shocked back in October or November whenever we went to San Jose to learn that they don't believe they're, they're controlling guns. They really don't believe they're about that.

But see, I— and I'm totally the gun owner that probably would have been with them prior to being a competitive shooter because I'm like, 10-round mag ban, who cares? They've still got bullets in their gun. That was like, if I heard— saw that headlining in 2005, I'd be like, yeah, who cares? Then I got in the— actually got in the gun community. So I was one of those people, they could say that I was a gun owner. Yeah. And I supported it, but it's because I didn't know any better. That was amazing. Again, back to the education, education, education. Um, and everything is, is flying by so fast. So Guns is talking about, um, he, he— well, I'm not just busting on him about being blind, he is actually blind. Um, and it's just like fear. There's nothing worse than fear. And then so his next thing about feeling insane for being afraid of the stairs, it's like even when we know what we know, even when we're like, okay, I've done stairs all my life, this shouldn't be a scary thing, and yet something traumatic happens and all of a sudden we have this fear. And it's like in talking to anyone who wants to stop violence, often it comes back to a fear.

Yeah, like it shifts our worldview. And when something bad happens, it kind of rips us out of our lulled complacency and says, hey, things aren't as you wish they'd be or as you thought they'd be. And then we have to reconcile that. And I would actually argue a little bit, there's nothing worse than fear is I think what I heard you say. I would say shame is actually worse than fear if we're talking like 10 core emotions that I teach on. What Guns BBQ is alluding to there is the sensation of being embarrassed. You know, like, I felt insane for being afraid of stairs because it's like, it's such a silly thing, right? Why am I afraid of stairs? Like, well, because they can hurt you if you can't see them.

You don't have depth perception.

And they did hurt him multiple times. Yes. And, and so that, that, that becomes almost a shameful thing because you're, you're now looking around going, I don't, I don't know if I fit in my community anymore because I can't simply navigate stairs the way that I used to. And shame is very powerful, and if used inappropriately, it can keep people locked up, uh, forever. Uh, families do this all the time. They do this shame-guilt treadmill where it's like, oh, shame on you for do— you know, letting me down. It's like guilt says, well, I'd love to fix this, how do I fix it? They're like, you can't. It's like, but shame on you. Religion does this. Big religion does this. And, um, it's very crippling. So, you know, thanks for sharing that, by the way. I appreciate the vulnerability and saying, you know, it was, it was really tough, you know, losing your eyesight and not being able to navigate staircase. Because I think a lot of people can identify that with that type of sensation where they lose control over something and then they're embarrassed that they can't change it, especially when trauma happens, tragedy occurs. They're like, we have this, this compulsion to, to believe that we should have done something. And there's a, I use should specifically there. Even though I have a video that says stop shooting on yourself.

Um, it's okay. Well, no, I was gonna say the Tony Robbins always says stop shooting on yourself when you're being a procrastinator.

So yeah, yeah. So like the idea of suicide prevention and stuff like that, it's like really, really powerful guy who was on our podcast, uh, on Guns and Melod— and on Nugget Notes, Matt Miller. He was, uh, Matt Miller, PhD. He's the, uh, the director of the VA's National Suicide Prevention Program. And he, so he does this for a living. He's a, he's a psychologist and he was in the Air Force and he lost, while he was the, the mental health guy on the base where he was, he lost one of his best friends to suicide. And he really wrestled with that. He shares this really powerful story that I don't want to steal it from him, but he says, he basically says, I don't know that suicide's preventable. And I think we're going to need to stop with that messaging because all it does does is create shame for the survivors. It's like, what? I've been told suicide's preventable. What else should I have done? Now I'm living in shame, right?

And that's the question I get all the time, right?

It is, how can I know? I believe someone, and now I'm ashamed that I couldn't stop it. And so we got it. We got to stop that messaging too and be a little more gracious with ourselves and say, you know, go back to autonomy. People are free to choose what they choose. We may not like it, uh, we may not be comfortable with it, but simple fact is they are. They're free to do what they want to do.

I interrupted you, sorry. No, no, no, no, no, no, it's— there's so many different things, and I'm just looking at the clock because we really only have 10 more minutes because Saturday is—

Kevin Dixie, by the way.

Okay, thank you. Oh yeah, sorry. Yeah, Domino. Oh, thank you. I'm like, that sounded familiar all of a sudden. I'm like, I've sung that like 5 million times.

Um, but Kevin Dixie.

Katie is Kevin Dixie. Um, so yeah, so we've got 10 minutes left, so my brain's sort of going there. But also just, it's amazing where we find fear, frustration, and anger. I am currently in frustration and anger over my knee because the crutch and having like literally sitting on the couch for the past 3 months is brutal. And it's just like, and everyone's like, well, aren't your kids helping? Aren't this? And it's just like, yeah, but I get tired of asking them to stuff for me. And it's just like— and, and it's just, it's making me mad and angry. And when we had Mike on on Saturday, I talked— I'm like, here's the thing, every time we do this, I'm trying to give somebody some little thing. And it's just like, for me right now, when I breathe in and give my body oxygen, that is my calmness. When I breathe out, I think of the word of peace because I'm letting go of stuff. Because one of the things we talked about was forgiveness, um, on Saturday night's event. So it's like that in and out, that forgiveness is not saying whatever happened happened was okay, but it's really for you. And it's that, that whole thing of like the graciousness you were just talking about is we all need to be more gracious for ourselves because it's so easy to do this, right? It's you, it's you, it's you. And what I was always taught was, well, there's one finger pointing out, but there's three fingers pointing back at us. And I definitely think we've been losing a lot of that, um, responsibility that, that your job is to take care of you first, and then you get to go forward and help others.

By the way, I just realized that my mic was not on the mic in front of me, it's on the camera. Let me change something real quick.

Now you're going to mess up our sound in the last 5 minutes? Really? Yeah, how's that? Oh wow, now you sound all fancy.

Microphone up here instead of the— oh, it's okay. Okay, so let me see if I can wrap that up into something, um, useful, quick and comprehensive. Yeah, so, so let's— I really want everybody to watch the emotional function videos. I think they're great, and I record them for a reason. It's to get this stuff out in the public so you don't come into my office, right?

Where are they?

Are they on Zephyr Wellness? ZephyrWellness.org. And then go to the, uh, click on the education tab and go to videos. And then just, you can just type in emotional functioning, um, and you'll see them on YouTube too. There's everyone's YouTube channel. But, um, so shame and guilt. All right, so shame says you failed to meet somebody's expectations. Sadness says your expectations didn't get met. So when you, when you feel shame, what you're doing is causing sadness in another person. Guilt says go make it right. When you apologize, you make it right. Forgiveness should be extended. Forgiveness is not an emotion, it's a verb, it's an action. And then hopefully we, we let go of that, we accept the forgiveness and we move on. We're gracious and, and we move forward and we don't beat each other up over it. What you're talking about is being gracious and forgiving of self because you let yourself down. You think that you're somehow imposing this, you know, stuff on your kids or whatever and asking for help, and you don't want to be a burden to them, and that's totally reasonable. Um, however, I would say if I put my little clinical hat on, you signed the waiver in the beginning, right?

Of course. Yeah. Was that last year while you were in Antarctica teaching penguins how to play guitar?

I just Um, the, uh, the trick here is, um, you want to be gracious enough and acknowledge that you don't get to take away the gift that they're giving you by serving you, by getting the things that you need while your leg is up getting iced or whatever it is. Um, so this, this, this little mental battle is really about like getting out of your own way to allow people to help help you, in your case, with the knee, right?

But mental health in general, though, too. That is awesome.

So thank you for jumping ahead.

Sorry, but I'm like, that's totally what we all need.

Yeah. And I think in our culture, I just had this conversation with a friend of mine the other day, came up to visit for some work. And he says, how quick are we to reject somebody's assistance? It's like, or their gifts, right?

I got this. I got this. You don't need to help me. I'm good. Sorry. I don't, I don't want to impose on you.

It's okay. Super Bowl's coming up, right? Hey, what can I bring? Oh, nothing, we've got it. Let me bring something. Who are you to tell me not that I can't?

You get invited, you're bringing stuff. I'm just letting you know. That's how I run all my parties, so I don't have as much stress, and I enjoy the time because I don't have to do everything.

I'll bring the betting pool. That's my contribution. I draw squares really well. Okay. But yeah, you know, it's like, let's make sure that we're okay with receiving somebody's gift. And then and then move on, because there's a season where you won't need that anymore. Your knee's going to heal, you're not going to need the crutch, etc., etc. Then you're gonna have to find some other way to advertise that you are the gun lobby. Um, maybe a sticker on your forehead or something.

Okay, I can get tattoos, baby.

But recognizing, uh, that the emotions within yourself and then handling them appropriately is key to dealing with your own mental stability. If you know shame and you can discern it from sadness, if you know anger and you can discern it from frustration, which is on the sadness continuum also, if you know excitement and can discern it from joy, you're going to be able to communicate better. You're going to be able to validate other people better. You're going to be able to de-escalate. You're going to be able to be calmer and more peaceful. You're going to parent better, and you're going to be a better boss and all sorts of things. So for me, it goes back to emotional functioning. But the ability to self-forgive, I think, is super key because it lets you let go. It lets you be not attached. You don't have to carry around big bags of psychological rocks. You know, you don't have to give life to dead moments of the past. You leave things where they are and, you know, look ahead to things that are yet to come and be at peace in the present moment. So that's my two cents on that. I would say allow people to give you the gift. Don't burden yourself with the, with the shame of thinking that you're somehow putting them out by asking for assistance. That you, for all you know, they're honored to do that. You know, it's like, oh, I get to help my mom. She's helped me all these years, now I get to help her, right? And I think that's really useful for people heading into older age too, or their parents are older age and they got to take care of them. It's like, well, this is weird, I shouldn't be taking care of my, my parents. Like, yeah, actually that's the order of life.

Yeah, yeah, they did teach us that in high school actually. I went to an all-girls school and they totally told us, it's like, here's the deal: you're born, everyone's taking care of you, you have a little bit of independence where you get to take care of yourself, then you have children and you're taking care of them, and then they go away and you're taking care of you, and then now your parents are old so you're taking care of them. And that this is exactly the flow of life and this is how, how stuff goes. Um, so yes, it reminds me of a story because, you know, there's always one more story. If I want something from you and you put it in my hand and I close my hand on it, I have whatever it is you gave me. However, if I just leave my hand open, you can always put more in and more can go away. And so it's one of those things where it's like the open palm allows you to receive and let go, and most of us are holding on to whatever it is that we have, and we need to remember to open our palms and let stuff flow. That's brilliant. I think that's a great place to end. All right, well, unfortunately I have to go to physical therapy now. Otherwise, you two could be made the second longest one because that was Mike's, uh, plan last, uh, on Saturday. So we literally went for an hour and 45 minutes if you look at the YouTube one. If you go to the Facebook one, the technical issue— I didn't turn Facebook on until we were like 30 minutes in. Oh, so yeah, so if you want to see the whole thing, you'd have to go to, uh, YouTube.

So yeah, one of these days I'll, uh, I'll, I'll make the time to do it at the normal, normal hour. Just Saturdays are pretty tough because that's—

no, no, dude, I— we, we applauded the fact that you are a family man and you have sacred family time. And Mike was actually saying how he's horrible with that, and, uh, and that sort of thing. Oh, Barbecue wants to know about the penguins in Antarctica.

EDC, is that like Electric Daisy Carnival?

Like the, um, well, we were talking about them playing, uh, guitar and also about your, your studying the penguins and, and social stuff and all of that.

Taiko, I think, I think they like taiko and Cascade, maybe flume.

Yeah. So yeah, no, every day, everyday carry is what EDC is. I'm like, I'm like, wait a second, do you really not? Well, no, because Mike is the ungun gun guy. I don't know, I know that you have firearms, I don't know what you do with them.

So, you know, oh yeah, I should probably have mentioned that. So I've been— I was— I'm a lifelong gun owner, uh, family full of cops, but I never was into the gun culture, much like yourself. And it was always just a tool to do a thing, um, because that's what my dad and my uncles always talked about. It's like, it's not a— we don't go recreational shooting with them. I mean, we did once every several years. We hunted, but, um, it wasn't a thing. It was just— wasn't, wasn't a thing. Um, then I got in the gun culture and that was cool. But, but joining Walk Talk America, I realized I had to come out of the closet as a firearms owning clinician to my own peer community, and that went over like a fart in church, uh, because we're all like— for as much as we want to believe that we're non-judgmental and we're lifelong learners, We're not. We're very judgmental. So I believe I have a responsibility now to train up my peer colleagues or at least coax a few more of them out of the closet because there are some of us who are gun-owning, you know, people who, you know, advocate for that kind of thing. But we've been so shamed by our peer colleagues that we don't talk about it and it's horrible. So, so I did have to come out of the closet. My everyday carry is a Glock 43. And I think the penguins probably prefer, something lighter because their, their flippers, uh, you know, have to like press it against their body. Um, they have this weird belly band too that, that like, it's like a, it's like a Velcro thing and the flippers kind of separate it.

Oh yeah, you know, your colleagues are going to start asking about your Antarctica trips, you know that, right? If my colleagues are listening to this tomorrow, there is that. I'm like, I have— yeah, it's like one of my other viewers, like, how many viewers would you like? I'm like, more than 10 would be cool. Yeah, right. But all right, so, um, yeah, I don't know. I'm sure we, like, we could probably go on forever and ever, but we're not gonna. Um, Demo says thank you, uh, for, you know, all of that. And I don't know, I guess we're good and done. Thank you for your time, Jake. Thanks for showing up.

Um, there's always more to talk about. Feel free to hit me up anytime. I love doing this stuff because, you know, put it out there and maybe people will get out.

And here's the other thing, you can now tell Mike that he may be the longest running one that I've done so far, but you are the first bonus session I've ever had. So there you go, that, that can be your claim to fame.

I love, I love having my badge of honor.

All right, goodbye everybody.