https://www.listennotes.com/e/70613fa717974c66b25acd298b04750a

All right, what's up everybody? How you doing this morning?

Great to be with you.

Lance, you and I have been talking about interviewing the Hargraves for a while, right?

I mean, this might be dreams coming true in the moment.

So no pressure, absolutely, Terry and Sharon, okay?

Yes.

We respond to pressure the way we respond to everything else. It's like, well, okay.

Well, yeah, I mean, we're excited to have you two on. As Lance was actually sharing before, and I'll let him share in a minute, our hopes for this podcast is to really talk about the work of RT. Our desire is that therapists will listen to it and learn something new about RT that they would also find a home here that they would just things that we talk about would really like resonate with them. They feel a sense of belonging and community. And I think we're also hoping that people who aren't therapists hop on and find things intriguing. But we want to start with you two. You two are obviously the founders of RT and Sharon, I thought I would just, before we hopped on, you said, was it this morning you were having a moment at breakfast? Let's just start with that. Tell us about that. Because I think for me and for Lance, the essence is really some of these stories in the history of RT that we're so excited about.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I think we've had a lot of opportunity in the last few weeks because of some upcoming events to kind of review the miracle of restoration therapy. And I just want to say one thing that, you know, I've really thought a lot about is that restoration therapy, the byline of restoration therapy, is restoring as much love and trust into relationships as we possibly can. And that's, I think our job as therapists and there's many steps along the way. You know, Rhett, there's almost a step I would go before that that I think is really critical is our experience in graduate school when Terry was in a systems class. You remember that moment that you had in your systems class?

Yeah, very much so. I mean, I was sitting in a family systems class and I thought, you know, this is like watching HD television compared to black and white. I mean, it's just like, I finally see it, you know? And I, I was, I was so enamored with that. I thought, I don't want to take one class on this. I want to go to a program that actually teaches us this kind of stuff. And that was the beginning of going to a systems based. doctoral work and everything I learned I shared with Sharon. And another unique thing about that is that we committed very early in our training that we were going to spend some dough and we didn't have a whole lot of dough, but we were going to spend some dough training with founders of family therapy because most of them were still alive at that point and still doing training. So, you know, We've had experiences with Carl Whitaker, Ivan Boorstein, Nage, Chloe Madonna's, Jay Haley, you know, significant folks that shaped the field. And it's kind of a hoot.

And I think that all fit into thinking systemically about helping people heal. Terry and I in working our way through graduate school, I was the marketing director for an elderly housing care facility. that had independent apartments that kind of assisted living and a personal care home. And Terry was the director of the personal care home. And that was our job to get us through school. And what we began to notice happen is that people would do things like they would tell their parents they were gonna take them on vacation and they would pack them up and they would bring them and drop them off at the personal care home. there was so little communication in the family about death, about dying, about end of life issues, that people were literally kidnapping their parents and taking them to the, to the facility where Terry was the director. So his dissertation, which Lance has just been through a recent experience, but Terry's dissertation began working with these families of working to reestablish love and trust in these adult children caring for aging parents and seeing the dynamic in the room of not just meeting with the kids to talk about their relationship with their parents or not just meeting with the parents about the atrocity that the kids had done, but getting the families in the room together to say, wow, this didn't go well. How can we make this different? So your dissertation was a huge part of a stepping into intergenerational family healing and the work that you got enamored with, with Ivan Borshimany Nag.

Yeah, everything has been a kind of a revolt around that idea of restoring love and trustworthiness, you know. So, you know, contextual family therapy is where really restoration therapy started. mainly because this was the only theoretical approach that took trustworthiness seriously. Ivan Naj was the only one that really talked about how trustworthiness occurs. You know, everybody talks about love and unconditional positive regard and all that kind of stuff back in the Stone Age when we were doing our therapeutic work. Nobody was talking about trustworthiness. I mean, you have these little dabbles. of the word trust showing up in attachment theory. You have a little dabble of it showing up in developmental theory with Eric Erickson, but nobody tears the thing apart like, you know, this thing about balance in relationships, justice happening, really the fairness issue of relationships and building a sense of safety. That's where we really began and were first attracted to the idea of contextual theory. The problem was, is that Ivan Böszörmenyi Nagy, he was a Hungarian psychiatrist, he wrote like a Hungarian psychiatrist. So understanding and tearing apart that was really an art. And I really worked at that.

And.

Started, you know, the only way that I can learn something is basically to simplify it into a language that not only I can understand, but also everybody else can understand. So I started doing that in the first book that I wrote. I kind of translated contextual theory in a lot of ways. I went on to do some work in forgiveness, which is just a further extension of the family that I came from, learning how to do that intergenerational healing in my own family and then report about it in their forgiveness work. But it became evident to me that every time that I would talk about intergenerational work, I was translating contextual therapy and helping people understand how love and trustworthiness happened. And like Sharon said, I think it was like 1994 or something like that, where just Just as a portion of helping people understand the dynamics that go on around love and trust. I drew out this, the paint chart that you see in everything that we use as the basis of the coping mechanisms of what people do, blame, shame, control and escape. which was, which was like one of those aha moments. You know, I'd say that was one of the first aha moment that helped me understand forgiveness a ton and started extending me. And that's when I started, you know, I didn't really realize it at the time, but that's when I started running a little afoul of contextual theory because they, they didn't like the idea of forgiveness. They liked the idea of exoneration, which was, which is totally empty. I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't hold to the idea of trustworthiness because basically it's, it's basically excusing the victimizer and letting it go. And I, I thought when I, when I first read that, I thought, that doesn't exactly sound like a healing moment, but. sounds like you have to, you, you pile it on the victim and say, now you have to find your own way out of it. So, you know, the work of forgiveness kind of evolved. And we were, we're still calling ourselves contextual therapists, but we were heading somewhere else.

Yeah.

And the, the story he was telling me at breakfast, actually, the pain chart that we were talking about, the blame, shame, control and Escape. These are the four ways that we see people when they're responding. pain. He said he was actually drawing that out. He was working in a hospital setting in Amarillo, and he needed a way to communicate to the people in the group their own responsibility in difficulty they were having in relationships. And so you draw this chart out, and we find this true today when we're in a group of people and we draw this chart out and say, when you feel pain, there are four basic ways you react. blame, shame, control and escape. People connect to that, you know, and instead of feeling bad about what they do, the thing that's been so astonishing to us, I think, is that then they begin to go, How can I stop doing this? So it is a therapy model that from the beginning, people can begin to think, I can see what I need to do differently, and I am empowered to make a change in my life that's going to make a change in my relationships. So, you know, people that have packed their parents up in the car and taken them and dropped them off at a elderly housing facility have something to work with as they understand what their coping was, you know, and, and how they got you know, to that place. So that chart was drawn at a hospital in Amarillo simultaneously in Amarillo. We were getting involved with a place called the Hottaway Experience, which trained us to do marriage intensives. And some of you are familiar with marriage intensives. Basically, it's four distressed couples, most of them on their way to divorce, two therapists in a room for four days for eight to 10 hours a day trying to figure out the problems. And we were laughing a little bit this morning because we were talking about this blame, shame, control escape and about contextual therapy. And basically, although contextual therapy helps you understand foundationally issues, it doesn't help you change. and we were laughing this morning about, you know, you get in a room with four couples, eight people that are all angry. There's something that makes you begin to think, I gotta help these people change.

Yeah. You better have some game at that point.

Oh, boy.

Yeah. So that stepped us into, I think that.

Yeah.

What year was that? The hideaway when you first two?

2006.

Okay.

So, you know, basically we were heading, we were doing therapy much better, but it was, it was, we were focused primarily on private practice, working with families, working with reconciliation, working with the ideas of how you get better. So, you know, We still have this contextual idea in our mind, but we were much better at implementing it where the contextual theory is more of an analytic type approach that you understand something and aha, I changed somehow. We were, our work up to that point was really about how do we put wheels and arms and legs on actually doing something differently. And when the Intensives, the opportunity came along, they created this thing called the Fear Dance or the Pain, you know, what we had eventually called the Pain Cycle. And, you know, when we first saw that, we were like, oh, you know, we've been doing that for years, but we draw that much better, more accurately, because we we had this understanding that primary emotions drive secondary emotions. So, you know, we quickly modified that into a little more expansive approach that was a little more accurate psychologically from this fear dance into this pain cycle. And the next big change was one of my supervisees at that time came to me and said, you know, you do a great job at explaining how people, you know, really get in trouble and how their reactivity gets them and things like that. So it said, shouldn't there be a, a positive cycle? Because people aren't always that way. And that was extraordinarily disappointing to me. It was a real wake-up call because, you know, I had made my living for years telling people what was wrong with them and helping them understand what was wrong with them. But they, the, the, but that was a turning point in terms yeah, if there's a pain cycle, there's got to be something that promotes the good stuff out of people. And, you know, we, we toss that around as a group, those of us that were doing intensives, and we finally settled in on this idea of peace, because that in essence is that when you're, we didn't use this terminology at the time, but when you're emotionally dysregulated, when you're activated, that's the bad stuff that's coming out of you. What is the opposite of that? And that's where we settled into the idea, you're at peace, your brain isn't activated, your brain is actually capable of thinking its way out and the best part of you comes out. So, you know, 2006-2007, we had those components of the peace cycle coming online. So, you know, we had the pain cycle, Peace Cycle 2006-2007-2008 and then saying, so what do you do with that? One of the things that we were, the people that trained us, we realized very quickly, you do not have an answer of how to help these couples out of it. They understand one another, but it doesn't produce the change that they need to be able to practice and implement. So we started, that's when we started working on the four steps and By 2010, I started seeing that, you know, everything that I've thought contextually, I started seeing everything come together. And that's, you know, since about 2008, 2010, we're saying, this is the crux of contextual therapy. This is a different way of doing therapy. So then we're after the races, you know?

The other significant thing I think that happened, another aha moment, I remember Terry was invited to teach at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena in 2008. So we moved from Texas to California and had the privilege of teaching at Fuller Seminary which opened up a lot of doors for us in a lot of ways. But one of the the first semester we were there, it just so happened that N.T. Wright was speaking at a church that was across the E- Freeway from Fuller. So we went to hear N.T. Wright that night, and it was before he had written the book. Oh, what is it?

After you believe.

After you believe, yeah. And, but he was talking about Ephesians 4, and he was talking about old self, new self behavior. He was talking about how he changed. He was talking about the theology behind that. Terry and I are sitting at Lake Avenue Church and we are just punching each other. It's like, oh my gosh, this is not only very psychologically sound, this has huge ramifications for discipleship and spiritual growth. So that, I remember that night really as an amazing moment of just saying, wow. The implications here are absolutely incredible from a spiritual format as well. One thing we like about RT is that it's applicable to both people that have a faith background and it's also applicable to people that aren't, that don't. But the reality of that, that night, I think, really came home.

Yeah, it is absolutely I mean, I think that was when, when I first heard about restoration therapy, it was one of those things where Jennifer and I were kind of talking through this idea of, like, how people change and, you know, like, and, you know, how do you come into this new self? And we kept on talking about that. And I remember sitting, hearing Terry talk about restoration therapy in the room. I'm like, this is it.

This is it.

This is the Merit. And it just. It just harmonizes so well. It's so much theological Merit, you know, when you're trying to look at from a. Like a Christian perspective, like, of, like, this is. This works when you're looking at shifting from this old man to the. To the new self that we're called to be in.

Yeah.

So I I totally have loved that part about restoration therapy.

I think Lance, you're talking about that. It's reminding me of another moment. You were there at Pepperdine University. We got together a group of RT therapists. It was a small group of about 20 people, but we talked about scripture.

We called it the RT dialogue.

The RT dialogue.

Which is the name of this podcast. Oh, water of that moment. Did you, this is, yeah.

Yeah.

And we sat in that room and the and we talked about Romans and how it applied in Colossians and I mean people were just popping verses out left and right in theological concepts. So yeah that was an amazing moment that I'd forgotten about that you were there when we were starting to work through those things.

So yeah here's a little known fact though that I've only I've only confessed this to Sharon and maybe two or three other people. Oh, big deal.

So, making news.

So, you know, we knew this stuff worked, right? Yeah, you identify this pain cycle, you name the pain that you feel, and it mobilizes your ability to start changing. and making choices. So you start heading into the peace cycle. And the mechanism to do this is this mindfulness, stupid little saying of the four steps, you know, say what you feel, say what you normally do when you feel that way, say the truth, and then, you know, go out and do it.

Right.

Well, so. I. I knew this was. I knew by 2009, when I saw all this coming together, I thought, I've got to write a book on restoration therapy. But to be very honest with you, by the time I finished that book, I really was feeling like, I hope this book can just fly under the radar. I hope nobody reads it because the ideas in it at, particularly at the time, sounded so dorky or unacceptable to the therapeutic community in terms of really, you're, you're gonna just say your truth. You're, you're gonna, you're gonna take an authoritative position on your own identity, your sense of safety. I mean, I you know, I know that that's only 15 years ago, but that was a, that was a huge step off the block at that time, therapeutically, to professionally write a professional book in the field of counseling psychology to say, yeah. So I was, I was actually secretly hoping no one would ever read that book.

You actually had a colleague call you and say something like, this is a little hokey.

Yeah.

I had a colleague that says, you know, this stuff about the truth, that's, that's just hokey. And I, I was like, yeah, I, you're right, but that's what you have to do. And, and as we, as we started realizing more and more, you know, what kept me going through that was the idea that, you know, I know people change when they do this stuff. And so we started exploring, started doing practicums at Fuller Theological Seminary. Lance, you were part of that first practicum group that we did, which was a radical throwback because, you know, we did We did, we created co-therapy teams. They would see three or four clients every Tuesday night, and I'd see at least one of those sessions for eight different people, and I'd give them feedback and they'd learn how to do restoration therapy, and they'd learn how to get better at it, and I would learn where the weak points were in terms of what we needed to work on more. And that led to about 10 years of doing faculty-led practicums at Fuller, which was a wonderful teaching experience for me. But I think also, you know, it just revolutionized the way that people did therapy. What I started noticing right off the bat is that people that went through that process, they they didn't become competent therapists, they didn't even become good therapists, they became great therapists.

So one thing I think RT does for the therapist is that it helps them organize where they're going, it helps them bring structure to what happens in relationships, and it helps people be able to step forward and to know what to do. You know, I think I think some of the things we've been kind of counter to the therapy movement over the years is this idea that individual therapy, people come to their therapist, they talk to them about what's wrong, the therapist is very empathetic and understanding, which is good. We believe in empathy. We keep telling people that. We believe in empathy. But there's not often sometimes therapists ask for change. So there, we've been fighting that a little bit. And then I think another huge movement in the therapy world in the last 20 years, 25 years, it's been so destructive, is this whole idea of boundaries. This idea, I do believe in boundaries. Let me say that. But boundaries is not just about saying no and cutting off. And somewhere along the way, it became healthy to have good boundaries and to just cut people out of your life that didn't do relationship the way that you wanted them to. And I think that's gotten us to this place today where one of the greatest problems in America right now is isolation and people living alone, which leads to depression and anxiety. But through the years when Terry was teaching restoration therapists and I was leading marriage groups in our living room. We were fighting this concept of, well, isn't my partner supposed to meet my need? Isn't my job here in this therapy or in this small group that we're in, isn't my job to communicate clearly to my partner what they need, what I need from them so they can do it and we'll be okay? problem is when you have two dysregulated people, nobody wants to do that. So those are, I think, some of the trends in therapy that when we say restoration therapy was stepping off the block, those are some of the things. Is there anything else that I'm missing?

Yeah. When we make this statement, and we still make this statement, you know, is that, hey, because sort of the I, and it's a fine therapeutic approach, approach, emotionally focused therapy. They're basically the, the main people that are pushing this idea of need meeting as intimacy. What we would say is that, yes, that's appropriate for children, but when you, so it's totally appropriate to need meat. when you're parenting, but when you try to translate that into marriage and parent your partner, that really screws up things and leaves no place where you can go. If you concentrate on emotional regulation like we do in RT, then you're really doing a more traditional idea of intimacy that, you know, as I share my thoughts, my motivations, my emotions, with Sharon, not only does Sharon understand me more, but I understand myself more. That makes us a good partner to be able to take on life and do things that we need to do. So we're very much, I think that that's one of the main vistas that restoration therapy explores. Of course, emotionally focused therapy much, much more popular and.

And a lot of people are helped.

And a lot of people are helped by that. But fundamentally, you have to ask that question.

And.

We'Re starting to see, of course, that those things run their course and people see the inability of their partner to make them feel better. out of this kind of parenting attitude. So when you get people that are self-regulated, then they come together and it's really a fulfilling experience. So that has been... That would be.

Another thing we were kind of running cross-culture to therapy and talking more about that partnering issue.

More recently, you know, is the kind of the misinterpretation of restoration therapy. I think that this is what we've been battling the last four years since we turned the last decade, is that people are so excited because they love, they love understanding their pain and peace cycle. They're like, yeah, that, that makes so much sense. Yes, yes, yes. And so Restoration Therapy, people have gotten used to calling it the pain in the peace cycle. The challenge of the last four years is saying, if you think that that's what restoration therapy is, you've got it all wrong. The restoration therapy is about the four steps actually changing when you're in the midst of your pain, being able to self-regulate into a position of peace. That has required in the last four years really operationalizing more and more in terms of embodiment, in terms of practice, in terms of role play, in terms of changing the way we do therapy from a sitting down position to literally standing up and working with our clients in order to teach them step by step how to do their four steps when they are emotionally dysregulated to get themselves in a position where they can be constructive and the good stuff of their personhood and their identity and their fairness comes out.

And I think, and I don't really have an aha moment for this, but I think somewhere in the last 10 years there's been an aha moment from what we've learned from neuroscience about the brain. I don't know if you remember, was there a day or a place? I remember Kurt Thompson hearing him speak one time that we were like, oh, wow.

I just think that that's been developing over the last 10 years. You know, Vandercook's book, the Body Keeps the Score, and him saying one of the things that surprised him was that you didn't really have to talk about trauma in order to change it. And I remember thinking, yeah, that's exactly right. Restoration therapy. You don't have to understand all the mechanics of that for you to be able to get yourself emotionally regulated in a better place where you can function. But particularly now, you know, as opposed to 2010, when I was almost like, I was worried that people would make fun of me for writing the book. There's just more and more research that comes out. Lance, you sent me an article the other day, says basically it's the practice and the intentionality of mindfulness that actually makes the difference that switches yourself from doing destructive behavior and making it more constructive and instructive to the relationship. So those things are encouraging. They show up more and more every day. So I think that time is on our side, neuropsychologically and mindfully deploying that neuropsychology to be able to say, yeah, to call out what your pain is in a operational way, to be able to call out what you need to do in order to hit the other direction and then operationalize and embody that through the four steps. That makes all the difference in the world.

Yeah.

And I think the other research that we spent more time looking at over the last several years has been the research on self-regulation. and how people that self-regulate can self-regulate are just that much more successful in life. And I don't mean they make more money. I mean, they have cleaner teeth, they have better friends, they do better in their marriages. They, you know, they don't go to jail. They don't go to jail.

They don't go to jail.

But, you know, they do better on the ACT and SAT. you know, all these things that the research says if we, and of course, if somebody is more successful in all those things, it's also going to play out into their relationships as well because they're not balancing chaos as much. So I think that we've also spent more time just in reading the research on self-regulation. It's been so helpful.

The research clearly points out you have less addiction, less problems, and you do better at relationships. So, you know, like I said, time is on restoration therapies side. And so to speak, in that framework, it's because it's, it's an operationalized theory of how to get people emotionally regulated and actually practice those things. in the moments where when they get emotionally dysregulated, they know the way out. There was something intuitive about that 20 years ago. Now it's. The research is catching up to it. So, you know, so RT will take over the world. Is that.

Probably not.

Probably.

But let me say. Let me say, this is my passion. This is my most recent passion. I think all our problems with politics, all our problems with family cut-offs, all the things that we face can be greatly helped if we would all learn how to self-regulate.

Isn't it true? I mean, if we could just slow it down and get ourselves in the right place, you know, and just get dialed in and like really examine that big plank that's sitting in our eye, that maybe there's something that I could work on in myself and then I can come to the table, have a good discussion with my friend or even my enemy.

And the great thing about restoration therapy is that it teaches you that in a compact model that you don't have to go looking at life, I wonder what I'm doing wrong. I mean, it is absolutely consistent with you. you because of the way the brain works. So it's. It's easy to find, and it's easy to find your way out if you want to. That's. I mean, that in itself, you know, what is it? Occam's razor is the idea that when you can explain things in lesser principles, it's better, right? So, you know, when we get it down to four steps, I think we're pretty close to the razor, you know? No doubt.

Yeah, I'm actually thinking, you know, I remember being in my practicum experience. And I remember being in the other room, probably like one of our first times, I was working with Corey Page and she is just this natural, amazing therapist. Um, but her and I were working, with, with a client and, her and I are, we think we're doing this amazing work. I mean, for a practicum, what would happen is you would work with your client for about, you know, 30 minutes or 20 minutes, and then you'd have to take a break. And at this break, I remember we would go in and then we would get to talk with, you know, the whole crew that was in there, mainly Terry, and, Terry would kind of give us feedback and tell us what to do. and go in there and do this. And I remember oftentimes in the beginning and Terri was like, do you even know what you're doing? And the actual response was, I have no clue what I'm doing. I think this happens for so many therapists. We don't know what we're doing. So what we do is we know what works and what works is if I can give you empathy, and come alongside you and say, oh, that makes sense. You know, that that's such an easy move that we can do in therapy. I think the other easy move we can do in therapy as we're showing empathy is we can help them lay down these boundaries to say, oh, yeah, that's too much work. Stay away from that person. And I think the one thing that you've taught us to do both you both of you guys and has, has been to say, no, there's something better for this person. There's something better for this person. We can, we can go somewhere else. We don't have to lean on the empathy lens. There's, we can actually call them to greatness. And I think that's one of the beautiful things about restoration therapy, as we call people to greatness through helping them to work through those stinking four steps. And, yeah, so I, I have been so thankful for that of, like, okay, where's the greatness here? How can we bring up, call that person up? I love it.

It's not as complicated as you think.

It's interesting to hear because it's easy. I mean, I have a couple of your books up here on my shelf, Terry, and it's, it's easy to kind of. at least now have this assumption that things kind of came out already all baked and done. But to hear the journey of you two over the last, well, that first systems class and probably before that even, to hear all the cool points along the way that brought this all together, I don't know, it's kind of like mind-blowing and I know there'll be other points along the way. as well. I just had this curiosity about your systems class. What was it that was like? Because I remember being in my systems class and doing the genogram for the first time at Fuller, and that changed my life. But I'm just curious if you remember being in that systems class and what it was exactly that captivated you or what you shared with Sharon about that.

Well, the first thing that, that got me, first of all, is the idea that, you know, systems was the first time that you weren't doing this kind of perspective of learning about how to manipulate people's brain, you know, and having them doing the Deep Journey inside. But you were looking at, first of all, were the interactions in relationships, which was much more telling. And so you weren't guessing what's going on in their head. You were seeing what they were thinking and doing in their relationships. That was one of those enlightening first moments. The other thing is that, you know, kind of breaking out of that humanistic Rogerian type idea is that, you know, the kind of the mythology. And I use that word purposely, that if I, if I, if I'm honest and empathetic and genuine with my clients, they'll, there will be something inside of them that automatically makes them better. That is just hooey, you know? And Family Systems was calling that out and saying, no, you have to change something. you as a therapist need to help the client change. And some of that was in the dynamics and specifics of the relationship. Some of that was in giving them a different kind of insight about how relationships work. But that's what really turned my screw is that we're talking about something that has the potential of dynamically changing a person or a family or a relationship in one or two sessions versus forever.

Yeah.

And we had a practicum experience like Lance is talking about where we had to do therapy in front of a professor and a group of other people. And it was always remarkable to me that you could put somebody in a different chair in the room. and it would change the dynamic of the conversation. I mean, that's just magic. If you have a, you know, enmeshed adult child sitting between two adults and you pick him up and you put him in another chair, and then you have the same conversation that you just had, it's totally different. So the. The being able to see that by the way we understand what's happening in the system, We can do such small things that can make the whole dynamic shift. It was, it was kind of magical.

Yeah.

Would you consider RT, like if people asked you, would you, would the word, experiential be applied?

Absolutely. That, that's where it's, yeah. That's where it fits in the, in the therapeutic framework. It's very much an experiential model. We do have insight, but most, like most experiential therapies, they actually embody something, but it's for the purpose of understanding something in the past. very seldom does it have that forward looking lens of experiential framework of saying, how do I do something different? I think that that's, that's maybe.

More.

Dramatically where restoration therapy is heading is not just understanding what you did, but actually changing direction on what are the potential things that you can do and actually practicing those in session. actually bringing those things to bear in everyday life. That's where we're headed. In fact, I would go so far as to say, you know, I've spent my life training therapists. So I had 36 years in academia training people how to do therapy. And I would say that basically training programs as a whole what we do is we train people, 95% of our time is training people on how to ask the right question of our client. You know, the right question or the right insight that's going to make them go, oh my God, I've never realized that before. You know, this changes everything. You know, these magic moments in therapy. What we know now is that they are enlightening. They are motivating, but they don't result in change. They don't go out and change everything. They actually stay exactly the same with just better insight. You know, my quest the last four or five years is at which we've been at doing is to say, no, that which we learn to do in graduate school should only consist of about 20% of therapy. It's not that empathy is empty or anything like that. It's not. It's a good thing. It's empowering. Insight is empowering in terms of motivating your client. the real tale of the tape really comes down to moving the client into actually changing their behavior. And that's what 80% of therapy should be about. None of us were trained that way, but that's what we're trying to catch up on in restoration therapy are the ways that we actually help clients embody that. for instance, you know, like one of my favorite interventions that you do is, you know, when you're working with a client about what they're going to face when they go home after this session, you have them write down four possibilities of things that are currently going on in their life that they want to address and you have them put it on the floor and stand in front of it and say, well, choose one of them and let's work on that. And they go and stand on that card and they say, well, okay, so what are the next step? And you help them work out the mechanics of actually what they do. And then you role play it with them to actually give them practice of how to do that when they get home. I, you know, that's, that is the game changer of therapy when your clients walk out saying, not only do I understand myself, but I actually know what I should be doing. And I know how to deploy that action into a behavior when, as soon as I get home, you know, that's the undiscovered country, I think, therapeutically that that we're bumping up with in restoration therapy.

I also think that's part of the reason we've seen this mass move from people going to therapy to people going to coaching. I think people go to coaching because they want somebody to help them change. And therapy has this reputation that, you know, I, I always tell my new clients when new clients come in, I sound pretty directive. and I'm going to tell you pretty much, you know, what you need to do. And a lot of them will say, thank you. I spent years in therapy, and I feel like all I've done is sit in the room and talk. And so I think that's why a lot of people are stepping out of therapy and saying, I'm going to go find myself an executive coach that's going to help me actually do things different. And so I think as therapists, we got to catch up. you know, with that desire, people have to change.

Try to go somewhere.

Try to go somewhere. Yeah.

Yeah.

I do love that intervention, by the way, Rhett, that no card intervention. When you just get your client, you just hand them out, like five no cards, and you say, all right, let's talk about five things this week that is going to happen to you that's going to trigger your pain cycle. Write them down right now. and you just kind of have them put them, stand up and talk about each one and like, okay, pick one. Let's, let's work, work it through. I love that intervention.

Well, you know, Lance and I have been talking a lot here the last several months, right? On a lot of calls and different things. And it's, I don't know. I'm listening as you two, as everyone's talking. I don't know. The great thing about this community is it, it. forces me. And I mean that in the best of ways to try to continue to grow because I've watched Lance work in the room and as I've watched Nicole, you know, and, and even on a, on a video call watching Nicole and Lance interact and, and listen to you, like, you just can't get, you just can't sit on your law, you're like your laurels and get comfortable as a therapist and not like try to step out in the room. And I think it's easy to do that, but I just think I'm reminded every time I interact with RT people that I gotta keep growing as a therapist. And I don't know, that's just that experiential piece is so important. I think, Terry, you said at the anxiety intensive when we were doing the pilots, I think you said at one point that you used to believe it was something like 80% insight, 20% practice, but now I believe it's 20% insight, 80% practice. Is that correct? I mean, I'm just saying.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that if we're talking about the name of the secret of therapeutically helping people is the practice piece. And, you know, actually it's the easiest part to actually implement. you know, Insight gets extraordinarily confusing in all these theories and all this kind of stuff. But actually, change is not that difficult. It's. It goes back to Basics. That's why it's. It's. It's not flashy, but it. It actually works. And at the bottom line, that's what we have to help our clients do. It's just. something that we have forgotten, I think. You know, I was, you know, I'm a big baseball fan. We're, we're both big baseball fans. But, you know, when a hitter gets into a slump, you know, so you have somebody that, you know, Jacks 40 home runs the previous season and then is hitting a buck 50, you know, the next season, you know, you don't see them. you know, turning their hands and saying, oh, what is it with me? Or something like that. What you see them do is they, they go get somebody and say, watch me hit a thousand balls. What is it that I'm doing? And somebody comes along, you know, in, you're, you're lifting up your left knee. You didn't do that last season. Go, go back to this. And they and they practice their way out of it. You know, I, those kind of, those kind of things, you know, if you look at human beings, they're really 40 home run hitters every year because they are so remarkable. They're so precious. They're so gifted. Everybody is. Human beings are quite remarkable. But, you know, our job as therapist is just to spot. Yeah, this is where you get emotionally dysregulated. You gotta stop doing that. Go back to the stuff that works so that you're Jack and 40 home runs again. You know, that. That seems to make sense. But, you know, in therapy, we somehow want to make it much more complicated.

That's so interesting. I think about. This is so funny. I'm thinking about. some of my people I've worked, like my associates I've had over the years, and I find that they'll get into the yips and their therapy. And they're, they're like number one thing they think about doing when they get the yips is there must be another model I could practice. I'll see about trying out this other model I could practice and do that. I'm curious, you know, I imagine there's probably some people that are listening to podcasts that have the therapeutic yips and they're just kind of stuck there. What would you say to them, Terry, based off of this then?

It's like that discipline of I know what works. You know, we all have clients that come in and say, I don't want to see any more of those circles in front of me anymore. You know, I don't want to do that. What else have you got? and we literally need to look at them and say, you know, human nature, where we stand right now, this is what works. Hey, I got nothing else for you. So you can. I can certainly give you the name of another therapist, but if you want to change, this is. This is the road that we have to go on. And it takes a lot of Courage not to be allured. to go do that. You know, there are a lot of good insight-based therapies. You know, I always think that, you know, you should be a connoisseur of that kind of understanding. There's, there's a lot, there's a lot of, a lot of things that I've learned from EFT or strategic therapy or structural family therapy. or even psychodynamic work like object relations. You know, there are a lot of things to understand, but at the end of the day, it comes down to actually practicing what I know produces change. Not that tickles my insight, but actually produces change. insight.

It's a good phrase. I was wondering, and this is for you, for either of you, was there a therapist you ever saw work.

That.

You were like, this is amazing. I want to be not necessarily like that type of therapist, but was inspiring someone you trained under or you two observed in any type of, of your, you know, grad school or post-grad school work?

Well, as Terry mentioned before, I mean, we spent our dollars for him to go see Haley work and George Minnigh and Chloe Madonas. I mean, we, when I, when I think of the therapist that we got to see through his eyes, work. I mean, it was a lot of the founding fathers of the field, mothers and fathers of the field. I think that radically changed us would be my response.

Yeah.

I remember sitting as a graduate student, watching a tape of Sal Minuchin do work, and literally in the first five minutes of the tape, he made three interventions. And this was first session. The first five minutes of the first session, he made three interventions with the family. And I was like, man, that guy is a wizard. So I I I don't know that I I I actively thought, like, whoa, I want I want to be that powerful in the therapy room or anything like that because, but I just thought that to be so skilled that you can, you can read the room and read therapeutic moves. I think that that is really a, a wholesome goal for a therapist to have.

Yeah, I was just, the reason I was asking the question is I think anytime again, we're around a bunch of RT people and watching people work. It's, it's pretty inspiring, you know, to, to, to see that happen and to kind of influence us as therapists to want of, to continue our craft. And again, I kind of get the sense that, cause you two have been doing therapy how long? what do you, would you say?

40 years.

40 years. And have you seen it just a continual, like, growth process over the 40 years? I mean, was there ever a place where you're like, hey, I'm a good therapist right now? Has it always been just.

Yeah, yes, but. Right. You know, I mean, I'm, I'm. I knew by the 1990s, I was a really good therapist, right? But here's, here's been the characteristic that I've always been surprised of. Every two years, two to three years at most in my career, I think to myself, man, I am really seeing it now. I am, I'm really getting it, and it each Evolution every two, three years, I think, yes, now I see it. You know, I couldn't believe. I can't believe I didn't see this a couple of years ago. You know, that's. That's terribly gratifying to know that, you know, you're still growing in those areas and still learning how to do therapy. Well, because this is a complicated thing that we do.

And I think, Brett, to your question, implies, and it's true because of RT, that you get to see other people do work. I think there are a lot of therapists in private practice that don't get that opportunity. I mean, restoration therapy was born out of eight therapists at Amarillo Family Institute committing to do marriage intensives together. And every Thursday we would meet. for at least an hour, and we would hammer it out, and we would role play, and we would, you know, work together. And I. I remember, you know, my memory that Terry and I actually owned the private practice, and the other therapists worked for us. But I'll never forget walking out of every Thursday, almost every Thursday, thinking, God, I'm not a very good therapist, you know, because I was so. inspired by the people that I worked with, and they had different gifts and different talents that I did. But I do encourage the people that are listening, if you're not in an opportunity where you're seeing therapist work, where you're learning more, where you're being challenged, you're missing out. And, and it's, it's intimidating because you will feel as you step into some of these environments that you're not very good. But it's a thing that I think it makes us sharp and keeps us moving and makes us, you know, better. So I think. I think we're very privileged in RT that we have a lot of opportunity to see other people's work and to show our work. The level two training that Terry does and Lance is starting to do with us. in the coming year, people actually bring videos of their work and they review it and they, you know, are vulnerable with each other. And it's always interesting. A couple of weeks before the training always starts, people actually read the information about what they've signed up and they're suddenly in this panel. You mean I'm gonna show my work? And, you know, then they walk out of the experience like, man, that has changed me because there's so many things that we do in the therapy room that we can't see that we're doing if we're just telling somebody else about our therapy. I mean, we maybe wouldn't say to somebody, well, you know, I was feeling a little anxious at this point. So I was talking really fast and wasn't really asking any question and giving the person too much information, and I was teaching them too much. You know, those are things that wouldn't be in my, in my conscious awareness. but somebody might be watching me or I might be watching somebody else and think, wow, that person really needs to slow down. Do I need to slow down when I do therapy as well? So I'm hoping that RT can create more of these kinds of examples. I know Rhett, Lance, you have that at your practice where you all work together. There are RT centers being developed around the country. that, you know, really focus on this one model and therefore have a lot to talk about and a lot to engage over what's working, what's not working, you know, what do I need to do differently. But I just love thinking that we're all always learning from each other because we're never going to know it all.

And that's the basis of that statement. really that Lance alluded to, the, the idea of real therapeutic courage is having your clients stand up when you don't exactly know what you're going to ask them to do. You know, that's, that's what happens when we see other people work. That's what happens when we have the courage to show our work to other people or say, I tried this and this is what I would do differently next time. I mean, that's how you. You really turn into a therapeutic wizard, is you learn to take chances. You're willing to be wrong and confident enough that you can fix your mistakes with clients, but you're also willing to go to that undiscovered place with clients. that they've never been before.

Do you think it's unique that there's a lot of restorative therapists doing the marriage intensive model or the anxiety model? Is that, you know, you just don't see intensives around very much across the country. And now, you know, I can think of all the RT therapists doing marriage intensives or anxiety intensives, you know, working with someone else in the room, which I think is, was life changing for me to sit, you know, for four days in a row next to another therapist and work with them. But that seems pretty unique to, I don't know, this group of people or RT in a sense. And I wonder if you have any thoughts on that.

I think it's unique. And it's essentially game changing because.

In.

I can't really stress this enough. That can only happen with a uber-organized model. In other words, you can't do that in a psychodynamic sense. You can't do that in an attachment sense. You have to know where you're going and you know, this this beautiful, simple idea that good stuff happens when you're emotionally regulated, bad stuff happens when you're emotionally dysregulated. Let's get you emotionally regulated so the good stuff comes out. I mean, that, that is very organized and only, oh, that potential only happens with something with it in restoration therapy. I mean, all so all the theory behind restoration therapy is just as genuinely enlightening as the deepest psychoanalytic theory that you can find, mainly because I think you can take restoration therapy and you can address any psychological problem that you, that you, that you can come up with, certainly in the DSM, you know. you can use restoration therapy in that model, which makes it, first of all, one of the few, right? But I mean, you know, solution focused therapy can't do that, you know, like it's not that there's anything wrong with solution focused therapy, but it can address deeper psychological issues. We, we can in RT and, but the, the the difference is that, yeah, we can take people away for four hours or four days, and we can totally change the direction that they're going. Most therapeutic models, no, they would need four years and a lot of time for the therapist to think in between time.

Gotta love the map.

Yeah.

I just want to say too, you know, the thing that I would love for people to experience, maybe that are listening today that have never felt successful in marital therapy, because we need more good marital therapists. the map is so helpful. And the majority of work that I do is with marital couples in conflict. And to have that system, Lance, that you're saying, that map in front of you, you know, most people say they do not want to work with couples because they can't deal, they don't like to deal with the fighting in the room. The fighting in the room is going to happen if you're wanting people to parent each other because they don't want to do that. They're angry and they're upset and they, I don't want to take care of my spouse. But if you have the pain and the peace cycle in front of them and the four steps and they start to get this dysregulated, it's so, I don't know, can I use the word easy? It's so easy as the therapist to say, what are you feeling? What do you normally do? What are you doing right now? What's the truth? What do you want to do differently? Let me help you do that now. I mean, and the thing is, as a therapist, if you're really using RT well, you're doing that multiple times in a session. and you watch people learn how to regulate themselves. It's, it's, and you, I mean, you, you're not doing the work. They're, they're the ones that are having to regulate because you have the map. Because you have the map, it helps people say, okay, I see what I'm doing that's wrong. I see what I'm doing that I need to do differently. So the drawing of the pain and the P cycle is that's crucial, as Terri said. But getting them in the room to do the four steps not only helps them change, but as the therapist, it gives you opportunity to not be afraid of them falling apart in the session or screaming at each other or whatever it is that therapists don't like about marital therapy.

Sharon, how fast do you have up typically? a couple's pain and peace cycle. How many sessions in?

Yeah.

Well, I would say, you know, we say, I would say I personally have both the pain and the peace cycle up in six to eight sessions.

Yeah.

Sometimes faster. And, you know, the great thing about RT is there's these psychoeducational groups now. relate strong. There's a lot of things. Some people already come to therapy already knowing their pain in their P cycle. They maybe need to do a little work on it and refine it a little bit more, but some people come in and hand it to me when they walk in the door. So that's really people. I, you know, a lot of people refer to me that are aware of the pain in the P cycle, but it's It's, and you can refine it along the way. You can start helping them regulate and get connected to one another and then go back and do some work on the pain and the peace cycle. So.

Do you think less therapists are wanting to do marriage therapist day or do you think, I don't know. I was thinking about your comment about like boundaries earlier and stuff. And I just, sometimes I wonder if, if a, a couple, someone in the marriage is like, I'm just going to go do my own work. I don't have a desire to do like marital work with you. That's my boundary, you know? And so I wonder if less people are going to couples work or we just have less therapists wanting to do it. I don't have an answer to that. I'm just curious.

Well, I think our perception, and of course it depends on the part of the country you live in as well, there's a difference. But what we would say is most therapists that we talk to, I would say over 50% of therapists that we talk to, we say, do you divide people up, people that come to you for marital therapy, do you send them to individual therapy? Over 50% of people are going to say yes. We think that's a mistake because what happens is when people that are married go into individual therapy, all they do in therapy is talk about what the other person's doing wrong. it's like a rumination over and over and over of what my marital problems are. Also, if they do any deep work about their own pain or what's going on, the spouse doesn't have the benefit of knowing it. So I think, and, and I would say even today when we work with, you know, like I said, there's restoration therapy centers around the country that are developing When Terri and I, we have people that bring their practice to come spend the weekend with us. There's typically a comment that someone says, that person and that person, they love to work with married couples, but the rest of us don't. And that always makes me a little.

Sad.

Because having both people in the room gets you both sides of the story. It helps you see the dysregulation. it's actually so much easier. So that's an area that I still hope RT can grow in, that we can really get back to developing a lot of programming for marriage marriages. If you go to conferences these days, psychology conferences, marriage and family therapy conferences, there's very few sessions on how to do marital therapy. So as therapists, we got to get back to get out there and present and help people understand. It's so beneficial and so helpful to the couple and so helpful to the children. I mean, when the parents start regulating, when they midwives regulated, the kids are just so excited about that, you know, because parents model regulation, being regulated. So there's There's a big area of growth, I think, for RT therapists to get more refined in doing excellent marital therapy because we have the model.

Yeah.

Sometimes by the time people end up with me, they're like, they both have their own individual therapists and sometimes coaches are working with on top of their therapist and they're like doing recovery group. It's just so much stuff, you know, and to trying to get them to kind of like Terry, you're saying this stick with the simple four steps. These are four steps and trying to get a couple to say, let's just do this therapy work, the couples work, and let's put everything else on hold for now is a challenge sometimes.

Yeah, I was laughing with a client of mine the other day and I just said, man, I wish I agreed with your individual therapist more than I do. you know, I'm just pretty outward out there about that because there's so much work that's Contra to the work of the healing of the marriage. And if you're.

We.

Terry and I try to get people to get rid of those people.

Yeah, it really. It really undermines the work.

It really does.

More than one therapist in the soup. Right. Just not gonna turn out well.

But if they have had a relationship with a person for a long time, I'm just pretty open and pretty out there about, I don't agree with that. Here's why. Let me tell you, you know, why I think that's not healthy. And your individual therapist has never seen the way you interact with your husband or your wife like I have.

Yeah, I think there's like five major reasons, right? When you would say it would make sense, Terry. like to that therapy is either going to be slow or it makes sense to separate them. Would you want to name those for us?

Well, traditionally, we talk about violence, we talk about an affair, we talk about an ongoing affair. An ongoing affair. So violence, ongoing affair, addiction, really personality disorder or psychological trauma. That's been the traditional answer. That's the academic answer that I would give in marital therapy. This is the answer that I give now.

Yes.

Yeah.

You can't. You can't do marital therapy in violent situations. And I would add you need to stabilize the addiction where you have at least one month of so sobriety before you do any marital work. But, and, and that sobriety has to continue. But for the rest of those, for instance, with trauma work, it, it benefits the couple tremendously to see the trauma work happen right in front of them. Same with personality disorders. Actually, personality disorders are much easier to work with, with a couple. rather than trying to see the individual, because with personality disorders, you don't know what story you're getting. You need a reality check in the room with what's going on. And so, you know, I'm very much so, you know, addictions and violence, those are the two reasons that we'd say, okay, I can't, I can't do couple work or family work at this point.

Yeah.

And with the ongoing affair, you kind of are, you're mainly doing stabilization work, but you're not really doing couples work.

Yeah.

But in that case, I'm doing stabilization work with both partners. If there's an affair going on, therapy is going to end.

Yeah.

Marital therapy.

Marital therapy. Yeah.

The other thing I just that kind of goes along this line of thinking is this whole idea of trauma. And I just want to say Terry and I are both trauma survivors, which I would not have put myself in that category for some reason up until the last 10 years. But as we've defined trauma, as we've thought about working with trauma, I began to realize that both of us come from trauma. So I like to say that just.

Because.

We'Ve been able to stabilize, we've been able to move forward, we've been able to love each other deeply, we've been able to live empowered lives. Live empowered lives. And that's what RT helps you do. I I didn't realize that. until, like I say, the last several years, is that people helping me learn how to take the next step was the way that I always got through the trauma that I lived when I was young. I didn't know it. I couldn't have named it at the time. I couldn't have told you that. But when I look back now and I realize the trauma I was in, that's what helped me, is people helping me move.

Forward.

So RT is an excellent trauma model to help people understand how can I keep going in the face of this difficulty? You know, we had 10 therapists at our house last week from LA after just going through the recent LA fires and just helping them understand how to help clients. They can grieve with them. They can be sad. they can hear about their loss, but all those people need somebody helping them say, okay, I've lost my house. I've lost my livelihood. What can I do now? So in the midst of empathy, you're also helping people move. It was. It was a pretty phenomenal weekend in that regard.

Yeah.

Well, makes me want to be a better therapist. I need to work on this.

I love it.

That's what we all need to be, Rhett. We all need to be better therapists.

I was thinking about, you know, Lance, you had the fortunate, the call blessing to meet them at Fuller, right?

You're.

Terry was watching you behind the magic.

Yes.

One-way mirror. But it was, I started doing the intensives in 2010 before I'd met you. And I remember it was the same model, but as you recall, the language wasn't all the same. But I remember literally coming home after that retreat where I was sitting third chair in October 2010, I think it was Todd Sandell and I can't remember who the other therapist was. It might have been Jenny.

And.

Heather picking me up and her and I getting into conflict over breakfast. And I just said my four steps at breakfast like that. I had learned a few days earlier and Heather had no clue what was coming out of my mouth. And it changed literally our dynamic change in that moment. I remember oh, this, this works. Like, this works. And I went to therapy later that week with a really great experiential therapist I had in Dallas who trained under, like, Fritz Pearl and some other people. And he, we're working on some other stuff, and he had me up in the room moving around and everything. And I think it was just maybe Serendipity a little bit that the same week that I experience the pain and peace cycle and RT. I have this great experiential movement in my room with my therapist, and that clicked. And it wasn't, I think, to probably 2014, I went off to Fuller and did some training with Terry, and then he watched me do some sessions in Dallas over video. So it's been a, it's been a long, long journey, you know, and just a remarkable one for me in terms of the community and how amazing they've been and stuff. And so I'm just sharing that with you because I'm wondering, you know, as you think about RT and we have a conference coming up in a couple weeks as well. I'm curious, Terry and Sharon, what are you two most, I don't know, excited about right now in terms of RT, in terms of the community, in terms of things that I don't know, have you excited that you're thinking about, wondering about, curious about?

Well, I am amazed at all the things that are going on in the RT community. It's really exciting. And this conference is a conference that both Rhett and Lance have been part of a committee that they have put it together. Terry and I've had very little to do with it. It's the first time that we've had a step back and had a group of people that said, We will take that on. It's been an incredible experience. The last weekend in January, this is when Terri and I had this practice here from LA. Seven, I mean, 10 therapists that were here from LA. that same weekend, our colleague Eric Solwin was teaching a level one training in Dallas. That same weekend, the co-authors of our new book that's called the Mindful Marriage, Ron and Nandalee were speaking in Oklahoma City to a crowd of over a thousand people. That same weekend, our colleagues, Meegam Gwen and Miyoung Hammer were doing an anxiety intensive in California. Now that's one weekend. I know of things that were going on the weekend before and I know of things that were going on the weekend after. So what's, I think what's so inspiring to me right now is just all the different, what Terri was mentioning earlier, all the different applications of this model. Oh, also that same weekend, a good friend of ours, Michael Cox, was submitting a rough draft of a book on parenting to us. You know, RT has so many applications and to see different people pick up their own passion and start developing the model in different ways that Terri and I have very little to do with. We get to just sit back and go, wow, look at all the stuff that was going on the last weekend in January. That's pretty amazing. I mean, I think that's been.

My.

High point and my dream that we can be supportive of people as they pursue their passions and how they use RT.

Yeah.

And that those things are exciting. I mean, I agree with you. But, you know, I'm.

I.

To boil it down more personally, you know, I. I see myself getting emotionally dysregulated and turning on those four steps and walking myself through those and good stuff coming out of me. I mean, yeah, I. I mean, I. I can. point to things this year that I'm, I'm better at emotionally regulating, and I still get plenty of practice of being emotionally dysregulated and having to do it again and again. But, I mean, for me, that's the amazing part, is, is that, you know, training and teaching people is one thing.

But.

Knowing the veracity of the truth about RT and seeing it change our marriage or change our lives. That's where the rubber meets the road for me.

Yeah.

Well, I'm just sitting here as you're talking, and I'm just thinking about.

The.

Way that you guys have changed my life and Like because of the way that Sharon, you asked me one day, you know, are you using these four steps in your house? And I was like, oh yeah, that's probably a good idea.

It changes- There's that directness coming out of it.

Yeah, gotta love it. But that changed everything for us. And I think about these magical moments I have in therapy. with people where restoration changes their lives, that their marriage, like, literally is saved. They were done. And I'm just so thankful. I I don't. I don't think we get to thank you guys enough for what you have done through your hard, hard work of creating this beautiful. motto. And I just, I don't even know where I'd be if it weren't for the time that you guys have put into really helping, you know, me, my team, Rhett, you know, I think I just, I'm so thankful for you guys and I'm just so honored that you guys would come on us and join this dialogue with us and I'm so excited for what the future has and just God bless you guys, man.

Well, we appreciate that, Lance. You know, that that's, that's one of the great things about even a small therapeutic movement like restoration therapy. It's, it's not, it's not our story. It's this, the story of many. And, you know, we don't, we don't represent RT. RT is truth because many people apply it, and that becomes the larger narrative. So, yeah, so in the same way, Sharon and I are way appreciative. you two. I mean, you all have been dynamic in that process for, I don't know, 15 to 18 years, believe it or not, along the way.

We met right when he was 30.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

And I, you know, I really appreciate we were, it must have been at wind shape over dinner one night somewhere, Sharon, you said something about desire to grow roots deep and not wide. You said it more eloquently than I am right now, but that stuck with me. And maybe it's because I just turned 50 or just stage of life I find myself in or looking around at culture. And there's a lot of things that take our attention that are flashy, especially in the therapy world and psychology and online and and I just feel like I'm more interested in a deeper formed life and I feel like RT offers that and I think whatever size it is or it grows doesn't matter as much as I think of the foundation it's built on, which is like therapists interested in going deep. Yeah, that's been significant and I think I'm excited to see everybody in a couple of weeks and just all the cool things that people are doing. And, you know, I'm laughing because I know sometimes when we have our own mind, how RT has worked, it can take some interesting paths. We got to kind of rein it back in.

Right.

But, yeah, but I just love that I have people in this community that have walked me through hard times and that I can also, like, laugh with and. Good conversation with and, are there for the long haul, you know? And so, yeah, we just appreciate you guys very much. And, you know, there's, I know there's more, there's more stories for sure that we'd love to hear. And we'll have both of you on again and, and more, details. And I, you know, my biggest fear, I know I could see Lance, our heads were spinning. I think we had like a million questions. We wanted to pepper at you, but. we'll leave that for later because there's all kinds of technical questions I think in the future too we want to get into in terms of therapy and other stuff too. But our hope is that RT dialogue will be a great place that people can come on and talk about the work they're doing within the RT community and we just appreciate you too and the foundation you've laid for all of us. It's just, it's beyond significant. So thank you.

Well, we're thank. Thankful you guys have been on the journey.

Yeah. Yeah, we're all. We're all fellow Travelers. It's great.

All right.

Well, thanks for this podcast.

Yeah.

Thank you for coming on.

You guys take care. Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Cheers.