Season 1 | Episode 20 | Special Guest, RT Therapist and TWU Professor, Dr. Mike Bishop

Lance, what's going on, man?

Show Rich.

It's been too long. I think it's. We haven't recorded in, like, three weeks.

I know. What were you doing during that time?

I was traveling with family. My daughter is going to college. I'm moving her in less. We're moving in less. About six. Ah, man. Less than six weeks.

So, sorry, I don't want to bring you up yet.

I mean, yeah, so we'll process this later. But I am in both grieving mode and excited mode for her, so that was a big family trip for us, so I was doing that. You were doing surgery.

Yeah. Do you like the way my new nose. It's more the inside parts that got changed, but, yeah. Well, I can breathe.

Yeah. Our guest was worried that it was going to impact your Southern California accent. Surfer accent, but so far, so good.

Okay, just let me know. I'll do my best to maintain form. Yes, bro.

Well, go ahead and let's introduce our guest. I'll let you. You start. You take that.

So our guest, when. When we asked how he'd like to be introduced, he really wanted us to, like, note every single accolade there is. But we got Mike Bishop here today, guys.

Dr. Mike Bishop.

Yes, Dr. Mike Bishop of Texas Wesleyan University. He's a professor out there. Very excited. We got to meet him at a turning from anxiety training. And this guy is a rich man. Like, and when I say rich, I mean, I don't know about financially maybe, I don't know. But, man, when you talk with him, he's got some good stuff. You know, his students rave about him. So I just appreciate a person that loves people and loves to care for people. Welcome, Mike.

Hey, thanks, guys. It's just fun to be here. I can't be rich because I've worked for churches half my life, so no income there whatsoever. But it's an honor and pleasure to be on here with you guys. This is great. I don't know why I'm here. I was telling Rhett earlier. So I haven't written a book. I don't have these, like, cool interventions that other people have come up with that I've learned about through RT dialogue. And I'm gonna take the podcast over for just a second because I want to give these guys. Everybody's watching. Some accolades. For me personally, I mean, this RT dialogue has been such a blessing because I just listened to it in my car, and I'm listening to. I'm going through, like, the sixth time. I'm listening to all of them. Again, because just the personalities that they have and the guests that they've had, I've really felt like I've gotten to know people and coming from not a fuller type of background, but a little bit different. When I came to Windshape, when I went to the, I went to Pepperdine things, I really didn't feel like I knew anybody. I knew Terry and Sharon had had a little bit of stint with, with Ron Deal, but everybody else was just kind of strangers. They were just like fuller people. But the dialogue has really done a good job of making me feel a part of the community just because I listened to everybody's thoughts and what they've been able to do, and it's really been personally helpful for me. So thanks, guys, for putting the work in and, and put this thing out.

Hey, man, it's our honor. It's our privilege. I mean, we call it RT dialogue because we really believe in the connecting with people and about really getting, like, fostering this community and like, really taking RT to the next level, I think, you know, as we talk about our lovely Terry stories and the like. But yeah, it's really good to have you on, Mike.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. That means a lot, actually, because I think that's one of our goals, is just try to connect people and.

Yeah.

And more so over the next several years. Just keep growing and, you know.

Yeah, because old guys are going to be disappearing. I mean, you know, Terry and Sharon's not going to be around forever. I'm not going to be around here, going to come up here and do.

This, have you, Terry, around for at least 40 more years.

So like I said, just, just for a little while.

And to bring it full circle, Mike, we have had two of two of your students on prior to you, so talk about impact. We had. Well, I'll just call her Dr. Tasha Kassar. She goes by Tasha. And then Bisola was on. Am I saying that right? I, I, I said her name right on the podcast, but I've had a few different formations of it.

I always say my students name very, very quickly because I screwed up. But Bisola is what I called her all the time, and she never corrected me after that first time.

Well, they both raved about you, and you were their entry point into rt. So I think one of the things that when I think about you, I think you bring it all together. You bring the model, the interventions, and you teach it to other people to use in their practices, or some people have moved on to also teach and stuff. So I think it's an awesome position you hold there. And so we're looking forward to hearing some stories. I. I guess I wanted to start with your connection with Terry because I know it goes way back. And, you know, I think your connection with Terry, that predated then your entry into RT itself. Correct? Yeah, correct.

The R2.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that was. I was this wandering graduate student, had been a youth and family Minister for like 17 years and got out of that and decided, what am I going to do when I grow up? So I decided to go to graduate school. And I grew up in Denton, by the way. So that's where Texas Woman's University is.

Texas.

Yeah. Yeah. So. So I started taking the courses and did what I wanted to do. So family therapy sounded really, really close to youth ministry at the time, which was the only thing that I knew. And so I had a good time in that program, met Terry there, and we were kind of in about the same time, and I didn't know what I was doing. I first came in thinking that I wanted to be Milton Erickson. I just really loved paradoxical therapy and. And deep system stuff, and tricking people was really kind of fun for me, and using some of those MRI type of techniques and just really kind of wandering and feeling my oats with therapy. And then, of course, Texas Woman's is a very systemic program. We have some great professors there. Bill Anderson was very close to Terry. I think he was his dissertation chair and, you know, several other folks that. Glenn Jennings had a great impact on us. So some. Some great mentors that we had. And we were just wandering along, you know, doing therapy and everybody kind of doing their own thing with that. And one of the good things that. That I really enjoyed was that Glenn was just a good old guy, you know, and he'd talk like this all the time, and he'd just be having all these common sense. And then all of a sudden he'd throw this great wis at you and you're just blown away. But he would have groups of students come over to his house and we would meet in his living room and we just talked family therapy stuff. And I remember specifically there that Terry came back and he had a report because he had just. He had just spent a couple of weeks with Borgia Mani Nagy, and I'd not heard of the guy before.

And to me, he wasn't like the big guy in the moment.

Well, it was like, you know, he was. He was one of the founders, you know, he was. We had a. We had a really good foundation of, of systems theory. And that's, that's what I try to pass on is, you know, the, the shoulders of the giants that we stand on. We want to honor them and keep those in mind. Even though that, you know, therapy has gone so many different ways from that. But yeah, he, he was talking about this time he spent with Nash and, and to be real honest, I thought he had actually gone to Hungary. I mean, I thought he was, he had actually gone to Europe. I didn't know that he was in Philadelphia. But then he kind of described what was going on there. And to be honest, I wasn't listening very well. I just thought, oh, that sounds kind of cool. That was nice. And so Terry was working at the time. He and Sherman both working at an assisted living home there in Denton. And his big thing was the first book that he really came out with was kind of based on his dissertation, I think was called Finishing. Well, yeah, he did that with, with Bill Anderson and that's what I knew him for. You know, he was the way he described. He said most, most therapy, you're, you're working with a client and then you're talking about their parents. Well, he was doing it the other way around. He was working with the parents and working down about their kids. So that, that interesting multi generational aspect was always there, but had a little bit different perspective. And so, you know, Terry tells his story about how he developed that and Nagy was a, that, that trip to seeing Naj was really big because he had spent time with, he spent time with Jay Haley and spent some time there when he and Chloe Madonnas were actually getting a divorce. I think he said he thought that was, that was kind of interesting. He also. We had the AAMFT conference in Dallas one year and Carl Whitaker was the keynote speaker and he was the oldest person to ever do a keynote. And also Terry Hargrave was there as a keynote and he was the youngest person to do a keynote at the same time. So he and Carl got a chance to spend a little bit of time together as keynote speakers. And I think that was a pretty good interest. I was in charge of all the volunteers at that conference.

Is that the one where. Because Terry tells the story of the. So in Restoration Therapy you have this story of usness. And yeah, he had a conversation with Carl Whitaker and Carl Whitaker is kind of talking about, you know, his wife, which.

It's Muriel.

Muriel. There it is. Yeah, yeah. And. And he's like, yeah, you know, I guess, you know, I'll I'll probably be fine when Muriel dies. But, yeah, there's this part, this, this. What do you call the entity. Do you remember?

Well, I think he said, you know, and she had passed away. So I really will miss Muriel, but I will miss what we were together there. It is more than just just her. So I thought that was. That was pretty interesting. They were married over 50 years.

Yeah.

Mike, what year was this? Just to kind of like understand the context. So what year were you starting at TWU?

Late 80s.

Late 80s.

It was in the late 80s.

And this conference was late 80s itself. Probably.

This was the big conference in Dallas. This is right when the, the controversy over. See, what was it? It was right to life. It was when the abortion laws were being really hotly debated in there and half of the conference boycotted because of that. So it was a pretty dicey time in our profession right now, too.

Wow.

So like 36 years ago. 36, 37 years ago.

Wow. I try not to count numbers like that, but go ahead.

Well, I just.

It's.

It's, you know, when you think about, like, how long people are ruminating, I use that in a healthy way on ideas that start to come into their mind and they're starting, like, playing around with theories and, you know, because for us who, you know, came into RT maybe in the last, you know, I think I came into it in about 2010 at the Hideaway. But, you know, you come into it thinking it's already a fully baked. But it's been this long journey of conversations and learning from some of the biggest names in the fields of marriage and family therapy. And you were there at the center of that. That's really. I don't know. It's exciting.

Yeah. I had. My mentor was Dr. Frank Thomas, and he was the. He was the director of tamft, our Texas association. And he would go out and. And get all these speakers for our conferences and everything. I'd meet all these guys. I mean, he would. He was a name dropper. I mean, he knew everybody in the field. And I got a chance to work with him and work on his committees and help run our conference. We ran our conferences. We had almost as large conferences as Double AMFT in Texas. We had. We had 1100 member attendees at one of our conferences. So it was kind of. I thought it was kind of the pivotal point of things that were happening, systemic therapy at the time. So cool. But Terry, you know, I didn't really. I knew Terry as a person, but I didn't know him as far as what he was studying. You know, I knew that interest because he would talk about that finishing well book that he was working on right there, but really didn't pay attention to what. What he was saying that much. I like the way Terry describes me as coming up. He said, I think Mike is a really, really good therapist. You know, he connects the people really, really well. Really personal and everything. Not the greatest scholar in the world. I own that. You know, my dissertation, it was a great study, but I wouldn't have passed my dissertation. It was terrible.

Really good therapist.

Not so much in the scholars, because Terry was the brain. You know, he was the studier man. He. He dug in deep and he would read everything in the world and. And just. Just really studious.

Yeah, it's a good app, but.

But I didn't, you know, I guess, kind of segueing that into learning about rt. We would go to conferences, of course, he's in Texas, and he would present at tmft and we would meet at aamft. And Terry's always presenting, and he would. He started doing these things, and he was. I don't even know exactly what he was calling it at the time, but I would go to his workshops just because he was a friend, you know, and I would listen to it and say, okay, well, that's nice. You know, that's. That's okay, you know, and I'm. I'm. I'm transitioning then from. From like MRI Strategic therapy over into Solution Focused therapy. Became good friends also with. With Dr. Linda Metcalfe. And what year is this, Mike, in what.

What year is this that you're doing this?

Before. Before 91. So we're talking about 1989, 90, something like that. Okay. And so just to bring that. And. And Linda Metcalfe is one of the gurus of solution Focused Therapy. She created Solution Focused Narrative Therapy. And that's the only book out of that, combining those two. And. And again, just the same as Terry. Very, very studious. Matter of fact, we had a. I had a client that I was stuck with. I did not know what to do. And I was talking to Linda and Terry both about. So we decided that could y' all come in and consult. So we had all three of us working with that one client. Terry was coming from this. This contextual family Therapy. And Linda was just now getting into Solution Focused Therapy. Matter of fact, I think she and I started Solution Focus about the same time, introduced to that. And I think they even presented a paper on that session. I don't remember much about that, come to think of it, I just know that we had all three of us together with this poor client who was listening solution focused therapy and, you know, some contextual family therapy. But I like to brag. So I did go to school with Terry Hargrave, Linda Metcalf, and between the three of us, we published, I think 22 books. I haven't published it. The three of us, we published 22. So that's awesome.

Hey, you know, maybe you inspired him.

Okay, I'll, I'll take that.

Yeah.

But, but just to, to move that to rt, to keep telling stories, I, I didn't really catch the RT bug. I, I, I read his books, you know, kind of said, okay, that that's okay, but I didn't really catch it. And, you know, that's something that Terry likes to say. And I agree with him with this. Sometimes you don't learn this stuff, you catch it. And until you catch it as a therapist, it's not going to make sense to you. But I remember the first time I saw Terry and Sharon present at the same time. I caught it telling their story. I knew these guys, you know, and it was, it was just knowing her story. Matter of fact, one story, as at a conference one time, and I came up behind Sharon and, and started massaging the back of her neck and she went, oh my, my gosh, you've got an hour and a half to quit. That, you know, just, just was wonderful. Great. Yeah. I said, oh, this is great. Everything. So, and Terry was standing right next to her. And so I went over to Terry and I put my hands on the back of his shoulder and he instantly went, I mean, literally like that. We were good friends. I didn't realize what a foreshadowing that was of their story about rt, you know, about, about Sharon, you know, talks about wanting to be included and scared to be abandoned and all the losses she's had in her life that she tells a story that here on Yalls podcast. And then Terry coming up in a, in a family that was not safe. So even just the touch on the back of his shoulders was a knee jerk reaction. So I stored that up. But when they presented together, the whole story just clicked with me. And at the same time, I applied it to me. That was the first time I applied it to me. And I went, oh my gosh, that explains it. This is, this is the, this is the, the legend to the map. I, I get it now. But, so that was, I remember exactly where I was sitting in that conference. I don't remember which conference it was, but I remember them doing that. And I thought that's. So that's when I, that's when I, I caught it and, and started moving down towards that direction and major things.

About yourself that you. Connecting with Mike.

Okay, so here's, here's the start of our three hour podcast. You know, just the way that I thought about myself and didn't really think of this as pain, of course, when you first look at this. But I thought this is the things that kind of stuck with me of Mike Bishop, you know, insignificant, not good enough. And if people don't like me, there's something wrong with me. So those were the pains. And I'll tell that to my clients all the time. I'll say, yeah, that was. I'm insignificant, not good enough. I mean, I'm a tenured professor at a major university training people. I've got clients coming in from all over the place. I've got professional athletes coming in to see me as a therapist. I'm doing supervision for all these people. I've been the president of the Texas association of Family Therapist. I've been on the board of directors of Double amft, you know, the, of the national organization. I was the head of their ethics committee for two years. But I'm not good enough and I'm not significant. So that, that incongruence there was, was, was pretty interesting. And then, you know, I just kept applying it to me and applying it to me and apply it to me. I think that made me a better therapist, made me better at understanding that model. And that's one of my little, little sayings, is that you can't, don't do therapy on any client until you've done it on yourself. If you've not done your therapy that you're doing on a client on yourself, it's not good enough. It's just not there yet. So I think it's really, really important. And I think that's, for me, that's where I got the energy for, for being an RT therapist.

I think that's such a, you know, this idea of like, what's. Once you kind of see that connect. Like what was the, the, the you catch it like that catch of looking at RT within your own frame. It's, it just changes things. It goes from like, oh, that's neat to like, oh, that's life changing.

Yeah, that's profound. Yeah. Yeah.

That makes me, that gives me a little more, makes help me understand a little more the idea that when I was, I First stepped foot in the Hideaway in 2010. I think it was the fall, and I was sitting third chair, which means I was watching two other therapists do the intensive, and I would participate, but I was mostly sitting back and they. They weren't using the language restoration therapy. They were just talking about pain cycle, peace cycle, and the four steps. And. But I remember sitting third chair and putting myself and actually doing the work as if I was in the intensive myself. And that's the intensive where I went home and literally practiced my four steps with my wife when I got off the plane. And she didn't know what was going on. But I was like, oh, I must have caught it because I hadn't read a book. I didn't even know who really. I didn't really know who Terry was because I had graduated fuller already. So I went in just totally blind to any type of model or idea. But I left feeling like, oh, I understand myself better now and my marriage after this intensive. And so I don't know. That just helps me understand because sometimes when I try to talk about the model to other colleagues, it doesn't click with them or it's not enough to pull them away from the other models that they've been working with for many years. But then when they get involved and go to a training or start using it in their therapy room, it's like, oh, okay, now I see it.

Which is an interesting, like, pedagogical, like, question. When we're coming across, like, when we're using, like, when we're, like, teaching people about restoration therapy, like, even co therapy, like, other therapists of, like, you know, like, just, hey, take a moment and just think about your own pain cycle. My. One of my old. One of the. My co director of my therapy center, Robin Reinke, like, she would make sure every single one of her associates knew their pain cycles, like, pain and peace. Like, she would spend extra time making sure they were dialed in and that. I always, like, thought, like, gosh, you should, like, kind of give them some space. Like, that's. It's like a little too intimate there. But I'm rethinking that. I'm like, maybe. Maybe I will end up bringing. Being a little bit more diligent to make sure we all know our pain and peace cycles a little bit more well.

And yeah, I can relate to that, Lance, because I have no boundaries. I mean, I'm pretty much an open world.

I like that you're the ethics chair.

Yeah. Okay.

What does that say about Texas?

I can say A lot about Texas, but we'll just let that go.

It's going to make me think twice now when I call Mike up about the ethics questions I have. I'm just kidding.

It's interesting. I mean and it's a serious topic too come to think of it, because I had no boundaries as a coping mechanism for me. So growing up and I didn't realize this, that you know, the self esteem. I didn't know that I had low self esteem, you know. So what did I do? I became the class clown. You know, still working on that. I'm practicing pretty well with that right now. But yeah, it's, it's a whole lot better. I. My dad was. One of his jobs in the army was a. He was a barber. And so when guess what haircut I had? You know, I was all the time and big old ears, lots of freckles and doggone it guys, I was pretty. Do you know how terrible it is to be a pretty boy with big ears and no hair? So I would just say hey, look at my big ears. Hey, look at this, look at all. Look how funny I am. And wow, was that a classic coping mechanism of doing that? It was funny shaming, you know, it was entertaining. Shaming.

Yeah, it's a good word. Add that to people's pain cycles. Entertain, shame.

Entertain, entertaining, shame.

But you know what guys? You can take that and you can turn it into a strength instead of being a coping. It can now be intentional. I think that's got a really, really important. Sometimes we can take those things and use them because I now use that humor and that lack of boundaries as a. As an amazing teaching tool. I think matter of fact my. Well, my dean called me a. She called me an edutainer. And I do that on purpose and also it fits my pain cycle. But I kind of use that now too because I think people remember that. I mean people remember my little, my little bishopisms that I told you guys about that I have that. These little sayings that would fit on a bumper sticker. They come in really handy if you're right in the middle of a session and you're kind of stuck with a client and they kind of pop into your head and I think that's useful. So maybe that's one way that God has kind of used the negative through there and been able to through maturity and self understanding through that maybe created that into a gift and didn't know it was a gift the whole time. It was just the coping mechanism. That's just a theory. I just came up with that right now. You guys are responsible for it.

Well, before we hopped on and record, you were showing me little signs that you'll use that you've, like, laminated and different things. And I was thinking, yeah, humor is. I think it's really important. It's the work we do. You know, it can bring some levity to a situation. And, you know, especially when we're dealing with a lot of the, I don't know, trauma and deep issues in people's lives, to be able to, like, especially in the role that you're in and teaching. And I think, you know, you know, your name came up, obviously, in our conversations with your previous students we had in the podcast, and I think that's one thing they enjoyed about you and they remembered, you know, your ability to, in the room, make it fun to learn.

Yeah, yeah. And you're a fun guy in general. I mean, you know, we do appreciate you.

I'm constantly coping plants, so that's, you know, don't mess with my pain. Yeah.

Let's talk about this for a moment, because I think this is important in the therapy room because I think it, like, for a person, I'm a performer as well in my. In my coping. And it is like this kind of hard differentiation around, like, to help a client to recognize when am I, like, in my pain cycle is. My pain cycle is kind of like, you know, it's. It's sanguine, it's. It's fun. Like, I like to play. Right. But there's this element of, like, it's. It's kind of frantic as well. What are those things that you do to help clients or your. Even. Even your. Yourself or even the people you're training to help them to differentiate when they're, you know, being, you know, the two. Yeah.

Wow. Now, if I was in session, I'd say, Lance, would you tell me the same thing but use different words?

But absolutely. How do you. How do you break out of the performer and. And bring in, like, when your performer has a. Like a protector? Like, I think you called it a edge. It's. Was it something shame you said?

Yeah, Entertain Shame. Entertain Shame.

Podcast.

Yeah, yeah, the Entertain Shame. Like, how do you help a client? Because there's that. That moment of, like, being vulnerable. Right. Like, if I'm entertained, shaming, I'm not really being vulnerable. Right. I'm. I'm doing a part, I'm playing a bit versus there's a place where I could be really vulnerable. Like. Yeah.

Like, and. And I Don't know if this addresses it, Lance, but it's making me think of my processes because I, I, I intentionally. I'm there for my client. You know, I am there to help them change, you know, get to where they want to be. So I, I keep that in the forefront, that this is always about them. And then you talk about ethics. You know, in ethics, you know, you don't want to exploit the client, you know, on one side, and then you don't want to ruin your ability to be a good therapist on the other side. Those are the two pillars that you have through there. So I'll. I will do some of these things as, as an icebreaker, as a vulnerability of myself. You know, Carl Whitaker used to do things like when he would walk into a session, he would drop his file folder and papers would go everywhere, or he would stumble or he would. Something like that. And he talked about that one time, said, I want them to know I'm human. You know, I want them to know that I'm a flawed human being. So that's one of the things I think is to make this a little bit more personable. This isn't. Dr. Bishop said, well, there's Bishop being him again. Okay, now we can kind of share that vulnerability. So I think that works. I think one of the things I have to watch out for is because I can get on a roll with that, and all of a sudden, I'm not being there for my client anymore. I'm being there because I'm cute and I like the attention. So I'll catch myself in the middle of a session, having to pull back and say, wait a minute, I'm not. How did I slip into focusing on me again? So I don't think we're ever. We're never a finished product. We're still working on this. And it's one thing I love about you guys is listening. I was going to think of a phrase that it's so fantastic to be able to sit here with as three flawed human beings who are helping people, because y' all both told your stories. You know, you've both been revealing. You both revealed those, those times of crisis in your lives and be able to come out of that. That makes you more human. I think that's. That's something that clients appreciate more and they don't get afraid of. So I don't know if that answers the question, but it's. It takes up three minutes in podcast.

No, it's.

It's.

I was thinking about this idea of being on A, not in a fixed position, but on some type of continuum. And so I'm a performer too. And the way that I perform is achievement oriented, great grades, try to achieve a diploma or an extra certification and do stuff. And I think sometimes that performance shows up also in healthy ways. And so trying to discern for me, I guess the language I'll use here at the moment is like, what fuel is driving that. Is that performance coming out of my pain or is it coming out of my truth? And it's kind of blurry sometimes. I don't always know. And it's kind of on this continuum. I don't know exactly where that is. And to have, I guess as therapist, to have somebody in the room with me to ask me good questions, to try to get to the bottom of that is really critical because I'm sure you work with clients too, where they're like, oh, how do you cope? I'm a performer. And they're like, well, what's wrong with that? I'm good at my job. I do all these things. And so it's like, well, what drives that performance? Where's that performance coming from? Is it my pain that's fueling that or is it my truth? And I don't know if I'm always clear with that myself, you know, and having people like you or a good therapist in the room, my own therapist, to like ask me a lot of questions is. I mean, it's, it's. I don't know. I'll just stop there. It's. It's a hard, It's a hard process.

Yeah. Terry uses that line. Performance driven identity is no identity at all. And, you know, when we fall behind our, our bit. And so I like this idea that you're bringing up right around fuel, you know, is this like me trying to be significant finally, you know, they'll finally know my name. Right. Or is this just coming from a place of true identity, of like, I believe that I'm called. And I'm really stepping into that part that I feel is like that next step, whatever. Whether I do great or not, it doesn't matter. It's just doing the thing that I feel called to do, which would be more in that realm. Yeah, it's.

It's probably more messy. It's probably more messy process than we want to admit. Like, it's not, it's not always clear. Clear.

That's one of the challenges, guys, when you're doing therapy, how do you teach messy? You know, it's really difficult because it's not a. It's not a workbook. You know, that's the. You know, we were talking about AI earlier, you know, in your podcast and everything in the place of that. He said, it's not an AI type of a thing. It's a. It's. How do you teach that? How do you go through there? So becoming a therapist, I think, is a. Is a long process. That's. That's. That's one reason why I came up with some of the. The little fun things that I talk about. Like one of them right off in pre prac. I say, okay, one thing you have to realize, guys, you're in my class and, And. And you have to understand that you suck as therapist right now. You really do. You know, that's my little. I don't know what the name of this little cartoon character is, but you know.

What he's showing to us, Rhett?

It's a sign with some creature, like, almost like a dog. It says, dude sucking at something. Wait, what does it say? Dude sucking at something is the first step to being sort of good at something.

Yeah, but that's perceptivity. Something good is something.

One of my. One of my presentations was, you know, you suck as a therapist and other encouraging words. But. But the reason I will say that is to. To kind of take the pressure off of. Because a lot of students, they'll walk in there and they're so performance driven. They're so. Because, you know, most people who come into the counseling field are pretty sharp. I mean, they're. They're achievers, and they think that they have to already know it. They think they already have to be good at it, and they think they have to do that. So what I want to do right away is take a little bit of that pressure off. He said, nah, you're supposed to. We want to go for it. This is my formula for becoming a. Learning to be a good therapist is you want to go for it, go for it, do your best, fail, fall flat on your face, get up, get some feedback and go do it again and repeat and repeat. Because that's. We have to. As we say in sports, you know, you got to put your reps in and you got to do that. The. The reps in for that as well. So taking a little bit of that pressure off allows them some space to. Where. Okay, now I can. Now I can go for it. Instead of trying to memorize, you know, memorize the. The first things you're supposed to say.

Yeah, that's so good. Instead I had someone when I did my first like live training thing where we were kind of practicing therapy on each other, my, the first bit of feedback I got was like, man, I could never see you doing therapy with my parents. It's like, I guess I suck. I wish I had a Mike Bishop in my ear saying, dude, you suck as a therapist. But that's okay. You gotta start somewhere.

That's like freeing to like be able to admit that though, to like. Because, you know, especially in a grad school early getting your hours in clinics, there's so, it's so performance driven and competitive at times depending on the culture and the environment you're in. And nobody wants to admit that or to hear that feedback, but the freedom to say, hey, you're not good at this right now, but with maybe continued work over the years, you're going to become a better and better and therapist. This is a long journey. I think that would have been helpful to hear, right?

Yeah. To be able to, to have. That creates a space for learning.

Yeah.

For experimenting. And, and you guys are talking about this a lot. One of the things I picked up on the dialogue was the, the getting up out of your chair. You know, that's been kind of one of the theme for dialogue. I've noticed almost everybody has talked about that. You know, get out of your chair and up. The Terry phrase of, that's, you know, no greater courage does a therapist have than to stand up not knowing what they're about to do. Yeah, that's where creativity comes from. That's where you, you have that because you're going to, because people are different. You're going to go through a technique or go through something that you usually say, which we all fall into. You know, we, we tell our stories, we, we have our, our, our game plan that we have. But then you never know what a client's going to come up with. You know, they're going to come up with something through there. So he said, okay, that's, that's kind of interesting. How do we, how do we take our understanding and apply that to their story? Now I think being, knowing that you are not perfect and, and that's okay, and we're going to be. Oh, I've got another one. Terry said this, he said, you have.

To, you want to be another bishopism coming at us.

Most of my bishop is I stole from somebody else. But you know, Terry said one time, you don't have to be perfect, you just have to be useful. How brilliant is that? How brilliant is that for A student therapist. Wow. Yeah.

I think one thing I love about, like, you know, connecting with you two and the community at large, because as a therapist, we can get pretty isolated, even if we're in our own little clinics. But I don't know, I. I've noticed over the last year or so the freedom to say and believe like this. I'm a work in progress, and the therapist I am today is hopefully not going to be the therapist I am tomorrow or 10 years from now. Like, I'm. I got to keep working at this, you know, and I'm hopefully a better therapist than I was, you know, five years ago and 10 years ago or last year. And I. I think that's what I like about the Restoration Therapy community is the willingness to, like, keep working at things and to improve our craft and to know that we're not a finished product. I don't know. That just feels. Yeah. Freeing.

So, okay, I'm leaning up close to the camera. For those of you who are just listening. I'm saying, watch this, guys. I'm about to hijack the picture podcast. So I teach in a. What I call a generalist program. I. My main courses that I. That I claim as mine is family of origin, class and family systems, and I get a chance to throw RT in there one week in each one of those classes because I've got to cover everything else at the same time. Become a generalist. Now, some of y' all had had classes at Fuller. I was so jealous about y' all saying I didn't know anything about therapy, and my first teacher was Terry Hargrave. Oh, my gosh. You know what? I didn't know anything else to clutter my mind with, but, you know, trying to. Trying to teach it at a generalist program, but then also trying to. To infect people with RT therapy is. Is kind of interesting. So. So I'm wondering, as. As you guys remembered how you were introduced to. To rt, what would be some good things about thinking. How do you teach someone the concept of Restoration Therapy? Concepts from that. That they've come from cbt, and they've come from Solution Focus, and they come from, you know, Carl Rogers, for goodness sakes. And you come from all sorts of things like that. How do you introduce that and begin teaching someone before they've. They've taken level one in their. In their thing? What. What are your thoughts on that?

I think. I think the thing I really like about Restoration Therapy is the. That when we talk about the pain chart, you know, that it's like Talking about this idea of, you know. You know, I find that people either go to blame or they go to shame. Like, they are kind of like getting angry at everybody else or beating themselves. Themselves up. But, like, there's this stuff that's coming out of them that they're emoting, right? That's that they're struggling with. Or we also run into these other types of people that maybe less in the emotion realm, but, like, more in the. Like, I have to control things or I have to just get away from everything. Like, where I have to, like, take, like, do these things through my environment. Like, I noticed, like, we all fall into this. And I think those categories of the blame, shame, control, escape, chaos is such a. Like, it's such an easy identifier, right? And then, so that's like this common place where people like, oh, I do this, I do that, I do this. And then it. It gets really interesting because when you say, and you know what, all that comes from pain. And then to be able to name that pain, to say it comes from a place of feeling unloved or feeling unsafe, that. That in unloved, that's this place where we draw our identity and to kind of talk through those elements in and around identity and then talk about the things around safety. Right? And. And what are those things around safety? It's so compelling because it's. You. You can have this short little conversation, and you've already formed, framed everything that goes wrong in a person's life and why they do it. But the best part about it is it's like, but, hey, we keep on trying to fix these blame, shame, escape, you know, control stuff. But at the end of the day, it goes back to where these violations come from. And if we could just find the recipe to the pain that was dealt with and really move within the truth, then we would get this new coping pattern. And I think that's just. So it's not this weird. Like, I have to explain this, that and the other. But, like, I think it's just really nice and foundational, very humanistic. And there's a huge hope factor with restoration therapy that it's just. I don't know. So that's how I do it.

I mean, you said that. Well, Lance, I don't have a good answer at the moment, but I think what I generally, like, if I'm in conversation with another therapist talking about it or I'm introducing to my clients, I may be more like, I think, here's a model that, number one, will give you a Lot of insight about yourself that you maybe do not have. But in order to change, insight alone is not enough. We have to practice our way into a new place. And so for me, RT is about this beautiful model that gives us a lot of insight about who we are and who we are in relationships. But there's this practice component that we use these four steps, and when we practice this, we become new people and we do things differently. And I think that differentiates it from a lot of other models. There's not a big practice component, at least I think a clearly laid out practice component. And a lot of the clients I work with, they have a, like, come in already with a lot of insight. I might be the third or fourth therapist they've had, and I think we can still do some more beautiful insight with the Pain and Peace cycle and give them language they never had. But few have actually been challenged to go out and practice something in a new way. And so I haven't. I haven't sat through and have, like, a good elevator speech for it. But for me, it's like, here's a beautiful model with insight, and here's a practice component. And those two together, for me is the power behind rt.

Yeah, I have a. And it's interesting because I think Terry emphasizes this a whole lot, which makes me think of something else. This sidebar. Have you guys noticed that people are talking about this being the four steps model more and more rather than the Pain in Peace cycle? Have you noticed that? Yeah, yeah, it's. It's because I think the emphasis that we've had in the community now is more about action. It's more about change. It's more about the. It's more about the four steps than it is about the. The Pain and Peace cycle. But the Pain and Peace cycle is what hooks people.

That's what they catch.

That's me. Yeah, that's. I tell a story. I call it the bicycle story. And I think that's what I do a lot, too. I will self disclose and talk about how I did this. Now, you're not going to do it the same way, but here's, like, this. This is how I did it. But I talk about as a young kid, grew up in a suburban Dallas area, very safe. We didn't lock our doors, everything. And my. My dad never met a stranger. My mom never met a friend. So we'll kind of leave that. My. That. So my neighbor across the street said, hey, Mike, you want to go ride bicycles with us? I said, sure. That's a Great idea. So I thought about this and thought if I wanted something, I'd go ask my mom. If I wanted to do something, I'd go ask my dad. You know, we learned that very early in kids, right? Like, how did you cope? How did you survive these two people that are living, that are raising him? So I said, dad, you know, Billy and Susie want me to go ride bikes with him. Can I go? And he says, sure, Mike. Go ask your mom. He knew, okay? He threw me under the bus. He said, go ask your mom. Because he knew if he said yes and she found out about it, there was going to be something to pay. So of course, I went to mom and asked and said it the same way. Mom, Billy's dad asked me to go ride bicycles around the block with him and his kids. And we're going to stay on the sidewalk or never going to cross the street. We'll be back in six minutes. Can I go? And she goes around the block. I won't be able to see you. What if something were to happen? What if you were to fall off? What, are you going to get hurt? What if you get hit by a car? What if you're going to be kidnapped? No, I don't think so. I don't think it's a good idea. So I. For the first time, I was defined. I was a very compliant child because I had to do everything right. So I jumped on my bicycle, went across the street, and halfway across the street, a car misses me by that much, Literally.

Oh, my gosh.

I get over the other side of the street, throw my bicycle down, burst into tears because I almost got killed. Now, mom was right. I can't handle it. I'm not good enough. I can't deal with it. I don't have the skills. Now, my mom did not intend to teach that to me, right? My mom wanted me to. She wanted me to learn. There's a dangerous world out there. I got to watch out and be careful. That's not what I learned, because this is a big thing, is that the lessons that we try, that we teach our kids are not the same things they learn.

Come on.

They, you know. You know, corporal punishment.

You have to say that again?

Yeah. Well, yeah, okay. The. The. The lessons that we teach our kids are not the lessons they learn. And the lessons our parents try to teach us is not the lessons we necessarily learned. One kiddo, he gets punished. He gets spanked. He says, wow, I'm not going to do that again. It's a bad idea to disobey the rules. I got to follow the rules, or there's going to be consequences. His twin brother, things saying happens to him. He says, hey, when I get big, I can hit people too. You know, you learn two different things. So I tell that story, and then I say, oh, by the way, last week. Last week I was getting the sweetener off of the cabinet above my coffee, and I reach. I open the cabinet door. My wife is so sweet. I mean, she is a sweetheart. She's a doer, She's a worker. And when she. What she does, when she does anxiety, she does stuff. She works, she cleans the kitchen, she washes. You know, she does all that stuff. So I open the cabinet door to get the sugar, and she reaches up and gets the sugar for me, for. It wasn't that sweet of her. I mean, she was so nice. She was so. I am ticked. I am mortified. I am really angry at her because you don't think I can get my own sugar. You don't think I'm man enough to do that. You don't think I'm able to do that. So I come out at that.

That's not bittersweet.

That's not. That's not what it is. Bittersweet. No, I was just pissed. But it had nothing to do with her. It had to do with what my pain was on the inside that I'm still working on and trying to. To do that. So. So. And. And when I lash out, you know, how does that do to her? Well, she's devastated because now she's alone and she's abandoned and she's feeling her stuff, and then she cries and goes away. I'm thinking, like, well, you know, Mike, you suck as a husband. You know, that was a terrible thing to do. You're lousy. So then I'm gonna. So I describe that. That cycle, somehow another. Sometimes telling it. Telling that story, the other person goes, oh, that's. That's what we're doing. You know, I also ask them, when I see through couples, I ask them the same. Almost the same question. I'll say, you know, what do you want to. What do you want this to look like when we're successful? I'll. Solution, focus, bones coming back in. And then I'll say, what's the first fight you guys ever had? What's the very first fight you ever had? And they talk about that. We talk about it. My theory is the first fight that a couple has is the same fight they're going to have their entire married life. Whether they have a marriage or a bad marriage, the same fight they're going to have. That's how we introduce that pain cycle. That's when we pull out words. When you fight, what do you feel like? What's it like for you? I use that to pull students in the same way, tell them that story, because when they do that, they apply it to themselves. So that's the hook.

Well, and I think also, Mike, to go back even to your first question is it's one of the models where, at least in my experience, you can map it out and visualize it, whether on a whiteboard or these charts that we use and people see it or a story.

Yeah.

And they're like, oh, like that clicks. That makes sense. Like, I can catch that. Where, you know, I. Again, there's a lot of other models where I feel like, how do I map this out? What we're describing, what does this look like? But to, to show people and their pain and peace cycle and then to, to put that into, like, a relational dynamic and how, you know, we've over time, have mapped that out in the RT community. I feel like that is a really powerful tool that RT has that just not only helps people get it, but it helps them take a certain position. You know, they're like, looking at this thing, and we can invite them into it in a way to, you know, again, to. Terry was talking about, like, what kind of empowered stance do you want to take?

Yeah.

In this, in this pain that you see now mapped out before you, what does that look like? And I guess that's the practice component, too. But I, I, that's the other piece I love is the visual, the visual aspect of rt.

I just thought about that. I think it was you who said in a other podcast, sometimes you'll get a mirror and. No, that was Michael Cox, I think, that said that, you know, he'd get a mirror and showed it out for everybody, said, well, this is what you're doing, you know, doing that. You want to do something different, you know, so show them that through that and then be able to say, but there's also. But there's a more excellent way to throw in a biblical phrase. What do you.

I was just curious about, you know, in your role as a, as a professor and you're teaching the model, is there one aspect of the model you notice students struggle with the most? Just like maybe not catching or not clicking, you know, just from your role and perspective, that maybe is a little.

More challenging just right off the bat. I think it's isomorphic to therapy. You know, what's the most difficult thing to do with clients? Let's get into that dang piece. What, what the heck is my piece? I had. I don't know what that is. I think that's, I think students struggle with the same thing. That again, is isomorphic to what's happening with the, you know, therapy room.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's the hard. And that. I was, I was, I was expecting you to say that. And I was thinking that's another thing I've noticed in my work that I have to catch, like, I can think my truth. And like, oh, yeah, I know, I, I, I know that I'm loved. I know that I'm adequate, but until I catch that and, and like, embodied way, it doesn't move me, you know? And I think that's why this experiential piece that we're all working on is so important. Because it's one thing just to talk about the truth, another thing to move into that place.

And just the idea that came to me then, too, was the word confidence that came in and trusting the model, you know, Terry's pretty adamant. He says, this is the way, guys. You know, of course, everybody that writes a book about their therapy at the beginning of the book says there's many, many ways of doing therapy, and this is just one of them. And then they go and write the book as if it's the only way to do it. But I think having confidence in that process helps with the next step of that, not only identifying what the piece is, but, man, those four steps and doing the action and asking for the sale, asking for the change is just really, really important. Had a client that, that we did the stand up, you know, let's, let's do this. And you know, she tried and tried, and third time she, she just quit and gave up and just sat back down on the couch and I was scared spitless. I said, stand up. Stand up. Stand up again. Do it again. Stand up. That was scary for me, guys, because I'm supposed to sit down there and go sit. Oh, well, you know, it's okay. You know, I know it's painful, but stand up and just scare me to death. Two weeks later, she said that was significant for me. And I just realized, I don't think anybody else has ever done that with her. Wow. Is anybody taking that risk to come in and confront that and do that? I don't know. That could totally not be the case at all. But that's, that's kind of how I interpret it.

I mean, I think that's such a beautiful illustration. I think, and therapeutically, we're totally trained to, like, just meet them in their pain. Like, oh, how are you feeling? I'm so sorry. But to hold the moment of, like, where they're weeping and crying on the couch and to look at them and to say, you can stand up. You can stand up. I know you can stand up. Stand up. To give that invitation is such an empowering remark. And it's so hard to go contra this, like, this idea of, like, just like, oh, no. We have to be very empathetic and come alongside them. What we're doing. Like, that lesson going back to your earlier thing, is like, yeah, if you. If you look, you know, bad and sad, you know, people won't ask you anything of you, but what you're doing is you're saying, no, you are much more stronger than you think you are. And I think that's such a gift. And I want to challenge any therapist listening today. Like, if you're listening and you have a client that's, like, on the floor and they're. And they're struggling or whatever, take a breath and say, is there an empowerment moment right now that I can give to, like, client? Not. Not this, like, you know, cheesy phrase, phraseology, but something that could really help them to break free. I think that's really important. I love that, Mike.

Yeah, well, I'm like a good therapist. I'm cognizant of the clock that we've all. We all may have sessions, so I was thinking just. We'll wrap up here in just a couple minutes. And, Mike, we'll definitely get you back on. I know we could talk about a lot of things, but I was. In closing, I was wondering if there's any final words or thoughts that you just want to communicate to the audience. People listening. Just from. You have a long history of knowing Terry, long history in the RT community. Sounds like you've been empowered to get more connected, even over the last year or so. And I'm just wondering if there's any final words of encouragement for you, anything you want people to hear or know.

I'm trying to think of something really significant. I'm thinking of entertainment. At the same time.

It's okay. Lean into that gift.

So I'll do both of those. One of them entertain another Terry story. So one of the conferences we went to, you know, Terry's known for what. What does he wear?

You know, bow tie.

So, yeah, so what he was. He was like a keynote and did a lot of things. So I said, going to be Terry Hargray this week. So I. I got my bow tie out, and I wore a bow tie every time. And. And he and Sharon went out somewhere and. And came back and. And. And brought me a gift. So Sharon brought two of these, so these palm hats. So he gave me one and Terry one, and we were bow ties and the hats. Walking around with these beards and. And lucky that this is a.

What type of hat.

Is.

Is that like a fedora? Is that, like, the proper term?

Palm. It's a palm hat. I don't know what, like a.

Like a Panama Jack, if you remember that, like, image or something, like, Mike is.

So just imagine just like this classic Panama Jack hat on Mike's head from Terry and Sharon.

Yeah.

And he's wearing a really floral, like, Hawaiian shirt in the podcast, too.

Just.

It, like, fits. Fits perfectly the ensemble.

Yeah, we had the bow tie and the jacket, but I don't. I don't do the jacket too often, but I don't. What. One other thing. I. I guess we talked about this, but, you know, putting a little bit of a. Of a spiritual element to it. I'm. I'm still working on stuff, guys. I'm. I'm working on. You know, I told you about the. The bicycle story. I'm still working on that, and I'm still working on. Driving is my new thing. I've just made so much progress in driving. And in Texas, you know, Rhett, you know this, there's only two types of drivers. Those who drive slower than you are idiots, and those who drive faster than you are maniacs, you know, so. But I'm still working on that, you know, why are y' all disrespecting me? Why are y' all not obeying the law? Why are you putting those things together? And so I was wondering. One time I was thinking of, gosh, I wonder if Jesus had a pain and peace cycle, you know? And I thought, is this blasphemy to talk about a pain cycle for Jesus? But then, you know, I just thought several times when he was writing, but it wasn't about him. It was about other people, which is my other drivers. Right. So, you know, all the different times that Jesus had that people disappointed him, you know? You know, I just asked you to watch for me an hour. You couldn't. Couldn't you stay awake for an hour? And I can't believe you guys are turning my father's house into a Den of thieves, you know. What about. Yeah, what about this man, Jesus, you know the thing from John. And then I saw the Chosen. They had this great scene where the sons of thunder were trying to jockey for position, you know, one on your left and one on your right. In such a poignant scene when they ask him finally. And Jesus went, you don't get it. You can't take the. You can't drink the cup out. You don't know what I'm talking about. I've been with you all these days and you still don't get it. You see him walking off. I thought, what was that like? And. And then I remembered John 14, you know, that you know, the washing of the feet and he takes the bowl and the towel. But one thing that sometimes we forget is the verses before that. If you read the verses before that, it says that he knows he's God. He knew he came from God. He knew he was going back to God, and he knew that all things were given to his feet. Then he took up the towel and the bowl and he knew his truth because he knew his truth. He could do this because he knew his truth. It wasn't because all these people were just. They didn't get it. They didn't. But I was thinking that that probably was one of his biggest frustrations. How does he. How do you put up with all that? So one of the things I started doing when driving and I started getting into that. Ah, I can't believe that they're. Oh, wait a minute. I'm loved, you know, I'm good enough. I'm significant. And I think it's. Lance, is that you are rather keep saying I'm. I'm called. You know, that's my truth.

So Red is also called for the record.

So much to drive. Oh my gosh, it works so well. So little. Little spiritual connection there.

Lots of opportunities to practice. That is for sure.

A lot of idiots out there, that's for sure.

Well, I know we gotta go. And we will, Mike. We'll post this up this week and we'll have you back on. And we just appreciate you taking the time to.

To join us guys. Just. Again, I appreciate Yalls work. I don't have anything else. You got everything I have today. Really.

We'll get more.

I think we're due a few more Bishopisms at some point. I know there's not just. I think you gave us about three. I think we're due probably. I think I saw a few more that we're due. So I'm looking forward to hearing those, but it's good to have you here today.

Thanks, guys. Appreciate you a lot.

Take care.

Cheers.