Season 1 | Episode 42 | Special Guest, Therapist Ryan Forsell...Diving Deep in Working with Men

Lance, what's up, bro?

Rhett. Dude, this is a little bit different for us today.

Yeah.

We are on a nighttime after work.

We thought we would.

What do we want to call it? Is it a disclaimer or. It's more of just an announcement before this next podcast?

Yeah, I think it's just kind of a disclaimer. I just want to be like, say, what's going on? You know?

Yeah. A lot of people ask me, dude, why do you have explicit on the podcast? And I tell them it's because when I set up the podcast on Spotify, they're really careful about anything that you talk about that could trigger emotional trauma, things like that. And I'm like, well, we're mostly working with therapists, so all kinds of topics can come up.

Right.

That trigger. So I want to be respectful for the community. It's not that you and I are bantering around and really graphic ways. It's just that we want people to be aware of, hey, you might walk into a conversation about sexuality or about abuse. And yesterday we walked into our first conversation around psychedelics. And I know that's controversial in all kinds of therapeutic communities, whether you come from a faith background or not. A faith background.

Yes. And even for me personally, um, I did psychedelics back in the day when I was a kid, and they had a really bad impact on me. And so for me, like, when psychedelics come up, it's always this like. Like, what's going to happen? I still feel that way. I'm thankful for some of the good stuff that's happening with psychedelics. But there's also this part of me that's really. That has a lot of questions. So even in this episode, I. I just want to be like, for us to know, like, I'm really thankful for where Ryan's story and I think we try and bring it back to the truth. And gosh, that guy is just. What? Ryan's amazing.

Ryan was an. Ryan's an amazing guest.

I've known him for a lot today.

For like 15 plus years. When he was really young, his youth pastor connected him to me and we started like chatting over the phone about the therapy. And he was in ministry. He trained at Fuller under Terry. He's level two trains, got a. A practice, does great work. And so he was phenomenal to talk to. But I think we just thought, hey, in the RT community is pretty mixed on a lot of things.

Yep.

And you and I doing the RT dialogue, we want to be, you know, we bring a lot of people on who are practicing RT strictly and those who aren't.

Yeah.

And we want to make sure that whatever Lance and Rhett talk about doesn't mean that that's Terry or Sharon.

Yes.

Yeah. In fact, we don't actually know where we stand on these things. Five years from now, we'll probably have different stances, but this is why we call it RT dialogue and not RT decrees.

Yes.

And we wanna. I think at the end of the year, we had some interesting conversations with some people in the RT community this weekend with Terry, where he put on the board, basically, these are the fundamentals of rt, and we wanna talk about those. But I think you and I, our heart is to bring people on either the edge of RT who aren't, who are practicing in different ways and people outside the community, because we want to. You and I, I think, have a heart to engage mindfully around a lot of different topics that can be controversial at times.

Yeah. I mean, that's the. That's. We're therapists. We have no choice. It's going to come in the room, and we have to figure out a way to talk about this stuff.

So. Yeah.

Hope everybody enjoys this episode.

Yeah. And Ryan, when you hear this prompt, be like, wait, what? How come I got the first disclaimer? And I told Lance we could have put a disclaimer on a lot of episodes. We just thought.

I really.

Yeah. I wish we had put one in front of the one where I talked about having nocturnal emissions. That would have been a good one.

That.

That was really embarrassing for me.

Yeah.

And we.

We just thought, this is such a powerful episode of someone's experience, and I want people to hear it. And sometimes in our communities, when we don't understand things or we have different positions, we don't always listen. And loved having Ryan on. Super thoughtful. And I could picture you and him mountain climbing together in the future. I could see that happening.

I hope so. I hope so.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right, well, anything else you want.

To say about that?

I'm excited. People. Tune in. Episode 42. Ryan's an awesome guest, and we had a good time.

I kind of like this. Kind of, like, get the episode before the episode moment. Kind of fun. We'll see if we do it again. It's a lot of work, but you never know.

Yeah. All right, Lance, we'll chat soon, man. See ya.

Enjoy the episode, guys.

Yep. Take care. Bye, Lance. What's going on, Rhett?

How you doing, my brother?

I'm good. We just saw each other in person here all weekend, so it's good to catch up again.

And we got to share the same, like, room together.

Yeah, we did.

We did.

It was an experience.

It was good. I brought my earplugs, so.

Yeah, the surgery didn't work, guys. I still snore.

Oh, wow.

All good. Hey, a couple things, Lance. I got more questions from people like, hey, what is substack? Why you have the RT Dialogue on substack? And I was like, okay. Essentially, it's an online writing platform that we have decided to just push this podcast and to do announcements and people to write articles. So if you are listening and not subscribed, head over to the RT Dialogue substack. It will be in the show notes. We have like 150 subscribers. I was looking this morning. It gets like 6,000 views a month. So people are looking at different things and we just kind of want to grow that audience as a central hub to push out information, announcements, connect people. We have different. We have different regional groups that are growing a lot. There's a regional group here in Texas that I meet with once a month online that we'll have to talk to our guest about. There's ones in California, Ohio, New York, east coast, etc, so. And you have some announcements.

Yeah, by the way, I still am trying to figure out what sub stack is too. So.

Okay, like, this is.

I, I'm on it and I, I'm still figuring it out, but it's free.

Too, by the way. We're not doing the play the paid platform, so don't worry, you can. Anyone can subscribe for free.

Yes, yes. This is good stuff. So we do have some level one trainings coming up, which want to mention to y' all with some of the people we just got to hang out with. Like Jason Wilkinson up in Oregon is doing one January 9th through the 10th, a level one training in person. We're really stoked for that. And then January 23rd through the 24th, fourth birth, whatever that means. We have Michael Cox coming in Austin, Texas. You know anything about Austin, Texas, Ryan?

I know nothing about Austin. That's good.

You gotta learn, bro. You gotta learn. And then, you know, I, I doubt this one needs much of a plug, but Terry is going to be doing one in February 20th through the 21st online. So, um, those are some level one trainings. I. We have level two trainings that are full right now. You have to get on them really quick. I think the. The next one is some. Sometime in the middle of the year. So anyways, I've made my announcements all Right.

Well, I'm going to introduce our guest. It's a guy I've actually known for a long time. It's funny how I meet people in in therapy communities who we kind of connect in the past and everyone kind of has their own c. I can't say the word circuit. I'm not going to say it. Everyone has their roundabout journey to becoming a therapist that I find always interesting. And so we have on today Ryan Frisel. I hope I say that right. Ryan, who is the founder and clinical director of the essentially Prax, Praxis, which is a marriage and family group in Sierra Madre, also, I think probably Houston, Texas at the moment as well. So, Ryan, welcome to the podcast here.

Welcome, gentlemen. Thanks for having me today. It's great to be with you both.

Did I say for Sal, right? You say it for me.

Yeah. For sale.

Okay.

Yeah. The running joke in high school is if you have to ask, you can't afford me.

Wow. Dang.

That's good.

Hey, that's good.

I told you high school was a low, so I had to. I had to be witty, you know.

Yeah, we were sitting earlier. Go ahead.

No, it's a good line for a therapist too, right?

Yeah.

If you have to ask, you can't afford me. Yeah, sorry, we're way off the tracks early.

Well, you know, this is. This is going to be a good episode, though. Why is it going to be a good episode, Rhett?

Because I've known Ryan actually off and on for a while. Ryan grew up in Phoenix area, which is where I grew up, and we connected via a mutual friend way back in the day and started having some phone conversations about therapy. And Ryan made his way out to Fuller, eventually trained there at Fuller, Terry, rt, done level one, level two, and he's on his own journey and exploring some new things. So that's why it's going to be good. Ryan, tell us about. Yeah, if you will, just kind of your journey to the therapy world because I know you started off in ministry also.

Yeah, yeah. What a. What a meandering journey it has been as it is for many of us. Right. I started in ministry, kind of took a shotgun approach to ministry and did a. Dabbled a little bit in everything from missions to youth ministry. And so did a bunch of inner city work where I really just fell in love with the ability to have these one on one conversations and take people through deeper experiences of who they are, what their community looks like, what their growth journey looks like. So ironically, got to a point where I really didn't want to be working in ministry anymore. I didn't know what to do. And, yeah, our mutual friend was talking you up one day, and it's like, man, I got to connect with this guy and see what this whole therapy thing's about. So I think we connected and you shared a little bit about your experience. And I jumped into a community mental health job because I didn't want to go get another degree that I don't use. So I figured, let me. Let me try this out a little bit.

That's a good idea.

Yeah. You know, more of us should do that, but instead I have an undergrad that I very much use, but I'm still paying for and not in a ministry context. But then ultimately went to Fuller, got my mft, and I've had, like Rhett was saying, had a bunch of experiences in the RT world. Got to train underneath Terry for a little while while simultaneously continuing to do community mental health and be in inner city work. I really have a heart for that stuff. Which group are you in? I was working with Hathaway Sycamores at the time. I think they're just called. Yeah, Sycamores now. Yeah. Wow. That was a wild time. Wild time. I've. I have stories of teenagers kicking out my car windshield. Nice knives being pulled on me. I had a gun pulled on me one time. It was. I mean, they're like intense stories, but, man, I felt so much more alive than the humdrum of adulthood makes you feel. So I dabbled in the community mental health world and started building a private practice underneath that. Did that for a couple years. Do not recommend this, but I think at the peak of that, I was doing 50 to 60 client hours a week.

Wow.

And that was rough. And eventually pivoted out of that into private practice. Did the solo practice for a while, then started building a group practice and have been dabbling in that world ever since. So it's kind of a crash course in what life has looked like.

Well, in your degree, I think I. Philosophy undergrad at Azusa, right?

Yeah, it was a philosophy and Christian ministry.

That philosophy is going to come in handy, I think, for you in your. In this new journey we're going to get into. I'm still thinking about 50 to 60 hours a week.

That doesn't make sense to me. Did you have a day off?

No.

So I did. Hathaway was my 9 to 5, and then I had like a 5:30 to 11:00pm, like, doing therapy in private practice. So I would do my 40, 40 hours in in Hathaway. And then I was doing about 30 hours of private practice. On top of that, my wife was in grad school, so I figured she was getting her doctorate. I might as well just work. Wow. So it's impressive.

What was she studying?

Physical therapy.

Oh, that's good.

That doesn't leave a lot of time for the outdoors stuff, Ryan.

No, I told you guys, my museum or my garage is a museum to the man I used to be.

I think that would be a great chapter book in a book.

Pardon?

The.

The garage is the museum to the man I used to be.

That would be many metaphors to pull out of that.

Tell us a little bit about. I. I don't know. I'm just, like, thinking through. You know, there's a lot of people we've talked to, Lance and I being also kind of transition from ministry world to, like, therapy counseling.

Yeah.

What was the. I don't know, the pivot for you or the deciding moment that you kind of wanted to transition from that to this?

Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know that it was one specific aha moment. I think ministry was wearing me out in some ways. I was very. I tend to do extremes, so I was unbalanced. But maybe the final straw to that was the anticipatory anxiety of having to prep a sermon every week. It just felt like I had to do a book report every week, and I really disliked that.

Yeah.

So maybe it was kind of the. There was a lot of. I hit a handful of community traumas that were happening in the church. A couple people took their lives in the community and really just heartbreaking things. And I think the way all of that aligned, I was just like, I need a. I need a pivot. So it's all right. I mean, that is. I think that happens for all of us who find ourselves listening to. To people's heaviness. Right. My. My one good friend and colleague, Brian James, which. Rhett. I connect. You guys connected.

Brian and I tried to connect here when he was driving through town on the way to a conference. So we are work. We are a work in progress to connect here.

Yes. He is a busy man, so it makes sense we should do a shout.

Out to him right now. Hi, Brian.

Hi, Brian James. He talks about this really beautiful idea of holding people's heavy. And when we hold people's heavy, we're bound to experience really terrible stories of heartache and loss. And both in my personal life, but in my practice, we talk often about trauma work. I'm starting to recognize the value of grief work in our world that doesn't know how to grieve very well.

Yes.

So there's been a long journey of dissent for me in that domain. Wow.

It's like we had so many topics that we were talking about in the beginning that we wanted to do, and I'm trying to figure out, like, just.

Go where you're feeling it, Lance.

I'm just wondering, like, if we should figure out, like. Like, I just spend long, like, trying to figure this out. Oh, gosh.

Like, the men's piece.

That was one option, was trying to figure that out.

That's a big piece.

Yeah.

I mean, we could jump down that road. We could also go down. I mean, grief. We haven't really hit that well on. On the podcast. I don't think we've hit it that much. And Terry does have some really interesting pieces on that we could talk about. Well, be better.

You frame it as if they're two separate things. But my experience of men's work. Is it.

How dare you.

It is grief's work. Grief work.

To be a man is to grieve. Lance. Tell me more.

Ryan what's his name, Robert Bly has this beautiful quote. Oh, I'm gonna butcher this. He has this beautiful quote, essentially, about how one of the main tasks of becoming a man is becoming reacquainted with our grief. And he kind of goes on to talk about the idea that when we don't choose to descend into grief, the hand of depression will reach up and grab us and pull us under. And so this idea that it's either something we choose to face and lean into, or it's something that just hijacks us. And I really love the way he paints that picture. I'll have to look up that quote for you guys.

No, I mean, Lance jokingly, if you're not watching video, is holding up an old book I wrote on men, like, in 2013. And short. I wrote it short enough because I figured a guy could read it real quickly. Right.

It's great. It's like three pages a chapter.

There's some things I would change, but it did lead me down that path, Ryan, of a lot of this men's work and people like Robert Bly and diving much more into some of the work of Richard War. Like, Wild Man's Journey was a book that really changed my life and how I see things. And I. I mean, I have a lot of men coming into my office. Is that your two's experience?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

There's not. There's not a lot of male therapists out there, like, so. And good male therapist is even, like, harder.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's huge.

It's huge. And there's. I think that's. That's in the water we're swimming in right now. Right. Like, you look around and increasingly in our world, there's more conversations being had of, hey, what happened to the boys and the men in our world? And kind of zooming out and looking at the women's movement had a lot of really beautiful things that happened in a lot of really powerful ways that it shaped society. And one of the things that I think has been lost is what is the male role in. In our world. And so much of the work of men coming in, into my office, trying to figure out up from down with this idea of essentially it's not okay to be me.

Right.

Like, particularly in la, I'm having so many conversations of guys saying, I don't think I'm allowed to have an opinion. I'm like, I'm a white, educated, straight guy who wants to hear from me. And I think men have really lost their place in our world. And so it's. I think that's why grief work is so intimately tied, because the idea of what for right or wrong, there were definitely some things that we needed to let go of. But.

Oh, come on, somebody.

The. The roles that men used to hold in society have shifted and nothing's. We've done the deconstruction. We have not reconstructed anything of substance. And so I think men are floating and. And we all feel that.

Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. It's like. I mean, if we're. This is an RT dialogue. So I'm even thinking from like the rt, like there's. It hits both dynamics, right? For like the two core things that we need. And when we look at restoration therapy is, you know, I love. Which connects to identity, you know, and then trustworthiness, which connects to safety. And all those areas are being smashed for men, it sounds like, from what I'm hearing. So, you know, this idea of, like, our worth, this idea of, like our belonging, this idea of, you know, our uniqueness, you know, maybe. Maybe we had a higher destructive entitlement. Like our privilege may have made it thought that we automatically get things as men, you know, I don't know. But certainly on that end of things got messed up. And then on the right side, you even point up, you know, with. With the trustworthiness and safety. Right, right. We, you know, this. This Idea around fairness, certainly being stretched. This idea around predictability, like the world that we used to know is no longer there. So that's being stretched. And then, and then openness.

Right.

You know, can I share? Can I be open? Can I be real? That all those things are, say, being violated. And today, for today, for today's man. It's really interesting.

Yeah, it is. And, and I don't want to paint like a one sided conversation in that. Right. Like, women definitely continue to have their fair struggles in, in our world, but.

Really.

Women have struggled one or two struggles.

Men are like, oh, this is what it's like to have a tough time.

But the, the interesting paradigm of culturally speaking, guys, we're just not really taught emotional vocabulary. We don't do interpersonal relationships. Right. Growing up, our play is shoulder to shoulder. Yeah. Kind of go do something. And, and what I found about the therapy space is so often, you know, talking about love and trustworthiness. So often therapy is this conversation of, hey, I'm a safe space. I want to create safe space for people. And I think what I've been discovering is especially for guys, we don't need safe spaces. We need brave spaces. Spaces where we can show up. And most of the guys I'm working with, they don't want me to hold space for them. They want me to challenge them to figure out how to talk in more meaningful ways about their experience and this interesting paradigm. You know, Michael Mead talks about this idea that men can only be initiated into manhood by other men. There are a lot of beautiful things that women can do for men, but there are some key things around masculinity that only men can offer. And the Lance you, you touched on, there's just not a lot of us male therapists out there.

Yeah.

And I, I see that as kind of problematic because I'll listen to my women colleagues who have really wonderful perspective on how to move someone through their pain. Right. And move towards some safety and some connection. And my observation of that is that just happens in a very different movement pattern than it does with men. And when we try to apply a feminine motion to a masculine problem, we get ourselves stuck. It kind of to put that in RT language, oftentimes what I will hear is, to use an example, I hear a lot of wives talk about feeling out of control and that looks like trying to micromanage and really be attentive. And again, I'm talking in umbrellas here, but trying to be attentive to changing and controlling the environment around. Right. But then When I hear men talk about feeling out of control, it's. It's a much more, A much more passive experience of their pain. And so anymore like they don't have control, they don't know what to do. So then we get all of the addictive withdrawal type behavior behaviors. Right. That's when we're stepping into drugs and porn and trying to find worth and value through work. But I, I often hear worth and value intimate for men really intimately tied to this sense of out of control. Right. And if and, and if we just address out of control, then we're missing the worth and the value piece. And it feels like we're treating the symptom and not the problem at hand. Right. So all of that to say, it's been really fascinating over the past 10 years to see how society has shifted in a direction that men are increasingly more eager to engage in emotional conversations. Yeah. And also feeling very out of water. And how the heck do I do this? What does it sound like? How am I heard? Right.

Yeah, it's, you know, curious for you, Rhett. I mean, you wrote the book on what it means to be a man. Like you have, you have tapped into this idea of like, what it like. And I'm sure there's probably elements in there that you would probably want to rewrite. I think actually when you told me that you actually had written a whole bunch of stuff that was like turned away initially.

So.

But I'm curious, like, what even happens for you when you look at the plight of like emotions and men and how do we. You know, I think it's one thing to talk the problem, but another thing to how do we tap into the solution? Ryan talks about like giving bravery instead of creating safe spaces, giving places to flourish. What do you think?

Yeah, I don't. I mean, I was just listen. I was like listening to your guys conversation with a lot of curiosity and actually encouragement because I. I don't know, I'm in this place, in my own practice where I work with lots of men and lots of young men, and I'm trying to figure out myself a solution because I'm. I don't feel like, like, I feel like a lot of good things can happen in the therapy room. You know, one thing I love about RT that's been helpful for me is even the simple thing of giving a guy a piece of paper with words on it and language to help them identify how they feel, to learn how to express themselves so they can understand like, yeah, that. That is how I feel. I Didn't know that's how I felt.

And.

And to be able to use that to empower themselves and to communicate that in relationship with the people that they do life with, I found has been really critical and trying to get them off the couch to do some experiential stuff. But where I'm stuck is I don't think it's enough to be in the therapy room, like. And maybe we'll get into this because I'm interested, but the conversations I'm a part of right now are with men in therapy and non traditional therapy circles are getting men outdoors, into wilderness, into space. I think I was saying before we recorded that I'm a huge fan, or I did say it. Richard Rohr's book, like, the Wild Man's Journey. And just. I don't know. I'm. I'm. I'm rambling here, so I don't really know. Like, I feel like we haven't. I haven't discovered the next evolution that I feel like I want to take therapy to with the men that I work with. That may not make sense at all, but I'm going to leave it at that.

It makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, I think you're hitting the nose on the head with. It's interesting. I've been talking recently about this idea. I feel like I'm a therapist who is increasingly becoming more disillusioned by the practice of therapy because of exactly what you're saying, Rhett. The talking about our experience of life is helpful in a certain avenue, but really, health, healing, wellness, that's an experience that's not a conversation. Right. And Red, I love your vision for. How do we start getting meaningful groups of men to engage in an experience outside where we're. Where it's embodied, where it's. Where it's communal, where it's transformative. Right. I think that is the big question. There's a bunch of groups that are starting to pop up that I've been keeping a pulse on that are doing that. And that's really encouraging to see people trying to do it. But it still feels like it's the Wild west and we're figuring it out as we go. Right. Mm.

And I'll say this too. Like, it's some of this stuff we're talking about. You know, we can. I want to continue talking about men, but I. I was in a conversation with a bunch of women who are.

Like.

I can't go to another women's conference and just listen to a speaker, you know, Especially in a church ministry setting, I can't do that. And the same thing guys are saying. And so there's like this hunger, I think, to experience something different. Like you said, it has to be experienced. And I think we work hard. I know Terry has tried really hard and we try hard in our RT community. And Ryan, I know you do. And Lance, to be experiential within the space that we have to get people to move and to shift. But I am drawn to stories and I'm drawn to the wilderness story. You know that it's a 13 day journey technically on foot, from slavery to the promised land, but yet it takes 40 years.

Yeah.

And there's something that we have to learn in that wilderness. Wondering that we can't learn in a simple direct journey or we can't learn in a space. And I don't know.

I love that you, you bring up the. Essentially that story of Exodus. Right. And one of the things that I've really been dabbling a lot in that has accentuated my RT practice is this idea of mythic imagination.

Right.

And essentially the idea that stories are storehouses. And I'm pulling a bunch of these ideas from Michael Mead and Robert Bly and James Hillman. But as we lean into learning how to abstract our story and put it in a metaphorical context, there's so much meaning and purpose and direction we can pull out of that. Right. When I think of what you're saying about Israel, That it's a 13, 13 day journey, but they had to literally have an entire generation pass away before they grant access to the promised land. Well, the mythic imagination part of me jumped in is like, yeah. In order to find the promised Land, what is that thing that we have to let go of? What's that part of us that has to die in order for us to step into healing wholeness, a more robust life.

Yeah.

I love being able to take RT as kind of the groundwork of this is how we're going to talk about emotional regulation. This is how we're going to understand your pain. And then how do we build a story that. That moves us closer to an experience? Right. But it is. All of that is so hard to do in the therapy context and in the sit and just talk room, basically.

Yeah.

I have a lot of those similar questions. You do? How do we do this?

Lance, you know what this reminds me of a little bit?

What does it remind you of?

Well, no, the work of. The work of Roy.

Oh, we got Baumeister coming at us.

Well, when he's talking about virtue.

Yeah.

Right. And Ryan's talking about emotional regulation. So this idea of like self control and one of the things he talks about. I'm going to not do him justice. But in one of his books he talks about the importance of telos, which is meaning making. It's having a story.

Yeah.

And without, you know, Ryan, like, unless we have a. Unless we have an end inside a telos, unless we have. Unless we're operating out of that virtue, that meaning making, it's hard to know what to step into experiential wise, you know, and so I like your language of. Here's the foundation of RT and helping with this emotional regulation piece. And for me, the peace cycle is about stepping into that emotional regulating truth, that virtue, and taking an action that connects with our telos, which connects with the story that we're trying to be. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Yeah, I love it. I mean, this is, this is where we're even. Like this last weekend we were kind of sitting, talking about this idea about like stepping into calling. More like this idea of like knowing what, what. What we're made for, I think. And you know, having this kind of journey set out ahead of us, I think makes a huge difference, you know, and like, and. And even being. I have this shirt of mine, one of my favorite artists. His name is Jeremy Collins. Have you guys heard of him?

Not.

You have Scranton?

No, no, I have. I'm not super familiar, but I. I recognize his name.

So Jeremy Collins is. He's a rock climber. So obviously I like that part of him. And he just does these amazing pencil drawings, but he has these like, amazing sayings that to me are just like, really speak to my heart. For instance, he says. He doesn't say be careful out there. His shirt says be dareful out there. It's. It's this turn to say, like, no, be daring.

Go for it.

He's got this other. He's gotta tell him. But one of my favorites, and I almost wore it, wore it at the intensive or whatever we call it, we were doing. I don't even know what we called it last weekend, but it says the pursuit, you know, it's not the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit is happiness and just finding oneself in the midst of the journey and encouraging them to see themselves, to embrace themselves. This mindfulness element that we do in restoration therapy, that instead of being so disembodied that like we do with escaping and all the others, being in control, to actually see yourself in the moment, to be with Yourself and to kind of enjoy the journey along the way. I mean, such a gift. I wonder if that's making sense.

It is. It really reminds me of the idea. My understanding behind RT is, hey, this is a strategy. This is a practice to help you help all of us regulate so that we can be present and embodied and conscious.

Yeah.

In the choices we make and the ways we relate to other people, to the things in our lives. Right. And that whole idea. Did you say dareful? Instead of careful? Right.

Yeah, Be dareful.

Dareful. I love that because that even connects back to that. Look at you just rocking it. Reminds me of that idea of creating brave space. Right. Like, yeah, safety doesn't do anything for us if safety exists outside of us. Right. Like, I think the crux of RT is how do you create safety internally? Because the world outside of us is not safe.

Yeah.

That's really cool.

I'm curious because, you know, James Hillman, I started reading the Souls Code and. And there's some. And I had to. I could tell how. How lazy my brain has gotten over the years with some of the reading, and I had to really, like, dig into some stuff. So I'm interested in, like, your pivot to some of these depth psychologists, the work of Michael Mead or James Hillman. What. What led you kind of down that path?

Oh, that's a.

Because it's not mainstream, you know, it's okay.

Oh, yeah, That's a good one. So I've. So we went to Fuller. It's very much a family systems approach to. Which makes sense for mft. Right after Fuller, I picked up Carl Jung's the Red Book for a little light reading. And as one does. Yeah, as one does. I don't know if you guys have spent a lot of time with that book, but it's this very fascinating journey where Jung is turning inward and essentially having conversations with his own soul. Right. And tapping into the collective consciousness that's swimming around him in that time. And I remember I came across one of these quotes from him that essentially went something to the extent of I didn't know the story I was living until I really understood my own mythology. Right. And so Carl Jung was really my first stepping stone into the world of depth psychology. And from there I discovered Hillman and Mead. And I brought Rohr with me into that because his. His mystic approach to life is really beautiful. But this idea really resonates with me that we're all living out our own stories and we're all here for some pretty specific reasons, and we Kind of shoot our shooting in the dark aimlessly until we can understand what is that thing that really is important to me and where do my gifts meet that thing that's important and how do I flush that out? So that led me. That led my creative interests, and I jumped into like a. Just on my own, I started reading a bunch of comparative religions, hit on all the major world religions, and was kind of doing a comparison of that, trying to look for the. The myths and the metaphors. And then that eventually led into fairy tales and hearth stories, which then led into all of the epic myths out there. And so I've been really dabbling in this world of, I don't know where spirituality and psychology and philosophy and theology, all intersections that came to a head where in my personal story, there's just a lot of grief, a lot of loss. I joke around often and, you know, we. You guys are familiar with the ACE score, the adverse childhood experiences. I joke around and say my life was so normal until I took an ACE test and realized that I have 10 out of the 11 before the age of 18. And then my adult life just followed suit. Right. Lots of. I find myself with people in chaos, with people in crisis often. So there's has been a very consistent initiation by depth of my life. So that just has gone hand in hand. Right. If you feel like you're drowning all the time, than Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater, I think, is the book he opens with that poem, Learning how to Breathe Underwater, that has very much felt akin to my experience. So the more I've dabbled with that and allowed myself to explore that, the more I have really begun to value the depth psychology approach. The great problem with this that I run into is in the. If I use the imagery of the ocean, when I'm hanging out at the bottom of the ocean, it's really hard to communicate in a concise, succinct way. So then I like, float up and I'm trying to run a business and I'm like, how the f. Do I talk about my perfect avatar? Or like, what is my marketing strategy? I don't know. Right. Like, it's. It's a very dichotomous world we find ourselves in. Yeah.

It goes from the. The ridiculous to the sublime quite quickly.

Yeah. But all of that stuff became transitioned from an intellectual experiment to a very embodied, practical thing. In 9-22-23, I did a heroic dose of psilocybin. And it was like my first venture into mushrooms. And I had this really profound ego death, dying kind of being pulled into. Like, I could paint the whole picture for you, but it was something out of Dante's Inferno where like I. My soul leaves my body, gets wrapped up by this like giant monster spider, and I get drugged down through the depths of hell into the center of the. The earth. And I'm having this like extreme fear, extreme anxiety. Like physically my, like I'm on the floor huddled up in the fetal position, just buried myself in some blankets for probably seven, eight hours. And at the peak of that, where I'm feeling myself kind of asking the question, have I gone too far? Am I ever going to come back from this? I deeply understand why people have psychotic breaks in situations like this, because it was gnarly. But in the depth of that, I heard my body calling out to my soul and this mothering archetype was really coming out of me of then nurturing for the next couple hours of the trip, nurturing my soul back into my body. And you guys, I have in the therapy space, talked about the need for self compassion, talked about the ways we can practice self love. Until that experience, I had never truly experienced caring for myself in a meaningful way. And it was a. That was the kind of the catalyst for me to really think, oh, there's something to this depth work and there's something needed about really sinking to the depths and feeling and experiencing our pain and our grief so that we can also then learn how to show up for ourselves and care for ourselves in the midst of our pain is really a wild experience.

What do you think? What was that message from the mother self inside of you? Like, what was the thing that you were discovering as you were kind of. I don't know if you mind tapping into this, but just curious for you.

It'S hard to describe. The. The closest I can get is. It's that feeling of holding your baby for the first time.

Yeah.

And you just, you just love that little person and, and there's no rational thought to it. It's just a full body, warmth, tenderness, care. Right. And I've. I felt that for my kids, obviously. But to. To be able to really embody that and feel that towards myself was a profound game changer in my life, in my practice, in my family. It's been, it's been really cool.

How, what would like. It's profoundly cool. Like, tell me about, like that dynamic of when you hold yourself for the first time and you see yourself, you know, freshly produced into the world.

And.

You'Re looking at that little rye guy. That's why I Like to imagine you saying to yourself, I don't know if you actually did that. That's what I would do. Like, what is it that you're. When you're looking at him? That's, you know, like. Like that. I just see it. I'm there with you in the moment. Like, you're. You're there, you know, amidst the seven blankets, you know, and the seven layers of hell and all the, like, there's. There's this, like, calling inside of your soul that. That motherly call that's. That you're called to be held.

It. It's interesting. It. I have to answer this in parallel. That was also my first experience of internally creating safety for myself. Right. Because I was still very high. And having all of these auditory. Like, what. What it felt like for me is my visual senses, my auditory senses, my physical senses were jacked up to 500, and I was just so overstimulated and overwhelmed in my own body. And to be that overwhelmed and then find that part of me that is like, hey, life is really hard. Like, that's a truth. And also, you are really beautiful. And this journey is definitely worth it. Right. And to have. Have both truths happening simultaneously, like, fully feeling how hard and overwhelming life is.

Yeah.

And. And practically in my story, I was. I was still stuck in some really deep grief around losing our first kid and how that really caused a lot of pain in my marriage. And. And I was stuck in that space. And so I went on this psilocybin trip with this idea of, I need to let go of some of this. I need to process some of this. I kind of want to meet God. And it just. Like all of the hard of my life culminated in that moment in my body, in my emotion and my spirit. And also, I'm hearing the birds chirp because of the impact of the psilocybin. I'm seeing light as a curtain, and it's beautiful. And I'm tracing my tattoos on my arm and with so much tenderness and love towards myself. It was fascinating to hold both the depth of our suffering and the beauty of the world all at once. And so all of that kind of got embodied and directed towards myself of I am this experience of life. And this experience is amazing. And I love that. I love me. Right. Like, hearing myself say it right now doesn't come close to the actual felt experience. Experience.

Like, louder. Is it more like ginger? Like, what is the moment like that you're missing that we don't. That we're not getting via the radio? Waves, whatever they are. I don't know what the waves are.

So think of. That's a great question. Think of. To use a fancy word, think of any time you've experienced the numinous. Right. Like those mountaintop experiences that you had with God where it was just so divine. Right. And we all have flecks of that. It was. That. It was. It was one of the pinnacle divine moments of my life. Maybe kind of like Moses on the mountaintop with the burning bush being like, oh, my gosh, I'm so overwhelmed to be in your presence. And also, I'm in your presence.

Yeah.

I kind of think of my daughter. We were watching Prince of Egypt the other day with her. Just, like, just. We're like. Jennifer and I were like my wife.

We're.

We're, like, going through exodus right now. So I'm like, with you guys 100% right now. But the. There's, like, that moment where the music comes on. It's like the bush is burning. My daughter, like, turns. Turns around, goes, whoa. Like, just, like, totally in the flow of it all of like, yeah, dude, that is crazy, bro. So I'm with you in that element of, like, I like me. Like, I like. I. I like me. I. I see me. I like me. It's. You can hear, like, the. The birds chirping as you're doing it, and the. And the flow of. Of the. Yeah, I'm with you then.

Well, and what's so cool about that is when I.

No, it is. It's.

It's like that. And. And when I think about the peace cycle, to bring it back to what you were saying a little bit ago, Rhett, I think when. Therapeutically, when we do the pain cycle well, and when we really make the peace cycle an experiential thing, I think that there's an element of that, Whoa, what the heck? I am so cool. I am worth this work, or I am worth risking to disrupt this part of my life for the sake of the bigger story of where I'm headed.

So true.

Yeah, we won't even have time for this today. But, like, I have a real, like. As Lance is unpacking this, I have, like, a real practical question for you, too, because you. You know, you're the first actually to bring up psychedelics on this podcast, essentially. And all. I know it's a growing conversation in most of the communities that I work in, in terms of, like, colleagues, first of all, and then people coming into my office, you know, and. And I don't know if you can put it succinctly, but what, what was your shift even to say? I'm going to go down this route, you know, because there's a lot of discussion around this and some people will choose to do this, many won't as well. But it's all around us that exist and it's happening in all our therapeutic communities. And so. And as someone, for you who's practicing and experienced it, what. What was that like? Okay, I'm going to do this. And again, I know that's for a longer conversation, but I, Yeah, I. I wanted to bring that up because I'm curious.

That's a great question. And for anyone who wants a little bit more of context to this, one of my good friends, Simon Ulger, wrote this book, Psychedelics in the Soul. It's a great read. He takes a depth psychology approach to it. He. He's a really cool guy and he. He teaches clinicians how to ethically and practically engage with this type of content. So a little plug for Simon there. But. There was no, you know, the way things tend to work in my life, there's generally not very many defining, definitive moments. It's more of kind of a long, steady current in a direction. So for me to start dabbling with psychedelics, you know, we had just come out of the pandemic. I had lost a baby. We had just had another baby. I was doing 40 to 50 client hours a week in private practice. There was not a lot of space for me to take care of my grief and my pain. Right. And things were just getting sticky. Right. Like I would. The way that would play out at work is I would notice myself saying the right thing with clients, but effectively just totally missing the mood. I would be much more mad. Of a matter of fact, I got myself fired a couple times because I was just a little too blunt, without the emotional tending, because I wasn't tending to myself. Right. And. And I was just so stuck. There's this story that Michael Mead talks about, essentially where some brothers are trying to find a healing for the kingdom. And the first two brothers run themselves into a slot canyon and they just keep going straight, thinking that it's going to work out without ever assessing the situation. And they get themselves stuck. That's what my experience was. I was so stuck and I didn't know what to do and there wasn't room to turn around. And so that was right around the time where psychedelics were really starting to take off. I had taken a couple trainings in them in. Sorry, take off in the therapeutic realm. So I had done a couple trainings in them and then my personality is just a full send. Like let's just jump and do it. So I did it.

You said you're a man of extremes earlier, kind of all or nothing, huh?

Yeah, I am. It's really fun and gets me into a lot of trouble. Yeah, as. As you could imagine.

I. I can kind of imagine that. I can see that happening.

Yeah.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

It's a lot of unpacking. You know, like I said, this will have to. We would need to do. Lay you down on the couch here and do like a four hour session unpacking. All of it. It's just a huge mixture of like theological background, ministry, trauma, grief, like all the integrative pieces I'm thinking of, like you said, psychology and philosophy and lived experience, just all. It's just, it's just really fascinating to me, you know, just like. But it's a culmination really of that long journey of all those things inter. Intermingling over time.

And again. This is my shtick against therapy, is all of those things in the absence of practiced experience just results in anxiety. Right? Yeah, because we are. And that's why I named my practice Praxis, because it requires a practice like we. I forget who said it, but somewhere along the lines I heard our practice teaches us where to stand and how to stand when the world gets uncertain. So we have to have a right practice. Right. And the downfall of therapy is it's become such a logical, rational talk experiment that we, we dramatically lack experience. And that's what I love so much about Terry. It's. It's funny. It's one thing to watch other people do RT and then it's a totally other thing to watch Terry do RT because he just hits the nail on the experience head so well. He really makes your pain felt in the room and then he really helps you transition into the experience of peace.

Do you have a good Terry story? We're always looking for a good Terry story.

I mean, the first thing. He would not want me to say this, but the first thing that comes to mind is Terry taught our human sexuality class. And I just get this image of him standing in the middle of class, wiggling like a sperm because it fit the context of what he was talking about. But. But Terry being silly is always funny to me.

That's a good. You get a good interior person there.

You move around the. Like when he has the, the orgasms happening up in your head.

Oh, gosh.

But I Think you're nailing it down. I mean, this is like, to me, like, the things of restoration therapy that we do when we. When we are.

Pratt.

Like, classic. I think. I think you need to change your verbiage, by the way, Ryan, because I. I think therapy is still necessary. I just think classic therapy is like, we're. We're navel gazing and we're not. We're not flowing enough. Sorry to use the cuss word. We have explicit on our thing.

How dare you, Lance.

But I. I do. I. I do think, like, classic therapy gives us.

It's.

It's.

It doesn't work. And, and especially for, you know, men, where. Where this is lived experience, where we. We really need to step into the fullness of the things that are going on. If we just. If we're just talking, that's all we're doing to get someone to stand up and. And to wrestle, to put them on the floor, to. To have them move and. And shift and find themselves in the midst of their pain or the freedom of their healing in the peace cycle. That, to me, is the. The best that is therapeutic. The rest is just like naval gazing and talking.

Yeah.

And. And that is the. That is the quintessential thing, that. With restoration therapy that we get to do.

Yeah.

That we get to call them into the fullness of who they are. Nothing more, nothing less. So I. I think, you know, classic therapy be damned. It may the praxis flow. You know, Rat and I. Here it is. I knew you were doing it.

Yes. That professor at Fuller, Ray Anderson, who was really the first professor at Fuller to kind of come over and do some classes in the school of. School of Psychology.

Yeah.

Ministry is. Theology is dead unless it's practiced, you know, and so he talked about praxis all the time. Like, it's. Unless there's an axis.

Yeah. Talking about praxis.

Unless there's an.

I'm not talking about a game.

No. I just. Yeah, it has to be. It has to be. Everything has to be practiced. And. And it's rooted in theory and. But if it's. Yeah. If we're just talking about it. And ministry was kind of dead to me until he made ministry come alive because of the shape of.

Of.

Of practicing the theology that I was reading. And the same thing with therapy. I think I was trained in a. I didn't train under Terry. I had great professors at Fuller and stuff, but my practicum site, you know, and things like that, it was a lot of just sitting and listening and. Which I'm a good listener. But it gets boring after a while when you don't help, you can't move people along it. And I think we're, we're talking about men especially, you know, men get bored in the office really quickly if you're just sitting and into intellectualizing.

Yeah. You know, the, the imagery that I use so often with, with the couples that I work with is, you know, this old way. And Lance, I really appreciate that amendment to how I talk about this because that's, you're hitting the nail on the head there. But this old way of teaching really is a lot like trying to teach someone to drive a car by having them do the written exam and do 10,000 hours of okay, when do you turn your high beams on, what speeds, what, how do you do it? But you never actually get behind the wheel. Right. And if you, if you learn the nuance of all of those things without ever getting behind the wheel, then the first time you get behind the wheel, you're going to be terrified. Right. Because you're anxiously running through all the rules, the regulations. What do you do in these conditions? What are you doing those conditions versus. I mean, I learned to drive as like 11 year old and 11 year old and as one does a myriad of different vehicles. And, and before I knew any of the rules, I knew how the thing worked, I knew how to operate it. Right. And I think that's what we're running into in our therapy spaces with men often is by the time they're coming, my experience, by the time they're coming in my door, they know a bunch of rules on what they're not allowed to say, they know a bunch of things that they are supposed to know, but they don't know how to implement. And so they're just sitting there terrified. Right. And most of my work is with high conflict couples. And oftentimes the dude is sitting there, well, his partner is sharing some beautiful, painful thing and then he's just so stoic. And it's not that he doesn't want to engage, it's he literally doesn't know how to do it without getting in trouble or afraid that he's going to get in trouble. Yeah. And so, so that's that imagery for me of like, oh, you're sitting behind the steering wheel, all you gotta do is push the gas a little bit and see how the thing reacts. But you're so afraid to do that because of all the things, you know, that could go wrong. Right.

It just goes wild in my brain.

Well, it's like, I was thinking about, Lance, you rock climbing, I mean, you can read about all day long, and you can. You could actually, I guess, practice even in a rock climbing gym a lot, too. But to get out in the wild and to actually do it for yourself the first time. Yeah. When you're on your fort, you don't.

Know when you're on your fourth pitch. So you're, you know, 600ft in the air and you're sitting there with your buddy and you're pulling a rope up, and it's like you're attached to the wall and you're switching your device and. And your device slips out of your hand and you watch it tumble down Half Dome, and you're like, yeah, like, that's my thing that I use to help you get up and down. I don't have that anymore.

Yeah.

Now I have to. Now I have to improvise and figure out what do I do now. And, I mean, I'm glad I sat and read the books because I would have known how to do the munt or not properly to make sure I was safe and secure. But to actually be there and use it was, like, amazing. Like, I know there's a moment where, like, oh, this is scary as all get out. I just watched something that is supposed to save my life, like, fall to the peril of where my life would go. So, yeah, absolutely. Rock climbing, it's. It's one of those things of, once you're on the rock, all things change.

Well, and to. To build on that story, Lance, I didn't say this, but I'm a big. Was a big climber before kids as well.

Yeah, before kids. The museum.

Yeah, museums. I have thousands of feet of rope that are just sitting stagnant. But in order for you to not lose your shit on the wall 600ft off the deck like that one, you had to have some prep. You read the manuals, you've had some practice, you had some intellectual knowledge. More important than that, though, is you've climbed a whole heck of a lot before that. So although you're in a scary situation, you're able to lean back on, trusting that you show up well in scary situations. And I think that is the piece.

Again, I need to. I need to absorb that for a second. Say it again.

Being able to. When you're in a scary situation, being able to trust because of past experiences that you've had, that you can show up in a meaningful way in that scary situation is, I think, something that especially younger men that I find coming into my office really lack, like.

It'S.

Just again, the experiential piece. We live in a world that is so for good and for bad, highly intellectualized and very skills driven. But. But we lack experience in almost everything we're doing these days. And when you lack experience but you have knowledge, you don't trust yourself to implement the knowledge. So you panic, you freak out. I took a group of. This is a poor life choice. Back in undergrad, I took a group of eight dudes out climbing to Joshua Tree. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. We're on, we're stuck on the summit at like 5 in the morning. We had do the whole night out there. Had to cut the rope three different times. It was a mess. It was a mess.

Which zone were you climbing in?

Oh, where were we? We were in the area.

Which one?

Jumbo Rocks area.

Oh, Jumbo Rocks.

Yeah, yeah.

But, yeah. And we started at like 9 in the morning. So we're all in shorts and tank tops. Not expect like two headlamps between all of us. It was a mess. But it was interesting because I have been in scary situations in the backcountry like that. So I was like, I was feeling how uncomfortable it was, but I knew we were going to be fine. And then people, the people that I brought with didn't have those experiences. And so they're existentially like, oh my God, I'm going to die out here. I'm going to freeze to death. Right. And I'll think about that often when I'm with clients of, oh, you're going through something really hard. Do you know how to trust yourself that you'll show up and come through or you having to step out on a branch of faith and believe yourself into your growth. And that's a big difference.

But dude, you guys, we're gonna have, I hate to say it, I'm gonna have to end the time because I'm gonna go work with a client now. And now I'm gonna sit in my chair and think. Think about how I need to move into practice. But this, it just, you know, I do, I want to circle back at some point because this gets back even to how we start talking about men's work and the lack of rituals and initiations and rights for young boys in our culture today that help them gain the experience to navigate difficult terrain. And we don't have that. And I think about YouTube being really great guides, you know, to come alongside men and say, hey, I've been there before. I can help you navigate this.

Yeah.

When it.

When it gets scary, you know, I'll help you, you know, get through this difficult situation. Yeah, that's the cool thing about this work.

Yeah.

Bravery.

Yeah.

I tell male time. Just even stepping in this office is an act of bravery. Some guys have never been, and it's scary to come in and talk to another guy.

Yeah.

You know, Love it, Ryan. Yeah, there's a lot. Lance and I'll be chewing on this for a while. I. I'm gonna put all the show notes in and links to your website. Anything, anything else that. Where people could find you that you recommend or is just putting your. At your website down. Good.

Yeah, website's great. I. I have pretended like I want to have an Instagram presence. On again, off again. I don't want to have an Instagram presence. That world depletes me. So website is great.

Cool. Good stuff, you guys.

It was an honor and a joy to hang out with the two of you today. Thanks for having me on. Really grateful for you both and the work you guys are doing.

Thanks, man.

Cheers. Good stuff, guys.