Season 2 | Episode 75 | Special Guests, Restoration Therapists Lindsay and Eric Minton

Lance, what's up, man?

Dude, I wasn't paying attention. I missed the countdown.

That's okay. Hey, welcome to episode 74, by the way.

Hey, it's good to see you, man. I can't believe we're at 74.

Yeah, our goal was to hit 100 by the end of this year. So I think we are on our way.

Good habit.

Let's not waste a lot of time 'cause we got some awesome guests today, but we got a big announcement. We have the, I can't even talk today. We have the registration, early registration up for Summit 2027. Woo! It will be in Malibu at Pepperdine. Thursday, March 4th.

Yep.

And 5th on Friday. And we'll wrap up on that Friday. And so people have the rest of the weekend to hang out in California, hang out in Malibu.

Come on.

We will probably do some kind of opening event on that Wednesday night for people who are in town, but no huge dinner like last time because we are expecting to sell out and we have a cap limit of about 300 people. So exciting. If people want to register, you want to give them the URL for that? I do, but I don't have it in front of me.

Restorationtherapysummit.com.

Okay. Yeah. And you can register right now for early bird all the way up until November 1st.

So, and I mean, it's pretty cool. Like we're doing it through our new nonprofit, the RT Fund. So it's pretty exciting for us to be, you know, doing this great project of being able to help others that need help. So yeah, we're stoked for the summit coming up. And yeah, what are, like when you think about it, Rhett, And you're thinking about like, it's June 2nd today, which is my mother's birthday. Happy birthday, mom. She's pretty awesome.

I doubt she's listening to the podcast.

No, but I gotta tell her to now, 'cause I said happy birthday.

Yeah.

Um, but when you're thinking about this summer, like, so what are you thinking about right now, Rhett?

Uh, man, you have me stumped. I don't know what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about registering for the summit. That's about it right now.

Oh man, I—

my daughter's coming home from college in a couple weeks. She's in Africa right now. That's what I'm thinking about. Um, that's all I got going. Am I missing something?

I, I was, I was thinking about Level 1 and Level 2 trainings.

Oh, go ahead.

Um, you know, Level 1, Level 2 trainings we got coming up.

Uh, it—

if you're— I doubt this will get published, but Level 2, they have like 2 spots left for, uh, June 4th and 5th with, um, Stephanie Lievens, um, and then her next one will be August 6th and the 7th. Uh, I think we have maybe a few more spots left for the Phoenix training, June 26th through the 27th. Uh, Terry's training, um, in August 14th through the 15th is full. Um, but you know, you can always try to get in. For the online training, August 14th through the 15th. And then I have my Level 2 training coming up August 28th and the 29th, and then October 16th and the 17th. And then finally, and last but not least, if you want to be an RT coach, you can get the awesome training done by Megan Eakin, September 18th through the 19th. So check those out. I think her training is online. Um, so we're stoked for that. She's gonna be moving out to Tennessee area with you guys.

All right, you know that?

Yeah, you guys just looking for a house right now.

Okay, on the other side of the state though, so I guess— is Knoxville— where's Knoxville?

We're in East Tennessee, a couple hours east of Nashville. Yeah.

Okay, nice. Right on.

That's a good segue for me to introduce our guests, I think, Lance. And this is a good, uh, promote for going to the summit, because I actually met this couple sitting outside at lunch at the summit up in Amarillo.

Mm-hmm.

You know, there are a lot of Fuller people, and sometimes you think you know a lot of them, and there's lots of people that you do not know. So they came to Fuller right when I was graduating my MFT. And so we want to welcome Eric and Lindsay Minton of Minton Family Therapy. Knoxville, Tennessee, and so much more than just running a private practice. So we're going to get to know them today. So welcome to the podcast, you two.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me.

I'm excited to join y'all.

Yeah, so we kind of like to start just trying to understand what were people's entry point? Like, it's going to be obvious because you came out to Fuller, but maybe there was a reason why you two chose to come out to Fuller Seminary in the first place. Tell us your journey to even get to RT. What was that like? And how did you get there?

I mean, it's a— I guess mine started— I was an engineering major, actually, in college for a little while, which is a different kind of career than marriage and family therapy. I didn't know marriage and family therapy existed. It's not a practice I was familiar with. I knew people went to therapy, but I didn't know anything about that particular discipline. And somewhere through college, I, you know, changed my mind and started looking at some kind of therapy thing and then had some interest in attending a seminary as well at that time in my life. And so just sort of through Google, honestly, right? Like finding like a seminary I had heard of that had a marriage and family and thinking, wow, this is exactly what I kind of had hoped existed. I thought it was an interesting approach. I had kind of gotten interested volunteering with like students through high school and college and getting to know people and thinking, where, what is going on in the families where they come from? What makes them who they are? I would love to kind of get some knowledge and experience of kind of intervening in these relationships, kind of figuring out what's going on. So that's kind of how I ended up, I guess, at Fuller and Eric Ehle. Eric and I already knew each other actually. So we needed to pick a place we could go together because we were going to be married as very Ooh. So that's—

So you dragged Eric across the country.

We did it together actually, 'cause he also wanted to go to seminary at that time. And yeah, we got married and moved to—

No, one of my dear friends who—

From?

Is still a friend of mine, but he started like interning at our church when I was in high school and college. And I remember asking him, 'cause he was going to seminary himself, and we're thinking like, yeah, man, where do you want to go? I did psychology in undergrad at a state school, and so, go Vols. And while I was there, one of my American Studies professors was like, oh, you should look at Yale Divinity School. And I was like, oh, cool, okay, sure. And then I asked my friend like what else I should do. And he was like, no, there's this great place called Fuller in Pasadena, California. And it's interdenominational, which means they've got like everybody across the board there, and it's in California. And I listened to a lot of Link 182. Mm-hmm. And so I had to let my American Studies professor know that I would be going to Fuller and not Yale Divinity School. And I remember he was like, "Are you sure?" Cool. And then, yeah, and so, and then everybody had that sort of response when, being from East Tennessee, We would sort of tell people, we're going to this place you've never heard of, not California, but Fuller. And yeah, yeah, I mean— All the small things. I don't wanna get in the weeds on all the things. All the small things. But that's like a little bit of it. I mean, that song is fine, but anyway, regardless. So, but then I remember Lindsay and I got there to Fuller and that was when, you know, one of my all-time faves, Richard Mau, was still our president. And so he was addressing all of us new students in some random congregational church, 'cause Fuller never had appropriate meeting space. And he said, I remember the first thing he said to us was, "Someone always comes to Fuller against the recommendation that they go somewhere else." And he's like, "Everyone is here." Oh, what happened? Where'd he go?

I don't know, I guess he was gonna say something offensive, but the internet has removed him.

Well, he's gonna hop back on here in a second.

Okay.

But I will say, yeah, it just didn't take a lot to convince us to move to California. That was part of the draw. And I'll let him finish that story when he comes back. But yeah, Dr. Hargrave, Terry, and Sharon showed up my second quarter, I think. And I just enjoyed being in his class and started to connect, you know, when I think you're becoming a therapist, you sort of need something to latch onto that helps you organize your work and helps you make sense of where you're going. And RT just kind of showed up as that thing that made a lot of sense to me. And I think had enough creativity, but enough structure that it, just connected for me and, and kind of became like a framework that I would use moving on. And Eric was not a therapist at the time, so I feel like he needs to be here for that part of the story of me kind of dragging— I didn't drag him to California, he was extremely happy to go there— but dragging him along into RT. And once he kind of made the pivot to studying therapy, and I remember meeting, I think at some point when Terry and Eric was telling him like, I want to become an MFT, but I don't know where to go to school. We're already living our lives, like we don't I can't move back to Fuller, what should I do? And he was really encouraging to say, just go get training somewhere and then do a bunch of training on your own. You know, like find a school you can get to that will provide what you need, but like the community is here, people are here, you can continue to kind of study and work and kind of figure out your identity as a therapist with all the extra supervision and things like going to the summit and just— Yeah. Being an ongoing community.

What was it like studying marriage family therapy with your spouse?

Well, that's the fun part is initially I was studying it and he wasn't. And I love to have the upper hand. So I was learning all these great things. It was sort of like, I know how to do this, right? You don't. And so really things probably leveled out better for us once he made the shift too. Because then we got to do that together. And one thing that was meaningful at our time at Fuller was participating in one of Sharon's Relate Strong groups. At the time, it wasn't even called that yet, but really then letting Eric kind of join into the same language and the same world that I was participating in. And so that was really helpful. So we liked that a lot.

That's cool.

Eric?

Yeah.

Lindsay picked up for you. You were like about to crescendo this huge Mao story and then you dropped off. What happened?

You know, I guess it just wasn't important. That happens to me a lot, actually. No, I don't know. My computer completely just said, nope, it's all set. So now I'm using my phone, which is super cool. So anyway.

That's awesome. So you're sitting there listening to Mao, and what did Mao say?

Yeah, so we all got there and he said, "Everyone comes here against the wishes of someone else in their family or their personal lives or in their like educational lives." He's like, "Everyone here is here at Fuller like on purpose, probably against someone else's recommendation." And I remember thinking like, "Oh great, this is the place for me." Yeah, so there's two of you then going out against someone's recommendation, I guess, that you're a couple.

You got multiple people either discouraging you or in like joining in with you and encouraging you on this journey.

Yeah, I think we had lots of support as well, so. It's always good to have a bit of both.

I remember telling someone I was going to Fuller one day, this happened the same day, and they said, "Oh, you're going to that really liberal school out there in California. It doesn't even believe in God, etc., etc." And then I have a conversation later that day and someone says, "Oh, why are you going to such a conservative seminary?" So that's when I knew I was in the right place. I couldn't make anybody happy.

No.

Absolutely. That's okay.

Yeah, that's always been my experience.

Yeah, and I was telling Eric while you were gone that like initially I was, I was telling him initially I was doing the MFT things and did the RT and then kind of started to bring you into it with like the relationship with Sharon and I didn't know if you wanted to add to kind of finding a connection with the model or not.

Oh yeah, you know, and being married to a student in the School of Psychology at Fuller, this is probably too much inside baseball, but I'm here with 3 other MDivs at Fuller. So the School of Theology is lame. And so then when you're talking to people on campus, you're like, I really like this person. And then you ask them like, hey, what's your program? They're always in a psychology or MFT program. And so yeah, I kept meeting all of these people that were part of Lindsey's cohort or were professors in the program. And I thought, man, these people, this is really interesting. And so then Lindsay invited me at Terry and Sharon's request to their home, which I thought was really powerful. And then sitting there with probably 4 or 5 other couples, doing something I had never done before. I had gone to therapy as a kid, my parents got divorced, I'd been to a couple psychologists. But I had never sort of encountered this kind, never done group therapy or anything resembling it, or even psychoeducation, probably. Yeah. And so going there, seeing my sort of genogram, my family of origin hashed out in front of other people, talked about in ways I probably haven't even talked to at that point in front of Lindsay in terms of thinking it through. And then seeing how Sharon sort of— and I think Terry at the same time— organized that for me, kind of put language or structure around things that have probably been bouncing around inside of me for a long time. But I think they sort of like encapsulated it in a way that gosh, made a lot of sense to me. And I think that feeling of not being crazy and having a sense of almost like choice over what I will do with this information and not just sort of wallowing in it or ruminating about it, but feeling the sense that I could like do something more interesting than what was done to me, I think was really powerful, even if it took me a few years to sort of figure out what that might look like professionally or even in my personal life.

That's great. I had a similar experience when we— because I'd been married to Jennifer for, I think, like 6 years, something like that. And we, we were doing our pain cycle in front of everybody, which is such a great experience, um, to just, you know, unveil your pain cycle in front of your everybody for the first time. Um, —And remember—

Did you share your real pain cycle or the one that you— Oh, you have a fake one, right? Are you— You know, like how real— No, I'm sure you were very authentic and share all of it. But sometimes, yeah, it's like, ooh, I don't know if I wanna tell everybody. I never developed a poker face. Yeah.

I never developed a poker face. I was screwed. I was like, I had to be honest. But I never knew like the stuff underneath of it all. And I remember like putting in front of everybody and then be like, well, here we go, this is where Jen learns I'm a total schmuck, um, or like, and like, I'm a weakling, you know. Um, and then she was like, are you kidding me? This whole time this guy I've been married to, he's been struggling with feeling like a failure, feeling unloved, and, um, like overwhelmed. She's like, I much rather talk to that guy. Like— Are you kidding? Like, what? Yeah, it's like the biggest unlocking ever. Like, I can just be honest with what I'm really feeling underneath the surface. I don't have to be this mean ogre or this performing madman.

Maybe Lance, you are writing— With SOT instead of the SOP there, so you're really hitting it.

Yeah, she is SOT person. I know, right? You know?

Yeah. And she's cool. I know, man.

It's cool.

Do you— so, you know, one of the things I'm like curious about, like, you guys are on this journey together. Did, did you know what you wanted to do? Like when you entered into the programs? Or was that all evolving? Like the whole time?

I think we probably thought we knew what we wanted to do. And I think it's always evolving, right? Like, I think you go in with certain ideas.

What were those ideas you two went into? Like, we're going to Fuller, like, what did you two like talk about and anticipate? This is where we're headed.

I was gonna just be a therapist, I don't know, 3 or 4 days a week and see where that took me. I didn't know exactly what that would look like.

Yeah, yeah, no, and I imagined, right, I'd be wildly successful as a, like a pastor in the, like, mid-aughts when that seemed like a viable solution, that I'd probably write a couple books, have a podcast, and Lindsay would be a therapist 3 or 4 times a week, and it would all work out. It was kind of my idea. Here we are. It worked.

Yeah. It could be just like you, Rhett. Couple of books in the mid-aughts.

Yeah. And we have this wildly successful podcast now.

I mean, look at—

we've arrived.

I know. Sometimes it happens for all of us. Welcome. Yeah.

Where did it, you know, 'cause we were talking a little bit before we started today and, you know, where did things like pivot, start to pivot for you two in the direction of where you are doing the work you're doing now? Like, I'm curious about that journey for you two, 'cause it sounds like, you know, some of that, some of the things you've been saying, like you had ideas about things, this is where we're going, but obviously a lot of things shifted for you too. And so where did that start to happen?

Some of it happens accidentally, right? I think for us, a big shift came at some point. We, uh, we had a son in 2015. We still have him. He's kicking it at summer camp for the, these 2 weeks, um, having the time of his life. And And I think there was a point where we just decided we really want to be rooted to a place. And I think we recognized that chasing some sort of life within church work, I mean, for a variety of reasons, just wasn't a good future for us and wanted to kind of just honestly move into our hometown and see what we could do, kind of connect with the people, with our families that are here, with friends that we still had, and just say, we're going to stay and we're going to be part of this system and figure it out. And, um, and I think through that, Eric went back to school and became a therapist too. And he's a number one, um, networker, promoter. Uh, he's good at connecting with people, whereas I'm in my pain cycle, like I'm not good enough. I'm going to hide in this corner and not advertise my business. And so we just turned it into something and felt like we really want to be a resource for the community. Um, and be a place where families can come and find healing, you know, Eric got kicked off again. I don't know what's happening with— we rented an office with sketchy internet, I guess. I don't know what's happening. But yeah, I think just wanted to create a practice, Man Family Therapy, a place where people can come where you can bring your kids if you need help, like mostly teenagers, we don't see a lot of young children, but like, how do we reconnect parents and children? How do we reconnect couples? I mean, mostly, I think we started working with couples. Yeah. With couples, but then with whole families. And there just aren't a lot of people doing that in the area that we could see at the time. And so we thought this will just be great to plant ourselves, live our lives here for better or for worse in East Tennessee with what it has for and against it and figure out what it means to just—

Yeah.

Just do it and be here. So that's what we're doing. So it evolved and turned into— I don't know that I would've thought we could be business owners. And here we are. So we're doing it.

And how many years has it been since y'all have opened your practice?

I think 6 years. We were rocking and rolling before COVID a little bit. Eric was kind of part-time. He's been full-time and I can't remember what, what year we did that. I should know. Yeah, but now at least 6 years, we And it's, I guess, 7 years maybe, right? Because I think we were all doing that. He was part-time in 2019, and then COVID was just a good fun time for everyone, and we have survived and made it through working from our bedroom and all that in our back, and it's been really fun. I think we see people from across Knoxville, but a lot of different people, families, and people associated with the university, people kind of just across the spectrum, different religious orientations, different just configurations of clients, and it's been a lot of fun.

That's awesome. What have been like, since you've, since you've opened your practice, like for the past 7 years, like when you look back, like what have been some of the bigger lessons for y'all when you look at like running a practice and, you know, Yeah.

I think lessons are just to kind of go for it really, but be truly yourself. And I think that's what we've really enjoyed is just trying to find like, who are we and what do we want to do? How do we make people come here and feel comfortable? We're a small practice. It's the two of us. We hired our first employee last fall and that's been really exciting. But to think like, yeah, I just want people to have a very consistent experience where they feel cared for, where we're pretty welcoming and warm and honestly like to have a good time. We like to laugh with people and have to make sure we don't do that too much and we get the tears in there too. But just really helping people feel like we're on their side, like we have their back, we want good things for them. And so yeah, just to do it, I guess, right? Is to trust, to kind of work through whatever pain tells you not to try it and to to go and know that like if you have a strong sense of who you are and if we demonstrate some love and trustworthiness with how we treat ourselves and our clients, like I think it is evident.

And I think that in our particular community, being a systemic therapist, even if you're an LMFT, is a little bit foreign, unfortunately, just because the academic environment here and just the way people practice in general. General. And so we're a bit anomalous in terms of doing whole family therapy, where we see multiple family members at the same time, or working couples in the way that we work with them. There's an EFT practice in town, but obviously we're the only sort of like self-regulation approach to dealing with like— I—

That—

I— That—

Gotcha.

—the coffee mugs you guys have. But, um, just in, in terms of the work that we do, I think we really take pride in being a little bit unique and sort of having a boutique approach to, like what Lindsey's saying, getting weird with people and feeling really comfortable offering experiential, thoughtful, creative approaches to navigating distress with people. And doing that in lots of different arrangements has been really fun for us.

So tell us what that looks like then. Like if you're getting, I think, A lot of people get really curious when they hear about like, oh, like, it's so different being RT or being systemic. Tell us a little bit like what that would look like, you know, getting weird with people. Eric, for you, like when you're— When you're naming that—

To avoid, I've listened to a few episodes, fellas, which nice job, by the way, it's been fun. I think—

You're welcome.

Oh, yeah, I just, I've said this Thanks for being a part— Dominantly for your mom's birthday.

Patreon.

But that's fine, I hope she's listening. Little boy came good. But I think that like one of the things that I remember being really difficult and important about doing RT2 training with Terry, it was, you know, kind of painful for me. But I think that one of the things he was really instrumental in telling me to do was that, Eric, I want you to stand up in every single appointment this week. Every appointment. And I remember asking like, oh yeah, okay, sure, like what will I do? He's like, oh, you'll figure it out when you stand up. And I think taking that sort of boundless optimism toward like, oh, I think we could probably just try this and see what happens, almost experimentally into appointments. I mean, within reason, ethically, of course, has given me so much freedom to— Of course. Like understand myself as the intervention rather than the model as the intervention. And so I think for Lindsey and I both, it's taking that kind of embodied presence into our work with people of every size and shape arrangement-wise in our offices and being able to say like, it's not necessarily important that I like sort of psycho-ed myself into this intervention with this person. It's important that I am myself, that I am doing the intervention, that I am the intervention. Mm-hmm. And that might mean crawling under the rug with somebody, as I have done before with an adult person, or it might mean getting up and leaving and going to an ante office that I have next to my office when they're fighting and saying, "Oh, this is boring. I've seen this fight before. I'd like to do something else. So I'll read until you guys are done." And so, you know, like, it's just feeling that level of, like, creative friction, I think, that makes it just really interesting to be a therapist. Yeah. So I know that for me, like, in talking with Lindsey about this and getting to do this together, it just feels like this process of now including this third person into saying, "Hey, no, like, I want you to try. I don't care necessarily what happens within reason. I think you're an ethical provider. So I want you to try something and I want it to blow up in your face because it's going to be fine." I think like starting with Terry, start like catching up with Lindsey, having her sort of show me the ropes in a lot of this as well. Yeah. Has been really empowering, and I think that it rubs off on our patients for sure.

Yeah, I enjoy it. Like, before we got on, you know, I'd love to hear from you as well, Lindsay, on this too, but like, we were chatting about, you know, I love that you're an engineer too. My father was an engineer at NASA. That's awesome. And I feel like—

To be fair, I'm not sure what's a master qualified name, but I do think—

You did this for such a long time in high school. She always does this thing, it's uninteresting.

But no, you can continue because I— There is an engineering mind, I think, at work here. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, there's the systems thinking, which is an engineer, like we look at the whole piece and we look at the problem and we are like, how do we take care of the problem? And we're looking at all the pieces that are associated. And Eric, you were talking ahead of time about, you know, all this systemic, you know, roots of restoration therapy. And, you know, I love that. I mean, I get really deep into the woods sometimes on these. So I was curious, what have been some of your favorite things when you look at like the makeup of—

I think for myself, and Lindsay was an early adopter. She worked with Terry. She went to school when Terry was sort of joining the faculty fuller. And I think she got sort of this experiential component of what it means to be this kind of person in the room when Terry's, you know, singing through lectures. And I didn't have this experience as a theology student, firstly, and I didn't have this experience in undergrad or my other grad school programs. So for me, it was like my idea of therapy was a psychologist not talking for 15 minutes. Mm-hmm. While I just felt uncomfortable. And so, you know, like when I'm like learning about this, it's then helpful to think like, oh, well, like what kind of people do this job? And then thinking, is just, is Terry bonkers or is there something else more interesting happening here? Right. And then like reading about Carl Whitaker and reading about Minuchin and reading about Virginia Satir and seeing all the ways in which, and reading about Ivan Vajramini-Najj and how contextual family therapy works Works and how all these guys through the psychiatric system in the United States were saying, "We don't really understand how schizophrenia works or what happens, so what if we just crammed every family member into the same room and watched them?" And then made all these ideas about this.

Yeah.

Which turned out mostly to be wrong later, but still, it's pretty interesting. So for me, I think RT then comes alive, for me at least, when it isn't just a discrete intervention that we use to explain explain people's distress. It comes alive when we understand that it's like a continuation of this historical way of being a therapist in a really iconoclastic way that bucks against a lot of historical tradition. So when Carl Whitaker is saying, "The most important thing that you can offer a family is absurdity," and I think, "Oh my gosh, that's incredible," and that he wants people to take responsibility for their own living. So when a family is doing this enmeshed sort of co-regulation with each other— Yes. —where they're maintaining this systemic dynamic constantly that Whitaker would say, "I want to immediately intervene in an experientially overwhelming way that people do not expect with surprise, and I want people to immediately take responsibility for the ways that they and not other people are contributing to the maintenance of the problem." Then you listen to Terry Hargrave talk about self-regulation, then you understand. Or when Virginia Satir is saying, "The most important thing we can offer people is loving kindness in the appointment." Mm-hmm. To do things and invite them to do things, but only if we are willing to do them first. So she would always get on the floor first. She would always stand up first. She wouldn't wait passively in her chair. She would be the one standing up over the family saying, join me, come on, let's do it. So when Terry—

Yeah, very attending.

And so for me, it's the same way with Minutian also. When Minutian's like, let's— I want to see the family all together. I want to see them eat lunch in front of me. I want you to enact your fight right now. Then you would say like, "Oh, I don't believe you. I think you're like kind of play-acting for me in my appointment. So stand on these two chairs and yell at each other." Then I would say again like when we understand sort of where our— Yeah. —or when Ivan Mazur-Mini-Naj is talking about reciprocity and this sort of kind of like self-understanding toward a multi-directed partiality that everybody is sort of playing a role here and was shaped by where they come from. But B, that like we want to have this like sort of orientation towards future generations that we say like kids didn't consent to this. So we have to keep that in mind when we're altruistically providing love and trust without expectation for return. So when all of these things sort of inform the soup in my opinion of what makes RT possible as a model, I think if you understand where it comes from, like the way that you inhabit it is so much more than— Yeah. Pain and peace cycles. Oh yeah, sorry. I just yelled at everybody for 15. I tripped on it on the way to get here. So sorry. No.

I'm like, it sounds like your second book needs to be about the history of—

It's the second book for me, right?

And what it's all— I mean, yeah, we'll talk about your first book later on, but I know that is— Is this, I mean, are these conversations you two are like just having along the way at the home and in your practice?

Lindsay makes these— Yeah, yeah.

I said you make that face at home when I start with this also.

Sometimes, sometimes. Here's the thing, we used to have these conversations about like theology and that conversation has turned as we've, you know, changed our interests more. But yeah, it is. But Eric does drive the interest in the, loves to like read and study and look at. And then it's fun to have that partner to bounce it off of. Right. And I think like with our jobs, it's also quite, or often quite isolating. Like Eric and I, it's hilarious because we work in the same building. We're in two separate buildings right now, but we do not carpool together because of the structure of like needing to get our kids different places and the hours we work at the office. And we some days don't really see each other other than 2 minutes in between appointments. And so it's kind of nice that we do come home together because we have space for all these conversations. Whereas I think sometimes in the practice, you're sort of busy. We're, now that we've hired somebody, trying to like have those conversations like in more structured time with her as well. But yeah, we, we do, we talk, we play and experiment. And I think that's a cool part of the tradition, the systemic focus of like, let's really pay attention to like you said, Blaine, it's the problem and understanding it. And it's not this one person who's the problem. And I think that's the number one thing that draws me to it. I think intergenerational healing is the, like the number two-ish. Yeah. Thing that kind of drew me to therapy generally. Like, how did we make it better each iteration? And I think RT speaks to that incredibly well. And I don't remember what my third part was because those are two big parts, right? I was just going to say nothing wrong with two. Yeah, it's fine. I love to have three parts. I always think back to Home Alone. A, two, D, whatever. Yeah, I think there's just a lot to talk about. Do you do therapy together, Lindsey? We have only done co-therapy once because we do make people pay for both of us and it just often doesn't feel that efficient. So we did have a family at one point that wanted both of us. We've had some other people, we entertain the possibility, we ask kind of maybe more like why, what are you hoping for? Oftentimes it's 'cause people have never really seen a family therapist and so they don't know that it's possible for one person to understand both of them, to take both of their sides at different times. I think we do come in and have a point of view about things. And I think that's where the multi-directed partiality is most interesting to me, because I'm not gonna both sides it all the time, but I am going to understand who you are in context. And I think when people are coming in for couples therapy, sometimes they want both of us because they kind of want like me to be on one side and Eric Ehle to be on the other side, and then we'll duke it out. And we're like, that's really not necessary. Like when you, Come see us. We are gonna connect with both of you and make sure that that relationship is strong with both of you. And we're gonna— I tell people at the first session, you're gonna think I'm really on your side sometimes, and then you're gonna be really annoyed with me other times because I'm gonna be really against you at times in here. Um, and that's gonna be part of like making the relationship better. And that's kind of whose side I'm on. Um, but yeah, it's fun to—

You're on the side of healing.

Yeah. I'm on the side of healing. I'm on the side of this relationship being what it needs to be, on it, on, on building that love and trust in the relationship. And so sometimes I'm going to be really annoying. Um, have fun, you know?

Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to make a, okay. A hard pivot here.

Yeah.

Cause I, it's an important topic and that is because we were talking before you got on, um, RT is not, I mean, I don't know, Lance, you can correct me when I'm hearing Terry talk. It's not a faith-based model. It's a model that can be integrated in a theological way. And that can create, I think, a lot of tension within the community, you know, and obviously, Eric, if you've listened to a couple episodes, at least we, a lot of our guests too are people coming from different backgrounds, pastoral backgrounds, Christian backgrounds. I think most people we interview work with a wide variety of people, but I'm curious about your guys' take because it sounds like that's something that's really important to you is understanding RRT, that it is a model that works for anybody and anybody, and it's not exclusive, a Christian or faith-based model. Am I stating that accurately?

Oh yeah, I think, You're right. Like, it's— Terry calls it like the best integratable model for faith-based people, but it's not designed— like, the design of it is that it would hit all people. Um, and I think that's what we have in the model. Like, you know, he was very thoughtful in how he created the model. Obviously, he comes from a faith background, so that's somewhat informing him. But what he has discovered Wow, um, love and trustworthiness. Turns out that, uh, it's not just for the Christian folk, it's for, for every human being. We all need these two major things of love and trustworthiness philosophically, um, and, um, when those things get violated, turns out we all do the same stupid stuff. So, um, yeah, I, I think that would be, um, when we talk about this model, it's It's so easy to integrate, however, not necessary.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't—

oh, go ahead.

Well, my friend David Dark, he teaches at Belmont. He says everything is religious. I don't know if I totally agree with him all the time, but one of the things that I think then helps me make sense of that is that the way people that we treat, and we predominantly do not treat people of— I mean, they have many faiths, but We're not a Christian practice. We don't treat Christians directly or specifically. For us, what's important, I think at least, or I speak for myself here, is that the way that we talk about politics, the way that we talk about economic infrastructure, the way that we talk about decision-making, the way we talk about progressivism or conservatism, these are religious texts, these are religious understandings. And so I think RT is like a way in which we translate What do you do with your tradition? I think all traditions parentify people. Christianity is my home tradition, and so I know explicitly how it parentifies people in my experience with it. Then I'm going to use our tea as a way in which we talk about like, "Oh yeah, what does it mean to sort of free yourself from this painful connection to your religious tradition?" Whether that's a family tradition whether that's a political tradition, whether that's a Christian tradition. How do we sort of find a way out of the way in which this sort of thing sits on us and then it asks us to or invites us to enact things that are repetitively harmful to ourselves and other people? So for us, I think that's what— where the secret sauce is. Mm-hmm. I don't think it has to be explicitly, "I'm using this biblical text to connect the pain and peace cycles to people." I want to say like, "Oh, I want people to take responsibility for for their own living under the weight of whatever harmful tradition they bring into the room with them.

I think what's neat is, like you're saying, Lane, the love interest, or this piece is universal, and I don't think it's like, oh, we found it in the Bible and then we created a model, right? It's like, no, that's just the human experience. And I think we all know that inherently, that we crave things that are just and make sense, that we all want to be loved and known. And I think that you can see those pieces in all kinds of writing and from all kinds of traditions, right? And so there's always the moment, there's never a moment in session where we're like, kind of making explanation about love or trust or experiencing it or looking at it or having the pain cycle or doing truth where people are like, that seems really religious. I don't know what you're talking about. They're all like, yeah, yeah, that's me. That's me. That makes sense. Or this is what I want. Or that's how I want my relationship to be. Like— Mm-hmm. I think it is just quite a good organizational tool for most people. So I would love to see it kind of—

Absolutely.

Yeah, break those boundaries and expand. 'Cause yeah, I think all the people that we see from a variety of backgrounds are like, "Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that's what I want." Yeah.

Are there ways that you two outside of just your practice have tried to expand that, you know, outside of specific barriers and stuff? I mean, like, how does that show up Does it show outside of your specific— in the office?

Oh, yeah. I did write a book. Maybe.

And so, you know, I mean, like, again, lots of people do this for terrible reasons. I probably had many terrible reasons for wanting to write a book. Lots to do with my own stuff. But I think at large, the book itself, and not to— my publisher would like me to spend the rest of the time talking about it, but I think in In large part, the idea was rooted in this sense of can we find a way of using this language of like parentification, of love and trustworthiness, of like individual self-regulation as a way of talking about what it means to live under the weight of late capitalist productivity demands or constant tethering to technology or the like bastardization of American youth sports and what it does to our families and our kids. Or how even American Christianity has sort of been co-opted by this impulse towards late capitalist productivity expansion and I guess I would argue human degradation. So then I think RT and the way that we talk about love and trustworthiness and the way that we talk about reciprocity or justice within the context of Contextual Family Therapy just has a ton of things to say that I think are deeply meaningful that not just sort of turning this into like sort of an argument about polarity, meaning like my tradition is correct, your tradition is incorrect, but giving people language around— and I think Bill Doherty in Minnesota does this a lot— giving people language around how do we reduce this sort of internalized polarity that lives with us all of the time, which I think if I'm using Terry's language would be, "Oh, this is like how do we get people out of their pain?" Like even if you're voting out of pain, like I don't think it's going to work for you. If you're enacting political discourse out of pain, I don't think it's going to work for you. If you're pursuing late capitalist growth out of pain, I don't think it's going to work. I think it's going to bite you. So I think for me, my work was about how do we sort of bridge these gaps between some of this theological understanding that I've had, some of this sort of economic understanding that I'm growing into that I've had lots of colleagues that have helped me understand better, and then using some of the language of our family or systemic or RT home to sort of put words to, like, hey, how do we embody or enact this on a larger scale and not just family to family, person to person?

Here's the book, It's Not You, It's Everything. Um, I, I'm excited for, um, I haven't gotten to partake of it yet. Who do you recommend the book to? Is it, uh, for providers? Is it for Yeah, who should be reading this book?

I can speak to that. I would say it's for just regular old people. You know, I think providers will enjoy it, but it's not specifically for practitioners. I think it's for regular people just digging their way through life. And the title, I'm gonna take credit for because I made it. And I think because it speaks to this idea of like seeing, again, you're not the problem, right? The whole system is the problem and the whole world that you're living in is like impacting, you know, how you're feeling about yourself, about your sense of safety. And so kind of putting credit where it belongs of creating a system.

And it's a great subtitle too. What Our Pain Reveals About the Anxious Pursuit of the Good Life. And so it was a— Did you come up with that too?

It just makes me think—

And it's got great photos. Oh man, that was in my rock and roll phase, clearly. Yeah.

Yeah. You are, you are like, this is 100% Rob Bell.

We all thought we were gonna make cool Ximena videos.

We all made a Ximena.

I'm like, guys, here's the deal. I'm gonna go out to Fuller and I'm gonna end up in a converted mall and this is gonna work out for me. Yeah.

It's gonna be great. And you can find the book at, like I saw it at a real life Barnes Noble recently. I would encourage you to go to your local bookseller, your indie bookstore. We love. We love our indie bookstore. So ask your indie bookstore to order it for you and enjoy. I really hope you enjoy it.

You know, but Lindsey's much better at selling it than I am. But, you know, I think in general, like, and you're like alluding to that, is that it is largely for folks desirous of putting language on, hey, I think there's this thing sitting on you. And while you might feel like a failure because like the USDA time use studies are really helpful when we're working with parents. And they're arguing with each other about household labor. I did this. You didn't do that. I did this other thing. You didn't do this other thing. Then it's helpful to sort of say, "Hey guys, I think you're becoming the problem. I think your relationship is becoming the problem," rather than acknowledging what the problem is, which is the problem is that working dads and moms right now are working more hours on average than any generation in American history and concurrently, working moms right now are doing more active, meaning like hands-on, eye-to-eye, like serve and return communication parenting than stay-at-home moms were doing in the '60s, '70s, and '80s while having jobs and working more than any of those moms have ever worked. So this idea that somehow like, oh man, like if my wife just picked up more around the house, gosh, this thing would be sorted. I'm like, I worry we're sort of missing it.

Yeah.

So sometimes it's helpful to have people sort of take a step back and acknowledge that this is the world in which you are living all of the time. What if you didn't just sort of aggressively blame yourself for not being more productive? What if you were able to free yourself with some self-regulation and acknowledgement that you are enough under the weight of everything that's telling you that you aren't and that your spouse is enough and that you all are doing something really incredible and that actually self-regulation and rest is an act of resistance? Sense to this thing. And so for us, like, peace, again, is not something that is a Christian term for people in our practice. Peace is this idea that we are able to rest even amidst the constant, like, gaping maw of our email. And so like, when people can enact this, they don't need to know that Jesus is the sort of source of their peace. They can say like, "Oh yeah, like, when I feel at home in the world, and I feel like I belong, and then like I'm enough." Mm-hmm. They're like clamoring for this. And so my worry sometimes with RT is that we're hiding it under a bushel by only using Christian language to talk about what all of us are desiring as people, like cellularly. Um, so Lindsay and I know, like, we speak to this regularly with people.

Man, I'm, uh, it gets me, it gets me excited talking to you too. And then I'm feeling a little overwhelmed too because I'm thinking of all the No, I'm just thinking of all the things in my own work as a therapist that I'm like, yes, yes. Oh, I'm not doing that, or I'm doing this and that. But it's exciting. And I guess I was wondering, is there a project or something that you two are working on or individually that you're really passionate about right now? And maybe it's—

Like, would you say like an Anthem Part 2?

No, I know what you're talking about, Lance.

I'm thinking of that. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Oh, I gotcha. Are you going back to the—

Man, oh man, oh man.

Yeah, we're back to the live album.

That live album is like my favorite of all time. But anyway, we'll get into this later.

Yeah. I would say yes and no because part of it is like we get really excited and we try to like live in this enoughness of like how, yeah, what do we want? I don't know, what do we wanna do, right? When you're talking two working parents, like we're, That's us and all the things that we try to balance and do and take our kid to soccer practice. And I love to go to theme parks and I'm gonna go to Dollywood later today.

Pigeon Forge.

Yeah, so sometimes, yeah, it's exciting. It's exciting to talk and dream and then, but to try to put the actual things on the paper has been not as quick at this phase of our life, I would say. And so, but yeah, continuing to, maybe bump it down into that. So if you have ideas, I love to be assigned a project. I love to do more. I'm not always self-driven into creating my own projects. I mean, yeah, I started supervising recently, which has been really fun. I'm enjoying that a lot and hoping to, again, like provide some of that like foundation for people as they find out who they are as therapists. I think that's really exciting. Um, I— Eric and I both got to do the Turning from Anxiety kind of training with Lance last year, and it was really meaningful and I think helpful on a personal level. And so we're integrating a lot of that into like our work with clients at our practice, but haven't yet brought that outside of our practice. One dream— there's a lodge here called the RT Lodge.

Yeah. Um, 100%.

And so like, yeah. And it's beautiful. And so when we came home from that, I was like, we have to host an RT, Trans Anxiety, like RT at the RT, like we have to make that happen. It has not happened yet, right? It's now been a year and a couple months.

That's how we roll.

And we're in the talking about how that would be cool phase. So, you know. I would say there's an art lot.

What is the art lot?

It's a beautiful— it used to be part of— did y'all have Ruby Tuesday where you live? This American chain restaurant. So initially that's how it got its name, because Ruby Tuesday headquarters was in Maryville, Tennessee, which is near Knoxville. They had this place where they practiced hospitality and like had this lodge and restaurant. And I don't know what the current relationship is now, but it's called Arte Lodge. People have expensive weddings there and you can spend the night and it's lovely. So we were gonna go last weekend.

I just looked at the pictures.

It's beautiful. It has beautiful meeting spaces, perfect little rooms for our clients to come stay. So it will happen. I can't tell you, is it gonna be '28? Maybe. I don't know.

You know, and I think within the context of our world also, it's been fun to try to, like Lindsay's doing a nice job of sort of, I mean, yeah, like I think I finished my book and then I had an obligation with my publisher about, social media. And then I quit all of it and haven't written anything since because I thought like, okay, like, that's enough. People would say like, I go on these podcasts and be like, oh, like, what's the next— what's the next thing you're working on? And I would say, what is this? I just wrote a book. Is that not enough for you? Now I'm in my pain. So anyway, but I think like, it's helpful, like, ret— to like think about like what you're describing, which is like, I think we came out of the turning from anxiety thing and recognize like, oh yeah, I gotta take my kid to soccer. And I gotta like, like take the trash out. And I don't have this like free space to sort of expand. And so it's what's been helpful is that like sometimes that can overwhelm me. And I'm a little bit different than Lindsey, I'll just read more books and feel bad about myself. I love this move. And so yeah, game recognizes game here. I think like one of the things that's been helpful for me is then just deciding, you know what, like instead of like thinking about how I'm gonna start this like so whole intensive program that's separate from my office, what if I just started like, I usually weren't, I wasn't seeing patients on Friday. What if I just started seeing people for intensives at the office on Friday? And so then I just started opening up couples to say, hey, why don't you just come see me for 3 hours? Let's just do it. I think you got some work to do. Let's get into it. And they bring snacks and sometimes I have some for them. And then families started wanting to come in and I found that it's just way more like efficacious if I can see 4 or 5 people. And I say no, first appointment is never an hour. It's always 3 hours minimum. And sometimes families are coming in from out of town and they're bringing in like adults now where they're like, my mom's coming in, we've got to do some work. Yeah. "Can you see us for 6 hours? We'll get an Airbnb." And I'm like, "Yeah, we'll do 90 minutes, bathroom break, 90 minutes, lunch break, 90 minutes, bathroom break, 90 minutes, and we'll see what goes on." And so people come in and they're like, "Let's do a Hail Mary. Like, come on, let's figure it out." Yeah. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] I would say, I tell Lindsay, like, when I tell people this who are providers, they are overwhelmed by it. They're like, "That's too much." And I tell them, like, I have never felt more alive than sitting with family and holding them hostage for 6 hours.

Yeah.

And like, at gunpoint willing their family to feel better, you know? So it's like, you know, and for me, like, that's where the most creative expansion is possible. Not in creating this like separate thing from what we're already doing.

Yes.

But in just sort of like, hey man, like, how can you expand a little bit under the weight of this and do something interesting? Just right now. And so for me, like, that's been a way that, like, yes, we have these other ideas, but I think it's about trying to find pockets now to sort of see—

Yeah, like, smaller, easier ways to get it started. Yeah. And I remember, like, Terry saying at some point, yeah, with, like, especially in the practice phase with our team, like, what if you meet with people longer? What if you did it more frequently? But, like, just in general, being flexible and creative with, are we going to meet more often, less often, longer, shorter, like playing with the form a little bit. Like, we don't bill insurance, so why would we be just doing 50-minute sessions all the time, right? Like, let's think about what really works and what— where we can have that space to, like, be creative and surprise people. And that's been fun.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah. When I was writing my dissertation, that was like the first section was on, like, the 50-minute session and how we've like become like, um, captured by the 50-minute session and all the things that mess us up because of the 50-minute session. And, you know, I'm really glad you guys are, um, taking a hold of like, oh, I don't have to follow this, um, 50-minute rule. I can actually lean in and do 3 hours. I can do a day or, you know.

And I will say, like, I still, the bulk of my work, like if I see 20 people, like 19 of them are 50-minute sessions, you know, like I still fall into that trap. I think it's what people expect. And I, but have been, I would say that's where we're moving over the next year or two is like doing a lot more, at least 90 minutes of work. 'Cause there's something about the 50 minutes. It's like for us, everywhere you go through Knoxville, there's a joke about how you have to go through Atlanta's airport, right? Like, like the on your way to death, wherever. Wherever you may end up, you'll go through ATL, you know? And so like, I think you, when you go from Knoxville to Atlanta, you take off, you land. They don't even give you water anymore 'cause they're real cheap. So they're like, you just, there's nothing to it. You come up, you come down. And sometimes that's a 15-minute session that there's not even time for cabin service. And so it's been fun to—

That's no hospitality, man.

I know. I mean, they used to give you a drink. You sat down and they very quickly gave everybody a Coke or whatever you want. Wanted. Then they switched to water.

I've never heard you use this metaphor before. This is genius, Lindsay.

They're like, just enjoy.

Yeah, I like this.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

I could see, I mean, I mean, I obviously don't know you guys well and just sitting with you at lunch that one day and sitting here on this call, I could see, man, it would be phenomenal to work in a room where you two are the co-therapists. Like, that would be amazing.

I think it would. It just would.

Well, you know, yeah. I would come out healed.

Whether you wanted to or not, right, is usually our policy. And so, but I take, you know, a lot of my colleagues are psychologists, and so they've introduced me to a fellow named Jacques Lacan. And so, you know, I've always like been like, just like really motivated by his idea of like the session of indeterminate length, which means if you come into the appointment and in the first 15 minutes, you say the thing he wants you to say, you to say, he says, you're healed, and he asked you to leave. Or if you haven't said the thing that he wants you to say, he holds you hostage for like 3 or 4 hours. So I appreciate—

Oh no, he's gone again! What is happening? So yeah, I assume the rest of it is like you could stay all day, which I think would be hard to run a business that way, you know, but could be exciting if clients don't know how long you're going to ask them to stay.

I feel like I just got healed by that moment. And Eric was like, and I'm done.

And I'm done. Magician. The fact that Eric is reading Jacques Lacan in his free time just tells you everything you need to know about his, his love of books and going deep.

Yeah, he loves books and going deep. And I'm like, I will see you later. I'm gonna go use my Universal Studios annual pass for the weekend.

Yeah.

Oh, different free time interests. But he is an inspiration of like taking on new ideas. And then I like to bounce those off with him. It's been fun.

That's awesome.

And then I'm like, let me tell you about this Marvel show and how it connects to this work I was doing with someone. You know, we have like different, different ways in and one sounds really elevated and one is Jacques Couffin, you know, so.

So who you going to Dollywood with today?

My sister and my friend Ellie. Yeah.

Okay. How often do you go?

I would say maybe just like once a month. It's close, it's an hour away, 45 minutes away.

Oh no, okay, this is, yeah, you're not an annual, twice a year person, you're like once a month.

No, we go often, although last year I did actually go to Universal Studios in Orlando I think more than I went to Dollywood somehow, so it just depends on the year and the season. Yeah. But yeah, we go, we go every now and then.

Well, the talk of my town right now where I live, McKinney, Frisco—

Frisco, is that where they're building the new Universal Kids Resort?

Yeah, the first Universal Kids, so it's gonna be open up here this year.

I'm curious. Yeah, yeah, I love the real theme parks. Yeah, it's like just for kids, so I'm like, um, the kids area at those parks is not my number one, so I'm curious what a whole— Well, kids park is, but how fun. Kung Fu Panda and I don't know, Gadget Girl.

Or Legoland.

You know, you'll have a great time. I don't know if you can find any children that are like 7 years old who will love it. But if you can take a 7-year-old, that feels like the right age.

Okay, you guys, Eric's coming back on again. I'm gonna, this is intentional. I think he's playing a, you know, a game.

This is a call.

He's on a different device this time. I wanna see him on like an iPad.

I know, it's so funny 'cause my computer has recently had a catastrophic failure, so I came home to do it so I'd have some backup options and he thought he was fine over at the office, but here we are.

This time it's gonna happen.

I guess since he picks up on the Blink-182, if he knows, we'll see.

All right.

Okay, Eric, what do you have? Oh, what are you on now?

You know, I've just had to pivot to—

Now we don't have your audio. Oh no.

Oh, okay.

Oh, there you go.

There you are.

Okay, great. This is just like COVID-19 hellscape all over again. This is mostly just my therapy appointments for like 2019 to 2022. So great.

Yeah.

I mean, I wouldn't call it a total disaster.

Eric, I'm starting to think you're like, I'm just so bored of this conversation. I'm gonna click off and go to the next room for a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, my, my ADHD that you definitely couldn't tell that I had, um, total intervention. Yeah, right. It's— that's the only way I can manage it is just to leave aggressively. I'll let the doctor— so that's fine.

Thanks. So I'm gonna put you on a spot.

A couple minutes left though, so let's—

I'm gonna put him on the spot first. Okay. Okay. Are we gonna see you in Malibu next year? Who are you asking? Either of you?

Minton? We have not registered yet. I did look up my room at the Four Seasons. We have not made plans. I did enjoy the Pepperdine list of hotels where it's like, did you want to stay at this $1,000 a night Malibu beachfront hotel? Yes, yes, I would. So if volunteers are going to be housed there, like, I will sign up to volunteer and come along otherwise. I think we will. We need to make plans.

Lance sent me a couple of houses. He's like, what if a bunch of us got a house? And the first one I looked up, it was like $18,000 for the 4 days. The second one was $36,000 for the 4 days.

It's reasonable. How many people can sleep there? It'll be fine. But we did attempt to go to an RT thing out there 2018, 2019, right? And we did have an Airbnb and then there was the fire situation. Situation. And so we would like to come back. We just have some logistics because our child will still be finishing school prior to his spring break starting. And do we— which guy just said— In March. Yeah, in March. But we'd love to come and then extend our break.

Well, we need your voice and energy in the work that you guys do. I think it's obviously really important.

Well, thank you. We enjoyed Amarillo and I mean, Amarillo, it's hard to beat Amarillo though. So—

Right. I agree. But I want to go— I want to go on record in saying that I think that— I remember talking to the Hargroves about this, that I'm like, man, people gave Amarillo such a hard time. And I really felt like that was rude. That place. Yeah.

I mean, like, I could go—

I could go to a Cheddar's, probably immediate seating. You know how long it's gonna take people to get up to one to go to Malibu? I mean, it's gonna take forever. So anyway, like, yeah, I'm Team Amarillo for Eric. I can't speak for Lindsey, but I'm Team Amarillo.

I mean, I'm Team respecting everyone's hometown and, and all of the flyover states and everywhere in between. So, you know, but also Malibu looked really fun. So I mean, it's nice if you like that sort of thing. Yeah.

Well, we might be moving some summit at some point here to Tennessee area.

So Tennessee is fantastic. And we would love to—

Do Nashville at the RT Lodge.

Of course, the RT Lodge does not hold more than like 100 people.

But unless you're gonna do it in conjunction with the RT Summit, I would not recommend Nashville. But if you do have— if somebody's having a bachelorette party while at the RT Summit, that'd probably be fine.

Yeah, but don't overlook Knoxville. It's a great city. If you're going to be here for any other reason, I'll meet you at Dollywood. And don't count us out. We got a lot going on over here.

Yeah. Right on.

Well, we'll wrap this up. You know, everyone knows the drill. I've been taking notes over here. Everything's gonna be in the show notes. You know, the link to the book. Make sure everyone goes and buys, what, 10, 15 copies apiece, Eric?

Please.

I mean, yeah, like minimum. I get those quarterly royalty statements and they are like pretty I don't—

they're not huge.

So yeah, that's fine.

We're still working.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm not currently retired is what I'm saying.

Oh, the early odds did not pay off.

Well, you know, I mean, during COVID in my bathrobe in my kitchen while my son was at home. So like, just take it with a grain. If you don't like it, just like— no, it's like he was having a hard time, so it's fine.

It's not about you, it's everything. Come on.

Yeah.

Well, we appreciate you guys taking your time. It's been a fun conversation. And just like, you know, again, being on the call with you two, it's just good to have your voice and your passion for RT and the way that you two come at it. And I'm gonna, I've been thinking through Terry's phrase a lot about a performance-based identity is no identity at all. 'Cause I'm gonna get off this call and wanna perform today and do all these things. 'Cause it's when you hear people talk about what they're doing, it makes you feel like, I gotta do all this.

Yeah, but not all at once. Like we live our lives in small moments.

No, take a deep breath.

Yeah.

Regulate myself. Uh-huh. And then call you guys up for therapy after the call today.

Sounds great. Rhett, the world needs you, Rhett.

It's true.

You bring goodness to the world.

That's way too much pressure, Lance.

Oh gosh.

Oh wait, yeah, yeah, yeah. Rhett. You are a good man. You do what you do in the way that God made you.

Okay. I appreciate it.

Thank y'all so much for having us. It was really fun to be here.

Yeah. And I'll put, again, I'll put all the notes, the link to your guys' website. And if people want to get ahold of you, they can reach out to you too.

Yeah. I'd like to get a big picture of Eric in that chair though. Photo like that with the black and white.

Can we get the— do we have the negatives for that? Do you have the digital files?

I feel like you guys being hard on me is hurting my feelings how we're talking. Send it our way. We'll put it up on the Substack photo there. So yeah. All right, everyone, it's good seeing you. I know everyone's going to therapy now, so thank you for joining us. Eric Ehle, thank you for joining us 4 times today.

Yeah, that was awesome. Keep persistent. Thank you.

See you guys later.

Bye.

Thank you.