Season 2 | Episode 80 | Therapeutic Models and Training Students with Lipscomb Professor Dave Morgan

Lance, what's up, man?

Bro!

Hey, this is episode 80 of the podcast. What do you think?

We're on 80?

Yeah.

Wow.

I know. I think, uh, you know, Terry and Sharon, we mentioned we'd be doing a podcast. You think Sharon thought we'd make it through episode 3, maybe?

No. Sharon's like, good job, boys, go get him. I think she is a believer now.

Yeah, yeah, we'll be at 100.

I might have listened to a couple of episodes, I don't know.

Yeah, that's our goal by the end of the year, um, is to hit 100 episodes here. We have an awesome guest today, but let's hit a couple of big announcements that are coming down the road here. Number one, uh, RT Summit, which is in Malibu at Pepperdine. The dates on that are March 4th and 5th. That's a Thursday, all day Thursday, essentially all day Friday. And then we'll do something on Wednesday night for people who are in town, some kind of loose activity and stuff. But we're excited about that. Restoration Therapy. Actually, let me pull up the website here while I'm talking to you, because I knew I'd pull it up. Restoration Therapy.

You know what I bet's happening right now? You know what I bet's happening right now?

What's that?

Arrow's got a little mm-hmm on the screen.

A little link?

Yeah.

restorationtherapysummit.com. We've already had a lot, a lot of registrations. We, we do expect it to sell out. We think we'll probably get close to 300 people at that event. So right now registration's up. Early bird is through November. Anything else, Lance, about that you want to mention?

Well, like November 1st, so make sure you do it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've been looking at some of these Uh, offerings that are going to be happening, uh, you know, as we get ready for the, um, the summit coming up. We'll probably be doing a little few things, like maybe introducing a few, like a little sneak peeks maybe. Wouldn't that be fun?

That would be fun. And they're still updating people who are speaking in some of the workshops. There's a lot— it's gonna be a lot of activity. So yes, come out, enjoy your weekend. We'll be done on Friday. That way you can hang out in Malibu the rest of the weekend. with friends, family, spouse. And then you and I are doing our first together anxiety intensive next month, September 23rd through 26th.

Yay!

At a beach house in Encinitas, right there on the cliffs. Um, we have, we have some availability still. Um, 6 guys we are taking, and it's only for men who are in ministry pastoral roles.

Because we've already done women, Christian. Now it's time for the men, right? Ladies first, now the men. So, you know, um, yeah.

If you're listening and you are in pastoral ministry and you know someone who is that would benefit, I've, I've talked to some guys recently and they're like, what if I don't have a lot of anxiety? And, you know, we're not just helping people with their own anxiety, we're helping them understand anxiety and how it shows up in systems. We're going to focus about, um, some of, um, Edwin Friedman's work and the differentiation of self and being a non-anxious leader in congregations and the staffs that you're on and leadership. So it's going to be a good time. Again, 23rd through 26th. We do offer scholarships. So, and that is turningfromanxiety.com.

Yeah, check it out. Uh, once again, RO probably has a little flash thing coming Right on the screen right now, I imagine.

Yeah.

I like it. Look at that one.

There you go. All right, Lance, I'll let you take it away.

So yeah, I'm excited today. I try to think when we met. I know where we met, but I can't remember which time.

This would've been the spring retreat 2025. So like a year and a half ago. And I don't know if this turned out to be the case, but my impression was it was maybe Terry and Sharon's last time at the Turning from Anxiety trainings.

Yeah, that was the handoff.

Yes, it was the handoff, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So that was really fun. Megan and I did it together, the training. And Terry and Sharon obviously did an amazing job as well. But I got to meet Dave there. And Dave is this, like, just beloved man. He's got this, like, deep wisdom. He's got, like, that Southern, like, instant connection type experience when you connect with him. I found out later, one of the people that was in my DMFT cohort had him as a professor, and she was like, that's my favorite professor. And this woman, probably one of the brightest, she would ask questions that would make me wonder why I don't think I belong here because she was so brilliant. But her beloved professor—

Having taught her, I can tell you I sometimes felt the same way being in the room with her. It's like, I'm not sure if I should be teaching this person. But yeah, that was a great experience having her in class.

So knowing that she has so much respect for you and how much respect I had for her, I was like, dude, Dave Morgan's got it going on. So Dave teaches at Lipscomb University. He was actually one of the guys that brought the MFT program to there, one of the first professors. teaches students on, um, theory. It's kind of like his— one of his favorite classes there. So, um, today we get to talk about theory, which will be really fun, and kind of the development of students. So, um, and I'm sure we'll have some other fun things to talk about. But Dave, glad you're here, brother.

And I appreciate it. It's a pleasure to, to be here. And, um, yeah, I, um, uh, I, I love getting to talk about theory and models. You know, everybody's a nerd for something. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, MFT models and theory, uh, I'm, I'm happy to nerd out about that with people who care about it, for sure. Yeah.

It's— I'm envious because, Lance, when I was at Fuller, there was, um, Jim Furrow, so who is all EFT.

Yep.

And then nothing else. It's not that I didn't like EFT, it's just, it's either that or whatever. And then when they stuck us in a practicum, I would say 90% of the practicums didn't have like a theory specifically that they were operating out of. But a couple of practicums, it was like, this is our model. And those students, I thought, came out really confident from their practicums, like having some kind of baseline to work. So I am envious because I finished Fuller MFT in 2007 and Terry didn't come to 2008. So it's, uh, I just want to put that out front. I wish I knew more about theory when I had left grad school.

You know, that was a pretty intentional choice. Lance mentioned I was, you know, part of the, the very small team that, that started the grad program here. And it was— I want to make sure and, and mention it was under, under the leadership of, of Chris Gonzalez, who was the program director for many years, and he's still on faculty here. And one of the things that we made a decision to do was kind of lay the curriculum out in a way where it's sort of a cafeteria, right? You're gonna get to taste a lot of these different models.

Mm-hmm.

And then you have to do the work of deciding which of these fits with you, uh, and, and integrating those into, uh, you know, a theory of change.

Nice.

I like that. Getting everyone kind of gets in and gets some experience, see what resonates with them, what's working, what's not working.

Yes.

I always tease Lance, my, uh, uh, supervisor in my practicum was all about this psycho— psycho— psychodynamic model. And so I really struggled under that theory. And then once I learned RT, I was like, okay, here we go.

When that was— oh, you said though you missed, so you finished before Terry.

Terry came right after me. I was graduating in '07 and Terry just came in the fall of '08. So I didn't even know about RT until I end up working on staff at the Hideaway Marriage Intensive up outside Amarillo, and they were using the RT model. This is 2010, before the book came out. So they were just talking about the pain and peace cycle. There was no, like, at least in my experience, oh, this is the Restoration Therapy model. So, right, I'm one of those people who didn't study under Terry, came a little bit later, but thankful that I did.

Yes.

Well, I, I talked to students about this I saw my first client in the 20th century, in the late '90s. Yeah, I saw my first client in the late '90s.

That's plenty ago, huh?

Yes, absolutely. Restoration Therapy, the book was published around or after 2010, like you just mentioned, right? So I had practiced over a decade before there was even an opportunity to learn about that. But I sometimes bring that up to students as an example of this is ever-evolving, right?

Mm-hmm.

Your theory of change is not set in stone at the point at which you graduate the program. I'm using a lot of restoration therapy these days, and that's something that I couldn't have learned about in graduate school.

Right.

What was the primary model you were in graduate school when you were practicing in the last century? What was it? Do you remember what it was?

Yes. Well, you've already mentioned some of the stuff you're doing at your upcoming retreat, Edwin Friedman, and of course he learned from Murray Bowen. I'm very Bowenian, still am. To this day, and any of my students would tell you that. But so a lot of Bowenian work, integrating some cognitive work in there. But as much as I love Bowen and as much as the concepts resonate, with me, I sometimes struggled to figure out how to bring that theory down into practice with some of my clients.

Yeah.

The very intuitive clients who liked to talk about the concepts, it really fit with them. But bringing this down into things you can practice in a pragmatic way, was something I often felt was missing from the work I was doing.

How did you end up in RT? What was that road for you?

Well, I was first exposed to it when we added it into the curriculum here. And I don't actually teach RT here at Lipscomb. Which is interesting. I practice it with clients, but because of the classes I teach, I teach Intro to Systems Theory. So that's just at the largest level.

The grandfather's.

Yeah. First, I'm just trying to teach our students to think systemically and not just in linear cause and effect ways, and think about reciprocity and cycles and those sorts of big ideas. Then we get into those fathers and mothers, those origins like Murray Bowen, Virginia Satir. I get to teach a lot of that, and it's a privilege to do it, but it's Family Therapy 2. I teach Intro to Systems and Family Therapy 1. It's Family Therapy 2 where restoration sits.

Mm-hmm.

But when we brought that into family therapy too, I began to learn about it and it really started to resonate. And then we had a couple of our students go on and start to do more and more and more training in it, post-master's.

Oh, wow.

And so I'm learning from my students, which is one of the cool things about doing this job is the reciprocal nature of learning. I'm learning about it, you know, that they're going to Restoration Level 1, then Restoration Level 2, and coming back, and we're talking about it over coffee, and I'm learning about it that way. Eventually, we were able to get Terry and Sharon out to Nashville to do a continuing education event for us. Lipscomb, in partnership with the Tennessee Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, which I used to serve on the board of our state organization. We had them out, and that's what eventually led to the invitation to go to the Turning from Anxiety event. And that's where I met Lance. And so it really happened very organically.

This may be in the weeds a little too much, but it did make me wonder, like, how does this— how does a model end up in a school, you know, like, where it's like, let's bring this on board and teach that? Did someone else, like, have experience with ROTC, or—

Uh, you know, I'm trying to— I'm trying to remember how that decision was made originally. Um, You know, Ron Deal's a friend of the program. His niece actually went through our program.

Oh.

And in the early days of the program, our director, Chris, used to work with Ron. That could have been some of the kind of early introductions.

Ron the Influencer. That's what I'm gonna call him.

He's a very influential person, right? So that could have been a part of it. Sharon's association with Pepperdine.

Oh yeah.

You know, Lipscomb and Pepperdine come historically out of the same Christian traditions. So I imagine that was a part of it as well. We're at some of the same conferences. I've gotten to speak out at Pepperdine a few times. So I can't trace fully all the connections for how it came to be, but—

Right.

The neat thing about the Family Therapy II course is, whereas the Family Therapy I course that I teach doesn't evolve as much— I mean, Murray Bowen's always gonna have been Murray Bowen.

Right.

And, you know, Sal Minuchin is always going to have been Sal Minuchin. Um, it has a— it's sort of half therapy, half history course in a way, right? Whereas the Family Therapy 2 course, I think, is always evolving. And we're talking as a faculty and collaborating, uh, you know, what, what needs to, to be added in. Um, uh, I can remember a similar sort of process that happened with Linda Metcalf when Linda wrote a book a few years ago that was integrating narrative and solution-focused therapy.

Mm-hmm.

And we're nimble enough that we were able to include that in that class, even though it was very new at the time. So, um, it, it got in there one way or another, right?

Yeah, yeah. No, I appreciate you sharing that.

Yeah.

And yeah, and what hooked you? Like, when did— when, when were you like, oh, I dig this thing?

It was early. I mean, it—

Because you're a nerd.

I'm a nerd, but intuitively, so it made sense to me, which is a good place to start.

This makes sense.

Although, I will say, I do caution students about this. When I was in graduate school, we were asked to write a paper about our model. And I wrote what I think was a very good paper about structural family therapy. The problem was I wasn't actually doing structural family therapy. I wrote about it because I understood it, right?

Yeah.

So understanding is the start of something, and it, it made sense to me. I, I understood it, and I started using it. And then that— but that's the second piece is, you know, am I actually bringing it into the room and practicing it? And is it resonating? And, um, we, we do a lot of feedback-informed treatment, uh, where we're using the Scott Miller, um, nice outcome rating scale, session rating scale, uh, every client, every session at our clinic here. And, um—

For the students?

Yeah, students, whether they want to or not, they have to use it. But we use it too, and it was working. I mean, that's the bottom line. It was working.

Yeah. God bless Scott Miller. When I was in my internship, my supervisor really turned me on to him and really thinking through You know, his process, I think it blends so well with, like, when you're doing therapy, what's effective? What am I— what are my clients actually walking away with? Right? Yeah, that's awesome.

Are they just polite? Yeah. Or are they actually experiencing change? You know, and so getting that feedback is really helpful. One of the things I learned specifically on the SRS, the subscales on the session rating scale. So for those who are listening who maybe aren't familiar, you can take an outcome rating at the beginning of the session, which is essentially how their life has been outside of therapy since the last session. But you also do a session rating at the end.

Right.

And I think that may be more intimidating to students because there's the potential for that immediate feedback on what the client thought about the session. But what I learned looking at that in aggregate terms, what are my clients saying? My relational scores were high. The rapport was there. The joining was there. They felt Comfortable with me.

I feel comfortable with you right now, actually.

Thank you. Yeah, we should do an SRS at the end of this podcast.

Totally.

But where I was lowest was the subscale on goals and topics, which is interesting, right? So the— what I think what we're talking about is relevant, but the client may not be tracking with that. And maybe, oh, I wish what we had really talked about was, you know, was this thing I came in with. So I tried to make some adjustments there. And one of the things I noticed is the more I used elements of restoration therapy, that the goals and topics really went up because pain— you could apply the pain and the peace cycle to whatever their topic of the day or topic of the week was. So, I still felt like I was working on process, not getting bogged down in content, but I was able to apply that to their content. And that really hooked me.

That's awesome.

That's really cool.

It's giving me some anxiety just thinking about passing over a rating scale at the beginning of therapy.

Yes, yes, it does. Yes.

One of my favorite therapists— for me, I mean, who— my personal therapist, um, very experiential guy. But we used to start session off, he'd say, he'd say, so what do you want to work on today? And I always thought like, what do you mean what I want to work on? You're the therapist, you're supposed to know what we want to work on, where we want to go. And later on I kind of realized that's a really good question because Yeah. I may have ideas as a therapist of the direction we should go, but that may not be at all what the client wants to do today or where they want to go.

Yeah.

And of course, the concern, the pushback on a question like that is, well, you're just going to get the crisis of the week, the content of the week or whatever. But again, that's what I love about restoration is they're telling me their content of the week. And I'm going, okay, remember this pain cycle?

Yeah.

Because this is what this sounds like, right? And so, we're able to still do process-level work while honoring this concern that they may have brought this week.

Right.

That's good.

Nice. One thing we talked about, and do you mind if we pivot for a minute? Would that be okay?

Yeah.

Because, um, one thing I really dig about you, Dave, and I think, I think this will be really good for all of us, is the way that y'all have kind of— that you've developed your, your, um, the, this, the school where you have them write on the theories of change. And where— yeah, so I wanted to kind of hear— have you talk about that. And I even want, like, you know, for our listeners to think, like, you know, developmentally As a therapist, how you've changed. So yeah, would you mind?

Sure. So our students become clinically active about halfway through the program. It's a 6-semester program. And so in the 3rd semester is when they first are in the room with clients. The semester prior to that, we have a small group practicum-type experience. They're not yet clinically active, but they're doing a lot of observations of either videos or behind the glass or that sort of thing. In that practicum semester, the end of that semester, we have them write their first theory of change. Now, they're very limited in what they can include in there because they haven't even had all the theory courses at that point. They've had my systems course, they've had my Family Therapy 1, they haven't even had Family Therapy 2, they haven't even had the couple or sex classes where they would learn a lot of John Gottman, for example, right? So they They have pretty limited tools in the toolbox, but based on what they know, they're writing a paper, and there's a section on joining, goals, the approach to assessment and diagnosis, interventions, right? So that's their first opportunity. And one of the things that I tell students is Your model needs to show up in each section of that paper. Sometimes we equate our model with our interventions, but your model should affect how you join. It should affect how you think about goals. It's relevant.

Yeah.

It affects how you think about cultural diversity, which is part of the paper. I want to see it in each section.

Mm-hmm.

So that's the idea. But then at the end of each clinical semester thereafter, supervised clinical practice 1, 2, 3, and 4, they're revising it. So it's sort of this working document. They're adding, removing, editing, changing, revising the prompts. Grow a little bit along with their developmental growth, but the sections are the same. There's always a joining section, always a goals section, etc. It's really fun to see those papers grow and change. And you can tell when they've had family therapy too, and restoration therapy starts to pop up for some of those folks. IFS pops up for the folks who really get excited about that. Whatever it is that they've learned since the last time they wrote the paper, by the time they graduate, they've got a pretty well-articulated theory of change. To be clear, we are not saying create a model.

Right.

But what we're saying is, what model or models do you integrate How do you do therapy? Basically, that's the idea.

Nice. What do you notice, like, when you're— if we were to look at the developmental and the, the evolutions and the devolutions that happen along the way, for what, what do you notice? You know, I think it'd be fascinating, like, for your typical student, And then over the years, because you've been doing this since 2012, right?

Yes.

So like, have you noticed there being like your students, how they develop, if it's how, what influences it, and what's your typical flow, and how has it changed over the years?

One of the, one of the things that tends to happen. Let me actually give a metaphor that we give the students, because sometimes they express frustration with writing the same paper, writing the same paper over and over and over again.

Yeah.

And I have empathy for that. I understand why it's frustrating to do that. But one of our former faculty members, gave this metaphor, which I think is really good. Imagine you're going to study abroad in Paris and you're keeping a journal of that experience, and the question for every journal entry is, what's it like living in Paris? You write that that first night you're there. You fly into the airport, you get into your hotel.

Mm-hmm.

What's it like living in Paris? You write it again in a week, you write it again in a month, it's the same thing, but the response is going to be significantly different. You're not going to say the same thing.

Yeah.

There's not a— you don't have to plagiarize yourself the 5th time you write it. You're not cutting and pasting everything from the first time you write it. And I think that's a good metaphor that holds up with what I see in students. And there's this kind of predictable thing that goes, knowing the curriculum and what other classes they're in, you can see the semester where their responses in the cultural diversity piece really evolve because they've been studying that during that semester. Again, you see that Family Therapy 2 kind of bump.

Yeah.

Sometimes they get real excited about this new thing they learned that semester, and it's sort of all that, right? And then maybe it comes back by the end of the term to something that's a little more integrative. But there is kind of a predictable flow based on what else they're learning, I think, in that semester, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Will you say something about a phrase you said a couple minutes ago about how model gets identified with intervention itself?

Essentially.

Yeah.

Oh, and that's a good— that goes back to a part of what Lance asked that I don't think I answered adequately. You know, how have I seen kind of not just in the arc of a student but in the arc of our program? Early on, I was giving this feedback a lot to students: you're not talking about your model until you get to the intervention section. Why isn't it influencing how you're joining? Why isn't it influencing certainly how you would articulate goals? I've found myself having to give that feedback less, maybe because I'm trying harder to get in front of it with the students that I have in any particular clinical semester. And make sure they're already thinking about that before they write the paper rather than it just being coming back on the back end. But I think all of us are maybe tempted to equate models with interventions.

Mm-hmm.

If it's CBT, okay, now we can write about identifying and challenging distorted thoughts, right? If it's RT, now we can write about the 4 steps. And so I really encourage students to back up and really think about, do I think about goals differently because I'm an RT therapist, right?

Yeah.

Do I articulate goals differently because I use a lot of IFS? And the answer to that should be yes.

Mm-hmm.

Right? They just have to consider that and, and put some thought into it. Yeah.

It just made me think, uh, there were— Lance and I had a conversation, um, with Lindsay and Eric Minton, who are in Tennessee. They have a family therapy practice.

They are, they are friends. Yeah, there's not as many of us on this side of the Mississippi River. So yes.

Eric said something on the podcast that kind of caught me, and he was— he He's talked about, and he referred actually to a biblical phrase in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 there, where you hide it under a bushel.

Yeah.

And he, and he said something to the effect that in RT, he feels like the model gets hidden under a bushel because we just focus on the pain and peace cycle, which is the intervention. And that, that got my attention a little bit, thinking. And I think his point was there's so many expansive ways that RT pulls people into change and how we think about, um, goals and—

Yeah.

And stuff, but that sometimes the intervention itself, which is the 4 steps you're talking about there—

Yes.

When you think of RT, that's all anyone talks about, or that's— and, you know, I'm putting myself in that category that sometimes I could get kind of lazy and just focus on the intervention, intervention, and To step back more recently and look at RT and reread some stuff, I'm like, oh yeah, there is a very expansive—

Yeah.

And this is someone who teaches it a lot myself in different— so shame on me. I'm just wondering, I just— you said that and it made me think about that conversation with Eric.

Well, I think given that your role is frequently as a facilitator and a teacher, that actually makes sense to me because the People that are coming for the CEU are coming saying, I want to leave this workshop with a new intervention. Right?

Yeah.

And so sometimes when we're talking about something like joining, that may seem too soft or something. We want practical things to do. Right?

I—

it's all important, right? From the joining to the goal setting to how you conceptualize how change works, you know, to how you even think about your own person of the therapist experience.

Yeah. What's my role in the room here?

Yeah. And that's influenced by your model, I think.

Yeah.

Right? Yeah.

It's really fascinating. I always think RT is so interesting because we start off with this our role as a restoration therapist, like, we're kind of like hearing them, or like, it's, it's like, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're organizing with them. It's, it's very like, you know, back and forth in this realm. And then like, once we get the truth, like, it's very, you know, we're, it's, we're, we're being a deeper guide, um, on like the truth. Like, it's very cushy and lovey, and like you get this amazing moment, right? And then you take on this third role as a restoration therapist, which everybody hates because Coach Lance is coming out right now. And let's do— let's, let's do the— let's do your, um, runs because we're gonna go through the 4 steps a bunch of times. So it's— I always find it fascinating. It's like Your role as the therapist is very fluid.

That's interesting. And I think that's part of what I was trying to articulate earlier about what drew me to it. RT is integrative already. Like a student could say, well, I do RT and I integrate it with these other things. Sure. It's sort of like the restoration therapy book was Terry's theory of change at a much more in-depth level than a graduate school paper. But it has elements of other building blocks from our profession. And it's got that supportive piece like you're talking about. Then it's got that challenging piece.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

As opposed to a model that tends to come down all on support or primarily on challenge. Yeah.

Yeah. But I would beg to differ with you, Rhett, too. I feel like you do a great job with the deeper components because I remember talking to you, you're like, this is a few years ago, you were talking about doing a presentation at a church and you're like, Yeah, I just kind of talked on love and trustworthiness and like what those things are. Like, that's— those are like the deep philosophical components of RT. So I feel like you are like— you, you, you, you do teach that. Like, I think Eric would be like, this guy's legit. I think Eric thinks you're legit.

Yeah, I don't think I don't. I think I— I mean, I do think I Because I love systems. I love thinking expansive and how everything works. And so I try to get into all nuts and bolts. But when he said that, it just made me think sometimes that I can get lost, I think, just in the intervention itself and miss out on some other opportunities to, like you said, take on that coaching role, for example.

Yeah.

So it's just a helpful reminder, I think. And that's why I like talking to people in the RT community because I always learn something.

Yes.

You know, like, Dave, we had a student on last week who's up at George Fox, and, uh, he had such good questions that it's like, I, you know, you need someone with fresh eyes to ask questions that you don't think about often because you've been doing the work for a while. And so it was good. And it's— it wasn't, um, his questions were just so good that they weren't meant as a pushback, but I felt it like, oh, I need to think about this. So that's helpful. And I'd imagine with you teaching students day in and day out, like you said earlier, you kind of learn a lot about yourself in that process with the questions that they have and they bring to you.

If they trust you, which is always— I mean, that's as a professor, in the same way that as a therapist, you know, we join. As a professor, I need them to trust me, and then they can ask that hard question.

Yeah.

I don't need you to pretend that you understand this so that I think you're smart. If you have a question that would help you understand this better, ask it. And yeah, It's sometimes I don't have necessarily a ready answer for that, which is it's a real learning moment. What I need to get some clarity on that question you're asking for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, I do.

I do get in in family therapy one, even though I don't I don't teach RT here, I do get to teach them about contextual family therapy and Nage. Which, again, thinking about RT as a theory of change, there's those nudge elements.

Absolutely.

The trust piece. And sometimes students will ask really good questions about nudge, and I can always say, well, why don't you save that for family therapy too? It's going to come back up with restoration therapy. You know, kick the can down the road a little bit there, but yeah.

I, um, go ahead, Lance.

I was curious around like what you've seen, like with, like when you're looking at students today, cuz we do, we do have a lot of students that listen to this. Um, like what are the big things that you're encouraging your students? Like how are you? Like when they come in, what, what is your heart for them? You know, you've been doing this for, for a while now, and I don't know how you're so young, but, um, uh, like how— what is your, you know, heart language for them? I mean, to be a beloved professor, you know, to me, I, I think I always— to me, beloved professors are super special. Um, And there's something, there's some extra secret sauce that's going on there. So I'm curious around that.

Well, first I want to clarify, I didn't refer to myself as a beloved professor.

No, you're not claiming it.

I'm just—

yeah.

Well, one thing that comes immediately to mind is you can only be who you are. And I look at my colleagues, colleagues I've had that have moved on and colleagues that I still have, and I think, oh, here's this colleague is so great at bringing in all these resources for students.

Right.

I wish I did more of that. This one is just really knowledgeable, has really deep content knowledge in this specific area that I don't have. That kind of comparison, I think we all do to some degree, but you can only be who you are. You just have to be the best version of that.

Yeah.

And who I am, who I've always been, is pretty relational. I came out of student life. I did a dozen years in the University Counseling Center, and that was actually situated under campus life. I have other things in my background, but all of which is very relational.

Hmm.

And be clear with students, be trustworthy. Do what you say you're going to do. Don't do things you said you weren't going to do. And I guess that's where it starts for me. And then the content knowledge that comes— somebody was asking me just the other day, it was a postmaster supervisee that I was meeting with. And I was rattling off some intervention from some model. I don't even remember the specifics that we were talking about. But her response was basically, how do you know all this stuff? And I assured her I didn't know all this stuff just from going through my master's program one time.

Yeah.

It's the repetitive nature of teaching this content over and over and over again. that it really sticks. So for anyone out there that's thinking about transitioning into the academic world, you grow that content knowledge over time, I think. Yeah.

This is kind of random, but I'm in a little book club and we just finished Jim Collins' new book, the author of Good to Great. He had a new book called What to Make of a Life, just came out. And it looks at people who have kind of second and third careers and when they entered what he calls the fog and the cliffs. And he's, you know, he's very research science oriented. So he comes from that. But one thing that stood out on all the data was that content building, that That these people for decades built this knowledge base that helped them transition into new things or other things. And we often see it as a, a one moment, you know, or it's like the artists, or like they have their first big hit, but they've been actually playing shops for 30 years, you know, building that.

Yeah.

Building that container. And I think about that as therapists a lot, you know, that a lot of our work is is the cumulative effect of just all the hours in the room over time. Um, yes, which is daunting when you're, you know, when I remember, you know, the first time I went back to visit a client when I was an intern and how scary that was. And you don't really know anything. And fast forward almost 30 years and it's like, okay, I think I know some stuff. Right.

Yeah, absolutely. I It's true as a therapist. It's true as a teacher. That first year, 2012, and if any of my students from that era watch this, they'll probably say, yeah, we knew that this was the case, but I was just staying a week ahead of them. I mean, it was treading water there.

Right.

You know, doing this for the first time and you never want to stop learning. It's a lifelong learning process. But yeah, you do, you build that content knowledge over time for sure. I would agree with that premise. Yeah.

I want to, Lance, if this is okay with you, I want to pivot again because we brought this up.

Dude, we're good pivoters.

Yeah, we brought this because it's too important, I think, and it's on our minds recently. And we had talked about it in pre-conversation. And Dave, that is— sounds like in your role as an elder at your church, you find yourself thinking about RT or the 4 steps or about the pain-peace cycle, old self, new self, that there is maybe a natural integration that kind of shows up, you know, theologically, psychologically for you. And I just— I'd like to spend a little bit of time just talking about that and And like, I guess how you think about that.

It's a— I have found the 4 steps to be a really useful tool. To be clear, so I'm a church elder, which is a lay position. You know, it's not a paid ministry staff position. We use the terms elders and shepherds interchangeably.

Mm-hmm.

The first role at our congregation of an elder is to shepherd, is to pastor, is just to be supportive in the lives of people. We're trying not to pick out the carpet for the new wing or whatever.

Yeah.

We have people who are talented and able to do those kind of things. There are some governance duties that are associated with it. It's first and foremost pastoral, and the 4 steps, they're universal and they're unique, right? I mean, it's pretty universally applicable In conversations with people, non-therapy conversations. I'm trying to be very— one of the things I have taught many times over the years in this program is also ethics, and so I'm trying to be very careful about not entering into dual relationships with folks. But just in even a non-therapy conversation with someone, about a challenge they're going through, those 4 steps are really useful.

Mm-hmm.

And a while back, I started teaching this class that we've now offered a couple of times, just kind of integrating some of the things that we know are helpful for people's mental health, integrating that with their spiritual life, And of all the things I've brought into those classes, I've brought in some Bowenian concepts like differentiation. I've brought in practical self-care activities that nothing resonates to the same degree that the 4 steps have resonated with people. You know, those classes, there's a felt need amongst people in our congregation. When they see a class like that offered, you know, they're showing up. And I've got— yeah, here's one. So I've got 2 adult children, and one of them, she's a very talented designer. And I gave her some Four Steps material and I said, could you get this on a bookmark for me? And so she did this bookmark where she's got the word— Sharon's word banks, right?

Oh, cool.

You know, say what you feel, say what you normally do, right? Say the truth, say what you do differently. Got the word bank because one of the things that I think I didn't fully get about RT until actually doing some of the training was just the importance of relentless practice of this, right? So I'm like, can you get these on a bookmark, something that people can have accessible to them? And I've had so many people over the last couple of years say, do you have any more of those bookmarks? I want to distribute them to this person in my life, or— I'd like a couple to stick around even in other places in my own home. Something about that is speaking to people, and they're not experiencing that as a competing answer. It's not, is Jesus the answer or is the 4 steps the answer?

Right.

It's integrating really well with their pursuit of a relationship with Christ. Will you—

this again, I don't want to get too much in the weeds, but I'm just curious about it. Like, when you teach a class like that, do you feel the need sometimes to have to get into some context and talk about what RT is? Or do you feel like, I can like introduce some word banks and help people identify pain they're in and behaviors and then like focus on this truth? And they don't need all the other extra context as it relates to maybe what us therapists or professors or teachers might want to get into.

It's certainly less than if I were teaching it in an academic setting. But I can't shed that part of me fully. I cannot share something in a class without giving citation. Even on the bookmark, I had her put Terry— you won't be able to see it on the camera, but I had her put a citation there at the bottom of it. So I give a little bit of that context. I also find— so I'm not going too far into that, but I've talked to several people who have then gone out on their own. I've given them enough that they've gone and found— some of his stuff elsewhere, right? And, and come back a couple weeks later and after class or before class and, and wanted to talk about that, right? Um, so it's, it's not, it's not the same as, uh, graduate coursework for sure.

Yeah.

But, but yeah, I do want them to know where that's, where that's coming For sure. Yeah. And I loved— you were talking earlier about kind of the self, I mean, true self, false self, or whatever language you want to put around those categories. I mean, that's stuff that Christian thinkers and writers have been describing for forever.

Yeah.

The notion of a true self and a false self, and what does it look like to deny a false self while pursuing a true self? And I think this fits right in with that pursuit.

Yeah, and it's so easy to also use language like that with people who, let's say, don't come from a faith background, because there's lots of writings outside of the faith tradition and Christian traditions. There's a lot of philosophical thought where it's just like you said, this true self, false self, and, um, it makes it readily available to bring that— this process of change into a lot of different, a lot of different environments.

Yes, yes. Um, even though I'm, you know, at an institution with, with a Christian tradition and Uh, you know, in, in a role with the church. Um, I don't limit my— I have a small private practice. Uh, I, I certainly don't limit that to, to clients of faith, and I have not found it— that to be a barrier to, to working from this, from this model with clients. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's good stuff, Lance. I don't want to hog all the questions here, so—

No, you're asking good questions. I think, uh, after this episode we're gonna get all these emails being like, how can I get these bookmarks? I really like these bookmarks. So Dave, do you have an Etsy shop? Does your daughter have an Etsy shop or something?

I should get her on that. Um, um, The, the— I wonder if I could possibly— we can talk offline about this. I could possibly share the PDF. Um, uh, I have limited quantities of the actual printed, printed bookmarks, but—

Yeah, if you got a visual just to show people, because I, you know, I think what it points to is the creativity by which people in the RT community are using this. We had a guy on A few months ago, Justin Metz, who's also a student at DTS, and he created, um, uh, mirror— like, like mirror, mirror hangers on a car.

Yeah.

With the cycle and the 4 steps. And he sold them, or he bought them on Amazon, just gave them away to clients, and they would hang them on their mirror. And his point was to see it a lot and to practice, just to have that awareness. And so To me, it just points to the creative ways that people are utilizing the tools and interventions. So I love that. I love that your daughter did that for you.

Yeah, I was really pleased she was able to do that. The class is called Under Pressure, and there's a— a jars motif coming out of 2 Corinthians 4, jars of clay, imperfect vessels, right?

Yeah.

And originally, she did it with some more clip art type jars, and she said, I'm not going to put my little design logo on there because this isn't original art. And I said, Go do original art. I want you to put your design logo on there. So she went back in and did the art and, uh, and put her little logo there. But yeah, she, she doesn't have a shop up and running. I need to talk to her about that. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's 2 Corinthians passage. You talk about, you know, like feeling truth, feeling truth, you know, persecuted, not abandoned, you know.

Yeah.

Struck down, not destroyed.

Destroyed.

Yeah.

So great. Yeah. That's right.

Yeah.

We're under pressure, but not crushed. I mean, it's a powerful place to start. And again, there's a lot of content from the professional mental health world that we could bring into that conversation. But this is the thing that, again, that really resonates the most, I've found.

Yeah, and then you can sing the song, you know.

Well, you would, because, uh, I've, uh, you— I, I know you're a big music fan. I know that from the, from the turning from inside.

Lance is not shy. He'll, he'll, uh, get up and do his song and dance.

There was sort of a guitar pull, Rhett, at the, at the event at, uh, WindShape, and, um, Was that Justin Little playing?

Yeah.

And then Terry got his guitar out and did a couple, uh, I don't know if he did that night, but sometime that, that weekend he played.

He did a couple that night. Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh man.

Yeah, that was great.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Hey, I would, as we're kind of winding up, I would, I would be curious if there's any, um, I don't know, books you're really into or books you're reading that capture kind of like theology change, integration type stuff. They don't have to be new books per se, but you know, when someone's like thinking about this topic, you're like, here's the 3 or 4 books that really have made an impact on you in terms of how you think about this. Does anything come to mind?

Well, this would be the— I'm glad you said they don't have to be new because this would be the obvious one. But I mean, again, anything by Edwin Friedman, I would put high on. It sounds like y'all are familiar and use a lot of that stuff.

Do you have a favorite of his that you like?

Well, my absolute favorite are his Fables.

Fables, yeah.

But I mean, what's the subtitle? Like, Process in Church and Synagogue, Family Church and Synagogue, Generation to Generation.

Generation Enduration?

Yeah, that's the biggie, I think, for me. There it is. Yep, absolutely. Yeah, that's good stuff. But that's been very influential. Another kind of Bowenian person, Roberta Gilbert's written I love her books. Yeah.

Extraordinary Relationships, is that what it's called?

I actually assign Extraordinary Relationships to students, but she has another one that's more specific to faith contexts, and I'm having trouble thinking of the name of it right now.

It's okay. I'll find that and pull that up. But I really liked her work as she looks at systems from Global world all the way down to who you live in your house with. It's fascinating.

Yeah. And it's also one of the things I appreciate about her is the person of the therapist piece, which is I started learning this stuff on a professional level and then it it couldn't help but influence my life. So she's writing both as a mental health professional and as someone who I think would say her life is better because of some of those concepts. And again, that's Bowenian, that's been around for years, but I see a lot of that in restoration therapy, especially the true self part.

Yeah.

So those things come immediately to mind. And this is not— one other thing that comes to my mind, this is not a person that's intentionally maybe integrating using theological training and mental health training. But people really appreciate things where there's evidence. And one of my favorite things is when social science gives us evidence of something that's consistent with some of the things that Jesus was teaching 2,000 years ago, for example.

Right.

And I think a lot of Gottman's stuff on trust, Science of Trust, I find a lot of value in that. Here's empirical evidence that it matters how we talk to each other. Yeah.

Right?

Here's empirical evidence of the difference in a harsh startup You know, versus a soft startup, or positive sentiment versus negative sentiment. You know, and so I find myself integrating a lot of that into these classes and conversations as well.

That's awesome.

Oh, and Mark McMen. Sorry, Mark McMen. Mark McMen wrote a book. Finding Our Way Home. I think he's at Wheaton.

Okay.

But there's a chapter in there called Home to Self that has a great— he talks a lot about the true self/false self tension in that.

Yeah.

That's helpful.

Sorry, I couldn't—

There's a lot of readers in our community and book recommendations have always been helpful. And so it's nice to know what people are reading and what they're interacting with.

Interesting. Lance, you were gonna say something about Gottman. I didn't mean to talk over you.

No, it's all good. His, uh, Mark McMen, his book— is he the guy that did embodying integration with his daughter?

I don't know. I don't know that one. Possibly. Wait.

Oh, oh man. Is it, is it that Mark McMinn?

That's the right name. Yeah.

Uh, such a great book.

Oh, that's a good recommend. I'll check that one out then.

Check out Embodying Integration, for especially for our Christian therapists out there. Um, it's such a fascinating, um, new look at, um, what integration looks like in the therapy room.

Oh yeah, that's great. That's great.

Yeah. So man, I wish we had a little bit more time with you, Dave. Maybe we'll have to— are you, are you going to be coming to the summit?

Um, we, we actually were— we've been having faculty meetings all week. Classes start next week, and we were getting the lowdown yesterday on how you— what the current process is for applying for Uh, time and potentially funding to go to things. And my first thought was, wonder what, what's coming up in the RT world soon. So, uh, definitely be taking a look at that.

That'd be awesome.

You can come out, you can get a free private surf lesson from Lance.

Oh yeah.

Do you know? He'll, uh, He'll take you out. He'll take you out.

Lance seems to think I'm young. I'm in my 50s, and I don't— I think that seems a little old to start surfing for the first time.

No, I actually know guys that start surfing in their 60s. So, you know, you might be a youngin'.

It would give me the rest of this decade to get in shape, and then maybe at When I'm 60, I could try it.

There you go.

Dave, how old are you?

I'm 52 years old.

Okay, see, I'm 51. I'll be 52 in January.

Awesome.

So, you know, it's never too late for us to learn some new things, right?

For sure, for sure.

So yeah, this could be you.

I'll probably watch you guys from the shore. I don't, you know, there's too many sharks out there for me.

Oh, boo, boo, boo.

Yeah, well, um, everybody who's listening, you, you know the drill. We will have this posted on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and then at our, uh, Substack. All the links— that's what I've been busy doing over here. I have, I have quite a few.

Yeah, you do.

Different topics and links that we'll, we'll put in the, put in the show notes.

Great.

And, um, Dave, we really appreciate you, uh, taking the time. I'll put your link as well to your faculty page. So who knows, you might get some emails from some listeners here. So we— and even though Lance has met you, I'm looking forward to hopefully meeting you in person here soon.

So I would love that. Just to be clear, any angry emails can go to Rhett or Lance.

Any angry emails, lanceall@gmail.com.

Be sure to get right on those things. All right.

But yeah, I would love to connect in person, and thank you for having me.

Yeah, for sure. Cheers.

Thank you. See you guys later. Take care.