Ep.142- The Bridge To Deeper Connection with Shari Foos

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights, and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed LMFT 🎗️, marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

Hey everybody, this week's guest is Shari Fose. She's a celebrated therapist and founder of The Narrative Method, which is a nonprofit that uses personal storytelling as a means to build thoughtful human connections and deepen existing relationships. The Narrative Method creates programs, products, and experiences that addresses the growing isolation and need for real connection through sharing stories. She also co-founded The Bridge in 1999, a free humanities program for low-income adults through Antioch University in Los Angeles. She received an MS in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University and an MA in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University in Los Angeles. She's a sought-after expert on the subject of relationships, remote group dynamics, and meaningful connection. And her writing and commentary have appeared in a range of online and print publications and podcasts, including Huffington Post, Thrive Global, Shondaland, the LA Weekly, Saundership, Let Pleasure Be the Measure, and Bustle. She serves as a board— on the board of the City Kids Foundation and is the recipient of the New Directions for Veterans Community Hero Award in 2015 and the Antioch University Life— Los Angeles Lifetime Achievement Award. So welcome and thanks for hanging out.

Really glad to be here.

Well, one of the many reasons why I'm excited to have you is that we're both marriage and family therapists. You're out on the West Coast in California. I'm in here in South Florida. And as I was going through some of the awesome things that you're doing, which is teaching people empathy and compassion and kind of recreating a narrative around what's going on in their life, stood out to me as one of the trainings from probably, you know, definitely my graduate training, but I'm not sure if part of your graduate training is narrative therapy, which is all about how we can re-narrate and re-story our life and our struggles and our challenges from a more empowering perspective. But I actually thought that that was part of what you were coming from, from the narrative medicine field, and it actually is a little bit different than what I assumed. So can you please share a little bit, and we'll start there with what is narrative medicine?

Narrative medicine was conceived by a physician at Columbia University about 20 or 30 years ago, um, in an effort to teach empathy to doctors. And the methodology was through reading literature, through identifying with characters. And of course, a lot of doctors are not fiction readers. And previous to now, we're never really trained in empathy. We've all automatically said, you know, I don't care about their personality as long as they do a good job. But the truth is, We're profoundly impacted by the way our doctor treats us, by the quality of their presence. And, um, you know, if you've ever been to a doctor with something going on, it's very hard to remember what you were thinking when you're given the sense that, you know, you're out of time as soon as you get there.

Yeah.

So, um, it's a very diverse field. It's rooted in social justice. And of course it's about understanding feelings, character, and other people through empathizing with their emotional experience. Narrative therapy, which was started in Australia by David Epson— uh, David White and Epson. What's his name?

Michael White.

Michael White and David.

David, yeah.

Good thing you're here, right?

It's all those models and all those names to keep up with, right?

Yeah, David Epson, Michael White, Jason Wasser. Oh, we all have so much fun. Well, anyway, I love their work. And yes, I studied that when I was at school as well, because it's about understanding the power of your story. And the way you interpret your story has everything to, to do with your outlook. So we're always looking for the truer story. In my work, the Narrative Method, it combines the mentality of narrative therapy and the respect and appreciation of narrative medicine with an understanding of society and, um, and the impact of what we call the cult of culture, which is the non-stop interference of noise that essentially tells us we're not good enough. And we know that because you're selling us soap and other products that are supposed to create miracles. But everyone learns from the time they're young children. What's wrong with them? In what ways they don't look good enough, tall enough, strong enough, cool enough, all of that stuff. So through our salons, we do both writing groups and conversation groups. We provide a non-hierarchical experience of welcoming, welcoming you for who you really are. Because until we separate all that noise and all that intrusion, and those negative messages from what's happened to us, that is how we see who we really are. I am reacting to negative things that have happened to me throughout my life. We all are. We're also responding to the positive. But when we get clear about how that interference has, um, gotten in the way of our clarity and our ability to manifest our real lives, that is the most empowering thing that we can do.

Yeah, when I see it very simply as a binary, uh, reality for us, we can either be empowered or we can choose to be stuck under, be a victim, whatever rotating words that we want to put out there, um, right? Disempowered, disengaged, um, and, and I would love working with my clients on categorizing those different stories, right? All the different stories that they've gone through, where they feel like they had proactivity, where they had agency, where they had urgency, where they had the ability to achieve and accomplish and, and work through something, and the things that they feel like they don't, where the world is against them, where they can't come out from under that rock. And then find those macro categories and then break down, right? Because the stories are the stories. But when we realize that we have themes in our life that we are playing up against, and we can put those into different categories, I feel like that automatically starts becoming more of an empowering That's when you're bringing it, of course, because you're bringing it into awareness, right?

And in, in my work, we— it's just groups. It's not therapy. It's connecting to other people. And in sharing your story, whether it's a written story that we do on the fly, you come, you don't know what it's going to be, you get prompts, boom, you do it. Whether it's a written story or a shared story verbally, there's no time for small talk. Small talk really makes everybody nervous. Some people are better at the game of it, but it's the opposite of getting to know somebody. So our stories just cut to the quick, and it's incredibly fun. And hopefully it's always funny as well, because there's so much organic humor in looking at not what's wrong with you or the mistakes you've made, but these common human foibles. In a group, what we see is we all have these same insecurities to different degrees at different times. We all have confidence at times. But when you feel like you're going through something on your own, it's a lot harder to get to a bigger perspective.

So let's tap into that a little bit deeper because we are you know, the last 2 and a half years has been a very difficult time for community as a whole. More divisiveness, more— there might be more community in the sense of like, I got to dig into my lines of who I'm aligned with, who I'm not aligned with. But it may not be a community out of proactivity and uplifting this versus the focus on what I don't want, what I don't like, and what I never want around me, which still creates a community. But it's kind of the way I would see it as like low frequency, high frequency. Engagement, right? Some of it's much more out of negative than it is out of positive and proactive. So what have you seen? I mean, number one, when someone's going to a doctor, let's just go back there for a second. They're going in alone. Maybe they're going in with a loved one during the pandemic. They probably were most likely either doing it via Zoom, or if they were going in, it was by themself. So they don't have advocacy, they don't have support, they don't have someone there to kind of, you know, hold their hand through that process. And two, if you're saying the bedside manner, the lacking of empathy, the, the, the restrictions of the modern medical system, insurance-based system, stuff like that doesn't actually advocate for all the things that you're trying to bring in. So what have you seen? And what have you noticed, one, from that perspective of empathy, which I know, like, is such a huge— right, that empathy and compassion side is probably the underlying trait that will create this success, which I think that you're focusing on, right? And the gratitude of, like, even when things are challenging, what could possibly come from that. So what have you seen? What have you learned from, you know, helping people walk through that, especially through the medical system, as far as, you know, whether it's the side of the person who is going through the system, or it is the provider being more empathetic that they didn't realize that they've brought to the table, or empowering the patient on that end to how to either advocate for themselves more, stand up for themselves more, bring in more of a community outside of them. But both of those are communities. So what have you— what are some takeaways from each of those venues?

Well, first it has to be said that, um, doctors, although they get the heat for seeing us for 5 minutes and not giving us the quality of time and attention that we need, they are squeezed because of insurance companies too. And they, you know, fewer men now go to medical school. Because when the money gets less, it becomes a woman's field. So now more than half of the new physicians are women. So that impacts doctors and it makes their work less gratifying because not every doctor deals with issues of lack of empathy. And some would really like to be able to have more meaningful connections. But one of my professors at Columbia, Sayantani Dasgupta, who was a pediatrician, shared this incredibly poignant story as an analogy of what happens when doctors are more interested in people's stories. So in one case, this woman had all kinds of symptoms. They were terrible. Nobody could figure out what was happening. The doctor started talking to her about her interests. Turns out she was a gardener. They realized it was something from the ground. Something that she was allergic to. In another case, it was a mother who was a Spanish speaker, and this doctor didn't speak Spanish, so she kept bringing her daughter back for an earache that wouldn't improve. And finally, the doctor had the presence of mind to say, "Show me how you're administering this." And the mother was pouring the syrup in the child's ear. And, you know, it's just such a great example of how We can't take things for granted, and this is not just about a language barrier. We all have such different ways of seeing the world, and the way to really learn how to see as clearly as possible is putting yourself aside when you're connecting with someone, when you're listening with them. First of all, putting yourself aside, you're liberated from all your self-consciousness. But also, you can be present to hear someone's story from their perspective without your own assumptions or beliefs. So this all ties into a medical approach of profound respect and breaking down that hierarchy of, you know, I know, you know, you're just the body. When you engage your patient, they respond better to protocols. They feel more a part of the process and are less afraid to ask questions. It's that easy.

Well, I think that really does speak to, unfortunately, the whole entire philosophy of what modern medicine is, which is it separated the mind from the body, which has been what's been happening over the many years. And now there's finally a, a comeback on that. My practice itself is an integrative mind-body mind-body medicine practice. And it's funny, because maybe whether it's my training, whether it's my down the rabbit hole journey for my own healing with some of the physical stuff that I've gone through, food sensitivities, that those questions are something that I wouldn't take, you know, now I wouldn't take for granted by asking them like, well, you know, why is our systems being trained to not even to take that into consideration of cultural competency, which is a big thing, obviously, and in all the medical fields, but specifically in our, you know, in the counseling world. But to like contextual environment and not taking those things for granted is finally making its way back into that allopathic medical system versus like more in the allied health fields, which I guess we would be considered our world more from. So it's great that we're having that relative influence. But, you know, the shelf behind me that you can see, the top weight, those two are all integrative functional medicine and nutrition. As a therapist, and which is incredibly rare, that I'm going to ask about your bowel movements and your period and your— right, what's working, what's not working, having— looking at labs with you and saying like, hey, they might have missed this. Here's a functional medicine person that can interpret that better. This doesn't look so iii for me based on what I know. Obviously, I'm not diagnosing, assessing, and treating outside my scope, but I know that, you know, people have heard on the show vitamin D levels and vitamin B levels and zinc and all this stuff that's COVID-related, but also for immunity and also for stress handling. And so I wonder, right, as you have come from a clinical, right, world back into a medical world, right, with the medical allopathic medicine world, are you seeing shifts and changes of incorporating back that mind-body approach where it's not just, you know, just throw on a pair of yoga pants and do some yoga and everything will be healed, but actually getting to the nitty-gritty?

Well, first of all, I don't operate from a medical perspective, right? Narrative, um, medicine is at the core of my value system, let's say that. But one thing that I believe has really started to improve things is, you know, psychotherapy has always been, um, the ugly child of science. And regarded as woo-woo and opinion and all that. But now that we have neuroscience and we can track things and we have fMRIs and we see that the brain is plastic throughout life, and these are scientific facts, now we're in a whole other world because the things that we sensed or knew to be true from our experience, we now have data on. And so you can no longer look at psychotherapy as, you know, friendship or holding hands or unprovable. So as this becomes more and more of a science and people understand the link between mind-body, if it's your bowel movements or your period or your breathing or any of that, duh, of course.

I mean, it's not even innately all along.

You know, your mind, your body, your soul. You mentioned gratitude, how gratitude changes your life, your outlook. I mean, of all the practices I've ever done, that more than anything has changed my homeostasis.

Yeah, the neuroscience. So as I've journeyed in my own journey of healing, one of the modalities that I stumbled upon when I was having panic attacks about 12 years ago was something called Neuro Emotional Technique, NET. And I literally did everything in the world to get rid of my panic attacks. And within 3 sessions, they went away. Non-invasive, right? It uses applied kinesiology, Chinese medicine, meridian points with a, you know, say a script protocol to figure out like kind of a flowchart type protocol. And I'm like, alright, this is crazy. I knew this existed. And I saw it in chiropractic. But I never knew that it existed in therapy for us. Right?

And again, no, I just—

mind-body, right?

So I was gonna say chiropractic is another field that, you know, is always having to sort of prove to justify theirself.

Well, right, because they were thrown in jail back in the day when they were first practicing. And so they have this outlier philosophy of fighting the system, which I understand, especially during the pandemic, when they took a stance as a whole against vaccines, many of them. So I know that comes from original trauma of their community, versus looking at it, oh, they're just anti-vaxxers, right? So right, there's a cultural context to that. And even in that mindset, which I've— NET actually came out of chiropractic originally. So, but the cool thing is, is that this technique, which has been around for 25, 30 years, has partnered with Jefferson University, their medical program in Philadelphia, and the chair of the integrative medicine department, Dr. Dan Monte is a psychiatrist, an MD psychiatrist who does psychotherapy, who does integrative medicine. They have a functional medicine clinic there as part of the program. But they're doing all the clinical research using fMRIs and neurology for mapping pre and post intervention using this technique, which just goes back to everything you're saying. Once we have brain scans, once we have blood draws, once we can prove pre and post, right? I keep thinking of like what John Gottman was doing when it came to couples counseling in his Love Lab for the last 20, 30 years. That was like groundbreaking and earth-shattering because he hooked you up to heart rate variability, right? And sweat galvanization— galvanization, I always screw up the word here— where he's measuring perspiration during and watching videos and replaying part by part. That was showing the science of couple's counseling.

Sure.

And that was so far ahead of so many other models that are just throwing stuff out there, that we now have all these things being proven. And yes, the neuroplasticity, but that goes back to what you're talking about, right? Empathy, compassion, patience, nutrition, exercise, all of the things that— it's struggling because I know that medicine is so important. And obviously, you know, we need it for sick care, but I don't know if it's been as— it's finally moving back into well care. And I think that we've been filling that gap as therapists, but also fighting against that system while being within that system.

Of course. Well, you know, in China, um, you don't pay your doctor if you get sick, but you pay them if you're healthy. Yeah. So, you know, everybody's on the same team. But, you know, another thing, when you think about like a chiropractor versus an osteopath, One doctor will— and again, I'm not putting down either field, but just generally, one doctor may look at an X-ray, talk to you, never or barely touch your body. This just happened with my husband. 5 minutes. My husband fell and hurt his shoulder. Doctor gave us 5 minutes, $750. When we left, I thought, He didn't even say whether or not you should drive. I had to go back. No, don't drive. And then he went to a really talented chiropractor who spent an hour with him, didn't do anything, you know, any kind of adjustments, but connected with him and with his body and spoke to him and learned and even said, you know, I wouldn't suggest that you try and do anything too extreme. Extreme here because of the way your body has compensated.

Correct.

Now that has everything to do with psychology. You don't say to somebody on day 1 who's crying, oh, obviously the whole way you look at your life is bad. There's the empathy between the doctor and the patient, the humanity. It's like, oh my God, if somebody's on the floor Remind them that we all have been there.

Yeah, they're not on the floor with them.

Exactly. You may sweep it first, whatever. But we're in the same camp. I really like thinking.

Yeah, it's fun. Because that was my own journey. And, you know, my family's medical doctors, there's some psychiatrists and stuff like that. And, and even though if they were psychiatrists of the old school, where they actually do the talk therapy over the prescribing, the old-school Freudian, you know, and, you know, literally what you think about, like, the '80s movies, lying down on the couch, not looking at the client during—

or the patient, pretending there's only one person in the room, right?

That type of thing. And, and they did real— I mean, they were professors, and they're academics and published, and really, I mean, they were very well esteemed in their community. And here I am coming out of this, like, marriage and family therapy systemic— it's about the relationship to the inside world and the outside world. World. It's brief. Like, I want you to fire me as soon as possible, and then come back when you need an oil change. You don't have to be my client for the next 42 years. And I was like, that alone was blasphemy. Yeah. And I playfully— and they never said that, but I playfully, like, you know, offered that to them. And then once I started going down and explaining the mind-body stuff to people who are in their 70s and 80s and have been practicing this philosophy for so many years, that was like, okay, forget it, you're just, you know, we're gonna burn you at the stake type of thing. They were lovingly like, okay, yeah, sure. Well, you know, if that works, you know, type of thing. So, you know, we can't teach that old, really an old dog new tricks. And they're wonderful. And they were lovely. And they were experts in what they knew. But I think that's kind of where we're evolving. And why I love what you're doing is because you don't know what you don't know, the Johari's window. And we do need to allow in other preferences and other perspectives and other approaches, and not just say no. Because I see this time and time again. And I had a choice this week, all of the excuses a client made not to schedule an appointment when they're calling around to— this morning, I was their 25th therapist that they called, apparently. And they still haven't. And I asked them, well, so okay, so outside of X, Y, and Z, right, you wanted someone who is this type of therapist that works with this. Great. So if— okay, so what would be the next criteria? Oh, well, I want this. Okay, great. So if you find that, what will be the next criteria? Oh, I want this. Right. In other words, there's so much of a list of limitations.

Wow.

And I call them out on that. And I'm like, I don't— I think you're going to call another 25 therapists because I'm going to tell you my prices and you're for sure going to say, oh my God, that's way too much. And I'm going to tell you my associate's cost, which is cheaper than mine. And you're still going to say that's way too much. So when you're done calling 50 therapists, if you want to call me back, please do so. And we create our limitations that way. And I was being loving and tender, and that was my intervention.

Yeah, that person sounds like they're just— they can't stop the narrative. Yeah.

So if that— right, so when that shows up in these workshops and you have those people, right, thankfully I'm sure there are people that are finally willing to do something different. Do you believe that, that just that willingness to do something different is the actual intervention?

Well, I don't know if it's an intervention if it comes from them. I think what I would say is that realizing, oh my God, this is what's been in my way, is a giant movement. Where we can often get frustrated is the expectation that a realization leads to a quick change. I think of it like a machine, like your brain is— has all of these cogs, all of these independent wheels, like a clock. And once you realize something is out of alignment, and I just want to change the way I think about this one thing. So I've been telling myself that I can't really succeed in what I want to do because I haven't so far.. And one day I realized, wait a minute, I can succeed in what I want to do. I just have to keep trying. Well, understanding that and figuring out how to integrate that within all the other circles that go around takes a long time. And you need to be able to self-soothe through that process and be able to see, wow, I went a notch. I now feel a little bit better. And to just keep up with that encouragement. If you were learning to read or you were learning anything else that was complex, it takes a while to assimilate. Um, and if you haven't had loving guidance in that way, you might not have, you know, the automatic capacity to self-soothe. And that's one of the things you have to learn.

Well, as I was going through the Gottman Marital Sound Relationship House this morning with my clients who did their, the whole questionnaire, and we're finally getting a little bit deeper. We went— we stopped on that. And one of the things is the ability to self-soothe versus having to be compelled to heal or soothe your partner, right? And I see that in the world in general of like, people are either like, too bad, get over it, right? The extreme. Or why do you respond? Remember I posted— one of my friends posted something recently in one of my, uh, integrative medicine groups, and I responded back to it about nothing to do with that actual thing, but the basis of what they posted was actually based on some antisemitic conspiracy theory. And a buddy of mine who I know really well was like, "Do you always get triggered when you don't agree with something?" Right?

When it's about my destruction, yeah.

Yeah, right? But they didn't get that. So instead of like being compelled, like I used to in the past life, just becoming the keyboard warrior, I'm like, "He's missing it. He doesn't— I don't think he gets it." Right? So that for me was like, a huge, like, okay, I have every right to dislike this person right now. And to get stuck in that old story and all of that, you know, Holocaust third generation stuff of, you know, and I'm like, I know him. I've known him for 8 years. This is so— that's not consistent. He's missing some data. So I picked up the phone and called him like, hey, you're missing. So literally, like, you're missing something from this story. Let me explain it to you. Let me explain the blood libels to you. And oh, holy crap, I didn't know that. I'm so sorry. And then went back in the Facebook group and he posted something on that.

Wow.

But that took me 40— I'm turning 44 in 2 months. Like, that took me 43 years.

No, it only took you 40. Right.

It only took— and I'm excited about that, right? It took me 40 to like have that, like, I can throw him out of my life. I can like, ah, like, this is now, right, part of the narrative of that whole community, that whole group, and now I'm going to alienate myself. And now I don't feel— now I feel excluded. They're all of the stories of victimhood that we can all easily go into.

Yes.

Right.

It is that it— that took 43 years of little by little by little by little by little by little. But also knowing, like, I didn't want the outcome to be the same.

Mm-hmm. It's beautiful.

Even if they didn't get it. So I know that when I'm sharing the story with my clients, or other stories with my clients, it's not— right, that self-disclosure thing, right? I'm sure like hours and hours of, of conversation in graduate school and supervision, how much do you disclose, how much do you not disclose.

Yes, right, right. Versus normal, you disclose everything you believe will be helpful to that client, right? It's not about us. But, you know, I just want to say another thing about what you shared and how fabulous that was, that you were able to quickly bring in the rest of your mind. But the problem isn't— and people need to know— the problem isn't that you're getting evoked. We will get evoked. That's fine. The problem is only how you choose to work with it. Absolutely. After 43 years, you were so quickly able to get to the big picture. He must not understand. Noname ears. I value him. And I'm going to offer a bigger picture to him. And you obviously did it in such a way that you not only didn't shame him, you enlightened him, and he went and did the right thing.

And he was willing to hear it. As it was obliviousness, it was an obliviousness to a thing that is unfortunately part of a certain culture that people don't get. And I guess that goes back to what we were talking about earlier about like cultural competency. And I get that all the time. I'm sure you've gotten that, like, oh, well, like, you know, or when, you know, more the clinical side, like, are you a, a, a, a, this type of therapist? Are you this type? Are you a Christian therapist? And my answer is, I love everybody, and I'm here to serve you based on your values and your meanings and your purpose. And I would never do anything to go against that. Are you okay with someone who doesn't fit all those things but also wants to support you? And may not look at the world the same way. Are you open to that? And they'll either say yes or no, but I know I'm being in integrity. And, you know, I'm not going to offer you to be like, hey, give up your, you know, whatever. So I think that when it comes to like medical— and I've seen this with doctors where it's tough because I do, right? Again, like I said, family members are doctors. They're incredible people. They love what they do. They're passionate what they do. One of my professors years ago who is systemic, postmodern, postmodern, postmodern, right? That, you know, we were joking around that even postmodern, like seeing that there is no reality except the reality that you choose to buy into and create and co-create with the people around you, has become modernist in its approach. That unless you are postmodern, you're wrong, right? In other words, it's become the challenge of that viewpoint is you have to be this way. And if you're not this way, you're wrong, which is the whole thing about the diagnosis model and the psychodyne, right? That all, like, you are diagnosis or you're not, right? We— that even that world has come to that challenges.

Whenever there's one right answer, you know it's wrong, especially when you're talking about human beings. You know, if we're going to survive the challenges in the world, it's about expanding, not finding an answer that's true right now, that is completely ignorant of what else will come in. You know, we're the same, Jason Wasser.

It's so exciting. I was at an entrepreneur conference 2 weeks ago. And I was talking to a lot of them, 98% of them in this conference were involved in real estate. It just happened. They have— in order to be part of this community, you have to have a million-dollar net worth. I was there as a podcaster, as a guest of one of the people in the community. And I felt like literally 98%. So I asked one of the people, I'm like, Listen, let's like cut through all the BS right now. We're talking about inflation. Mortgage rates, prices have just gone up. Everybody's jacking up the prices of their homes. People are selling it, but then there's no point in selling it because then you can't buy anything for a good deal right now. Is it really? Is there such a thing as not a bad time or not a good time? Right. Is that really just a myth based on pop culture and news and all these other things? Like, is it really never a bad time to buy real estate? Even if it crashes. And I'm like, yesterday was always the best day. Even if it goes up $150,000, it's still the best day because it might drop $300,000 next month, but it's still the best day. So I wonder, right? Like you said about expansion is exactly the theme of everything we're talking about here. What more can you add? What more value can you add? Who more value can you add?

And what else do you see? What else is true? You know, when you have this idea that you can't manifest your dream, what else is true? What else is true is that's what you've been believing. That's what you've been told. You know, one question I like to ask people is, when you think about the frustrations you have with humanity, do you relate more to how inept people are, or do you relate to human suffering?

Yeah, the injustices.

So because it kills me when people say, yeah, well, people do this and they do that. It's like, yes, but we're only struggling because we don't know more. I mean, that was something Socrates said, and it's just such a big idea, but that there are no terrible willful things that come from anything but ignorance. And if you expand upon that idea and realize people see the world in very different ways, and on one hand we want to encourage people's unique ways of seeing, and at the same time invite them to see more.

Yeah, well, our training calls that the both/and reality. And I joke that I'm a vegan who eats meat, right? Like, wow, how's that possible? Well, I do love eating that clean, and I know it serves me. And I also know that I observe kosher dietary laws, and according to my spiritual path, that it has to be done in a certain way, and, you know, and certain level of, of sanctity to even the process of doing that. So it's a both/and, right? And people are They're like, I don't know, I don't get that. I'm like, but who created the rules?

Who created the boxes?

Right, right. Man, humans, right? So if another human created a box, why can't another human uncreate that box? And why? And right then we go back to the conversation of power and hierarchy and all that other stuff. And that, I mean, which, you know, and I'm sure part of the problem, right? And part of the program of solving this is understanding that hierarchical— and we're seeing that right now with, with what's going on in the government with, you know, which has happened with the Roe v. Wade and a bunch of other stuff. So it's power and control.

And it's the antithesis of freedom. It's the antithesis of free thinking and democracy. And at a time like this, where we really need to come together to solve the world's problems, shame on the people that would have the audacity to tell anyone what to do with their own body.

Yeah, or their own books.

Absolutely.

So what's next on the agenda for one, what you're doing in, in the work? What's— what do you— what's some of the things that you're working on and hoping to accomplish over the next little bit?

We offer, um, 3 free Zoom-ins every week because I think it's really important that the public has a place where they're invited to be themselves and there's no ulterior motive. And we do 2 writing groups and we do 1 conversation group and they are really fun and incredibly creative and people connect and meet each other. So you can go to thenarrativemethod.org and sign up for those. We also have cards that reflect all of the 12 concepts concepts, and they have prompts, and you can use them to start your own group or as writing prompts. We're starting a subscription basis shortly that will give people lots of things to do throughout the week. We do classes on the 12 core concepts. I'm always writing more stuff, and we're just expanding. And, you know, we had somebody come last week from Gambia, and like, how How cool is that? Because we're doing it online.

Yeah.

We get people from all over the world. And it's one thing to talk to somebody that you instantly have an affinity for the way I felt about you. And it's great and it's amazing and we can go far, but there's also something brilliant and incredibly exciting about connecting to someone you never would have met.

Right.

And you are finding gold within each other in moments.

I think that's been one of the hidden blessings of the pandemic has been the radical advance of us using it, obviously, again, going back to community and wanting to connect and talk to people in person. But that's— but at a certain point, what I find is the people that I saw were hanging out with the same people before the pandemic are hanging out with a lot of the same exact people now. And they haven't opened up that spaces, right? And versus the people who did embraced this. All right, I closed my office, I went fully onto Zoom, I got licensed in two other states during the pandemic. I have coaching clients that are not therapy-based stuff all over the country. So, right, so I, I'm getting a— I have clients that are the radically the most opposite politically, philosophically from me, and I love them, right? So I think that, like, I think that's one of the things that I, I really do appreciate about what you're saying is that we're going— if you allow yourself to get in front of people you would never traditionally get in front of, which is one of the many reasons why I have this podcast platform, because I would never have met you necessarily, or many of my other guests, is because I'm wanting and searching for this new information and this new way to look at things and talk about things differently, bring it down and distill it for my clients. Or one of my favorite things was last year, one of my clients told me, like, I think I'm going to take a break because I just got up to episode 57 of your podcast. Podcast, and I think that's been therapeutic enough for me.

Wow.

So I put myself out of a job, which was amazing.

That's your goal.

That's my goal, right? So, so let me ask you something.

Yeah, because, um, you're inspirational, and when you talked about being able to very quickly move through the insult that your friend had, uh, lashed, um, And it took you all these years to become yourself. And when you look at people who you feel like, guys, you're not reaching beyond your, your safety, what do you think they need in order to even have that curiosity start to develop?

The most cliché thing that I'm going to say is hiring you and me. As much as it's true, it's also cliché, right?

You—

one of my, one of my coaches says you can't see the picture when you're in the frame. So sometimes we do need, or many times we do need, you know, the, the side view mirror, the rear view mirror, our headlights to be on high, you know, for someone to flick the switch for us to put the high beam on. But I'm also a huge fan of like creating your own board of directors, or your, you know, your— Lincoln had the team of rivals, right? He hired you know, on his cabinet, people that he disagreed with, to see opposing viewpoints and where the holes were, you know, the cracks were in the armor. So I think that's one of the most relevant things, is that, right, goes back to comfort zone. It has— goes back to the willingness to be wrong. And it's a willingness to have opinion about something and to have that, that, like, you know, like what I just shared, that idea with you, and you vehemently disagreed with it. Cool. Which is why I asked, like I said, right, tell me more, because Maybe I write, I think I phrased it wrong, or I'm missing some information. And I want to go back and maybe have this conversation more with you fully off, you know, off air, because, you know, something was missing. Not that we have to agree on everything, but it's an interesting topic for me. So I think that first people have to be willing to get in front of someone else and throw their assumptions against the wall and see if it sticks like some spaghetti and see what falls to the ground and what's serving them and what's not serving them. But I know that it doesn't serve me, because I know I have an intergenerational theme of cutoffs.

Mm-hmm.

And my family, so it's easy to say they're wrong, I don't want them in my life and be self-righteous. Versus, well, part of my job as a therapist and as a healer is to do the dirty work. And I don't certainly don't want to be a hypocrite.

And there's nuance. You know, I mean, that's the thing. There are some people that we may decide are unsafe. We would like to see zero for the rest of our lives. But, um, it is such a privilege to realize that someone who you may have had an idea about their group or about a person that presents this way or whatever those beliefs were, it's kind of a thrill to have that crushed and realize, oh my God, we're, we're cutting to the quick of who we are. And I see you.

Right, we're all entrenched, and we're all entrenched. I realize, like, as entrenched he is in his approach, I might be as entrenched in my approach. And there might be things about things that I've shared with him in the past that might have been offensive or annoying to him, and he may not have ever said anything to me. So I want to give that opportunity. I was hoping that he would give me that opportunity, so it did. I don't know if I would do that with everybody, but I know that because of— it's a particular type of community that there are some things that I really do feel involved, engaged, and so to speak, a leader at some level, even though not in a technical capacity, but invested in, that I need to make sure that I'm not going to be the one that ruins that for me, not someone else.

Beautiful. And I also think it's really important in the way that you say, I chose to move there with him because I respect him, we have a history. But people also need to know because there are so many places that are calling you to open up, open up, tell your story, blah, blah, blah. And as much as I think we both probably believe in the power of that, it's also important to know if you don't feel safe, honor that.

Yeah.

You are the only one who can do that. So, you know, when you haven't worked through something, it does feel vulnerable to talk about it. Once you get kind of a handle on it, you understand what happened. It may not cost so much. Regardless, people have to protect themselves. No one else knows how you feel, and there's no rush to share something to anyone who happens to ask.

Yeah.

Love it. Right. And I always tell my clients, and we can wrap with this, like, what would it be like for you to just say— this morning I said this to one of my clients— what would it be like for you you to say no to your mother about a request that she consistently makes without giving a justification or for an excuse why, and literally just saying no. And like, her mouth like just like dropped.

Like, it was like, oh, can I?

Right, right. Intellectually it was a yes, but like, of course, all of the like roller coaster of emotions and, and, and, you know, 35 or so whatever, 30 years of intergenerational, you know, her, her born and the intergenerational stuff and the cultural stuff that all came like, I saw it on her, on this person's face flooding forward. And I'm like, yeah, this is, that's the magical, the magic. No, it's sometimes that simple. And we are giving stories, we are giving justifications and excuses that sometimes work against us in the long run. And I think that's kind of, you know, what I'm understanding your path and curriculum freedom and empowerment is coming from is changing that.

Exactly. Awesome. Just to be able to be, to exist and flourish in your own skin.

That's it. So if anybody got any value, which I know I did because, right, I get to focus on aligning or streamlining or being more clear with a certain concept that I've been struggling with for the last couple years, please check out The Narrative Method. And like I said, there's, there's some Zoom classes you can jump on. There's all these different amazing tools. And if you can, if you really love this episode or any other episode, please just leave us a positive comment and a review on iTunes. Apparently, it seems to be the only place you can leave us a review. And if you don't have an account, it takes you 2 minutes to create an account and just leave some thoughts and feedback. And obviously, you can follow Shari @thenarrativemethod on Instagram. Narrative Method on Twitter, and the website again is thenarrativemethod.org. And once again, thank you for this awesome conversation.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at You Winning Life.