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She Refused to Sign a Social Justice Pledge to Become a Therapist. They Kicked Her Out. · Radically Genuine

• 00:00:00:00 - 00:00:04:09 Speaker 1 What did you experience when you went to graduate school to become a counselor? 00:00:04:14 - 00:00:25:16 Speaker 2 We were told that we were supposed to do something called race broaching. You're a white woman and I'm a white woman. This kind of language is so disgusting to me. But you're supposed to say that. How do you feel about your privilege? She used that as an opportunity to tell me that if I did not really do this work, that I was going to be a danger to my future clients. 00:00:25:20 - 00:00:39:08 Speaker 1 This feels a lot like educational camps or these indoctrination camps throughout history, that if you're not thinking the way that the dominant culture or the authoritarian viewpoint is, then you have to be reeducated. 00:00:39:10 - 00:01:08:16 Speaker 2 People should be aware of how their counselors are being trained, that counselors are not being trained in a politically and ideologically neutral environment. They are being taught that we handle race in this particular way, we handle gender in this particular way. And there's a very strong political bias, very strong left wing political bias in counselor training. 00:01:08:18 - 00:01:12:12 Speaker 1 Leslie Elliott Boyce, welcome to Radically Genuine. 00:01:12:13 - 00:01:14:19 Speaker 2 Thank you so much for having me. 00:01:14:21 - 00:01:36:16 Speaker 1 I don't know why I get shocked at such things. I was been doing the work and following your story and learning more about what has gone on in graduate schools, you know, over the past what amounts to probably a decade now, possibly more. And I can tell you, I was legitimately shocked by some of the things that I heard. 00:01:36:19 - 00:01:45:17 Speaker 1 Let's just get right to it. Start off with your story. What did you experience when you went to graduate school to become a counselor? 00:01:45:19 - 00:02:08:17 Speaker 2 It's always hard to know exactly how far back to go when starting that story. But when I was in undergrad, I considered a career in counseling. Briefly, I, I was in undergrad in I graduated in 2008, and my major was psychology, and I'd been planning to go to law school. But I enjoyed the study of psychology so much. 00:02:08:18 - 00:02:34:12 Speaker 2 I had a research fellowship. I worked closely with my faculty mentor, and I just thought it was studying human behavior was was endlessly fascinating to me. And I thought, maybe I want to go into counseling. My mentor really discouraged that she didn't believe that the field of counseling was. 00:02:34:14 - 00:02:54:08 Speaker 2 I guess, I guess, valid. She said, if you really want to study psychology, go into clinical psychology. But I wasn't that interested in clinical psychology. I was more interested in working with people one on one that sort of less scientific, more spiritual aspect, although I don't think I would have defined it in that using that term at the time. 00:02:54:08 - 00:03:23:01 Speaker 2 But the the more the art of working with people rather than the the science of breaking people down into components. And yet she was her opinion was really important to me, and I heard the discouragement don't go into that. It's a woo woo weird space. So I stayed on the course and went to law school, but about halfway through I was really miserable with it and I didn't see a career in law for myself. 00:03:23:04 - 00:03:48:04 Speaker 2 So I took a leave of absence. And I was looking at all these, these counseling programs and studying them and seeing what a thinking about what I wanted to do. I took a longer leave of absence than I planned because I had two children during that leave of absence. So it was several years later, in 2019, before I finally went back to counseling as a as a graduate study. 00:03:48:06 - 00:04:13:09 Speaker 2 And so it was 2019, and I, I think I was less selective with the program that I chose. I chose one that I could drive to, that I could study in person. And, you know, it was just I looked at a couple that were in my area instead of kind of selecting from what I thought was the best and most robust, I, I picked what was convenient and close. 00:04:13:11 - 00:04:43:21 Speaker 2 But I liked their mission. It was a social justice mission, which at the time didn't mean to me what it has come to mean to me. I thought that it was noble, and I did not understand it in the reductive way that I. Now when I hear those words, I hear something very different. So I started at that program at Antioch University in Seattle, and right away it was the group interview where we were asked to give our pronouns. 00:04:43:23 - 00:05:07:21 Speaker 2 And this was the first time I'd ever been a part of that ritual, and I complied with it. I under I got the I understood what was being asked of me, even though I had not been involved in that prior. I'd been out of academia for years and had not been in any situation where that was being asked, but I somehow I guess enough of the culture filters in that I understood what they were saying. 00:05:07:22 - 00:05:14:12 Speaker 1 I, I noticed you used the word ritual intentionally. What do you mean by that? 00:05:14:13 - 00:05:38:20 Speaker 2 Well, it it's a it's a it's a signal, you know, it's something that's being done in order to signal a certain message, not necessarily to the people, not necessarily about the people who are present, but about what kind of people we are. So, you know, there are I've thought about this a lot. Even at that time, I thought there were other ways that this could have been done. 00:05:38:21 - 00:06:02:23 Speaker 2 If what you were concerned about was that there was somebody in our midst who was going to be embarrassed because they present ambiguously or, or androgynous. So you have somebody who's who's sitting there. And, Morgan, we're not sure if we should call Morgan miss or Mr.. So let's, let's make sure that we all do a politeness gesture towards that. 00:06:02:23 - 00:06:28:16 Speaker 2 And, and we could open up by saying, let us, let us know if, if there's anything in particular about how you want to identify yourself or, or if, if you want to specify the way that you'd like to be referred to, let us know that as you introduce yourself, you could do that, which would still include everybody, but instead we're doing a thing where we pretend like we don't know the difference between a man and a woman. 00:06:28:18 - 00:06:44:19 Speaker 2 Like, we just we just have to act as if for every one of us. We don't. We don't see the difference. In order to make sure everybody present and not present is included, and that we're all signaling to each other that we are the right kind of people. 00:06:45:01 - 00:07:14:17 Speaker 1 Yeah, we were talking about Voltaire before we started rolling here, and that quote is for those who can get you to accept absurdities, can also get you to commit atrocities. And so we're faced automatically with this absurd notion that we although throughout the course of all human history, we could recognize quite clearly the distinction between a male and a female, and those were accepted as biological sex. 00:07:14:17 - 00:07:55:09 Speaker 1 Those were normal. They were taught in our schools, they were taught in biology. And now we shifted into this period of time. And to me, it seems like it came almost out of the blue, right, that you are now facing a different kind of reality, which no one can really, truly know what they're what the biological sex of another individual was, to the point where in Congress, during certain testimonies, PhD level MD level educated people were refusing to define what a man is and what a woman is. 00:07:55:11 - 00:08:21:21 Speaker 1 And so I'm interested to know your automatic reaction during that interview. So you did come in and there was an attraction to their mission. You saw it with positive intent and then you entered into the interview and you even appear to see that from positive intent. What was your your experience, your mindset at that time? 00:08:21:23 - 00:08:48:08 Speaker 2 It was a huge red flag. It disturbed me. So I, I went to a Catholic undergrad university, a Jesuit law school, and, and then this was a Jesuit school as well. So all of these have social justice in the mission. I thought this was just a generally benevolent stance towards people. I mean, I really saw this in general terms, so that was what attracted me to it. 00:08:48:09 - 00:09:18:09 Speaker 2 But in this interview, there was a group interview, and I guess there were probably maybe 6 or 8 other prospective students in the in the interview being asked to provide our pronouns as we introduced ourselves, one of the the individuals was a feminine woman make up a dress heeled boots. You know, she was feminine. She introduced herself as them. 00:09:18:11 - 00:09:45:11 Speaker 2 Those were her pronouns. And I thought. And then she was subsequently admitted she was in my courses. And this was a huge red flag for me, because this is an applied psychology course where the people who graduate from this course are going to support other people. In reality, testing and in understanding their lives and their social context. And this is being encouraged. 00:09:45:11 - 00:10:20:05 Speaker 2 This is this is it goes beyond just supporting the the marginalized to use their language to. It goes beyond supporting the marginalized individual to still feel like they're a part of things and to be included. And it pretends that everything is unreality in order to fold in the margins. So it was a huge red flag, and I can remember going home and talking with friends about this, and just how strange it was that in an applied psychology program, we were being asked to give gender pronouns. 00:10:20:07 - 00:10:27:11 Speaker 3 Did you have a sense then, at any level of where this might go for you, or was that leader? 00:10:27:12 - 00:10:59:18 Speaker 2 I think I probably did a little bit. I probably did a little bit. I was concerned about about some of the ideology I had not, like I said, I'd been out of academia for a little over a decade, and I'd had such a positive experience studying psychology and undergrad that I, I really thought we were going to start getting into the meat and potatoes and start getting back to and deepening the study I had done previously. 00:10:59:19 - 00:11:02:16 Speaker 3 So what happened instead of that. 00:11:02:18 - 00:11:22:03 Speaker 2 Instead of that? So I had a couple of good courses. I had a counseling skills course that was really strong, with a great professor and a family of origin class that I still draw from all the time, I think was very valuable. So there were there were a couple of good courses. And then my second quarter I was put into a multicultural Perspectives course. 00:11:22:05 - 00:11:45:03 Speaker 2 The name of the course, it's a I now have come to understand that as a Di module that's disguised as a core part of the curriculum. And in that course we were we were taught on day one something called the addressing model. It's the Hays addressing model. Are you familiar with this? 00:11:45:05 - 00:11:47:19 Speaker 3 I am, but I doubt our audiences. So break it down. 00:11:47:23 - 00:12:32:02 Speaker 2 So the the professor who was a young woman with PhD in psychology teaching us about multicultural, counseling, wrote an acronym on the board addressing, and she filled it in and said, this is how you are to evaluate your clients and yourself and your power differential in relationship with your clients. So it was aged gender, age, disability, acquired disability, genetic R might have been religion s that would be national or national origin. 00:12:32:02 - 00:13:05:00 Speaker 2 I think the end. And then there was like your your gender identity and your gender your sexuality. So all of these things were demographic categories. But we were to assign ourselves and our clients either marginalized or oppressors, and then kind of tally that up and see if we're more the marginalized or the oppressed counselor or the oppressor counselor or, or we're dealing with a marginalized or oppressor client in relationship to us. 00:13:05:00 - 00:13:16:07 Speaker 2 And race was the trump card. So if you were of a darker complexion or a different national origin, depending on on what that was, you were oppressing your client. 00:13:16:12 - 00:13:18:20 Speaker 1 Can I tell you if the exercise I was put through. 00:13:18:21 - 00:13:20:01 Speaker 2 Yeah, please. 00:13:20:03 - 00:13:41:21 Speaker 1 So this is interesting. And this is 2004. Okay. And I went into clinical psychology for the reason that you rejected it. I was more interested in the science. I was concerned I already had a master's degree in counseling, and I was concerned that. 00:13:41:23 - 00:14:14:04 Speaker 1 One's biases, emotional states, a history of a counselor can influence another person, and it becomes a little bit more of indoctrination into a creation of a reality. And always saw science as like a protection against that type of abuse. And I went to a program that was housed at a medical school, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. And in 2004, one of the required courses was Multicultural Psychology counseling. 00:14:14:04 - 00:14:40:09 Speaker 1 I can't remember what it is, and that's required for the for APA accreditation. And my first class, you had to do an exercise. Everyone had to stand against the wall on one side of the classroom. And then the professor would say, if you're a white male, take a step forward. If your if one parent went to college, take a step forward. 00:14:40:11 - 00:15:09:05 Speaker 1 If two parents went to college, take a step forward. You know, things of that nature. If you have no disability, right, take a step forward. And I got to the other side first, almost intentionally. Like I took bigger steps. Anyone? I was realizing that some of the stuff was nebulous, that you could attach an idea that you were either marginalized or disabled in some way. 00:15:09:06 - 00:15:44:00 Speaker 1 Other people were catching on, specifically the the white women who, you know, clearly came from backgrounds of strong wealth, never had a job in their life, were just always in some form of education, right, supported by their parents. Generally. I saw the shame, you know, on their face because they were inching closer to the wall. But what kept them from getting to the wall, you know, alongside me was the fact that I was a male. 00:15:44:02 - 00:16:05:01 Speaker 1 And when I got there first, the, the the professor who was a woman of color, kind of put her head to the side and almost looked like almost with a degree of sadness to me. Well, how do you how do you feel? As if I should have felt shameful. And I and I gave her the exact opposite. I said, I'm very proud. 00:16:05:03 - 00:16:37:17 Speaker 1 And she looked at me like I had two heads, but I had to explain to her my situation. I said I had a grandfather who was first generation, who went to World War two and survived. You know, he was in the Pacific and faced some of the most challenging atrocities of war, returned, got married to my grandmother and worked two jobs, one as a night janitor at a hospital. 00:16:37:19 - 00:17:02:20 Speaker 1 And then, you know, he'd get a few hours of sleep, and then he would be a door to door salesman. He had eight kids total. One died. So seven. And he really believed in this American dream, right? So he did everything he could to get his sons and daughters to go to private school, which was a private Catholic school in Philadelphia. 00:17:02:22 - 00:17:26:11 Speaker 1 And my father ended up getting a football scholarship to get to Lehigh University. And you just saw kind of the fruits of like, that kind of hard work. They were very faith based people. They really did believe in the value of hard work they were loving. I never saw a prejudice or judgmental statement come out of their minds. 00:17:26:12 - 00:17:47:10 Speaker 1 There were very, very committed Catholics. And my mother was a nurse, you know, so you kind of grew up with this very blue collar mentality. And there were always challenges, right? When you're sent off to war or when you have to work as hard as they did. I got to the other side and I said, I am only here. 00:17:47:12 - 00:18:14:08 Speaker 1 Based on the work, the hard work and the commitment and the faith and the steadfastness of generations before me, I had another grandfather and they were. Only reason I'm probably here is it was in Northern Ireland, and he was 18 years old, and there was a hit on him from the British Army, and he had to get in a boat, leave his family and, you know, travel to start a life here at 18. 00:18:14:08 - 00:18:41:03 Speaker 1 So I had all that in my mind, just about difficulties and challenges, and I don't think I really fully understood the world view of what I was going to be exposed to from that counseling class, because they saw everything about me, you know, as privilege. At that time, I had two young kids, three and under, actually just, I just had a daughter at that particular time. 00:18:41:05 - 00:19:00:10 Speaker 1 I worked two jobs myself and put myself through graduate school. I was driving an hour from our 15 minutes from where I lived at the time down to Philadelphia. This was a program that started at 4:00, so I put my kids to bed. I wouldn't see them until, you know, Friday afternoon. So I was just like in this grind culture, right? 00:19:00:11 - 00:19:15:19 Speaker 1 I was really, really working and really working hard. And I was at the I was at the under the wall. And I knew some of the backgrounds and the experiences of some of the women in the class who were just everything was paid for by their parents, and they were living a pretty good lifestyle in Philadelphia in nice sections. 00:19:16:00 - 00:19:42:18 Speaker 1 But I got to the end of that. So I got to the wall first. And so I started to really start feeling like, wow, there's an agenda here that they want to create an oppressor, and they want to convince you that anything that you have experienced or achieved on certain level has nothing to do with anything internal, nothing about your inborn talents, the type of person you are, the hard work. 00:19:42:18 - 00:19:45:13 Speaker 1 It was only going to be about identity characteristics. 00:19:45:17 - 00:19:50:04 Speaker 4 00:19:50:06 - 00:20:22:08 Speaker 3 It's it always strikes me when I think about this, how the similarity between the desire to break people down into DSM categories take a person apart into these, into these little blocks, rather than seeing a whole human being, a whole unique human being that who's never been before and will never be again. How similar that is to the desire to break a person down into identity blocks rather than, you know you are. 00:20:22:08 - 00:20:54:16 Speaker 3 Leslie. You're this you're a beautiful soul who's here on earth that I can get to know as a whole person versus while I see your hair color, I assessing your disability level. I believe you're probably cisgendered and heterosexual and, but you're a female, so you can get some points for that. And this whole idea that the level of similarity between those two systems and how they don't recognize the sacredness of the actual individual. 00:20:54:18 - 00:21:27:16 Speaker 2 I think that's a really important observation. And I've thought a lot about what, because it's easy to object to the kind of woke, demographic obsessed ideology the oppressor oppressed like you're talking about. You pointed out so many holes in it, just in that anecdote that you shared about what makes you value achievement and resilience and generational work that it takes to get somebody to a position where you can walk all the way to that wall. 00:21:27:18 - 00:21:56:19 Speaker 2 But I think that the degree to which we've been systematized and materialized and the the medical bureaucracy as well as the education bureaucracy, leaves people feeling a lot more like a number or a diagnosis than a human being. And I think that the what's going on with woke, with the the demographic obsession is a response to that using the same tools. 00:21:56:21 - 00:22:26:21 Speaker 2 It's it's sort of trying to replace the content but keeping the process. And I, I, I think that there's something in it that is true. And that's why it appeals to so many people. I don't think that all of the people who are adopting that way of talking or looking at the world were, were evil or misguided or, or looking to to hurt somebody because they'd been hurt or obsessed with being a victim. 00:22:27:01 - 00:23:07:11 Speaker 2 I think that they were trying to call out what they felt were true exceptions that people were ignoring. If if you're and and I grew up pretty poor and felt like I, I can remember the feeling of of of like having one pair of jeans to wear to school every day and it's the same parent. And when they get a rip in the knee, everybody can see that you're wearing the same pair of jeans every day because you don't just have two pairs with an identical rip, you know, feeling like kind of embarrassed and jealous of other people having more. 00:23:07:12 - 00:23:36:22 Speaker 2 And I can remember in my early 20s, I had a really good friend who'd come from a family that was more well off, and we both were young moms, and she I felt like like she was she represented sort of the conservative mindset, as you know, this is reductive, of course, but she was the conservative and I was the liberal in this friendship. 00:23:36:22 - 00:23:57:03 Speaker 2 And we're still best friends to this day. So we met when I was 21 and she was 25 or 26, both new moms. But she had this kind of like I worked for what I have perspective. And I I'd be like, your parents put you through college, your parents put you through college. Like my family couldn't have done that. 00:23:57:03 - 00:24:37:20 Speaker 2 I, I moved out at 19. My family was fractured. And, you know, I just I feel like that's kind of the woke mindset, though, there is to say. But look, it's not all your hard work. It's not all that. You're just you're just intrinsically better at at life. There were these contextual issues that made this harder. And so there's a core of truth in it, but it gets it reduces people down to the, the systematic, the material, the demographic, in the same way that that diagnostic process also loses sight of the humanity because it reduces people into categories. 00:24:37:22 - 00:24:51:06 Speaker 2 So it's it's different content, same process. And therefore it's it's just an incomplete it's an incomplete challenge to the problem. That is the bureaucratic system that we live in. 00:24:51:08 - 00:25:13:13 Speaker 3 So take us back to Antioch. You've had this interview, you've started the program. You're now in this D-I course, cloaked as part of the core curriculum. What begins to happen? What do you begin to experience after this? Addressing? Acronym is put on the board. 00:25:13:15 - 00:25:34:21 Speaker 2 So I wrote to the teacher that same day, we had to do a reflection every week, which was basically a an email to the teacher. It was an essay that you'd write reflecting on or journaling how how you were processing the material from the class. I read some of the book, which was by Darrell doing Sue. If you're familiar with Sue. 00:25:34:22 - 00:25:41:19 Speaker 1 Oh, the Su and Sue models and books are the core curriculum, whether you're a counselor or a psychologist. 00:25:41:22 - 00:26:05:00 Speaker 2 Yeah. And I, I did a I've had a couple of guests on to talk about this on my podcast, and I've done one myself, just breaking down some of the Sioux and Sue book that we used as our curriculum. There is so much there, if you want to talk about that. There's a lot there. But it's it's this bizarre idea laundering that. 00:26:05:02 - 00:26:06:23 Speaker 1 So worthy of a of a deep dive. 00:26:07:00 - 00:26:09:00 Speaker 2 Yeah, it really is. Yeah. I mean. 00:26:09:01 - 00:26:10:23 Speaker 1 Do you want to start and I'll jump into. 00:26:11:01 - 00:26:38:22 Speaker 2 Sure. I mean, it basically the the Gerald Wing Sue is responsible for the development of the cultural competency framework that is now used everywhere. And his book, his Daryl Wing Sue and David Sue, their book is the like you said, the curriculum that he's used in these multicultural programs, at least throughout K accredited university, is the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs. 00:26:38:22 - 00:27:03:06 Speaker 2 So it's the the kind of gold standard. If you want to become a licensed counselor, you really want to go into a program because you get your educational process streamlined. You need fewer hours, supervised hours in order to, get licensed. So it's just it makes the whole process easier for you. And your education is recognized in more states. 00:27:03:06 - 00:27:37:16 Speaker 2 Some states don't recognize in their licensure boards non accredited programs. So it's the gold standard is the thing that you want. If your goal is to be licensed and they have cultural competency requirements that I believe are authored by or at least in part authored by Gerald Wingsuit. And so a lot of his materials self-referential. He does a lot of of citing his his previous papers and works, which is really bizarre when you start reading his stuff and you're looking at his citations and he's citing himself. 00:27:37:17 - 00:27:52:08 Speaker 1 I thought there were like 50 sues out there because I could not believe that it was just him referencing his own stuff over and over again. I thought there was like, yeah, brothers or sisters or other colleagues who had the same name. Yeah, yeah. 00:27:52:09 - 00:28:22:22 Speaker 2 And it's, it's it's really steeped in, in bitterness and racial reductionism. Like his, his work is, he, he has I mean, we had chapters on white identity formation. And here is how a white person sees themselves throughout their process of becoming, going from being a basically default racist person to being an anti-racist person, which is when you basically hate other white people. 00:28:23:04 - 00:28:35:05 Speaker 2 Yeah, and it's pretty bizarre, but but likewise, he has this sort of zoological take on all racial categories. So he breaks down, here's how black people think. Here's how Asian people think. It's incredibly reductive. 00:28:35:06 - 00:28:57:20 Speaker 3 Okay, so I'm sitting here having not been through the education the two of you have been through. And this sounds to me like one of the most racist things I've ever heard of, that I could look at your face and know not just how you currently think, but how you thought through your whole life. And you're telling me that this is a core curricular part of psychology programs. 00:28:57:20 - 00:28:58:22 Speaker 3 The two of you are telling me this. 00:28:58:23 - 00:29:03:00 Speaker 2 It is. Yeah, yeah. These masters in counseling programs. Yeah, yeah. 00:29:03:00 - 00:29:29:23 Speaker 1 So what that means is both accreditations for her crap. For me, the American Psychological Association, which pretty much governs all internships, postdocs, licensure. So you really not going to be able to attain a license unless you graduated from an APA accredited program? So when that is part of the the curriculum that's across the board. So all psychologists are exposed to that. 00:29:30:05 - 00:29:32:04 Speaker 1 All counselors are exposed to that. 00:29:32:05 - 00:29:43:22 Speaker 3 So counselors and psychologists who are graduating around this country right now are coming out, having been taught that you can look at the face of the person sitting in front of you and know how they think based on the color of. 00:29:43:22 - 00:29:48:14 Speaker 2 It, you can know something of substance about them. Yeah. 00:29:48:16 - 00:30:10:02 Speaker 3 And with what you were saying about being, you know, the the addressing model where you're being taught to assess whether you versus your client are the marginalized or the oppressed. You're being taught to potentially sit across from someone who came to you in the vulnerable position of desiring help and pre categorizing them as the oppressor of you. 00:30:10:04 - 00:30:10:14 Speaker 2 Yeah. 00:30:10:18 - 00:30:13:00 Speaker 3 How how could you help someone under that situation? 00:30:13:05 - 00:30:15:16 Speaker 2 And it gets it gets worse. I mean. 00:30:15:22 - 00:30:16:12 Speaker 1 It does give. 00:30:16:17 - 00:30:23:23 Speaker 3 I'm sorry to be sitting here asking the the, the, you know, the layman idiot questions, but these feel. 00:30:24:04 - 00:30:25:09 Speaker 2 No, it's. 00:30:25:11 - 00:30:43:16 Speaker 3 If I was walking into a room asking someone for help and I knew they would look at they would look at the page, you know, paint swatch of the color of my face and which is pretty light. I know and determined that if they fell at a different place in the paint swatch, that they could decide who I was. 00:30:43:18 - 00:30:47:01 Speaker 3 How could I trust that that they would help me. 00:30:47:03 - 00:31:12:06 Speaker 2 Yeah. Good question. Good question. I mean it's honestly I think that some of those, those concepts could be a starting point for a meaningful discussion, even the privilege walk thing that you did. It's interesting if you don't take it to a reductive place, you could be pointing out to someone who's going to work with with lots of people. 00:31:12:06 - 00:31:38:10 Speaker 2 Like I wondered, why are these people in my course eating this up? Why are they regurgitating this language? And I thought something like what you just said a bit a bit ago about some of your your schoolmates when you were in class. Maybe these people really buy it because they really feel it's true for them. Like they feel, wow, I'm kind of coming to a realization of how much harder some people have it than me. 00:31:38:12 - 00:32:12:04 Speaker 2 Maybe, maybe that's a part of it. I and I'm trying to sort of look generously at this. There is a conversation to be had about demographics and disparate experiences, and what are the what's the likelihood that you will have experienced this as a black person or a white person or whatever? But to have that conversation, you always have to foreground the individuality of the of the person and the fact that this might not be true. 00:32:12:10 - 00:32:39:18 Speaker 2 You can't reduce from the demographics like, oh, you've got a 68% chance, greater chance of experiencing whatever. You don't reduce that down and say, this person has experienced 68% more racism than I have because I can look at them. It's it's just never that simple. And they do make it that simple. It could have been the starting point for some really meaningful conversations, but they they did not. 00:32:39:20 - 00:33:03:12 Speaker 2 They're not taking it there. And the the reason I say it gets worse is that we were told that we were supposed to do something called race broaching, preferably in the first session, which is where you start talking about these concepts to your client, like, so you're a white woman and I'm a white woman. This kind of language is so disgusting to me. 00:33:03:12 - 00:33:30:14 Speaker 2 But you're supposed to say that. How do you feel about your privilege? How do you feel? So you're supposed to enter into that ideological conversation. Or if you're if you're a black woman, how does it feel for you as a black woman to sit here with me, a white woman, as your counselor, and introducing that into the dynamic between the two people with this presupposition that you have been loaded with by the addressing model and by the privilege walk and by all of this stuff. 00:33:30:14 - 00:33:41:14 Speaker 2 So you're you're looking at the person with pity or with resentment based on your marginalized and and privileged identity. 00:33:41:16 - 00:34:20:11 Speaker 1 I have a story. Yeah. Because I, I remember this question because I brought it up context here, 2004 2005. The Bush administration were steeped in war, real division in a long political lines. And I'm in Philadelphia in a psychology program mostly left. So the professors, the students were certainly opposing the Iraq War and the Bush administration and the Bush administration had two people of color who were prominent positions, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. 00:34:20:12 - 00:35:00:15 Speaker 1 So two, one African American woman and one African American male who have risen to very powerful positions, driving some of the ideology that was neocon neoconservative at that time. And I thought it was a opportunity for critical analysis. And I posed this question to a professor, and I said, so under these models that were provided in multicultural counseling, someone who is from rural Kentucky, who had two parents who were drug addicts and, they themselves are barely making it. 00:35:00:17 - 00:35:26:14 Speaker 1 They they are in the welfare system and so forth. Their health is a certainly a a factor to the level of poverty they're exposed to. We're going to say that they are more privileged than Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell. And that tends to stop the conversation right there. I don't know if what your experience was that you you might have had this depth for. 00:35:26:14 - 00:35:49:11 Speaker 1 You're like really wanting to understand someone else's perspective. But then that statement is kind of couched from a period, like a place where you're coming from a place of privilege. That's why you would ask the question. Right. And and there was some maybe inference to what they had to go through to overcome and to be in that position of power. 00:35:49:12 - 00:36:12:21 Speaker 1 And I can accept that to a, to a degree. But then, like their children or their grandchildren, become steeped in this position of privilege to and has nothing to do with race. And I wanted to expand this conversation, and it was just an absolute refusal to go there. Everything started to become about race. 00:36:12:23 - 00:36:39:09 Speaker 2 Yeah. That, that, that that was my experience. Also, I in my emails, my journals to the professor. I really didn't want to do this because I didn't want to engage in the competitive victimhood thing to say, what about this? Then this? Like, I just feel like that that's a downward spiral, and I didn't want to make it about me. 00:36:39:11 - 00:37:05:05 Speaker 2 But I did raise, you know, I grew up pretty poor and I grew up in a minority white area, and I was bullied for being white. So I, I think there are other perspectives on this. You can't say that every person who is white has not experienced discrimination based on their skin. And you can't say that everybody who is not white has. 00:37:05:05 - 00:37:33:15 Speaker 2 So just in. That's just the very simple argument. And I responded with that and I was she she responded back with a bunch of stuff about checking my privilege, about how privileged I was, and how maybe the reason that if I experienced any sort of bullying or negative, racial experiences as a kid, it was because of all of the racism that those people of color had been subjected to, and that it was. 00:37:33:17 - 00:37:53:01 Speaker 2 So it sort of felt like, well, if you're if you're white, then you're supposed to be a part of this hive mind, and anything that's done to one of you is retribution for things that have been done by others of you. You're you become this part of this collective. And the same with the so-called POC, the people of color. 00:37:53:01 - 00:38:13:20 Speaker 2 And I found that the term Bipoc to be really kind of ridiculous in its reduction as well. I mean, it's it's what does that even mean? It's everybody who's not white and they're reducing them into one category and saying, that's how these people experience life. They're oppressed. 00:38:13:22 - 00:38:23:07 Speaker 1 Want to bring up one other concept that was pushed and it's microaggressions. And I think that's in the Sue and Sue literature. 00:38:23:08 - 00:38:24:17 Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah for sure. 00:38:24:19 - 00:38:58:01 Speaker 1 And it was this idea that you could be aggressive. There could be an injury to another person without your conscious awareness of it. So it doesn't matter what your intention is. Certain benign behaviors where now being labeled as aggressive based on race racist actually. So talking about reductionist, it really limited our ability to understand the inner world of somebody. 00:38:58:01 - 00:39:27:14 Speaker 1 And it was really in competition with the research I was doing at the time. I was conducting research on, internal attributions of events and what I was realizing from my data is that, you know, a person has an inner world and tries to make sense of their world. And those who interpret benign events, interactions, which is a lot of human interaction. 00:39:27:16 - 00:39:54:23 Speaker 1 Those who interpret benign events as hostile have a negative internal reaction, and then are more likely to respond in maladaptive or ineffective ways. My research was on eating disorder, so I was looking at the inner world of adolescent girls who were making them throw up or were starving themselves in response to events in their life that were social dynamics. 00:39:54:23 - 00:40:20:22 Speaker 1 So they were attributing a lot of benign, normal events to be hostile and being targeted to them. And we saw this in the literature as well, with boys who had conduct disorder. So boys who were coming from like abusive homes, violent homes, they were on the playground were viewing typical playing behavior, very benign as aggressive, and then they would become aggressive. 00:40:21:00 - 00:41:03:12 Speaker 1 So I had this, like real concern to automatically assume that someone of a different race was being aggressive in a way that they couldn't even be conscious of it without their intention. And I saw it as a form of brainwashing. You're actually creating a divisiveness amongst to people that are going to limit their ability to really understand and see themselves, because now anything can be under the umbrella of aggressive, even if like by no means was that your intention at all, even if you're trying to be kind and loving, that can be viewed as coming from a perspective where it's your it's your it's your white supremacy. 00:41:03:15 - 00:41:16:22 Speaker 1 Like there was a no win situation in a lot of ways. If you were a white person trying to connect with somebody of color and it created a real anxiety. 00:41:17:00 - 00:41:49:19 Speaker 2 Yeah. So much. I mean, I think it's I think it creates that anxiety you're talking about is it perpetuates and makes manifest the same racism that they were claiming already existed. You know, if you have to pause to think about the racial category of the person that you're speaking with, then you've already done it, you're moving backwards. And yes, examples of microaggressions are particularly wild. 00:41:49:20 - 00:41:56:04 Speaker 2 Like there's the one scenario of the people in the private jet. Do you know that one? 00:41:56:06 - 00:41:57:04 Speaker 1 I don't think so. 00:41:57:06 - 00:42:13:12 Speaker 2 I can't remember it that well. But it's basically like himself, an Asian American man and a friend of his. It's black, and I think it's like a private jet or a small jet. So this is very, you know, privilege level already, right? 00:42:13:12 - 00:42:14:05 Speaker 1 Right. 00:42:14:07 - 00:42:35:00 Speaker 2 And the people behind them are getting better service than them. And those are those guys are white. And so they assume that this must be their race. And this is he writes it up as this whole racist experience that, that he and his friend had. But there's no other context given. So who knows? You know, who knows what the what the story is. 00:42:35:00 - 00:42:58:12 Speaker 2 It might be, but I but I would bet that there's a lot more complexity to that story. Just like in in a social psychology textbook. I'll never forget this. This is from my undergrad. So I guess at least a little of it was already there. And I remember studying these pictures and being being really off put by this example of, of racial bias, automatic bias, implicit. 00:42:58:12 - 00:42:59:08 Speaker 1 Implicit bias. 00:42:59:09 - 00:43:23:09 Speaker 2 That's the word. Yeah. And so they had these pictures of a white kid and a black kid about teenagers similar age. And they were saying that if you reacted differently to these two pictures, that was your racial implicit bias. The white kid was standing up, shoulders forward, wearing a polo shirt or a button up and looking at the camera with a smile. 00:43:23:11 - 00:43:57:07 Speaker 2 The black kid was literally bent over in in a hoodie next to a car tire, like there's a tire. So his posture was like, he's bent over, kind of kind of oblique to the camera, wearing a different, like a sweat outfit and with a hood over and next to a tire there. There were so many things in those pictures that were different from one another, but if you perceived one of them as more open and friendly, and one of them is more threatening, it was because you were a racist. 00:43:57:09 - 00:44:30:11 Speaker 1 Have you ever gone to a restaurant where you were seated first before somebody else and you didn't get served first? Has any has that ever happened to you? Yeah, all the time. Like, this is like, there's reasons for it, I presume. But that was used as an example in one of my classes. And I, I remember it was a, it was an African American woman who was trying to report that to all of us, to let us know that that's an example of this, like implicit bias, these microaggressions that you sit down and you don't get the service right away, somebody who's white does. 00:44:30:13 - 00:44:51:16 Speaker 1 And I remember saying, oh, I this happens all the time. It's regardless of your race or color. I just imagine it has to do with how busy the person is and maybe the size of the table and other things that are outside our awareness, which I always thought was the healthy response. Like, in all likelihood I do not have all the information. 00:44:51:18 - 00:44:56:09 Speaker 1 But in their situation it's like, oh I have the information and it's because they're racist. 00:44:56:11 - 00:44:57:12 Speaker 4 00:44:57:16 - 00:45:28:06 Speaker 2 Yeah that's interesting. And, and it's you know going back to the idea of, of keeping the same process but replacing the content, it really feels like what's the problem with racism. The, the problem with racism is that you're prejudging somebody based on a demographic category. And you are assuming that you know something of substance about them, that that makes them more dismissal or more threatening or more whatever based on their demographic category. 00:45:28:08 - 00:45:30:11 Speaker 2 So how is it helpful. 00:45:30:12 - 00:45:31:18 Speaker 3 To do exactly the same thing. 00:45:31:19 - 00:45:32:13 Speaker 2 To do that? 00:45:32:17 - 00:45:51:12 Speaker 3 I mean, there isn't even anti-racism. There's just there's just racism. Yeah. So after you you are writing these journal entries to your professor, she's responding to you to just check your privilege, take us, take us further in this story. What continues to happen? How does this snowball for you? 00:45:51:14 - 00:46:16:11 Speaker 2 So that course that the course was a really painful experience for me. I did she in one of the first journals. She said, I encourage you to bring this up in class. And, you know, and I thought, well, okay, she actually wants to have the real discussion. Like, let's talk about some of the nuance here. So I brought it up in class, whatever the scenario was, because it was a it was relevant to whatever the class discussion was. 00:46:16:15 - 00:46:46:03 Speaker 2 And she used that as an opportunity to tell me that if I did not really do this work, that I was going to be a danger to my future clients of color, and that I needed to repair it myself, go back and repair it yourself, was the phrase that she used, and it was about me giving a counterexample from my own childhood of of bullying going the other way, because the stories that we were being told is just white people bully people of color. 00:46:46:05 - 00:46:51:12 Speaker 2 So I used an example. Again, I didn't really like getting personal about it because I don't like that downward spiral. 00:46:51:14 - 00:46:51:22 Speaker 3 Like the. 00:46:51:22 - 00:46:52:20 Speaker 2 Competitive victim. 00:46:53:00 - 00:46:56:22 Speaker 3 Victim Olympics. Exactly. There are just a a race to the bottom. 00:46:57:01 - 00:47:25:03 Speaker 2 And I've done a lot of, you know, whatever you want to call it. Work, emotional, work. I've done a lot of contemplation about what it meant to be different and what it meant to be treated differently like that as a kid. And I think that it hurt me in ways, but it also gave me some strengths. It gave me some immunity to the need to fit in. 00:47:25:05 - 00:47:49:11 Speaker 2 That has been helpful. I have not felt like I'm. I have felt like it served me well in sidestepping groupthink. I probably have blind spots where I'm I'm doing it anyway, but at least in some of these situations, it made it a little bit easier to stand out from the crowd because I grew up not being a part of the crowd, so I can see strengths and benefits from having that experience. 00:47:49:11 - 00:47:57:08 Speaker 2 But I can also see places where that really hurt. That really sucked. Being a kid who didn't fit in, so. 00:47:57:12 - 00:48:05:13 Speaker 3 So did the immune system of this culture start to recognize you as a like a foreign body? 00:48:05:15 - 00:48:25:07 Speaker 2 Oh, that teacher was she was a really she I can't believe the quality of graduate schools. I really, really have come to look on this, these programs with a lot of suspicion. It's not just my story of her, lots of other stories from other people. And it's not just that one school. I've heard lots of stories from other schools. 00:48:25:07 - 00:48:38:15 Speaker 2 But yeah, I guess you could say that she, she targeted me for humiliation in the course, and it happened several more times. Just. 00:48:38:17 - 00:48:55:01 Speaker 2 In. And I was given a, my, my record at the end of the course, my narrative evaluation, I was told that I needed to basically go to professional counseling to work on my issues around race, because I wasn't agreeing with the entire Sue and Sue model. 00:48:55:03 - 00:48:55:17 Speaker 3 Okay, so. 00:48:55:22 - 00:48:57:19 Speaker 2 So it was a mental health. 00:48:57:21 - 00:49:04:11 Speaker 3 That's, that's that's a diagnosis. And does that does that would that follow you in your academic file in any way? 00:49:04:12 - 00:49:10:21 Speaker 2 I mean it's in if I, it's it's in that, that curriculum. It's in my narrative evaluation. So yeah I guess so. 00:49:11:02 - 00:49:38:13 Speaker 1 But Tracy, this has been our, our argument with psychiatry and the mental health industrial complex is our concern with the use of diagnostic categories, medical conditions to silence and even incarcerate dissidents. And this is a bit of an example where someone who disagrees with that prevailing dominant narrative is now identified to have an issue that needs to be corrected. 00:49:38:13 - 00:49:55:10 Speaker 1 And this feels a lot like these, like educational camps or these indoctrination camps throughout history, that if you're not thinking the way that the, you know, the dominant culture or the authoritarian viewpoint is, then you have to be reeducated. 00:49:55:12 - 00:49:56:12 Speaker 4 Yeah. 00:49:56:13 - 00:50:05:12 Speaker 3 So this class wraps up, you get told you need a mental health evaluation. Did it get better from there. 00:50:05:13 - 00:50:39:11 Speaker 2 Well I think now this is not the most interesting part of this story because it's just it's not as ideological. But there was a lot of incompetence in the program as well. And I wasn't the only student really suffering from this. We had a professor who revoked all of our grades from the prior semester or quarter halfway through the next, and required us all to resubmit our finals, which had been these crazy, you know, very, very big works. 00:50:39:12 - 00:51:16:08 Speaker 2 And there were a few issues like that. So there were some administrative problems already. I talked with I talked with my faculty advisor at that time about filing a grievance against this, this particular course for administrative issues, as well as for the way that the the racial education had been handled and the way that she had she had given me taught marks on everything that I had submitted throughout the quarter because according to the rubric, I had deserved the top marks. 00:51:16:10 - 00:51:41:01 Speaker 2 But then when it came time for evaluation, I had gotten a less than stellar. They only had three tiers, but I got a mid tier evaluation, which is what went forward on my record. It did not match the marks and it accompanied this statement about my mental fitness, which I felt was I felt like it was academically inappropriate and I, I wanted a hearing for that. 00:51:41:04 - 00:52:06:01 Speaker 2 But the grievance process was basically just going to a series of meetings with her and the diversity person at the university. And so I was really intimidated by this. I'd already felt like I'd been bullied by this woman who had cried in class at one point about her emotional labor, literally had cried in response to me raising a question and, and, 00:52:06:03 - 00:52:35:00 Speaker 2 Yeah, it was it was bad. So I went I didn't go through the grievance process, and instead I was really disillusioned with this school at this point because of that and because of some of the administrative stuff. So my faculty advisor suggested that I could transfer out to another school within the university system, and I did, and I ended up at a distance student for the New England program. 00:52:35:02 - 00:53:02:22 Speaker 2 And this was around the time of Covid. So everything was going online anyway. So it didn't really change what my experience would have been. And I found that the problems were there as well, outside of that particular diversity module, the Dei stuff, the race inclusion gender framework felt like it was grafted onto all of my courses where the course, be it maybe it was a an addictions course. 00:53:03:03 - 00:53:23:22 Speaker 2 You'd get some good information, you'd get some some quality curriculum. And then there's this like graft also. Now talk about diversity issues and same with assessments or diagnosis and treatment courses. So it was a graft. 00:53:24:00 - 00:53:35:09 Speaker 1 It had to be included in like all your probably treatment planning case conceptualization. Right. And if if that was absent from your conceptualization then of course that's going to affect your final grade. Oh yeah. Yeah. 00:53:35:11 - 00:53:36:10 Speaker 2 It was a part of the rubric. 00:53:36:11 - 00:54:02:03 Speaker 1 I want, I want to just express my experience here because I was in in Philadelphia, inner city, very diverse, and I was working in various clinics. So not only was I sometimes going into the home of minorities, people of color, different class, certainly, you know, different race. And then also being in a free clinic at the school. 00:54:02:03 - 00:54:36:17 Speaker 1 So interacting with people of color who were also med students, I never once experienced someone who was of a different class or a different race than me, who was viewing the world in this way. Yeah. So it would have made it completely awkward and uncomfortable, and you would have ruined the relationship to follow their directives. And I sometimes had to make that case, which I thought I articulated it pretty well and got some agreement from my professors, most who probably weren't fully on board with this model. 00:54:36:19 - 00:55:17:10 Speaker 1 But that was like the most that was the probably one of the things that was most meaningful to me is like, there is no way I am trained to effectively help somebody by shifting the conversation away from why they're there, which was often the typical reasons why someone would seek out a psychologist or a counselor going through an extremely difficult time, having a hard time coping, sometimes engaged in behaviors that are really problematic or dangerous to their health, and for me to anyway shift that conversation from what they desired they wanted to make it about race felt not only awkward and uncomfortable, but it would have been harmful. 00:55:17:13 - 00:55:18:02 Speaker 4 00:55:18:04 - 00:55:46:07 Speaker 3 We're all being played. We are all being played here. So when I first started to hear about this stuff around 2020, I started to fall into the trap of us versus them. This is a crazy liberal problem. All liberals think this way. I could sense myself being infected in reverse by this way of thinking, if you know what I mean by that. 00:55:46:09 - 00:55:49:08 Speaker 3 And. 00:55:49:10 - 00:55:54:12 Speaker 1 Can you can you explain that? Because that's so I think that's an important point. 00:55:54:14 - 00:56:20:02 Speaker 3 This this ideology breeds the same on the opposite side. Whereas now if, if I met, if I had at that point encountered a woman that I perceived as a liberal black female college professor, like the ones I was perhaps hearing about, I would have made assumptions about who she was and what she thought, and I would have prejudged her. 00:56:20:04 - 00:56:43:02 Speaker 3 So it would have. It was breeding prejudice in me from the opposite side. We're all vulnerable to this. This isn't a left right issue. This is a vulnerability we all have in our hearts. And I, while I hear the two of you talking about this, I keep coming back to this massive change that happened in 2011 with mainstream news. 00:56:43:07 - 00:57:26:15 Speaker 3 So in 2011, we had Occupy Wall Street. We had an uprising, a peaceful uprising of people noticing that there was this tiny, tiny class of bankers who were acting against the interests of the rest of us. Their policies were causing poverty across black, across white, across Asian, across Native American populations. Their policies were were creating an entire generation who couldn't afford ownership, who couldn't afford college unless they were blessed enough to have parents who could pay for it, or who were landing up in deep debt slavery trying to get there, that they would be clawing their way out of it forever. 00:57:26:17 - 00:57:49:23 Speaker 3 So there was this very real reckoning of this is happening. There was an effort to suppress that movement, but immediately after it, if you go and look at word counts for the term systemic racism as used by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, all of these papers, suddenly that term is appearing everywhere where it had never been used before. 00:57:50:04 - 00:58:14:18 Speaker 3 And I believe deeply that what happened was a conscious decision by certain parties that desire us to be divided by race, who saw the potential that 99% of people could potentially unite and say, no, we're we're not okay with these policies that are hurting all of us, that that that had to be divided. We had to be divided against each other. 00:58:14:18 - 00:58:40:10 Speaker 3 United we stand, divided we fall. And so these terms started to get pushed on the much wider population, and that this was a literal psyop to divide us against each other. So I have a dear friend who, you know, we went through the the 20 tens and into the 2020s together, and I watched him observe the, you know, the, the riots of 2020. 00:58:40:12 - 00:59:12:12 Speaker 3 See the footage of what, you know, my friends Brett Weinstein and Heather haying went through, which we'll get into that a little later. See all of this and I, I watched this person become more and more guarded toward the people who would appear to be the opposite side. Right? So if he if he saw someone who appeared to be trans or blue haired or, you know, a really liberal African-American person, I knew his reaction was assuming this person is hates me. 00:59:12:18 - 00:59:32:18 Speaker 3 This person hates me because I appear to be a white male. Right. And I watched that. How that would close off his heart where he couldn't, he wouldn't even occur to him to approach them. He called me about six months ago and he said, Tracy, I got to tell you something that I experienced. I was down on a farm in North Carolina where we both know people who live there. 00:59:32:20 - 00:59:51:17 Speaker 3 And another mutual friend came and she brought a whole bunch of friends with her. These friends were trans. These friends had, you know, were gay. These friends had blue hair. These some of these friends were all different races and they were all hyper liberal. And he's like, guess what? We just hung out together. We went on a ride on a boat. 00:59:51:19 - 01:00:12:16 Speaker 3 We had the best time. They were such cool people. I loved them. We didn't talk about any of this stuff that supposedly divides us. I'm realizing I absorbed all the stuff I was being told about what they thought, and it would have kept me from liking them. Except that I trusted our mutual friend enough to let my guard down. 01:00:12:21 - 01:00:34:05 Speaker 3 And I think so many of us don't realize we're we're vulnerable to this. We see what happened to you or to Brett and Heather at evergreen, and we assume first they're insane to I would never do this. But on a much more subtle level, we're absorbing the same thing. And I know I say this as not something other people would do. 01:00:34:05 - 01:01:11:17 Speaker 3 I'm saying this is something that I know was creeping into my heart at one point around 2020, and my hope is that when people hear, hear this show, they think this through and don't just see this as an insane liberal issue, but recognize this of, okay, where is some tiny piece of this creeping into each of us? And how do we what do we do as human beings to see the soul, to see the full, unique, beautiful person standing in front of us without getting so deep into fear of being judged by them that we go into judgment ourselves? 01:01:11:19 - 01:01:12:19 Speaker 4 Yeah. 01:01:12:21 - 01:01:29:19 Speaker 2 That's such a good example of the Occupy Wall Street and the divide and conquer. Is that com that comic that I, I really love that where the, the, the advisor to the king tells the king, we don't need to fight the mob, we just need to convince the torch people that the pitchfork people want. 01:01:29:20 - 01:01:31:21 Speaker 4 Exactly, exactly. 01:01:31:21 - 01:02:08:09 Speaker 2 Yeah, it's it's classic. And it reminds me very much of the antebellum period before the Civil War, where a lot of those tactics were done as well, to divide poor people in the South. Just to respond to the piece about seeing the individual. I mean, I think that so much of this is about scale and and condescension and underestimation of other people, because when you turn people into a category that you can pity, you can also you are underestimating them. 01:02:08:13 - 01:02:33:01 Speaker 2 Just definition. You're seeing them as an object of pity, something that you need to help. And there's just such a fine line between pity and disdain. And I think that that that is a social virus. I think it's a social virus. And you can look at that and say, is it a product of divide and conquer? That was that was disseminated in order to turn us all against each other? 01:02:33:01 - 01:03:08:20 Speaker 2 And maybe so I think that's a really interesting hypothesis and makes a lot of sense. But I also see this sort of the, the idea of the luxury beliefs that you were talking about. That's what Rob Henderson calls that process, by which it's mostly the people who would be identified by the ideology as privileged to look through the lens of ideology at them selves and other people, whereas the people who are not in the privileged camp don't necessarily use that, that framework or lens, they're not the ones espousing it. 01:03:09:02 - 01:03:40:05 Speaker 2 I think that the, the, the so-called privilege, if you adopt that framework and look at yourself as privileged, what you're basically saying is I'm better than other people and therefore I know I have I have better in my life, I'm better equipped and I know better what those other people need and what they should be doing. And so it's a it is a it's like a lens. 01:03:40:05 - 01:04:16:02 Speaker 2 It's like ego syntonic for the, the privileged folks to go out and propagate that. I never saw myself as that. I never pictured myself as being a part of that. So when I saw them all wearing these privileged glasses and trying to teach everybody else this thing, it felt like, what do you guys doing? That's not you're not describing reality according to so much of the world, like you're touching on it, but in such a reductive fashion that fundamentally underestimates the intelligence, the resources and the humanity of the people that you're targeting with your ideology. 01:04:16:04 - 01:04:57:05 Speaker 1 That that's so well said and such a fascinating point, because if you followed the history of quote unquote, mental health therapies, it began to shift from a model that was really prominent in the 60s, 70s and 80s of kind of this humanistic viewpoint that you just allow people on in an experience with a therapist to be able to bring something to the forefront in their lives and to be able to solve that problem, to emotionally process it and then kind of move, kind of move on from it, you know, as if everything was episodic and challenges are normalized. 01:04:57:07 - 01:05:29:21 Speaker 1 And then the medicalization occurred in the 1990s that came along with psychiatry drugs, the chemical imbalance kind of myth. And you started putting counselors or psychologists in this role of being like, a health professional that someone would go to because they were experiencing a diagnosable condition. And I always thought that was kind of a dangerous viewpoint because, you know, we started adhering to the DSM and we started putting counselors master's degree, and we both know about the quality of that education. 01:05:29:21 - 01:06:11:17 Speaker 1 It's not rigorous, and you're putting them in a position where they are to assign a label or a diagnosis to somebody, and that's impacting their lens. You're automatically creating a hierarchy. The moment you begin to do that. It's not just a fellow human or a soul on a journey who's suffering. And we study suffering and we know suffering, and we're compassionate and we're loving, and we have a high tolerance for emotional distress, which is what I always thought that the the ideal person who could serve as someone else, just deeply cared about them, was deeply empathic and had a high tolerance for human suffering, and could guide somebody in a very wise way through that 01:06:11:17 - 01:06:44:12 Speaker 1 journey. And I think the best people who serve those roles are also philosophers, in a sense, have kind of this attentive nature to what makes us all similar, you know, outside of identity characteristics, the fact that life is painful and it's difficult, and they don't approach that person with any judgment, and they don't approach any with fear. But the shift that came over the course of these previous decades was it now became a condition. 01:06:44:12 - 01:07:08:15 Speaker 1 And there was almost like you were infantilizing people who were coming in to see you. They became patients, you know, the name patients. So it became very medicalized. You started handing like checklists to attain the diagnosis. You started conceptualizing under the category of diagnoses. So, Tracy, I think you brilliantly were able to make that comparison very early on in the show. 01:07:08:20 - 01:07:31:04 Speaker 1 Was is it really that different from categories, categorizing somebody in terms of being a marginalized culture or by their race or by their gender versus a diagnosis does the same thing. It splits the human and dehumanizes them. It splits them up, and then it creates that power differential automatically. 01:07:31:05 - 01:07:32:15 Speaker 4 01:07:32:17 - 01:07:35:10 Speaker 2 Yeah I think that's really well said. 01:07:35:12 - 01:07:49:11 Speaker 3 So there came a time for you where you reached the boundary of what you were willing to do to fit into this program. Tell us about that. 01:07:49:12 - 01:08:08:01 Speaker 2 So the, the graft that I spoke about the day I sort of graft your case conceptualizations. There was a way to massage that into speech. That made sense to me because you can talk about somebody characteristics in a way that you can you can address how this may or may not play into the context of what they're experiencing. 01:08:08:01 - 01:08:27:06 Speaker 2 I didn't do it in the language that they wanted, but I could still do it. I think we could all do that for anybody. Just about there's a way to massage it. The political language coming from the program was really strong. There was strong political rhetoric. Sometimes it was stuff that I agreed with because I did tend to be up to that point. 01:08:27:06 - 01:08:58:01 Speaker 2 I was a Democrat voter. I was a left wing. I considered myself pretty far left. So some of the things that they were, they were saying I didn't necessarily disagree with. And sometimes I even sort of agreed with, but it was this way that the, the Chancellor and the and the university faculty were using their, their communication to students as kind of a megaphone to tell us how we should vote and what we should be doing. 01:08:58:05 - 01:09:21:12 Speaker 2 And I didn't like that at all. And so I'd written back and forth a little bit, responding to some of these, these messages. I have those on my Substack, some of those back and forth conversations, even just where I'm, I'm, I'm concerned with the political messaging coming from the program, but even that I could continue going forward with I had very few courses left to take. 01:09:21:12 - 01:09:45:14 Speaker 2 So as I would sign up each semester, I'd be looking through this, this dwindling column of courses that I needed to sign up for. And so in 20, I guess 21, I had tried to sign up for a trauma, grief and loss course. And the very first assignment was it was an online course. Go to the syllabus, read the Civility Pledge and post in the student forum that you agree with it. 01:09:45:18 - 01:10:11:11 Speaker 2 And so I'm like, oh that's interesting. Let me go to the syllabus. I've never noticed this thing. And there in the fine print is this Civility pledge. And I wish I could remember the verbatim, but it's basically pledging to analyze your intersectional identities, racism, sexism, all the ways that you're marginalized in privilege. And it was this, this pledge to be investigating my own privileged and marginalized identities, along with that list of the isms. 01:10:11:12 - 01:10:38:20 Speaker 2 And I just felt like stubbornness kicked in for me. I there's a way I could massage this in my mind, and I can maybe make this into something that I can not be violating my conscience by signing, but it was really going to require some gymnastics, and I just said, I can't sign that. But I knew I also didn't feel comfortable going into the student forum and writing that. 01:10:38:20 - 01:11:09:10 Speaker 2 I couldn't sign this because I went in and I read all these responses from the students, and it's like they're not only taking it, they're taking it and running with it and expounding on it all the ways that they're going to be investigating their privilege and marginalized identities. And I just couldn't play ball. So I dropped that course, and I thought maybe this was just a really particularly activist professor who required this as the first assignment for this semester. 01:11:09:12 - 01:11:33:07 Speaker 2 So a year later, maybe several quarters later, semesters later, I remember what system we were on. I think it was quarters. I needed to take this course because I was running out of courses I could take. So, okay, I looked for a different professor to sign up with. And the first that was the first assignment. Again, I just couldn't sign it. 01:11:33:07 - 01:11:55:09 Speaker 2 I couldn't do it. So I wrote to my faculty advisor and I said I was concerned about the the ideological compulsion in the program. And she got on a zoom call with me. And during that zoom call, she said, we know we are no longer training counselors who can work with the Trump supporter. That's a that's a quote. 01:11:55:10 - 01:12:16:06 Speaker 2 We know we are no longer training counselors who can work with the Trump supporter. I wasn't a Trump supporter, so that wasn't relevant on a personal level. But as a person going into counseling, I did not feel like my client's opinions about presidential candidates should have any bearing on whether I saw them as somebody I could work with or not. 01:12:16:07 - 01:12:43:08 Speaker 2 I mean, we were we were they were training counselors who could work with pedophiles. They were training counselors who could work with people who were involuntarily, involuntarily incarcerated for violent crime, but not for people who voted for somebody they don't like. And that was stunning to me. And she said, if you don't like the ideological bent of the program, I suggest that you get through it as soon as possible because it's just going to get worse. 01:12:43:11 - 01:12:45:14 Speaker 2 I don't think she used the word worse. I think she said more. 01:12:45:14 - 01:12:53:23 Speaker 1 But take us into the mindset of someone like that who can proclaim those statements. 01:12:54:01 - 01:13:23:12 Speaker 2 It's it's kind of what you were saying. I think that the implication is that there are those who will say that psychiatry and psychology are inherently political because they're assessing your fitness according to a cultural norm. Yeah. I mean, there's there are ways in which you can get more objective and, and more relative with that. Like, you can you can see somebody who is. 01:13:23:13 - 01:13:52:12 Speaker 2 There are ranges of, of, of mental health behaviors that that most people would say, no, that person really is it needs needs help is is dysregulated or is having a serious problem that that maybe we could even objectively stand back from and say that person is is not well, but then that gradient goes all the way over to the subjective, where we're starting to assess these degrees of behavior, even political values. 01:13:52:15 - 01:14:29:05 Speaker 2 And right now, in the current state of counseling education, and I think a lot of academia, people who are voting in a certain way are being considered morally ill, even mentally ill, maybe, maybe not even mentally ill necessarily, because that's that's the thing that's occurred to me if it were mental illness. Well, we're here in a program where we could train, we could diagnose this, and then we could treat it, but we're just basically carving them out as not even human enough to be treated under our paradigm. 01:14:29:07 - 01:14:43:22 Speaker 1 Yeah, it really is the, the in-group outgroup division that's created. I mean, it's been used throughout the course of history to influence control on people. That's when I started this said I was truly shocked. 01:14:44:04 - 01:14:44:12 Speaker 4 01:14:44:18 - 01:15:36:21 Speaker 1 That story is what truly shocked me because we're talking about generally speaking, you know, people who enter into this profession out of just empathy, love and caring for other people and wanting to help them, you know, just relieve their suffering. And the fascinating part is, let's imagine they truly believed that somebody who voted for a candidate that they morally disagree with, if they truly believed that they were being operated by a fundamental belief system that is ultimately going to harm them and harm our country, you would at least then probably just consider that what an opportunity to very gently using the skills that you're trained with to enter evidence into somebody's mind to create some 01:15:36:21 - 01:16:03:00 Speaker 1 dissonance. Because you have these skills, you're trained as a counselor, as a psychologist, to almost induce cognitive dissonance, which would be a discomfort, and then allow somebody to potentially face something they didn't previously see. But they're not even sophisticated enough to be able to hide it. Right. It's just a contempt for someone who's different than them, which is just so. 01:16:03:01 - 01:16:07:15 Speaker 1 Ironically, given that multicultural bent that we we've spoken about. 01:16:07:16 - 01:16:09:06 Speaker 4 01:16:09:08 - 01:16:19:23 Speaker 3 So what was your decision now that you're faced with I either say words my conscience disagrees with. 01:16:20:01 - 01:16:22:21 Speaker 3 Or I can't graduate this program. 01:16:22:23 - 01:17:03:05 Speaker 2 I dropped the course after speaking with the advisor. I filed a, I actually filed a grievance for the first time citing some of the other issues. The not to muddy the water, but the issues with that multicultural professor continued, somebody in the UK who was doing a study on bias and counseling programs had reached out to me and I, I she said, would you do you still have the correspondence between you and the professor that because I had spoken about it with colleagues, with other students and with counselors who were concerned about this as well? 01:17:03:07 - 01:17:24:20 Speaker 2 So she, she this, this psychologist in the UK had reached out to me and I, when I went into my Google drive to provide her with the copies of the correspondence. During that course, I found that that professor had been sharing them with someone else. So there was they had been shared, someone else had been given access, another faculty member. 01:17:24:22 - 01:17:47:00 Speaker 2 And in our syllabus for that course, these were treated with the utmost confidentiality. There was a clause in there saying that they would not be shared with anyone. And this is similar to counseling confidentiality, unless something in there revealed that we were danger to ourselves or others. So there was no reason these journals should have been carved out as something very private the way it was written. 01:17:47:00 - 01:18:15:21 Speaker 2 So I went ahead and filed a grievance, and I was I was also raising my concern about the the compulsory, compulsory speech there. I was dismissed by the provost. It was just raised and dismissed. They there was no appeal. Just we dismissed your grievance. And in frustration, I made a short video, just an eight minute video that I put online. 01:18:16:02 - 01:18:39:17 Speaker 2 And I really thought that this was just going to circulate among the people that I was already speaking with. The Critical Therapy Antidote, which is a group that was started in the UK and a joint UK, US venture to address ideology and counseling. So I was kind of just putting it out for, for my colleagues, but it caught a lot of traction. 01:18:39:17 - 01:19:09:16 Speaker 2 So a lot of people saw this in this eight minute video. I said that I think people should be aware of how their counselors are being trained, that counselors are not being trained in a politically and ideologically neutral environment. They are being taught that we handle race in this particular way, we handle gender in this particular way. And there's a very strong political bias, very strong left wing political bias in counselor training. 01:19:09:18 - 01:19:44:06 Speaker 2 And if people understood that, they might think differently about the counseling profession, maybe not go in with blind trust, maybe ask some more questions before you go in and see someone. And my school saw this, and I was effectively terminated from the program because I put the video out and they they declared an emergency, set up a 24 hour crisis team and told everybody not to listen to my hateful and dangerous voice. 01:19:44:08 - 01:19:51:13 Speaker 3 So, as Roger had said at the beginning of this, this was shocking to him to hear. I have to say, it wasn't shocking to me. 01:19:51:15 - 01:19:53:06 Speaker 2 Yeah. Because you talked about evergreen. 01:19:53:07 - 01:20:09:01 Speaker 3 Yes. So, Brett Weinstein and Heather haying are good friends of mine, and they went through this in 2017. For those who don't know the story, which I'm I know you do. 01:20:09:03 - 01:20:30:15 Speaker 3 Evergreens a similar a similar school to Antioch in many ways. And they had a Breton Heather had taught there for a very long time. There were beloved professors. They had a very loyal group of students, and they loved it there themselves. They were not on the right. They were simply principled people who loved teaching evolutionary biology to their students. 01:20:30:17 - 01:20:59:17 Speaker 3 And evergreen had this tradition one day a year where all people of color would could choose to not show up on campus, to allow everybody else to reflect on what their contributions were. This was completely voluntary. Most of them did it. And Breton Heather supported this. If it was begun because it was fully voluntary and it gave everybody else an opportunity to just reflect on, oh wow, if these people aren't here, all these things don't get done. 01:20:59:19 - 01:21:23:01 Speaker 3 You know, the discussions are different. The you know, these, you know, various things are different. They fully supported this. But in 2017 it was different. The request changed. It went from a voluntary day where people of color chose not to come to campus, that their absence might be felt to instead being. This is a day where white people may not show up. 01:21:23:03 - 01:21:46:12 Speaker 3 And for them, that was the line. Because, as Bret told me, I'm Jewish. My family has been told repeatedly throughout history that they are not allowed to be somewhere they cannot come, somewhere they do not belong. This raised every red flag for me, and so they brought this up, not expecting what happened to them, what happened to them. 01:21:46:12 - 01:22:06:23 Speaker 3 When people can go and watch the video of this online was that they faced a mob, a mob who came at them with threats and with threats of violence. They ended up having to go into hiding because there were groups of students patrolling campus with baseball bats looking to bash their heads in, and the university did nothing to protect them in any way. 01:22:07:01 - 01:22:31:12 Speaker 3 They ended up having to leave the university, leave the area for their own safety, and this completely broke them in some ways because they loved the school, they loved their students, they loved teaching and simply for asking, for bringing attention to the fact that it was wrong to forbid people to come to campus because of an immutable characteristic. 01:22:31:13 - 01:22:55:06 Speaker 3 They lost everything, they lost their jobs. And then they started the Dark Horse podcast, which I'm sure many of our audience are familiar with, which is a great show. But this, the reason I'm telling this story is that what happened to you isn't an isolated incident and the long, slow march through these institutions, began a long time ago and has impacted many people. 01:22:55:08 - 01:23:14:14 Speaker 3 Their story is known, your story is known, but there are many people I'm sure you know this has happened to who? Who aren't known, who have simply invested years and time and money and passion into their desire to come through a program, to come out and help other people and lose, lose all of that. 01:23:14:16 - 01:23:59:13 Speaker 1 Our producer, Ralph, is known to state to us, no one really gets to the why. You know, everyone's really good at talking about the problem, right? How it happened. We can even look, historically, this has happened before. Boy, we're human beings. We tend to repeat the same things over and over and over again across history. But no one really gets to the why this is happening, how all of a sudden can a virus I mean, that's the word a mind virus spread amongst the population and create such a shift in understanding human interaction and reality, where you deny, you know, a characteristic like gender or like a or, you know, sex, like no one 01:23:59:18 - 01:24:10:13 Speaker 1 can is too scared to admit a definition of a man or a woman. Have you have we thought deeply enough about how something like this gets started and what the purpose is? 01:24:10:15 - 01:24:11:03 Speaker 4 Yeah. 01:24:11:04 - 01:24:32:22 Speaker 2 I, I mean, I've thought about this a lot and it seems like one of the major, the major issues right now is scale and that we are not. You think about Dunbar's number, which is this concept of how many people a person can really know and interact with. What's your sort of your, your extended tribe or village. Right. 01:24:32:23 - 01:24:58:11 Speaker 2 It's like 150 to 200 people, something like that. I might be off a little bit, but it's in that range. And if you try to conceptualize beyond that, you start to rely on heuristics and categories. So that's where you start to get kind of reductive and diagnostic about what other people are like. And you look at the internet and how we're all being trained to have short attention spans. 01:24:58:11 - 01:25:22:13 Speaker 2 We carry around these little ad devices that that train us to have attention deficit every time we use them and engage with things in a very shallow, very momentary fashion. So thinking about things with a lot of complexity and nuance becomes less and less a part of our skill set, like you talked about meditating and how important that is to you. 01:25:22:13 - 01:25:51:20 Speaker 2 And I think that's great because it's a hard thing to do. You're switching off the need for instant gratification, instant entertainment, something to pull you out of your deeper thoughts and keep you entertained. But I think that that's reality for a lot of people right now, myself included. I tend to look at my phone more than I want to look at it, and love to have a podcast to keep me company instead of my own thoughts just rattling around. 01:25:51:20 - 01:26:24:12 Speaker 2 So I feel like I'm a part of that. I'm not just I'm not calling out other people. It's it's something that I, I do and I hear about a lot of the time, but that reduces the, the regularity with which we are dealing with deeper, longer philosophical nuance in our analysis of of things in our own life. And when people are just things that you can scan through and dismiss, I, I think that we start to reduce the value of other people. 01:26:24:14 - 01:26:33:17 Speaker 2 And is it any wonder that we have ideologies that do the same thing? I've long thought that there is a. 01:26:33:19 - 01:27:10:02 Speaker 2 A giant ribbon of sadism run through our medical system. For instance. I think that it is the the fact that when you're dealing with a bureaucratic medical system, you as the the patient are coming in with problems and nuance and complexity. You are perturbing a system that's already in motion, where these people already have so many activities and responsibilities, and then you're coming in there with your need and your human individuality, and that frustrates the machine. 01:27:10:04 - 01:27:51:01 Speaker 2 And I think that there can be a sort of kneejerk backlash against your need from that system. I think that that's that's something I've witnessed for a long time, and I've worked in the medical environment. I worked in primary care for 11 years. But as more and more of our social structure takes on that format, we're being systematized and materialized out of our individuality, and we're engaging with short attention span trainers and the masses online that far exceed Dunbar's number. 01:27:51:01 - 01:28:00:16 Speaker 2 So is it any wonder that we end up with these kind of diagnostic ideologies? So I don't know if that answers the question very well, but those are some thoughts. 01:28:00:18 - 01:28:20:05 Speaker 3 I believe there are forces at work beyond humans on this. I believe there are forces that want us divided on a spiritual level, and that there are humans that fall for that hook, line and sinker and that there are human forces, pushing it to. 01:28:20:07 - 01:28:51:04 Speaker 3 But I believe that a population that's in fear is much more controllable than a population that is operating from a place of a fearlessness, of courage, of love, of gratitude. And so I think there are many reasons that it's highly convenient if we divide ourselves from each other in these ways. I don't want to be pointing fingers at individual people as being the responsible party, because I think that's kind of missing the point. 01:28:51:05 - 01:29:14:06 Speaker 3 You'd cut the head off one, head off the Hydra, and ten more will grow in its place. There isn't really an individual in that sense that I think we can say is, you know, the the boogeyman for this. But I do believe that the goal is division and that we, each of us as individuals, can choose whether we fall in line with that goal or not. 01:29:14:08 - 01:29:39:02 Speaker 3 And something my dad used to say to me was, when there is someone that you have a deep disagreement with, go sit down with them. Try to understand them. Even if they hurt you badly, try to understand them, seek to understand them rather than so much seeking to be understood. It's very much the Saint Francis prayer, and I watched him him do this in very difficult circumstances when I was a child. 01:29:39:04 - 01:30:12:20 Speaker 3 And so I'm curious if either the professor, you know, the one that cried over the emotional labor you were making her perform, or your advisor who basically told you go, you know, make the do the forced speech or get out of the program because we're not training people who can work with Trump supporters anymore. If either of those women were sitting across from you to table right now, not for a debate, not for a, you know, in response to the grievance you filed, just as as fellow souls sitting across from you. 01:30:12:22 - 01:30:18:22 Speaker 3 What would you want to understand about them and how would you approach them? 01:30:19:00 - 01:30:19:17 Speaker 4 01:30:19:19 - 01:30:37:03 Speaker 2 That's a good question. I think. I, I am fairly detached from worrying too much about what other people think. I don't I honestly do not mind. 01:30:37:05 - 01:31:01:00 Speaker 2 If people think that I'm completely wrong. I, I've, I've let go of that. I don't know at what point I let go of that, but I feel it. I feel it leaving all the time, more and more like I. I facilitate a support group, a peer support and discussion group we are on, or I guess we're about three and a half plus years into it and it's been running beautifully. 01:31:01:00 - 01:31:26:03 Speaker 2 It's an online group. And somebody recently we were talking about community college, about university experiences, and I was like, that's what this feels like. It feels like the group of people you hang around with, that community college where everybody comes from a different background, and you're just sitting around talking and you're getting into philosophical ideas, and there will be times when people in the group just they think things and they think them strongly that that I disagree with. 01:31:26:04 - 01:31:44:11 Speaker 2 Like we've recently been talking a little bit about Lindsey Clancy. I know that's something you've talked about. I listened to your podcast on that. And really, I really appreciated the way that you went into that. But that's a case that's right now in the news, and it's bringing up a lot of strong feelings. And you can see it back and forth. 01:31:44:12 - 01:32:13:22 Speaker 2 And I feel myself just witnessing how other people feel and how they, they speak and not needing to jump in with my own. Not like I can. But if they don't want to hear it, that's okay. And so these women who felt so differently from me, I don't I don't know if I'm really deeply curious about why they felt that way. 01:32:13:22 - 01:32:27:06 Speaker 2 I would kind of wonder what their I from a more detached perspective. I kind of wonder what their arc will be like. We just saw recently AOC going woke one was crazy. Did you see that clip? 01:32:27:08 - 01:32:27:14 Speaker 3 No. 01:32:27:14 - 01:32:28:09 Speaker 4 I didn't saw it. 01:32:28:10 - 01:33:02:11 Speaker 2 Yeah. And so it's this, this person who's associated with a lot of the woke ideology. And you've got plenty of we've we've all seen her talking in this particular way and then going, that was crazy, wasn't it? As if to distance herself from it. And so I am kind of curious in a detached way, whether some of these professors are on that same journey where they will at some point see some of these issues so differently and not really see themselves in it the way that they were experienced by others like myself. 01:33:02:12 - 01:33:30:14 Speaker 2 But I am not. I'm not interested in debate at all. I've just never really been interested in debate. So that was part of why that grievance process didn't really appeal to me. I don't want to argue that was why. That's why I left law school. I mean, I'm not really interested in embroil myself in conflict. I'm much more interested in people just as people. 01:33:30:16 - 01:33:34:02 Speaker 2 I don't know if that answers the question very well, but that's kind of. 01:33:34:08 - 01:33:44:00 Speaker 3 And you don't seem you don't seem angry now about what happened to you. Were you angry then? 01:33:44:02 - 01:33:46:05 Speaker 2 Angry. I was. 01:33:46:05 - 01:33:48:12 Speaker 4 Really confused. 01:33:48:14 - 01:34:17:18 Speaker 2 I think there was some anger in there. I was confused, and I was really sad, and I. I think those were the primary feelings that I was experiencing. Probably was pretty angry. It's funny to look back on it now. It was a weird time. I, I can remember just going into my bedroom and closing the door and crying over and over during that. 01:34:17:20 - 01:34:40:22 Speaker 2 That time when I was taking that course and the things that I was being told I needed to believe in order to be a good counselor just did not make sense. I can remember just going in and and feeling like, this can't be right. This cannot be right. So it was a lot of confusion. And that kind of gets into the topic of moral injury, which we talked about before we recorded. 01:34:41:04 - 01:35:03:14 Speaker 2 I know you wanted to get into a little bit, but it's made me really curious about the what what the process I went through, what other people are going through is there is this bigger than this school? Is this bigger than this profession? And I believe that it really is. 01:35:03:16 - 01:35:12:17 Speaker 1 I feel like there's still some, you know, corn on the cob here around, like deeper questions about why. 01:35:12:19 - 01:35:43:22 Speaker 1 And I guess this is an opportunity for me to talk about my book a little bit. And we were just mentioning some of the spiritual awakenings that both she and I have had, you know, over the past 5 or 6 years that you begin to see the human experience differently. I began to see each individual as a soul in a body for a journey, and that journey being very, very meaningful, even holy. 01:35:44:00 - 01:36:06:07 Speaker 1 And this is what I loved about therapy. Once I started to learn this, and it shifted my perspective and expanded my consciousness is I began to see the or of the journey, and I saw everyone who came in my path for it to be a holy experience. I eliminated the idea of coincidences because that's what I learned in my spiritual awakening. 01:36:06:07 - 01:36:37:00 Speaker 1 There are no coincidences. Everything is happening for you. And so when you begin to see, for the lack of a better word, the God in another, you begin to see this interconnectedness of all of nature, that I was no longer serving that person. We were serving each other. It changed everything for me. And the first part of my book, which was what I termed interference. 01:36:37:02 - 01:37:12:05 Speaker 1 Interference would be anything that gets in the way of your direct connection to a universal consciousness or a conditional, an unconditional love. And that could be what you talked about earlier the phone addiction, the entertainment, the constant distraction. But it's also ideas, beliefs, anything that creates separateness, anything that would create a division, a fear, a hierarchy. To me, I now see as direct, purposeful, intentional interference for division. 01:37:12:07 - 01:37:40:13 Speaker 1 And I stopped trying to question people's motives and purpose. Everyone wants to go to financial aspects like it's a money driven and that's what drives you these systems. But the truth of the matter is, is the powerful have so much money. It's not about that. There's a control mechanism that's in place. There is an intentional division. There's a desire to almost enslave us through our own minds. 01:37:40:15 - 01:38:11:06 Speaker 1 And that can happen when we are isolated from each other and we other the other person. And you made such a great point about the limitation of our sphere of influence, that we end up creating a version of who somebody is not from our direct experience by what somebody who's influential or potentially powerful begins to constantly create in our minds about those people. 01:38:11:08 - 01:38:38:05 Speaker 1 And once I really became a woken to the fact that there really isn't a major division between the two political parties, I saw that as a as a clear psyop and that these shifts are constantly going to occur because what is the ultimate goal? It's not being on the right side. It's provoking tribalism to create division, to create fear, because it's a spiritual harvesting. 01:38:38:10 - 01:39:13:02 Speaker 1 And the only way that we can really become enslaved is if we become divided that way and we lose our sense of agency, our sense of, autonomy and independence. If once we just become a, a group of people who are being controlled and influenced through technology, and our lives only come about escaping the emptiness of a culture that is no longer connected to things bigger than them, than we are completely controlled and enslaved. 01:39:13:03 - 01:39:13:15 Speaker 4 01:39:13:17 - 01:39:38:21 Speaker 1 But if we begin to see each other as spiritual beings who can serve each other, and you cultivate empathy, which doesn't happen in the mind and it doesn't happen through ego and all the things that we're told about what makes you happy. It happens when you fill that emptiness, that void in your life with true connection and true love. 01:39:39:00 - 01:40:07:20 Speaker 1 And if you see it, just about this life, if you see just about your own personality and your own experience, it's just going to trigger everything about the darkness of this place is that it's just about survival. And so I see it in a similar way that Tracy does that this becomes much more spiritual. And that's why when you look at academic influence in our particular country, you know, it's very secular. 01:40:07:22 - 01:40:29:05 Speaker 1 You know, there's a new religion that kind of becomes created and people begin worshiping that religion. Because I do think human beings desire for a connection that's bigger than themselves. And this is where it shows that we are so vulnerable to worship a some form of deity, when that deity is not something that's much greater than just the human. 01:40:29:05 - 01:41:10:00 Speaker 1 We end up worshiping ideas, political parties. We worship Hollywood or you worship a medical professional. And my purpose, or I think my mission right now is to be able to communicate that we have a way to serve each other outside of these constructed institutions that have created such division. And I can only speak for our profession. Somehow we took the desire to really help somebody, and we turned it into ideology, coercion and moving people towards pharmaceuticals and labels. 01:41:10:06 - 01:41:35:22 Speaker 1 And now you see an entire generation that's identifying with some psychiatric label that's not even scientific. They don't even understand that it was created for a purpose of classification. And we've we've discussed the problems with classification. But my question, I think it's a deeper question, too, because ultimately, you desired you pulled yourself out of law school and you're incredibly bright. 01:41:35:22 - 01:42:00:07 Speaker 1 You're incredibly intelligent. This is we see that right now. There's to me, you would have stood out in any counselor program because you're a critical thinker and you're articulate, and there's a level that you are examining these things that people around you just couldn't get to, but your heart desired something else, and which is what puts you in on this path. 01:42:00:09 - 01:42:07:15 Speaker 1 How did you originally understand or see the counseling profession to serve people? 01:42:07:17 - 01:42:28:06 Speaker 2 That's a great question. That's a question I ask a lot of people when I talk to people about their experiences. And counselor training is, what did you think it was that you were getting into? And I think for me, see, it's how much do I want to say? So my mom had a really troubled childhood. I'll just leave it at that. 01:42:28:07 - 01:42:57:11 Speaker 2 I won't say too much more. She had a really troubled childhood when I was a little kid. There's this, you know, this way that they talk about the companion child, the the parental child, all these kind of roles that you feel as a kid. I don't know if I really fit any of those perfectly, but she did talk to me about a lot of the grief that she'd been through, a lot of the things she needed someone to talk to, and she talked to me and I. 01:42:57:12 - 01:43:29:15 Speaker 2 I think I wanted her to be able to have a counselor. I remember that at one point she tried and she she didn't have a good interaction with the one counselor she tried to see. It was unsatisfying, and she kind of gave up on the process. But I thought about the amount of, of sort of verbal processing that, that she needed in order to feel like she could understand herself and what had happened to her. 01:43:29:17 - 01:43:58:16 Speaker 2 And I think that sort of sparked the beginning of my, my thinking about this, this role that we fulfill for one another as family members, as friends, as whatever. So that wasn't necessarily a transactional model. That was more just the human human listening to human, the human story. What's my narrative and how do I understand myself? And is it helpful to have somebody else co understand that? 01:43:58:18 - 01:44:36:05 Speaker 2 And I think what what drew me to counseling, what I wanted to do was I wanted to work with women across the lifespan around issues that and men and women both go through their own issues. Women's issues are not more difficult than men's issues. They're just different. And I'd been through a lot of issues around my facility, from miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy, early motherhood, things like this, and and difficult experiences in the medical system giving birth, which that's a whole podcast right there. 01:44:36:07 - 01:45:03:12 Speaker 2 I mean, if you if you talk to ten women about their birth stories, you hear some really wild stories about how they're treated in the medical field. So those issues, knowing a lot of other women, hearing my mother's own story and I, I thought that there is a there's a degree of grief that a lot of us are, are carrying. 01:45:03:12 - 01:45:30:09 Speaker 2 And I'm not going to call it trauma in the trendy sort of way. But there's there's a story that sometimes isn't being shared that, you know, you, you have a I had a second trimester miscarriage. And when I went through that and I shared it with a few people, the stories that came out were incredible. The stories of similar experiences that you would never know unless you shared it. 01:45:30:09 - 01:46:06:17 Speaker 2 And there's so I think what I, what I thought I was getting into was a furtherance of the study of psychology that I had started in undergrad, which I found so interesting, and a deepening of my my own skill set, which I will say again, the counseling skills course that I took was really, really helpful because it sort of taught you the difference between being a good friend and being somebody who actually has the skills to listen to someone else in a in a. 01:46:06:19 - 01:46:25:22 Speaker 2 In a, in a more helpful way. You're sitting on your hands more. You're not giving a bunch of advice like you might have done if you were somebody who was oriented towards listening to other people and just teaching you some ways to be with people. So I thought I would get more of that. I thought I would get more theory, like, what's the how has this field been developed? 01:46:26:00 - 01:46:48:07 Speaker 2 What are the prevailing schools of thought? And we really didn't get much of that. We really did not. I think we had one course on, therapy modalities, and it was kind of like pick one and study it and then write a paper on it. And that was the end. So it wasn't like we got to go into Adler and Rogers and you know, we didn't we didn't do that. 01:46:48:08 - 01:46:49:23 Speaker 2 We just you pick one. 01:46:50:01 - 01:46:50:12 Speaker 1 Which is. 01:46:50:12 - 01:47:14:15 Speaker 5 Different from when I got my master's degree. It started in 1999. Okay. That was a big part of what we did. But I, I think this is a good time to tell a quick story because the 2020, 2021, 2022, my practice was completely overwhelmed. You know, we I remember looking at a waitlist. 01:47:14:16 - 01:47:18:03 Speaker 1 We had at one point and it was like over 100. 01:47:18:09 - 01:47:18:15 Speaker 4 Wow. 01:47:18:16 - 01:47:50:13 Speaker 1 So I was really in need of staff of hiring staff. So I started opening it up to more interviews with people who in the past, I would not have interviewed just by the nature of their training. And so that meant social justice theory. Those who identified themselves to be that on an initial, just a resume or, or questions we would ask to screen people out. 01:47:50:13 - 01:48:21:12 Speaker 1 And I'll never forget this one time I was on, it was a zoom call, and I approached it with real curiosity because where I was at the time and I'm still there to a to a degree, is it was my prevailing viewpoint that therapy should be limited and should not be something that is automatically provided or viewed as something that is just universally healthy. 01:48:21:13 - 01:48:52:02 Speaker 1 I had concerns that we were moving further and further away from support that would occur within communities, and that community could be broad doesn't necessarily mean one's family, but close friendships, faith based communities, a teacher, a mentor. We were just outsourcing things to the professional things that were getting pathologist in that environment, things that I thought were normal, which were part of the journey of life. 01:48:52:06 - 01:49:17:22 Speaker 1 That if you had wise mentors or even elders, they could share their own experience. So I was really concerned about the pathology of the normal and what this was meaning to society. But I did believe and I was a clinical psychologist dilemma, a clinical psychologist, that there are these conditions that the mental health field fails consistently because there's an incentive problem. 01:49:18:00 - 01:49:48:22 Speaker 1 The counselor and even a lot of psychologists wanted the easy case because you would get paid the same if you were working with a mother who might be very high functioning. But is talking about something challenging in their life will attend every session we'll pay versus somebody who is deeply, deeply impaired. And that could range from multiple hospitalizations, suicidal, severe OCD, severe eating disorder. 01:49:49:00 - 01:50:27:10 Speaker 1 My mission was to serve those and to study how to best help and intervene with those people. What I was seeing is they were getting drugged into oblivion and calling it health care. So my advocacy work really grew during that time period, but I so I asked this woman to explain, you know, her social justice theory, and she went into a lot of the isms, rejecting them and then speaking about the human condition in terms of really the suffering arises in terms of like cultural and institution, institutional oppression. 01:50:27:12 - 01:50:55:03 Speaker 1 And I accepted what she said, but I wanted to know its applications. So I would create the the scenarios, the clinical cases that I was dealing with, somebody who's suicidal, somebody who is starving themselves to death, can't stop binging and purging. And I'd ask, talk to me how you would take this case. How would you intervene? What would it look like in the first four sessions, which are critical? 01:50:55:04 - 01:51:04:05 Speaker 1 How would you set this up? The level of incompetence there was so unbelievably concerning. 01:51:04:07 - 01:51:35:03 Speaker 1 That I believe that I called people completely incompetent, and I was very concerned about their ability to do the work, if that is how they viewed struggles through that, through that lens. And I really, really challenged people, some who were still in school who were coming for group interviews. In some ways, I was completely off my path because I could not influence them in a positive way. 01:51:35:03 - 01:52:04:12 Speaker 1 I was just so upset by how an ideology could overwhelm a. I think what turns out to be a well-meaning person, and they could not think in the least bit critically. And I'm not going to be hyperbolic about these numbers. For every 50 people I would come across, I would get potentially one who would reflect your level of critical analysis of this. 01:52:04:14 - 01:52:29:03 Speaker 1 And I'm recognizing this is what the mental health field is now like. This is what people are entering into. They they're the ones who survived your training. They were the 49 out of every 50 people that I would reject. This is what our young people are going into. This is what many millennials who are moms are entering into. 01:52:29:04 - 01:52:32:00 Speaker 1 And I'm deeply, deeply concerned. 01:52:32:02 - 01:52:34:15 Speaker 4 01:52:34:17 - 01:53:04:00 Speaker 3 You were speaking about moral injury. What do you think the impact is of someone who goes through one of these programs. They've put in tens of thousands of dollars is their life dream. But in order to get through the program, they have to at least appear to accept lies about themselves, lies about other people, and potentially, as in your case, would have to. 01:53:04:02 - 01:53:24:04 Speaker 3 Commit to actual active speech that violates their conscience. What does that do to a person? And what does that doing to people who are coming out of these programs now, who may go in feeling the way you did? But bend the knee in order to come out the other side and have the job that they dream of. 01:53:24:06 - 01:53:26:02 Speaker 4 01:53:26:04 - 01:53:53:23 Speaker 2 Yeah. It's, it's it's a big problem. I mean what, what you were just speaking about Roger, about the number of people coming through these programs that are qualified or competent. I think that it that critical thinkers and people who would question reductive ideology are being selected out there being gate kept out of the program. And that speaks to what you're asking about. 01:53:53:23 - 01:54:40:18 Speaker 2 There's a I, I, I know a lot of really good therapists. I've had the privilege of working with people. I, host and facilitate provider consult groups and have been doing so for, I guess, about a year and a half ago was when I started the first one. And so I get to speak with we provide a place for people who don't want the ideological rigidity that they get in a lot of their their contemporary group discussions and supervision groups that they attend, the Facebook groups for therapists, the other sort of mainstream opportunities that they have for collegial conversation are often very captured by the social justice ideology. 01:54:40:18 - 01:55:27:12 Speaker 2 So we provide a space for people who want to take a broader lens and, and talk about things in an open forum. And through that process, I've met a lot of really good people. So I know a lot of good people do come out. At least some good people do come out of these programs, some thoughtful people. But I also know through the interviews that I've conducted, a lot of people who have been excluded, who have either dropped out, been forced out, opted not to go into, or have not been selected into these programs because of of of a difficulty adhering to the the social justice framework, the reductive ideological bias. 01:55:27:12 - 01:55:59:00 Speaker 2 And I think that it is incredibly hard. Like I talked about that I how emotional it was for me to come home from a course where a counseling professor with a PhD in psychology is telling me to check my privilege and to repair it myself, or I'm going to be a threat to my future, people of color, clients that I might work with because I don't agree with Daryl Wing Sue, and I don't think that we are that simple. 01:55:59:00 - 01:56:19:03 Speaker 2 I don't think that I should should have to say in this course that I know something of substance about you, because I can see the skin that you're wearing because I can see the color of you, you know, it coming home from that and going to how can this be real? And, and I've talked with so many people who've had that experience. 01:56:19:03 - 01:56:49:06 Speaker 2 It's really hard. And do you think I guess one of the questions that I've, that I've, I've wished I could ask of this profession as it goes in this direction is do you think this benefits people's clients? I mean, how do you think this affects the work that people will do as they come out of these programs? And they have violated their own conscience just to get through, and they've struggled with themselves and with what they're saying is truth. 01:56:49:08 - 01:57:05:01 Speaker 2 You know, when you come out of that, a lot of people tell themselves, I'll just do what I have to do here. And then when I get out and I get my license, I'll practice the way I want to practice. But it doesn't tend to be the case because the license is another form of of social control. 01:57:05:03 - 01:57:05:11 Speaker 4 01:57:05:16 - 01:57:40:14 Speaker 1 That's such a good point. One of the things that's important for people who are listening to understand is the social conditioning is important, but so are, you know, other forms of conditioning that are more industrial. So for example, a counselor, psychologist as well is taught that if anyone presents with certain symptoms. So now we're medicalized it that it is your, your duty, your ethical duty to refer that to a physician. 01:57:40:16 - 01:58:06:05 Speaker 1 So they're creating a pipeline of medical distress and saying and take and putting a drug. As the primary response to such things. So it was always this real interesting dichotomy that I saw in one respect, these therapists are trained to completely validate all your emotional states, and then they're in the same breath or saying, have you tried this drug which is going to blunt them or mute them? 01:58:06:07 - 01:58:35:03 Speaker 1 And these were always one of the questions I would ask if if you believed that the mechanism of overcoming challenges is to emote or to experience your emotions without suppression, without avoidance, to create this ability to tolerate those emotions and still move forward in life. How do you then support a drug that really it's only benefit is to blunt and mute those experiences. 01:58:35:03 - 01:59:00:03 Speaker 1 How do you make sense of that? And it's rare that, as anyone has ever thought about it, that they're just believe that it's something that's medicinal, that it like takes the edge off in some respect and that I trust the physicians, you know, under these things. And it's just universally positive. But then the ethical question that always came is that you are making a recommendation. 01:59:00:03 - 01:59:26:22 Speaker 1 So if you can admit that it's outside your scope that you haven't really understood these drugs, you are influencing another person. You're a professional in this field and you're recommending or even referring them for the drug. So in that respect, you are influencing even though it's outside your scope. But they're told that if you don't, your license could be at risk. 01:59:27:00 - 01:59:48:05 Speaker 1 And then the licensing exams are the you have to prepare for these licensing exams. So you have to answer these questions and a specific way to be able to get the license, even if they're not accurate. And that influences people rarely. You know, we have so many situations where people are entering into large systems, corporate systems. Corporate medicine is a big one. 01:59:48:05 - 02:00:18:12 Speaker 1 So therapists are employed, their employees, you know, not everyone just has a shingle and a in a private practice. A lot of people are working for these larger scale organizations, and they are under the same belief system and same ideology. It feels to me like it has become so reductionist that it's almost like a, you know, like working in a factory, you know, just in some ways you're assigning the label, parroting back what people are saying. 02:00:18:12 - 02:00:33:13 Speaker 1 I call it counselor speak or therapy speak, validating the emotions, entering in some worldview and then referring them into the medical system. That, to me has become 75% of what I see. 02:00:33:15 - 02:00:51:23 Speaker 2 Well, then there's no the the two sides aren't really talking to each other. I think you addressed this recently in, in a podcast that I listened to where you were talking about the default being over treatment, because it's really under treatment that can get you in trouble. So if you recommend two few drugs, you're in trouble. But if you recommend to many, no problem. 02:00:52:01 - 02:01:19:03 Speaker 2 So air on the side of overtreatment. And I think that that goes way beyond the mental health field. But the it is not the master's level counselor that does the prescribing. They don't do any prescribing and they don't do any drug oversight, but they're the one that's going to see the person every week. It's the physician, usually the GP, and sometimes the nurse practitioner, a psychiatric psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse practitioner, sometimes who will be handling the prescribing. 02:01:19:03 - 02:01:39:00 Speaker 2 But but usually it's a general practice doctor who's only going to see them for a med check every 3 to 6 months to renew their prescription. And they're not seeing the the day to day, week to week impacts of that drug. But the counselor isn't trained to do the med check and to see how is this impacting their lives. 02:01:39:00 - 02:01:48:18 Speaker 2 So it's this like this, this area that just the two sides never meet and it goes really unobserved. What is the impact of this drug? 02:01:48:19 - 02:02:07:08 Speaker 1 What's interesting is these drugs have all these known reactions to them as well as severe withdrawal. And the counselor is almost trained to see that person independent of what they put into their bodies. So a person can be going through severe withdrawal, known drug reactions, and they're labeling it as a worsening mental illness or a mental health condition. 02:02:07:08 - 02:02:52:08 Speaker 1 It's I mean, it it to speak to that level of incompetence. It's only helpful to us if we transition to what the alternative would be. And I hope we can move this conversation in trying to identify how do we improve humanity, how do we create alternative systems? What may they what might that look like if we are able to learn from this dark period in human history where I think so much harm has occurred, what does the alternative look like where we just reverse course and then return to some common, common sense and just some principles, I think, of of health and sovereignty. 02:02:52:10 - 02:02:54:14 Speaker 4 02:02:54:16 - 02:02:56:17 Speaker 3 You want to start on that? 02:02:56:19 - 02:03:23:08 Speaker 1 Sure. Yeah. I think the first thing is, you know, I mentioned that my book previously is that there's so much interference that is somewhat of a poison to the human being, and so much of the poison we ingest or have been purposely injected into our, into our culture, then gets identified to be a symptom of some condition which then justifies more poison. 02:03:23:10 - 02:03:50:18 Speaker 1 So I don't know how we begin to create alternative systems unless we first recognize the intentional poisoning of our culture. And that includes from pesticides, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and probably what goes unseen. You know, I we were talking earlier about this being an energetic world, but there's a lot that is unseen because, you know, that phone that we have here, obviously information is carried through that through waves. 02:03:50:20 - 02:04:22:18 Speaker 1 So there's so much that is unseen and we can be targeted in so many different ways. I personally believe in the power of human consciousness. I do believe that we are energetic beings and with this creative power, and we have this powerful ability for self-healing in so many ways. But if we do not have the conversations about what that looks like, and we don't incorporate even the science that already exists, then we stay hidden in this paradigm. 02:04:22:18 - 02:04:54:05 Speaker 1 It's so false where we're acting upon a paradigm that is slowly material, and we use this material based science despite the outcomes being horrible. We're in a chronic disease epidemic. Obesity rates are through the roof, childhood diseases are becoming more severe and more chronic. And there's a fertility crisis. All these things are happening which are clearly demonstrating that we are killing ourselves off. 02:04:54:07 - 02:05:25:02 Speaker 1 And there seems to be a fear of recognizing what is true. And it's very hard, in my opinion, for people to for human beings, ourselves included, to discern what is truth. Because what is true is always true. It's not going to shift with a new study. It's not going to shift in a culture. And what is true in the year 2026 was true in the year 300 BC. 02:05:25:04 - 02:06:03:21 Speaker 1 Bottom line, that's truth. We're in this shifting version of truth and moral relativism, and a constant shifting of the goalposts about what is real. And I believe we're exposed to only about maybe 1% of everything that is real. But the human mind has this powerful creative capacity. Our attention, our focus is so meaningful in creation, which is why it's under attack, and why we have to be so aware and clear about where we're trying to be enslaved through these ideas and through technologies. 02:06:03:23 - 02:06:36:23 Speaker 1 So if I start the conversation off, I'm going to throw it out to the two of you to build off of it. I think step one is you have to begin to start removing the interferences and a return to nature. And I think nature, being broadly speaking, you know, of all things that are of the natural. And that includes when we talk about meditation, is you get a respite from the ego, you get a respite from thoughts and everything that people are attacked with constantly. 02:06:37:03 - 02:07:11:08 Speaker 1 And that respite is in silence, not through a distraction. And there are powerful, life shifting experiences that take place through prolonged silence and our culture more than any. What I mean by that is, Western societies have been pushed to get our attention to ideas and entertainment that ultimately create emptiness. A consumer culture has created profound feelings of emptiness, and there's a crisis of meaning. 02:07:11:10 - 02:07:32:01 Speaker 1 And the mental health crisis is that once we pay attention to that, no it's not. You have a chemical imbalance or genetic condition. You don't have this one of 300 plus diagnoses they have given you. What has happened is you've been targeted often from the moment you were born in the birthing system, the medical system, with all these interventions. 02:07:32:06 - 02:07:46:20 Speaker 1 And then what's happened? It's been compounded by ideas over the course of your entire life, and we are experiencing the predictable consequences of that. 02:07:46:22 - 02:07:57:17 Speaker 2 I yeah, I think that that was all really, really beautifully said. I could I could go on listening to you talk for a long time. It is. 02:07:57:19 - 02:08:12:13 Speaker 2 You said we're killing ourselves off and that's, that's it's a it's a really it's a it sounds like a dramatic thing to say, but I think it's true. I think we're in a strange. 02:08:12:15 - 02:08:41:15 Speaker 2 Embrace with with nihilism in the culture. And I think that, you know, in thinking about life and death, institutions and organizations and movements, they have a life cycle as well. But what you see with the contemporary mental health profession and the the drive to control and license more and more of it, and to add more and more thought controls into that process. 02:08:41:16 - 02:09:18:12 Speaker 2 As you see, this desire to immortalize something and prevent it from growing and changing. And one of the ways that I would start is by rolling back licensure requirements and detaching those from the government. I would I mean, in a in a sense, what we have right now is a guild that's married to the state, and it creates just such powerful, powerful control against necessary growth and maturation and and dying out of systems that need to come and go and be challenged and be be moved and be forced to to change as they as they go. 02:09:18:13 - 02:09:43:02 Speaker 2 And I was very surprised recently to learn that the licensing requirements for professional counselors are much more recent than I realized. Like you could practice as a lay counselor in the state of California up until I think it was 2004, 2009, something like that. And call yourself a counselor and you could be you could hang up a shingle and do that. 02:09:43:07 - 02:10:14:06 Speaker 2 And I think part of the underestimation of people, you see it in that treatment of the patient. The patient is the one who is infantilizing, who is vulnerable, who needs somebody smarter, stronger and better to to think for them in these ways. So, you know, you you put yourself up here as the medical model or the guild or the whatever, and now you're protecting this, this precious patient instead of seeing people as human beings. 02:10:14:06 - 02:10:36:07 Speaker 2 I'm a human. You're a human. You use your judgment. I tell you who I am. I tell you what, what I'm what my service is. And you make a decision for yourself how you encounter that. When the when the patient comes in already assuming the one down position, then the authority of the counselor becomes dangerous. Then the intervention becomes something that has a ton of power. 02:10:36:09 - 02:11:00:12 Speaker 2 But if you're just going over to see Joe, who might have some good ideas, then you can take it or leave it. And I think that that power differential is a big part of the problem, and it's part of that same it all kind of it all revolves around the fundamental devaluation of human life, of the other, of our self. 02:11:00:14 - 02:11:25:21 Speaker 2 If you can write off, if you can write off your mom and dad because they voted wrong and all the other things that they did don't matter, then you reduced them down to something really small, and then you can write off your children, and you can write off your friends, and you can write off yourself like you reduce people down to these tiny fragments of what it is to be a person. 02:11:25:23 - 02:11:48:06 Speaker 2 And that is that is fundamentally anti-life. And I think that that's what we've got in a system that that if you picture it, it's like, here's this, this dying framework that's not being allowed to grow based on market forces and a growing population and it's growing needs. And it just gets layers and layers of scaffolding put around it. 02:11:48:06 - 02:12:05:04 Speaker 2 And that's the protocols that build up. Oh we saw a problem there here Institute new protocol. But what you're doing is just regimented and systematizing and materializing further and further and further. And I don't know these bureaucratic behemoths I think that they, we. 02:12:05:07 - 02:12:05:15 Speaker 4 We. 02:12:05:16 - 02:12:09:09 Speaker 2 We need to strip back some of the power that they currently possess. 02:12:09:11 - 02:12:37:15 Speaker 3 I couldn't agree more. I mean, this is something I'm absolutely passionate about. I don't believe government has a role in licensure, period. I'm something of an absolute assert on that, that people should be able to express what they offer, offer full information that someone else can fully consent to working with them, and that any two people should be able to agree to work together. 02:12:37:17 - 02:12:38:22 Speaker 4 02:12:39:00 - 02:12:50:21 Speaker 3 Reflecting in my own life, I would say that when I have faced significant challenges, emotional difficulties, the people who have helped me the most are the people who actually loved me. 02:12:51:01 - 02:12:52:08 Speaker 4 02:12:52:10 - 02:13:41:04 Speaker 3 Friends, family, partner. And that the force of their love was no small part of what actually brought stability, clarity and healing. And I think this is one of these areas where the perhaps the material doesn't see the full material, science doesn't see the full picture, that love is an actual energy that can be measured. There's the The Heart Math Institute is a, a group that has been testing this where you can measure the actual field when you have someone in a state of of unconditional agape love, you can measure the electromagnetics of that, and it goes out from their body when they're in a state of fear, anger, resentment. 02:13:41:07 - 02:14:16:01 Speaker 3 It's a fractured energy, and it's much smaller in their heart has gone out of coherence. So this is this is scientifically measurable. But I do believe that that field in a person who is in a state of peace, love and genuine caring for the soul of the person sitting with them, that it can bring the stability that allows that other person to settle out of the fight or flight, the survival mode where they're completely over activated and get to the point where they can find within themselves their own center, their own compass, and find the answers there. 02:14:16:03 - 02:14:36:02 Speaker 3 Because I think one of the biggest problems with so many people in the profession is that it's about giving answers from oneself, rather than helping the first. The person who's sitting in front of you find the answers inside them and that. 02:14:36:04 - 02:15:00:17 Speaker 3 I said, I'm not going to pretend for a minute that I'm pro licensure and I'm also not. I'm also not going to print for a minute that I'm I don't have much respect for credentials at all. I feel deeply that while there are very specific tough scenarios in, you know, eating disorders would be one of them where you really do need to find someone who understands how to help that person. 02:15:00:19 - 02:15:23:12 Speaker 3 Most of what we go through in life that people go to a therapist for is things that our ancestors have gone through for thousands, tens of thousands of years and none of them had credentialed people to go to for it because that didn't exist. Which tells me that humans don't need credentials to heal. What they need is someone who genuinely cares. 02:15:23:12 - 02:15:42:12 Speaker 3 They need someone who loves them, and they need someone who will hold them in that moment of I believe in you. You are more than this problem. You are more than your fear. You are a strong person here. You are a soul, and you're going to find these answers within yourself. And that that's where healing really does come from. 02:15:42:13 - 02:15:47:10 Speaker 3 But that's hard to teach in a program that doesn't recognize the soul. 02:15:47:12 - 02:15:47:21 Speaker 4 Yeah. 02:15:47:22 - 02:16:29:11 Speaker 2 I think that's right. I think that's right. I think that what seems clear to me is that people help each other, people mentor one another, and that's part of what we are as a social being. You know, we connect and we we help each other at different stages of life. And right now we live in a socially diffused sort of culture where our connections are broad but shallow, and we it's common for people to live far from their family and not live around the extended framework of social connections that they've been ensconced in from birth, you know, so we have these shallower connections, and we're online a lot that's super shallow but very broad. 02:16:29:12 - 02:16:54:21 Speaker 2 And we've developed a workaround, this, this transactional model of helping that we call counseling or coaching or whatever. We've developed trainings for people to learn how to do the thing that you're talking about, which really can't be done. You can take a person who really feels that love and that desire to connect to other people, and you can help them to do it better, but you can't take somebody who doesn't have it and and replace it with a bunch of clinical skills. 02:16:54:23 - 02:17:20:02 Speaker 2 And I think that right now there's a really there's a low barrier to entry. Nobody's being kept out of like a master's in counseling program, except for except for the people who really are concerned about how reductive it's all getting and how ideological and political it's all getting. But otherwise people are, you know, I've heard some really bad stories, and I've seen some things that would really concern me about the graduates from these programs. 02:17:20:04 - 02:17:51:08 Speaker 2 And we're we're replacing that soul thing because that's hard to quantify. It's hard. How do you start to describe that? And it defies description according to the scientific material model, that that is the stuff of our agreed upon consensus consciousness at this point in our culture. So you can't quantify those kind of love soul things. You can't identify who has that according to any kind of metric that we have. 02:17:51:09 - 02:17:56:06 Speaker 3 Yeah. There's no you can't great on, you know, on a rubric. Give it a given a numerical percentage. 02:17:56:06 - 02:18:03:19 Speaker 4 They will try because it's because it's the checklist. How much did I love you right. Yeah. Exactly. 02:18:04:00 - 02:18:06:01 Speaker 3 How much did it change by the end of the appointment? 02:18:06:03 - 02:18:06:18 Speaker 4 What they do. 02:18:06:19 - 02:18:31:06 Speaker 2 What they do show. And they'll tell you this even in the modern, training programs, is that outside of any of them or the treatment planning or the whatevers that that help people to feel like they've made a meaningful change in their life, that all of those are, are so much less important than the rapport that they build with the person that they work with. 02:18:31:08 - 02:18:52:17 Speaker 2 It's about human connection. At the end of the day, we're all we all represent nodes of potential connection for one another. And you talk about interference. I think that that's a useful model to think about, like some of us don't connect to one another very well. Maybe there's interference between us of some degree, or maybe it's something about me that reminds you of something or whatever it might be. 02:18:52:17 - 02:19:23:19 Speaker 2 But there are people who possess the ability to nonjudgmental, connect better with many more people, but they won't connect with everybody. Yeah. And there are people that, for whatever reason, click with each other. And that's one of those difficult to quantify things. But when you find that in a therapist and you feel like you can open up with them and you feel like you can start to break down the barriers that keep you stuck, well, it can be very helpful. 02:19:23:19 - 02:19:36:01 Speaker 2 It can be amazing to have somebody who can co-processor with you. But whether that's a psychologist, a social worker, a counselor, a life coach, a nutrition coach. 02:19:36:07 - 02:19:38:08 Speaker 4 Meditation watcher, you know. 02:19:38:13 - 02:19:40:18 Speaker 2 I mean, it's going to be different for everybody. Yeah. 02:19:40:19 - 02:19:41:11 Speaker 4 Yeah, I. 02:19:41:12 - 02:20:07:01 Speaker 1 I always thought that the most important thing you had to do sometimes just from a thinking standpoint, before I learned some of the other things, I think I was effective because I could identify what the problem was and then try to address it in some way. And I reflect, reflected back at some of my success before I learned and had these spiritual awakenings. 02:20:07:03 - 02:20:28:09 Speaker 1 And when I was getting my doctorate, I was working in a middle school as a school counselor, and there were a number of kids who a lot of them were boys who came from these, fatherless homes. They were like, in poverty, their single, single mother homes. And, you know, the mother was, like, working and not home a lot. 02:20:28:09 - 02:20:50:14 Speaker 1 And they would present with these behavioral problems or, you know, what looked like depression, just like complete withdrawal, sleeping in class and what I, what I did, what I chose to do is I identified I thought the problem was the lack of love, and a, a person of who was an adult, especially a male figure who believed in them. 02:20:50:16 - 02:21:14:00 Speaker 1 And so I would take them out of class. The boys mostly I'd do the girls differently, but the the boys and I would play Madden football. I got a television and I got a PlayStation and I would play Madden football with them. And of course, I was completely judged by the entire experience from the teachers who how can you reward someone with play who's struggling? 02:21:14:02 - 02:21:38:00 Speaker 1 But I would connect with them in playing the game, and we would find our way into some of these conversations where I could gently guide, and then I could always, like, end the conversation by saying things like, you know, you're really important. You know, I know you're going through a hard time, but your life is really meaningful. And then I would find and I would tell the teachers anything that they'd do. 02:21:38:00 - 02:21:51:13 Speaker 1 Well, let me, let me know. And I would just, like, walk myself in the hallway. And I would just like, if I see like that, I was like, oh, man, I'm so proud of you. Like, I heard what you did. Right? 02:21:51:15 - 02:21:52:04 Speaker 4 02:21:52:06 - 02:22:10:00 Speaker 1 And I got a, I hardly ever go on LinkedIn but I should start checking this more. I, one of those boys contacted me. 02:22:10:02 - 02:22:17:22 Speaker 1 Contacted me on LinkedIn and he went to college. 02:22:18:00 - 02:22:39:18 Speaker 1 He's a professional. And when he was in middle school he was like in special ed classes. And this was a kid that I was, you know, playing Madden football with. And he just texted me and he said, those that time I spent with you changed my life because I. 02:22:39:20 - 02:22:47:10 Speaker 1 You know, I, I believed that I, I was worth something. 02:22:47:12 - 02:23:24:10 Speaker 1 And then when I went into to becoming a psychologist and I learned all the protocols, you know, the evidence based ways of doing things, I started training other psychologists and other counselors to do the same things, but they weren't having the same results. And I came in my practice. I created outcome measures that I wanted some degree of accountability for what we did, and I was realizing that it wasn't the fact that we were weighing our clients or doing these behavioral interventions or these homework assignments. 02:23:24:12 - 02:23:47:23 Speaker 1 It was the manner in which it meant something to you as the therapist and the way you communicated it, because you were communicating like you are important. If we're trying to gain weight because you've been anorexic, or we're trying to decrease the amount of times that you vomit, what was the response of the clinician? Were you genuinely proud of the person? 02:23:48:01 - 02:24:14:16 Speaker 1 Were you were you emotionally invested in their health and their outcome because you cared about them, and that you can't fake and they know it and people know it. They know when somebody is real, they know when you care, you know when it's a job or when it's a calling. And when you push too many people into this where it's not a calling and it becomes a job. 02:24:14:16 - 02:24:36:05 Speaker 1 It's very easy for human beings to understand and feel that separation. And that's the major difference here. When we talk about love as an energetic force, that people are really good at feeling it and they're really good at knowing it. Even if you say all the right things, because counselors are trained to say the right things, but they know the difference. 02:24:36:10 - 02:25:03:12 Speaker 1 And this is where the materials paradigm falls, because you are emitting an energy always and you're emitting a bio field and people are in your bio field and they can feel. And I've noticed this throughout the course of my career. If I was a little off, if I was stressed out and I wasn't necessarily omitting the same thing internally, although I was very disciplined in the responses would be the same. 02:25:03:12 - 02:25:32:10 Speaker 1 I could put on a smile. I could say the same things that I said in other sessions. They knew it. So this is what it means is our paradigm is flawed. We are always communicating, we are always energetically producing. And you cannot fake your way out of this if you are not internally at a vibration of love and caring and connection to other people, we are going to fail each other and that's what they're doing to us. 02:25:32:11 - 02:25:57:21 Speaker 1 They are creating an entire system that exists in this form of separation. And I 100% agree. Now, Tracy, you've convinced me. I thought the credential meant something for a while, probably because I invested in it. I'm still paying off student loans. Right. So there's this inherent understanding like, well, I went through that challenge and I got through it. 02:25:58:00 - 02:26:18:12 Speaker 1 Therefore it must mean something. And it's not the truth. There are people who are blessed. Maybe they're old souls, maybe they're naturally caring. And if you put them in the system, it can almost brainwash them out of what is in their intuitive nature. And they're better off if they never went into it. 02:26:18:15 - 02:26:21:02 Speaker 4 02:26:21:04 - 02:26:24:12 Speaker 2 Yeah. That's really a beautiful story about the boy. 02:26:24:18 - 02:26:25:04 Speaker 4 Yeah. 02:26:25:07 - 02:26:50:04 Speaker 2 About that, that connection not just with him but with the other ones and how you were putting yourself into that. And I think about my favorite counselor that I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them was somebody that when I went to school and I started learning the protocols, I was like, well, she did this wrong, she did that wrong, and she did way too much self-disclosure and all this stuff. 02:26:50:05 - 02:26:53:06 Speaker 2 But she was so wonderful, and she really helped me. 02:26:53:07 - 02:26:53:18 Speaker 4 Yeah. 02:26:53:21 - 02:27:16:18 Speaker 2 And it was it's it was interesting to hold both of those. But on my way out to see you guys, I was flying out and the guy on the flight, we had a really funny flight attendant. He was the guy reading the, you know, they do the preflight instructions and all that. He goes, he starts the whole thing out by going, excuse me, everyone, did somebody drop this? 02:27:16:19 - 02:27:36:06 Speaker 2 And then and then he goes, now that I've got your attention. And so he, he had he cracked a lot of jokes the whole time. It was really cute. And one of them, he said, was at southwest, we love you, but we don't trust you. So we're going to walk through and make sure you're wearing your seatbelts. And so that was kind of cheeky and cute, but I think that we don't trust you is at the heart of so much. 02:27:36:07 - 02:28:03:09 Speaker 2 And right now within the the profession, within the the licensing model, the training and licensing model, everything is we don't trust you. We don't think you really have the stuff. So we're going to put all these protocols in front of you and all these metrics that you have to meet constantly, and you have to there's the rubric always meeting our accountability standards because you you must be held to account or else you are dangerous out there. 02:28:03:11 - 02:28:29:10 Speaker 2 And if you're not doing it our way, then you are dangerous. We essentially do not trust you. And that's the message from the profession to its members. And yet these members are supposed to be out there teaching people to trust themselves and to find their own internal coherence. And I, I agree with you. I decided early on in my counselor training that I would not be a licensed therapist. 02:28:29:12 - 02:28:55:00 Speaker 2 I was it was in that that that first year when I was still on the the in-person campus, I took an ethics class. And during the ethics class, the teacher is she's giving us examples of how we could violate ethics, in terms of multiculturalism, by not by if you the example, one of them was if you have a Latina student who comes in and tells you that she wants to drop her math class. 02:28:55:00 - 02:29:22:15 Speaker 2 So you're a school counselor, she wants to drop her math class. If you don't first investigate with her the ways that her internal, sexism and racism are playing, her internalized white supremacy and sexism and racism are playing a role in her thinking that she's not good at math, then you have violated your ethics requirement. You have to investigate those intersectional things. 02:29:22:18 - 02:29:41:23 Speaker 2 So there were all these scenarios like this. And one day the teacher says, and if you don't like that, you don't. You think all these ethics requirements are too. Whatever. Go ahead and and drop out now and become a coach. And I thought, I'm going to be a coach. That's what I thought is I, I'm not doing this. 02:29:42:00 - 02:30:12:10 Speaker 2 I knew I was never going to bill insurance. I came into the program already very against insurance, and at that point I was against licensure as well. I just thought, plus I found that in Washington state, where I live, in 2018, gender identity was rolled into the conversion therapy ban. So now you're in violation of your license. If you are licensed by the state and you do any kind of exploratory therapy, that's not strictly affirmative. 02:30:12:10 - 02:30:27:09 Speaker 2 If you have a young person with gender confusion. And I just thought, I don't this compelled speech, I would rather just stand on my own two feet and, and have my own practice. And you can evaluate me without the letters after my name. 02:30:27:11 - 02:30:29:17 Speaker 6 Well, I left, so I still have my. 02:30:29:17 - 02:31:06:00 Speaker 1 License, but I stopped treating patients from the viewpoint of a clinical psychologist. And I'm doing coaching, okay. And it's my, you know, opportunity to still be to people, but do it not in the way that I am told I must follow, which includes labels, diagnoses, treatment plans, all those things. And to use what my inherent God given talent is and my true nature to be able to assist people, outside of the pathology and the indoctrination. 02:31:06:02 - 02:31:31:17 Speaker 1 And I still have that practice and I have a great psychologist doctor is ammad who is, you know, in this position to try to help shift a way of thinking with new people who are coming in for training and people who are who are already there. And it's and it's extremely difficult because you're trying to shift under the same old model. 02:31:31:19 - 02:31:57:19 Speaker 1 You still have to apply the diagnosis. People don't understand the degree of harm the Affordable Care Act has done. You know, it was certainly part of this psychological operation that was put on us to believe that somehow this universal health care, regardless of its effectiveness, and we can make it cheaper for the individual to attain it was somehow just right. 02:31:57:22 - 02:32:42:10 Speaker 1 And it was it was it was about, you know, being able to have equity within the amounts of people receiving it. But when the care is harmful and when the ideas are harmful, and when the doctors now are pushed into corporate medicine, when you push out financially, all of the independent doctors who work in their communities and develop relationships to the people that they live with, and now they have to work under these protocols and they get eight minutes a session, a meeting, and they're more concerned with their notes, which now they're using AI to create, getting the right billable diagnosis, making sure they push the right drugs so the hospital system can be reimbursed 02:32:42:10 - 02:33:11:08 Speaker 1 for it. Now you've moved further so far away from what is health care, you're in disease management, and the disease management is going to create an earlier death. Those are facts. And then we don't talk about the consciousness of it. All right. The consciousness is what we create in our minds about disease and disease is the body. At disease we are a self-healing mechanism, our alliance in all of nature and being at peace in our life and on our souls path is optimizing the human experience. 02:33:11:10 - 02:33:47:00 Speaker 1 But we adopt all these poisonous beliefs. Everything's constant danger. Everything is fear, provocation. And once you start aligning with fear, your body goes into disease and we become injected with all these chemicals that are outside of what is nature. And so to me, there is an attack on the pure human. It is anti-life, it is anti-human. And if we don't recognize the forces at play that are pushing us towards transhumanism, that really do have strong beliefs about overpopulation, even, that's ridiculous. 02:33:47:02 - 02:34:05:19 Speaker 1 You know, they, they, they, you push other things like around around weather and climate change and humans destroying the, the planet to push another agenda, which is depopulation. And you can also disguise. 02:34:05:21 - 02:34:37:10 Speaker 1 Technological innovation in terms of extending the lifespan. So we have all this longevity stuff now, which is another psyop, and people don't completely realize it, that they don't understand that age in itself, in time and space, are all still illusions. So the creation and the identification with age and I'm supposed to be I, I look this way and I act this way at this particular stage in my life is all about influencing consciousness. 02:34:37:14 - 02:35:07:09 Speaker 1 I have no doubt in my mind that we have much more control over how our body ages. But it's nothing like these longevity experts are telling us to do. I think it's a state of peace and love slows down the body. I think connection to nature slows down the body. So that means what you put in your body, your exposure to sun and grass and the woods and you know, the touch of a baby, not a baby who's been injected, you know, 60, 60 different vaccines over the course of five. 02:35:07:10 - 02:35:36:23 Speaker 1 I mean, the real baby, the skin, the the medicinal aspect is heart to heart, chest to chest. A baby with their mother. A birth that is natural, that is not being able to be able to, you know, you're you're you're treated in that system like you are some form of a machine. You're dehumanized in it, and everything that is is natural, and everything becomes natural to the mother you have to fight against just to adhere to these, these doctor's recommendations. 02:35:37:00 - 02:36:09:08 Speaker 1 It's across the board, whether it's public school, whether it's our medical system, whether it's the recommendations that consistently come out that are that we learn years later are the opposite, right. Avoid the son, they tell you. And then the more people that avoid the sun, the higher rates of cancer put this chemical on your skin. You know, all these things that they tell you are innovations in healthcare have turned out to be absolutely harmful, and we see the suppressed science around it. 02:36:09:10 - 02:36:23:00 Speaker 1 So the wake up call here, and it's for everybody listening, these institutions and these systems that you were conditioned to trust are the same institutions and and conditions that are harming our species. 02:36:23:03 - 02:36:24:09 Speaker 4 02:36:24:11 - 02:37:02:01 Speaker 1 And unless we wake up to that with courage, with love. I'm not saying you fall into this camp of becoming helpless. There's a lot more of us than there are of them. The government only has the amount of power that we give it. So if you create enough of the alternative system and say, we're not going to play by your rules because I morally don't agree with it and I have the evidence to support it, then courage is what you will experience and you'll we know this from the obedience studies. 02:37:02:03 - 02:37:28:19 Speaker 1 This is where I'm glad I was a psychologist. You know, I'm glad because I'm able to study things that I know intelligence forces and people of influence are using against us. If we if we convince each other to do what is right and we stand up, even a small percentage of us are enough where that system can no longer stand. 02:37:28:21 - 02:37:53:22 Speaker 1 And when those systems are in darkness, when those systems are in fear, when its use of violence and all its forms and we finally agree. You know what? I decide I'm not going to pay 30% of my income for money that goes to war to kill other human beings. I'm no longer going to align with that energy. And you know what? 02:37:53:23 - 02:38:19:12 Speaker 1 I'm not going to just constantly focus on the next disease I can get and go in for quote unquote disease prevention. Now, I'm not going to sit with a medical professional for eight minutes where they know nothing about me, and then have to accept their medical recommendation as treatment adherence. And no, I'm not going to go and see a mental health therapist because I you you disagree with my idea. 02:38:19:14 - 02:38:42:17 Speaker 1 Stand up and tell me where my idea is wrong. And if we choose to disagree, respect our freedom in that to be able to make choices for our families and for our communities and for, you know, where we move forward in our careers. And here's what I believe. I honestly believe that you begin to touch the hearts of people, and you move them away from those control mechanisms. 02:38:42:19 - 02:39:08:15 Speaker 1 I believe you slowly begin to wake people up, and they I see the good in people. Most people want to care and be cared for. They want to love and they want to be loved. And everything goes wrong when those two things are missing. When you take that out, when you don't have somebody love and you don't feel loved in your life, then you enter into a form of disease. 02:39:08:17 - 02:39:35:00 Speaker 1 But that is for you. That is to get you back on your path, that is to get you to wake up. And revolutions occur from these emotional states. They're not bad, they're not wrong, and they're not harmful. And even going through something difficult like a vaccine injury or a medical condition in your life could be exactly what your soul required to wake up, and that you don't have to live in fear anymore. 02:39:35:06 - 02:40:04:03 Speaker 1 And just possibly, just possibly, then we start sharing with each other real innovations like our own healing capacities, the healing capacity of love and connection and nature and new cultures and new societies get all that attention. That's where we take our creative capacities, and we're no longer focused on what turns out to be a clown show of politics and fear provocation. 02:40:04:05 - 02:40:25:22 Speaker 1 That's why I believe this show has to be completely different. I don't want to be The Daily Wire. I don't want to be any of these other podcasts that show up in the top 100, where they use their own sense of fear, provocation, and emotional provocation to grab your attention. So easily done. And it's so small and it's so weak. 02:40:26:00 - 02:40:51:12 Speaker 1 Why not see what it is for what it is and pull our attention away from it? And let's create the new. If you're struggling or your family struggling, we'll just use our area of expertise with suffering. And you're in depression, or you're in fear, or in any of those emotional states create problems turning to substance abuse, all the things that are real. 02:40:51:13 - 02:41:12:01 Speaker 1 Why do we have to accept their narrative? Why don't we have a free market system where someone, a parent, can go see somebody, where that family is respected, that we understand that it's your family, that's your child. You gave birth to that child. I have no right to interfere with your authority in that regard. It is your family. 02:41:12:01 - 02:41:34:17 Speaker 1 It is your values. They are not mine. My responsibility in this is to not tell you what to do if you value who I am. If you believe I have some wisdom. If you value my experience, I'd love to share it with you. If you deny that, I accept that too, because it is your journey. Because we are eternal beings and this time is short. 02:41:34:20 - 02:41:49:01 Speaker 1 And once you realize that your eternal being and you're here for great lessons, well then the ego and the personality doesn't have to get so attached to the outcome. And that's freedom. 02:41:49:03 - 02:42:15:02 Speaker 2 I think the scale and the centralization have so much to do with that just becomes really hard to see people as individuals when you're looking out at past that Dunbar's number, you know, to pass that scale, you start to flatten people. I know I've already said that there's something you said about woke waking up, and I thought about woke and how it is kind of like one layer of waking up. 02:42:15:03 - 02:42:34:22 Speaker 2 I mean, it's the recognition and I'm not woken. I don't think I ever was. I certainly never described myself as that, even though I think I think differently than I used to in some ways. But it's it's a level of recognition that, hey, systems, the bureaucratic systems that we live in, function better for people who are closer to the average. 02:42:35:00 - 02:43:06:11 Speaker 2 And they're leaving out a bunch of people who are not like the, the, the average. Hey, that that's not fair. So that's one level of waking up and then but you're still kind of emotion that system game. So what you seem to be describing is something that transcends that entire frame and, and comes out of it. And I think about the credentialing question and how you, you say you still have your license, but you're working as a coach now. 02:43:06:12 - 02:43:27:00 Speaker 2 The work that you can do as a coach, it doesn't turn you into a different person. Maybe you you kind of maybe utilize a little bit of a different toolkit. Maybe you leave some diagnosis off to the side, but you as a person that somebody could connect to when they're having a difficult time, you don't change based on what you're calling yourself. 02:43:27:04 - 02:43:28:07 Speaker 4 That's right. 02:43:28:09 - 02:43:37:14 Speaker 2 And I think that there's such an overreliance on that right now because of the scale and the lack of. 02:43:37:16 - 02:44:01:18 Speaker 2 The lack of value of the the reputational integrity of the people that we work with. We can't really know when you're picking people from an insurance registry, you don't know anything about. What's the difference between Michelle and Susan and Richard and John? But they all have these credentials, so they're probably all going to do the same thing. So I'll just I'll just pick the one who I don't know, I'll just at random pick one of them. 02:44:01:20 - 02:44:11:13 Speaker 2 Maybe I'll want to see a man or I want to see a woman. So you're kind of selecting as if they're all the same based on those letters. But it couldn't be further from the truth. 02:44:11:15 - 02:44:23:12 Speaker 3 Would you say your life is better or worse for having stood by, stood your ground, and not complied with forced speech? It's up your license. 02:44:23:14 - 02:44:45:12 Speaker 2 That reminds me of the the Milan Kundera quote from The Lightness of Being. But we can never know what to want, because we only live one life, and we can neither compare it to our other lives lived before or nor to lives to come. So is it. I'm I'm I'm not getting it verbatim, but I think of that often. 02:44:45:12 - 02:45:14:20 Speaker 2 I don't know, honestly, I don't know. But I'm pretty happy with my life as it is. And I, I think that it, it certainly different than it would have been. I don't think I would have been happy being in that sort of tension that I was in when I was in training, and I think I would still be in that tension if I were working right now. 02:45:14:22 - 02:45:38:02 Speaker 2 I kind of going back to where I said, I think that being a different as a kid, being kind of singled out and not fitting in the way that I did, and for me, it was racial minority stuff. So I have a lot of sympathy for people who go through that, no matter what the circumstances of their of their experience were. 02:45:38:04 - 02:45:54:11 Speaker 2 It it sort of. For me in a way, and I think it made me a little bit rebellious also, you know, so I don't think I'd be very happy being a part of a system where I felt boxed in. 02:45:54:12 - 02:46:12:12 Speaker 3 What would you say to someone else who's hearing this interview, who's right now in a program where they're facing moral choices that are very difficult, where they're facing similar compelled speech, where they're facing giving up what their conscience knows to be true in order to get through the program. 02:46:12:14 - 02:46:42:06 Speaker 2 Well, there's there's two things. There's the part of me that just would look at it with that individual and with their choices that they have in front of them, and see that as a very complex question for them. And then there's the part of me that wants to see people start to meaningfully push back on some of the narrowing that we're seeing right now, and not just this particular field, but in, in the, the, the social systemic paradigm in general. 02:46:42:08 - 02:47:14:16 Speaker 2 If I'm talking from that perspective, I would ask, what are you what are you sacrificing for convenience and what is that convenience mean? I know, I know clinicians right now who bill insurance even though they are not happy with with that system, but they do it because it would be really hard to restructure their practice, and they'd have to make hard decisions about sliding scales and how to help clients access care if they need to use their insurance. 02:47:14:22 - 02:47:36:14 Speaker 2 And it creates a big headache that you have to you have to go in and reinvent the wheel. But you can do that. You can do that and maybe you should. And, you know, maybe you can get the training and the mentorship from nontraditional routes. If you think that your career really is in helping people, maybe there's another way to do that. 02:47:36:18 - 02:48:04:20 Speaker 2 Besides going through a training that's going to break your spirit, you won't be able to come out of it on the other end with the same status or the same network. But are you still the same person and and are you still helping people just like like the switch from psychologist to coach, it doesn't carry the same weight of status, but you're still you, and you're still bringing your training and your heart into what you're doing, your connection. 02:48:04:22 - 02:48:21:19 Speaker 2 So I would just encourage people to think that what you feel like you're sacrificing might be a lot bigger than what you think it is, because it's it's a mountain of those little sacrifices for convenience that create this edifice that were staring at right now. 02:48:21:21 - 02:48:28:04 Speaker 3 Beautifully sad. Leslie Elliot Boyce, thank you for a radically genuine conversation. 02:48:28:07 - 02:48:30:12 Speaker 2 Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.