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Should Dads Really Go To Therapy? · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  Is this all just overblown and guys need to get over it and like there's just a time where you just need to go and get help? Or is there something adaptive and helpful and necessary about this kind of compartmentalization, bottling things up? Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family. Welcome to the Family Teams podcast.
• 0:29
  Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I am joined today by my friend Tyler Graham from Greenville, South Carolina. Tyler, thanks for jumping on here today. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Jeremy. Yeah, and first time on the podcast, Phil Dosa. Phillip just moved from Kansas City to Dallas. Some of you guys know the Stein family. They're part of Family Inc. integrated and super excited about all the things that Phillip is starting down there in Dallas. Thanks for jumping on here, Phil.
• 0:55
  Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Awesome. And Tyler's got a three mile per hour fatherhood. Um, you guys haven't checked that out and go over to LinkedIn. Is that the best place for people to find it? You got a website too, right, Tyler? Yeah. Then go to a three MPH fatherhood.com. LinkedIn is where I post content daily. You've got a free community for dads there for anybody that wants to jump in and, uh, learn to slow down, be more present and intentional as a dad. So love it. And then Philip, you got a YouTube channel, right? Your family, um, where could people find that?
• 1:23
  Yeah, you can go on YouTube, look up my name, Philip Dosa, 1L. And yeah, we vlog on there about our journey as missionaries and feel free to check it out. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for jumping on here. So I want to talk to you guys about a topic I am completely on the fence on. So I'm happy to like get any help trying to figure this out. I'm going to play a couple of clips. And the question I'm asking is, has therapeutic culture done some kind of damage to
• 1:53
  to fatherhood. Do we have a different approach to the therapy in general? So I'm not a therapist. I'm not, I think it's a really important question though. I'm like, I've done therapy. I have recommended therapy in many cases.
• 2:08
  I definitely think there's a time and place where it seems essential. But we do have a therapeutic culture. And so oftentimes what happens when there's like a realization that we really have been missing the boat on this, sometimes the pendulum just swings to the other side and it just feels like the answer to everything. And so I heard a couple of clips the last couple of weeks that kind of like,
• 2:31
  specifically, I think for me, at least tied together this question as to not only the therapeutic culture that we've been embracing collectively, but also because we haven't actually talked about therapy enough nuance between like a father versus maybe like a single woman. Like we just talk about it very generally speaking. And, and so I want to play a couple of clips that got my head scratching on this one. Um, and I'd love to get your guys' thoughts on
• 3:01
  One of the reasons teachers might give that they want boys to write about their feelings and they want schools to be more feeling-centered is that they think this is necessary to combat the dangers of unhinged masculinity or something. But there was a very interesting study by...
• 3:26
  I think it was Amanda Rose at the time. She was at University of Pennsylvania. And she interviewed a huge group of adolescent boys and girls and asked them how they felt after they...
• 3:40
  If they had a terrible problem, how did they feel after they talked about it? Did talking about it, talking it through, make them feel better? And she asked this, you know, 14, 15-year-old kid. And the girl said, absolutely, they felt better. They were so glad they could talk about it with their mom or their best friend. And the boys, a huge disparity. The boys said, first of all, they thought it was weird. And that was the main word that kept coming up. And a waste of time.
• 4:10
  and it didn't make them feel better. And we have a lot of evidence that this is a difference. So most people rush in and say, well, that's not good for the boys. But actually what they found was that the boys were a little more stoical and could sort of compartmentalize and move on. And the girls were ruminators. When they had a problem, they wanted to talk about it and they thought about it and they ruminated.
• 4:40
  these psychologists concluded that maybe girls would be better off if we encouraged a little more stoicism. You know, rather than spending all our efforts to get the boys to be ruminators and constantly talking about how I felt and what it meant, which most of them don't want to do, and any mother of a boy or father might know about this. But what if it turns out that that's adaptive and that what the boys are doing may be helpful to them?
• 5:10
  And maybe we've, in this highly therapeutic society where we're so focused on people's emotional states and things, maybe girls have a tendency for that. Maybe we've exaggerated it. And now they have to cope with all of the...
• 5:30
  highs and lows that can be brought on by social media and what people are saying about you, what's going on, all that, it may be just impossible. So it just may be unfortunate that all of these things have come into play at once and the sensitivity of girls which we have encouraged is
• 5:50
  creating, helping, adding to the misery. Okay, so I find that really interesting observation. So that's kind of setting us up. There's one more clip I want to show you guys, and then we'll dive a little bit deeper. I just want to highlight her point. There's two points I think that she's making that I think I don't really hear very often. One is to draw the distinction between how we treat males and females in this area. It feels like that's gotten very combined.
• 6:19
  But then she uses this word, maybe it's adaptive for men to be able to compartmentalize their feelings. Maybe the assumption that we need to be treating boys like girls is overplayed or that we need to think about human beings as essentially androgynous. How do you decide what's adaptive for male or female? And our answer to that is really, I think, specific and I don't hear very often, which is.
• 6:45
  The definition of what's adaptive is what is going to turn that girl into a good mother someday, or what is going to turn that boy into a good father. That fatherhood and motherhood are the anchor points for gender. This is not something that people in our culture believe, but it's something I believe is really clear in scripture, that the male and female characteristics are created in order to create a certain kind of family.
• 7:09
  Regardless of whether or not you actually start a family, that's why those genders exist. You can see it biologically, it's incredibly obvious, but I think that also sociologically, emotionally, spiritually, the differences exist in order to create a pair bond between a man and a woman, a male or female, a husband, a wife, a mother, father, and for that to be maximally...
• 7:31
  stable and helpful for the creation of a family. And so that's, I think, why when you start to ask the question, is embracing a therapeutic culture maladaptive for men? Then the question I think you're really asking is, is there something different about fatherhood that makes a father approach
• 7:51
  therapy differently than a mother or a boy versus from a girl. And so it's interesting to me, the whole like, Oh, that's weird. Or it's just like these adolescent boys having this reaction. If they're preparing everything inside them is preparing to someday be a father.
• 8:07
  then maybe there's something there. Again, I'm on the fence. I'm really curious what your guys' thoughts are. I want to bring one more voice into this, and then I want to hear your guys' thoughts. This guy, Dwayne Knoll, I don't know if you guys are familiar with him. He's the Dry Creek Ranger School. Just man's man on YouTube. He's like...
• 8:25
  This guy's clips are kind of legendary. He just sits there smoking a cigar and with his giant beard talks to men about male issues all the time. And it's kind of like the father you never had. But it seems like he comes straight out of an era that's at least like 80 years old. Anyway, Chris Williamson had him on his podcast and they had all kinds of.
• 8:49
  kind of mind-blowing discussion. It was like the modern world was colliding with this ancient world. And that's what I mean. Of course, I love seeing these collisions. But then they started having this conversation about therapy. And I was like, oh, this is going to get interesting. So I'll play this for you guys and then get your thoughts on this. How do you come to think about that balance between the hardness and the softness in men? I'm still old school.
• 9:13
  Um, I'm still very old school. Um, now there comes a point where it can be debilitating to those around me. Okay. Um, if I bottle everything up inside so that I get to the point that I am toxic or debilitating to those around me, then I need to get some help.
• 9:42
  But as long as I'm not, I don't need to add more burden for them to carry. That's just me. Can you be a bit more specific about what that is, how that shows up for you? Um...
• 10:06
  My wife has been encouraging me for a while now for me to go and talk to somebody. Just there's years and years and years of, I mean, there were a lot of rough years there.
• 10:20
  But I'm like, I can't do that. You know? I mean, I know the guy gets paid to sit there. But it's just not necessary. You know? I'm still old enough. And I'm of the school. It's like just...
• 10:46
  Just deal with it. Suck it up. Suck it up. You know, I broke three ribs one time in a barn, saddling horses, horse to a fit. Took eight aspirin and got on that horse and did a four hour ride because I had a job to do. It's my job.
• 11:05
  Now, I know, let's go back to balance. Okay. I was about to mention that. I understand. I'm with you 100%. All right. So a couple of things I want to highlight there. So it's interesting. So his wife's been trying to tell him, look, you need to go talk to somebody. You know, like you got a lot of stuff bottled up and he's just like,
• 11:25
  And his response to that is, I don't want to be a burden. Like, and there's like a sense in which I can't, I can't do this. Like, I can't, there's something I can't do. I know he's paid. I mean, so he's not really articulating a philosophy of like why he's not doing it. So much as he's just sort of viscerally like reacting the way I think a lot of men are wired. And this is what I'm trying to understand. And it really reminds me of, I don't know if you guys remember, but...
• 11:52
  When The Sopranos first came out, you had kind of this weird side element to the show where I guess the, so the father who was like constantly committing crimes and murdering people was showing up at a therapist's office every week, you know, and getting therapy for all the murder or whatever he was doing.
• 12:15
  I remember this conversation happening kind of publicly. And that is like, you know, they're trying, they wanted to show what the sort of man's man in therapy, like what happens or that's such an interesting thing to watch because there's something that,
• 12:31
  And like, we're not getting to the bottom of this is part of why I want to just stir up a conversation. And I'm curious what you guys think. Is this all just overblown and guys need to get over it? And like, there's just a time where you just need to go and get help. Or is there something adaptive and helpful and necessary about this kind of compartmentalization, bottling things up?
• 12:50
  Need a blueprint to revise your family to be a multi-generational team on mission? The book Family Revision by Jeremy Pryor is the book that summarizes all the big picture ideas you hear on this podcast. Available on Amazon or familyteams.com. So Tyler, let's start with you and then you'll get your take.
• 13:09
  Yeah, I've got a lot of thoughts, and I'll be interested to see where this conversation goes as well. I think kind of in both videos, you saw what I think is like this spectrum, and he even mentioned in that last clip the need for balance. And I think you see that in the way the first lady was describing, right? On kind of one side, you have this like stoicism is how she referred to it.
• 13:33
  where it's almost the suppression of emotions versus what she called like ruminators or rumination, where you're thinking about your emotions a lot. And it's almost like two ends of a spectrum, right? Where on one side you have somebody who's maybe completely dominated by their emotions.
• 13:51
  And the other side, somebody who's completely suppressed everything. And they just maybe more where that second clip, where that guy lands where he's like, I'm just going to keep showing. I got a job to do, right? Pop a few aspirin and get on the horse kind of thing. And so I don't think either one of those are super healthy. I think men and fathers probably tend more towards the stoicism side.
• 14:14
  I certainly resonate with his comment of not wanting to be a burden. I think about that often and how I show up in my family, in my marriage, in different spaces where I don't want to show up and be a burden or cause inconvenience to somebody else. And it's a real deterrent to expressing any sort of hardship or any sort of like deep emotional pain or whims that I may be navigating. It's like, well, I just, I need to deal with this on my own. I think men are probably more inclined towards that.
• 14:41
  So as with everything, I think there is probably a middle ground that's healthy and that middle ground may look different for men and for women. You know, women's may be more on the rumination side where they need to be able to process that a little bit more. Whereas men, maybe there's more on the stoicism side where it's like we don't need to, we don't need to.
• 15:00
  dig in deep to see every emotion that's ever been there, but we need to at least understand them and what, how it's influencing us, how it's causing us to show up as a husband, as a father, as a friend, as a leader, um, and be able to like work through those things. And I've got some more thoughts on that. And we'll, we'll kind of dig into that as the conversation goes. But as this kind of my initial, uh, initial thought on this. Yeah. There's something that we were trying to get, or we need, um, um,
• 15:28
  One of these keeps making me think about just looking at kind of the Dwayne, his like cowboy hat. Like to me, there's like an archetype, which is where I think what he's describing is really adaptive is if you're off on the frontier and there's like you have no one as a father to go back. You just have to become like this hyper self-sufficient man.
• 15:52
  And I think that to the extent that that's your archetype for fatherhood and masculinity, this is going to be really hard for you to do. Yeah. It's like, yeah, I'm not built for this modern world. Yeah. Phil, what did this start for you?
• 16:05
  Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I think we're facing a fatherhood crisis. And so, you know, what we're trying to figure out is how do we deal with these problems that come from not having a father teach you what you need to know. And I think on my journey, I spent a lot of time in this sort of therapy mindset internally with friends.
• 16:28
  and feeling sorry for myself, coming up with excuses. And I think around it was a lot of confusion, actually. And there's just a lot of confusion around, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to approach these problems? How am I supposed to approach myself? And for me, I wasn't a bottle-up person. I was someone that wanted to talk it out. The problem is that I think our culture creates more spaces leaning too far in that direction. And so what it created in me was just,
• 16:56
  like I was like a wave tossed back and forth by the sea, just constantly thrown around by different thoughts and opinions. And as I've gone further in my journey, I think I've realized that what I needed was a father who was able to help me understand like what to do with myself and what to do with what was going on inside of me. And,
• 17:16
  to be able to say like, hey, that one you can ignore or that one you can say, I feel that, but I'm moving on. Well, as this one, you should actually express that and you should go there. And to me, I think one of the things that's impacted me and how I look at this is this peer-driven identity culture, Jeremy, you've talked about.
• 17:37
  in this reality that we oftentimes are really going to our peers to try and find our identity and our performance. And we don't have a father who's coming in and helping us see ourselves. And so we have that crisis and then we have all these problems we're facing in the middle of that. And it creates this storm of confusion. I think as much as needing to express emotion, it's this like,
• 17:58
  I'm confused about what I'm supposed to do and how I'm supposed to do it. And I think in that either side, you go on it, you end up hurting yourself and other people if you get into the extremes on it. And so I think that's some thoughts I have on it. Yeah. That reminds me of that clip. I don't know if you guys remember it back in the day. I think it was...
• 18:16
  Um, is it Jason Wilson, um, who, um, was teaching, um, you know, mostly African-American kids in Detroit, I think martial arts at this cave of a Dulum school. And, and what you're talking about, Phil is exactly what he was trying to do, which was like, he would, um, push, push, push them until they broke essentially. And they would start crying. And his reaction to their tears was really incredible.
• 18:40
  unique, like the way he fathered them at those moments, he would just sort of stop them and say, I understand why you're crying. I cry sometimes too. But as a man, you have to, you have to be able to push that down and push through. And so I want you to write, like, he would not, that would not be the end of the lesson. That would be like the middle of the lesson. Like, that's the thing you have to overcome. You've got to overcome that emotion, that thing that you're feeling. And then, and then, and that's a very different approach. And I love what you're saying. I feel like,
• 19:06
  Yeah, we were designed to be fathered through these emotional questions as opposed to, but now that the choice is between therapy and, and just the, in confusion, it seems like you're saying like, well, we're just kind of lost in the emotions. Yeah. Tyler, I know that you're, you, you want to drill down another layer. I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. Yeah. So one of the things too, that I think, and I feel like I've seen you post about this before, Jeremy, where so much of therapy culture today is almost looking for, you know,
• 19:36
  People go to therapy to look for something or someone to blame for their problems, right? Where they're going to understand, to almost validate why, or validate is probably not the right word, but to vindicate why they feel a certain way.
• 19:54
  And I'll go on a quick tangent. There's a, I don't know if y'all are familiar with the Enneagram. That's another polarizing topic that could probably be a seven episode. But there's a guy, Ian Morgan Cron, he wrote The Road Back to You. It's probably the most popular Enneagram book these days. I'm a big fan of it. But he has this quote where he talks about the Enneagram and he says, the purpose of the Enneagram isn't to put you into a box, it's to show you what box you're already in and how to get out.
• 20:22
  And I bring it up because I think there's probably some similarities there between therapy and personality types where people are looking for vindication, almost a reason to blame why they are a certain way or why they're justified in acting or being a certain way. And it's not, it's less about the forward action of what you're going to do about it and almost like it's the get out of jail free card to say, hey, I've got this thing from my past or, hey, I'm wired this way, so it's okay that I...
• 20:50
  respond poorly in these situations, right? So they're almost going to therapy to look for like the vindication of justification instead of illumination, of help, instead of helping them to see why it is that they're responding in certain scenarios in a certain way, why maybe they have this pent-up anger, why are they being harsh with their kids, why are they being overly critical of their wife, all these different things that men may go to therapy for.
• 21:19
  And they're, they, that, I think that can be the way that therapy culture is geared more towards that. And like, that's very, I think probably disinterested, disinteresting for men because they're not looking, they don't want to just say, Hey, this is why I feel the way I feel. They want the action. They want to know what can I do about it? Why am I in this box and how do I get out of it? And that's where I think therapy can and is extremely beneficial, extremely helpful, but.
• 21:46
  I've done it myself. I've been in therapy. I've worked through things that have helped me illuminate, hey, this thing that once served me, the reason that I act this certain way, it served me at one point in my life. It's not serving me anymore. I need to let go of that. I need to work through that and move on and respond in a different way because I am who I am now, you know? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
• 22:09
  Yeah, it's an interesting, you know, one of the things that Dwayne says in that clip that really triggered him was that I know this guy's being paid. And I think that that's actually part of the problem. Like, I think he's actually pointing out something there that you're saying, Tyler, what you're saying, Phil, about fathers. I think the fact that, like, where are we supposed to get? Like, so fathers, if you don't have a father, it didn't raise you this way.
• 22:35
  Is it worthwhile to pay somebody? Does that actually create, is that something that men just need to get over and say, yeah, this is, we live in an economy where there's, this is our means of exchange of value is we, everything has a price. Or, you know, in the church, do we need more, you know, brotherhood? Do we need more friendship? Like, is there, do we need more mentoring? Yeah.
• 22:56
  Yeah. I mean, are there other avenues or I don't know how you guys have experienced that, but that's another part that, that this sort of stirs up for me is, is that, you know, there's, there's sort of plan a, which is like, you have fathers and brothers and like, there's a, there's a place to have these conversation.
• 23:26
  I'm curious if that's part of what he was getting at. But yeah, Phil, what else, anything else this is kind of bringing up as you're thinking about this? Yeah, so, you know, I didn't say what I felt about therapy in the first go-round. I...
• 23:38
  I think of life, you know, your life, my life is kind of like a string and the experiences of life, we get knots tied in that string. And there are some people that their string is just so knotted and those knots are so tight and there's so many of them and they don't have any hope and they don't have the resources to figure out how to untie. Some of those knots are trauma related that are really difficult to untie just by, you know, working at them.
• 24:04
  And so I think in those instances, there's a real need and a real value for therapy. I think outside of that, I'm with you on the real benefit actually can come from real relationships and friendships. And, you know, to me, the biggest question that I would ask if I'm in a spot where I have a problem I can't solve, I have a knot I can't untie, is who has had this knot and how did they get it untied? Hmm.
• 24:28
  And I would start asking people in my community, you know, do you know someone that's had this nod? Do you know someone that's been in this situation and what did they need to get out of it? And I think sometimes therapy is like, it's a broad stroke that is not helpful to say it's good or it's bad because it really depends on where you're at. It depends on even which therapist you're talking to and what method they're going to use. And so to me, I would like...
• 24:56
  probably say run away from therapy in a lot of cases, except if you go find someone and they say, I got out of this using therapy. I had someone meet with me. And then I would say, who's that therapist? You know, I need help untying that particular knot. And they helped that person because...
• 25:14
  I just think, generally speaking, there's a lot of therapists today that are going to basically either not have the tools to help you or are just going to say, let's dig deeper inside of you. Or maybe we just need to uncover, you know, and that might be what you need. But you need somebody that understands that essentially you are paying someone to be a father, to have the resources that your father should have had or to help you with a problem that's frankly just, you know, not a normal problem. Or maybe it's become normal, but it's not your typical fatherhood tool belt.
• 25:44
  Yeah. Yeah. There's sort of a, I think, I think one of the things that men are really sensitive to is there's a business incentive on the part of a therapist to keep this relationship going. And I think, you know, Abigail Schreier, she wrote a book called Bad Therapy, where she kind of goes through.
• 26:06
  how this is affecting young boys and girls that there's a whole generation of parents kind of in the upper class, mid to upper class that rush their children into therapy as soon as there's an issue. And one of the things that Abigail Schreier is trying to point out is because there's a business model at the other end of that to keep the conversation going and children don't
• 26:36
  there's really no way for them to properly say when this is no longer necessary, right? That it tends to go on until there's a rumination where, you know, the ruminating is actually becoming counterproductive to the client in that situation. So that's, I think that that happens. And I think that men are like,
• 27:03
  Part of what I hear Dwayne saying and maybe he's being sensitive to is just, just like, okay, I need, you need to know why you're going and you need to go for that reason. Like you would to a doctor or you need to know what the answer, like, like what you're saying, Phil, what I really needed was this. I didn't have that.
• 27:19
  I'm tied up in knots. I think that's a really good analogy. Like when you got a knot, you can't untie, like you need help. You can't find help from somebody in your life. Then getting somebody to help you that is a therapist that you're going to have to pay, that's reasonable. But I think that then you know when the knot's untied, you probably can move on. And I think that...
• 27:39
  Like to me, one of the best, the reason why I really wanted to process with the, with you guys from the lens of fatherhood, um, I think the best analogy I've heard in kind of the way this collides is we make fun of men all the time for not wanting to ask for directions. Right. Like that's kind of like a trope. Oh yeah. Like, um, yeah.
• 27:58
  Women have no problem, you know, asking for directions. Now, I don't know if that's even relevant now that we've got all, we all have iPhones and GPS. But before that, you know, it was, it was like, it was a universal that, that men resisted asking for directions and that women, for some reason, had no problem asking for direction. And it used to be a joke at the expense of men. And I, I think that.
• 28:18
  Actually, reality is men are designed in a family context to be sort of the backstop. Like they're designed to be the most self-sufficient member of the family. And so they have intuitions that say, I've got to figure this out. If I can't figure this out, it's better for me to go through the hard knocks to get to the other side because that's my role in the family. There's a unique place. Whereas I think a mother or a wife...
• 28:43
  you know, she doesn't have to be as self-sufficient. She has a greater level of dependency within the family structure on the father. And so for her to ask for help, given her role is totally reasonable. But for the father to learn a higher level of self-sufficiency, I don't think that anybody should try to become 100% self-sufficient. We're all supposed to be dependent on the Lord.
• 29:05
  and dependent on each other. But in the family context, the father is the most self-sufficient member of the family. And I think those intuitions are part of the reason why therapy is uniquely difficult for men to want to embrace. And I think instead of maybe hooking fun at that in a way that just says, oh, men just are broken women. It's like, no, they're future or present fathers. And so they have a unique
• 29:29
  relationship with this question. But there is something like you both are saying, there's a time in which you got to get over that because you need help. Like what you hear? Be sure to leave a rating and review for this podcast wherever you use streaming.
• 29:45
  Tyler, any last thoughts on this? Yeah, it reminds me. So to share a personal story, I think about a friend of mine who for years was in a, their family was navigating some really difficult things. He's married, multiple kids, young kids. And he was kind of that pick yourself up by your bootstraps kind of mentality. Just never really wanted to ask for help. Had people in his corner, but wouldn't really open up.
• 30:12
  And, um, after a year or two of, of just kind of distancing himself more and more, he ended up leaving his wife and kids. And I remember talking to him the morning after he moved out, it's like six in the morning, we're on a cold sidewalk outside of a gym. And I'm like, how, how could you let it get to this point? How could this happen? Yeah.
• 30:34
  And I'll never forget what he said. He was like, I've been working so hard for so long and look where it got me. He was like, I just, I have to try something different. And it's like this picture of what I call like treadmill fatherhood, where you're just, you're working really hard, you're churning, you're putting in all this effort, but you're not actually going anywhere. And that's the place where I...
• 31:01
  I caution dads to be aware of and even mentioned it, do I mentioned in the last one, right? If you're becoming a detriment to your family or to your spouse, to your kids, like that should be an indicator that something is needed. Like that, that you're not designed to just put your head down and push through all of this, right?
• 31:20
  until either it gets better or you break, you know, like there, there are other options. Again, there be, may, might not be, you may have brothers that you can get around to fire with and have a glass of bourbon and a cigar. And like, that's, that's what your soul needs. I'm, I'm a big proponent advocate for that. Find that if you don't have it. Um,
• 31:39
  But I do think like having the courage, the confidence to say, hey, things are falling apart here. I'm really struggling. I need to be able to grasp on to something or someone else, whether again, brothers, whether it's a paid therapist. I think the fact of merely paying somebody sometimes for me, at least like that, that eliminated that feeling of a burden for me. I'm like, I'm literally paying this guy to do what he's supposed to do.
• 32:07
  And like I can go in and I can just talk about myself for an hour and not feel the burden of like reciprocation that I think was actually helpful for me. And so I think they're like those are the things that I like I want to caution dads against of feeling like there aren't other options if you're getting to a breaking point where you feel like things are about to fall apart.
• 32:29
  Well said. Yeah, there's definitely that point, man. And we need to do whatever it takes to become the kind of man. It's not going to be helpful for you to break. Right. The worst possible scenario. Yeah, there's no honor in that, right? It's not an honorable thing as a dad to resist help to the point where you break and your family falls apart. Because now, years later, I'm still picking up the pieces, helping to pick up the pieces of what he left behind. And it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking.
• 32:58
  Yeah. Yeah. So much of what we're wrestling with right now as a culture is, is picking up the pieces because of broken men who were unable to find, find a way to untangle those knots before they really became in that detriment. Yeah. Phil, any, any last thoughts that you had on this?
• 33:15
  Yeah, I agree with what Tyler said here. And, you know, my thought for that person who's in an extreme situation and for the person that feels maybe like, they're listening to this and like, I'm doing okay, I'm fine, I can keep going. To me, I really think what we need to recognize is that we have a crisis where we no longer have community of elders, community of men, and we can't wait for that to fix itself
• 33:43
  and then rejoin. We have to go join. We have to go jump in with men in our communities. We have to find older men. We have to find men who are broken or confused as we are or who have figured some of this stuff out. And we have to start to go and talk and share. And I think even this idea, not wanting to be a burden, we've got to face that head on. We are meant to lock arms. We're meant to be brothers. We're not meant to do it alone. And so we have to not...
• 34:13
  Let go of the need for each other as a reality that our culture is rejected, but we can't reject it. We have to go in and say, okay, I'm going to force this to work, even if it doesn't work. Like, even if it's just showing up and just...
• 34:29
  That's the starting point to create what we need for our sons, what we need for the future is the elders at the gate, you know, where we can come together and we can talk about what's happening. We can receive wisdom and insight from older men. And I actually think that a lot of them have it. And I'll have a lot of them have the answers to those questions and they've wrestled in the dark, but they've wrestled and they've figured out some stuff.
• 34:55
  And we just got to go and build those communities, those cultures. And I think that we can do that in a church context. I think there's broader spaces for that. And we should not limit ourselves to, can I find a group of men that are all in one place together already? But instead, like, go find them on individual coffees and then maybe get them together, maybe have them over for dinner together. Go build those communities because we need them.
• 35:20
  Yeah. Very well said. Well, thank you guys so much. I sometimes just love to like tease out a topic in real time where I can sense there's really strong arguments on both sides.
• 35:31
  Like there's a really strong fathered argument for like increasing your ability to sometimes suck it up and get through things. And then there's a really strong argument for there's a brokenness in our culture and men need help and we need to help each other better. And so how do we navigate that? I think that's that I just so I want to kind of tease out to the surface just the intensity of that tension. And this has been a really, really helpful conversation. Thank you guys both for doing this.
• 35:54
  Before we leave, I'm curious if there's anything else or anywhere else that people can find you guys on. Phil, you guys got a new business, right? You guys are getting started? Yeah, we're working actually on a business to tell stories for brands and a ministry that's also about story. And the basic idea is that we're all searching for peace as a part of our search. We look to our purpose to find peace and we can't find peace in that place. And
• 36:20
  telling those authentic stories as businesses of what's really gone on in our story is a way for people to see us and to understand how the kingdom connects with business. So that's something I'm working on. Excited for that to come out next year. Awesome. Yeah, so stay tuned. And if you're in the Dallas area or the Greenville area or the Cincinnati area and you're looking for a fire and some guys, let's like get together and hang out. Let's like...
• 36:48
  let's make this happen oh yeah awesome sweet well thank you guys so much for jumping on here today thanks jimmy thank you for listening to the family teams podcast if you're enjoying this content or have learned something new please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend to stay up to date with our events new content and products you can follow us on facebook and instagram at family teams