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A Safe Place To Come Apart with Jason Lyle · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Guy McPherson.
0:04
Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
0:07
Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
0:11
Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show.
0:14
Speaker 1: So five, four, three, two, and one. Our folks, welcome
0:19
Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Very excited to have as my
0:21
Speaker 1: guest today, Jason Lyle. Jason, welcome.
0:24
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you for having me, Guy. Awesome.
0:27
Speaker 1: Jason is a men's resilience coach, retreat leader, and host
0:30
Speaker 1: of the Sacred Grit podcast. A former pastor with experience
0:34
Speaker 1: in wilderness therapy, he draws on his own recovery from
0:37
Speaker 1: addiction and faith reconstruction to help men rebuild self-respect and
0:41
Speaker 1: emotional strength. He's a founder of Adventures in Recovery, a
0:45
Speaker 1: non-profit offering free wilderness-based programs that support men in regulating
0:50
Speaker 1: their nervous systems and finding belonging. Through Sacred Grit coaching
0:54
Speaker 1: and retreats, Jason teaches practical, embodies tools rooted in honesty, responsibility,
1:00
Speaker 1: and lived faith. All right, Jason, obviously just a little
1:03
Speaker 1: bit about you. Before we get going, share with our
1:05
Speaker 1: listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently.
1:10
Speaker 2: I am originally from East Point, Georgia, which is just
1:12
Speaker 2: a little bit south of Atlanta, and I am currently
1:15
Speaker 2: in Dahlonega, Georgia. Okay.
1:18
Speaker 1: All right, Jason, here we go. How the heck did
1:22
Speaker 1: all this start?
1:24
Speaker 2: Man, that is a great question. So, I mean, I
1:26
Speaker 2: guess you could rewind it a long ways. It started
1:28
Speaker 2: at birth. I was adopted at birth. I was given
1:31
Speaker 2: up for adoption. And so my story is a story
1:35
Speaker 2: of relinquishment from the beginning and a story of detachment.
1:40
Speaker 2: And I spent the majority of my life having this
1:43
Speaker 2: feeling of, you know, just almost as if I just
1:48
Speaker 2: didn't belong. I always struggled to find my way and
1:52
Speaker 2: I struggled with attachment and connection and as I got
1:56
Speaker 2: a little bit older that started to present itself in
1:59
Speaker 2: ways through sexual misconduct and so I'd struggle with having
2:04
Speaker 2: a girlfriend and then I would cheat on my girlfriend
2:07
Speaker 2: and I would want another girlfriend and you know there
2:10
Speaker 2: were sexual urges that took over as a young man
2:13
Speaker 2: and I was also a part of a Baptist church
2:16
Speaker 2: and You know, the conflict between sexuality and Southern Baptist
2:21
Speaker 2: is not a very easy one to navigate.
2:25
Speaker 1: No.
2:25
Speaker 2: And so things rocked on, got married really young. I
2:28
Speaker 2: was 19 when I got married. And I actually went
2:32
Speaker 2: into the professional ministry in 2003. I was 32 years
2:37
Speaker 2: old and went to seminary and became a pastor. Hang on, Jason,
2:42
Speaker 2: if I may.
2:43
Speaker 1: Why did you go into the ministry?
2:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where I was headed. So I felt like
2:50
Speaker 2: at the time and I still feel like now that
2:53
Speaker 2: it was something larger than myself doing that. But I
2:56
Speaker 2: also think that there was an underlying current of that
3:00
Speaker 2: would be the thing that would fix me because I
3:03
Speaker 2: just had sexual behaviors that were out of control. And
3:07
Speaker 2: so what.
3:09
Speaker 1: Does that mean when sexual behavior is out of control?
3:12
Speaker 2: I mean, multiple affairs. I was, you know, using pornography, masturbation.
3:17
Speaker 2: I was, you know, going to places to get sex.
3:20
Speaker 2: I mean, it was pretty much out of control. And
3:23
Speaker 2: a wife and two kids at home.
3:24
Speaker 1: Now, were you seeking any kind of professional help?
3:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I had been to therapy and just was
3:33
Speaker 2: not finding any sort of gratification in those spaces. No,
3:37
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, to be fair, I was also... 28, 29,
3:40
Speaker 2: 30 years old. And I don't know that when you're
3:44
Speaker 2: that age, if you've really found the capacity at that
3:48
Speaker 2: stage of life to be able to integrate what a
3:50
Speaker 2: therapist may say to you. And also there's a lot
3:54
Speaker 2: of hormones going on in those years, you know, where
3:57
Speaker 2: you just have these strong urges that are hard for
4:00
Speaker 2: a healthy young man to resist, but certainly one who's
4:04
Speaker 2: struggling with attachment issues to resist as well. So I
4:08
Speaker 2: think maybe, you know, no, I don't think maybe. I
4:12
Speaker 2: went into ministry and I sought after God as a
4:15
Speaker 2: solution to a problem. And it didn't take long for
4:20
Speaker 2: that to kind of start to fall apart as well.
4:24
Speaker 2: I went to seminary and I made it 13 years
4:28
Speaker 2: as a pastor. And over the course of that 13 years,
4:32
Speaker 2: I was having affairs. Now, not with women in the church.
4:35
Speaker 2: Strangely enough, I had ethics around that. But It was
4:38
Speaker 2: just other people that I would meet here and there
4:42
Speaker 2: and they would be, you know, casual affairs. And so
4:45
Speaker 2: in 2017, one of those came out and I lost
4:49
Speaker 2: my job as a pastor. There was a lot of
4:51
Speaker 2: shame involved. And I went to work for a wilderness
4:55
Speaker 2: therapy program to try and, you know, make ends meet.
5:00
Speaker 2: And while I was in that wilderness therapy program, I
5:03
Speaker 2: met a man by the name of Rob Gent. And
5:07
Speaker 2: Rob started teaching us field guides about nervous system regulation.
5:12
Speaker 2: We worked with a lot of young people who would
5:16
Speaker 2: have the most strange behaviors, such as in the middle
5:20
Speaker 2: of 44,000 acres of wilderness, they would just run away
5:24
Speaker 2: as if they were going to go somewhere. Or they
5:27
Speaker 2: would threaten to kill somebody with an ink pen or
5:30
Speaker 2: threaten to kill themselves There's all these different levels of dysregulation.
5:35
Speaker 2: And so he started teaching us that the reason why
5:38
Speaker 2: they had irrational behavior is because their prefrontal cortex of
5:43
Speaker 2: rational thought was losing connection with the amygdala, the fight-or-flight response.
5:49
Speaker 2: And he said that when the trauma response was triggered,
5:52
Speaker 2: they just could not access rational thought and that we
5:56
Speaker 2: had to learn how to co-regulate with these kids. And so...
6:01
Speaker 2: I took that in and he talked about pre-verbal trauma
6:04
Speaker 2: then because a lot of the kids that we worked
6:06
Speaker 2: with were adopted children. Fast forward a month or two,
6:12
Speaker 2: you know, I'm laying on my left side in my
6:14
Speaker 2: bed in the middle of the day planning my suicide.
6:17
Speaker 2: I mean, my kids knew about my affairs. My marriage
6:23
Speaker 2: was falling apart and I was just laying on my
6:26
Speaker 2: left side just planning it. I mean, I had a
6:28
Speaker 2: full plan, knew what I was going to do and
6:30
Speaker 2: how I was going to do it. And as a
6:32
Speaker 2: last ditch effort, I reached out to Rob Gent and
6:37
Speaker 2: he was kind enough to respond to my email and
6:40
Speaker 2: we set up a Zoom call.
6:41
Speaker 1: What did you say in the email?
6:43
Speaker 2: I said, brother, I am at the end of myself.
6:46
Speaker 2: And I told him about my sex addiction, what had
6:49
Speaker 2: been at that time diagnosed as a sex addiction. I
6:52
Speaker 2: told him about that. I told him that I was
6:55
Speaker 2: ready to check out. And so he set up a
6:59
Speaker 2: meeting and he taught me about nervous system regulation. He
7:02
Speaker 2: taught me about how to use cold water immersion to
7:05
Speaker 2: learn how to regulate my nervous system and breath work
7:08
Speaker 2: and yoga and meditation. And he gave me some books
7:12
Speaker 2: like Dopamine Nation and Widen the Window to read. And
7:17
Speaker 2: the day I came home from that Zoom call with Rob,
7:21
Speaker 2: I filled up my bathtubs. got all the ice that
7:24
Speaker 2: I had in the house and put it in there.
7:26
Speaker 2: And I got in and that's been five years and
7:29
Speaker 2: I do it every single day of my life. And
7:32
Speaker 2: the next morning I went on my front porch and
7:34
Speaker 2: did the Wim Hof method of breath work. I did meditation.
7:38
Speaker 2: I did yoga. And it just, it was the most
7:41
Speaker 2: amazing experience. I started breathing. learning how to regulate my
7:46
Speaker 2: own body through my own faculty. I could be an
7:49
Speaker 2: autonomous human being.
7:50
Speaker 1: All right, let me pause you for a second. Let
7:52
Speaker 1: me pause you, Jason, because you're filling, you're saying so
7:55
Speaker 1: many amazing things here. And what I'm hearing is it
8:01
Speaker 1: sounds like you were just, as you were going through
8:04
Speaker 1: this experience of what, trials and tribulations and sex addiction
8:12
Speaker 1: and At the same time, it feels like you were
8:15
Speaker 1: hungry for what? Answers for.
8:21
Speaker 2: Answers, man.
8:21
Speaker 1: Can I use the word? Answers.
8:23
Speaker 2: Connection. Yes, absolutely connection.
8:27
Speaker 1: Love. I mean, connection. But it's just so palpable that...
8:34
Speaker 1: And then when this guy reached out to you, but
8:37
Speaker 1: when you reached out to him, by that time, were
8:40
Speaker 1: you guys good friends? Yes.
8:43
Speaker 2: No, no. Just acquaintances.
8:44
Speaker 3: Wow.
8:44
Speaker 2: No.
8:45
Speaker 1: Okay.
8:45
Speaker 2: Yeah. The night that he was in the, that he
8:48
Speaker 2: had the training at wilderness therapy was the first time
8:51
Speaker 2: I ever met him. And in the middle of that talk,
8:53
Speaker 2: he said, is anybody in here adopted?
8:56
Speaker 1: Wow.
8:56
Speaker 2: And I said, yes, I am. And he said, okay.
9:00
Speaker 2: He said, if I were to tell you, that I
9:02
Speaker 2: love you and I want what's best for your life.
9:05
Speaker 2: What's the first thing comes to mind? And I said, bullshit.
9:08
Speaker 2: And he said, exactly. He got a little bit excited.
9:11
Speaker 2: He's like, exactly, because you are answering that question from
9:15
Speaker 2: a dysregulated state because you're dysregulated around your ability to connect.
9:19
Speaker 2: And that's really what caused me to reach out to him. Wow.
9:23
Speaker 3: So he sounds like you. He was a no bullshit guy. Yeah,
9:29
Speaker 3: he was no bullshit guy. But then I started to
9:32
Speaker 3: find out that it worked for other men. I mean,
9:35
Speaker 3: I've seen it work for heroin, methamphetamine, pornography addiction, depression, grief, anxiety.
9:41
Speaker 3: Any behavior that we find that people have that they
9:45
Speaker 3: would say, I don't want to be this way, but
9:47
Speaker 3: I just can't help myself. I have found that nervous
9:50
Speaker 3: system regulation gives them the capacity to be able to
9:53
Speaker 3: regulate themselves and find their way to autonomous decision-making.
9:57
Speaker 1: Well, let's get into that. Let me just remind everyone here.
10:00
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with Jason Lyle. His podcast is called Sacred
10:05
Speaker 1: Grit Podcast, and his website is sacredgrit.com.
10:12
Speaker 2: So The sacred grit.com. Yeah.
10:15
Speaker 1: Thank you. The sacred grit.com. So you're, you're, as you said,
10:19
Speaker 1: you were laying on your left side. I'm curious about
10:24
Speaker 1: that detail there.
10:28
Speaker 2: It's burned into my brain. I mean, I can, I, yeah,
10:32
Speaker 2: I remember it like it was yesterday. I was resolved.
10:34
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what I was going to do. And
10:37
Speaker 2: it was scary, um, to, to think that I was
10:40
Speaker 2: that close. Um, And it was a very logical conclusion.
10:45
Speaker 2: It wasn't, you know, emotional. I didn't feel unrational. It
10:50
Speaker 2: was just, I'm like a rabid dog that keeps biting people.
10:54
Speaker 2: And when you have a rabid dog that keeps biting people,
10:56
Speaker 2: you put it down. And that was my line of logic.
11:00
Speaker 2: So I had, I was going to drive to the
11:02
Speaker 2: funeral home, wrap myself up in a tarp and do
11:05
Speaker 2: it on the front porch. So I would be there
11:07
Speaker 2: when they got there the next morning.
11:08
Speaker 1: So what happens.
11:10
Speaker 1: After that phone call, you meet with him. How do
11:15
Speaker 1: things unfold?
11:15
Speaker 2: Dude, I mean, I got into the ice water. And,
11:19
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of people would say, well, maybe
11:21
Speaker 2: it was placebo. I could care less if it was placebo.
11:25
Speaker 2: I started doing cold immersion, which I do to this day.
11:28
Speaker 2: The breath work, yoga, meditation. I do it every single
11:31
Speaker 2: morning of my life. But the other thing that started
11:34
Speaker 2: to happen was I started reading books by, and I
11:37
Speaker 2: think you've had him on the show, Basil van der
11:39
Speaker 2: Kolk with The Body Keeps Score. Started looking into a
11:44
Speaker 2: lot of Peter Levine's work, Gabriel Maté, his work, and
11:49
Speaker 2: all these folks that are teaching that trauma is stored
11:53
Speaker 2: other places than just in our accessible brain, that it's
11:57
Speaker 2: stored inside of our body as well. And so as
12:01
Speaker 2: all those things, I started to study those. But I
12:04
Speaker 2: also had this brain-body connection. So it didn't just feel
12:08
Speaker 2: like I was taking in information in my head. It
12:11
Speaker 2: felt like I was able to put that information into
12:13
Speaker 2: my body. And now we know that we have neurons
12:16
Speaker 2: in our stomach and our digestive system, more neurons than
12:19
Speaker 2: cats have in their brain. So we have our body thinks, feels,
12:24
Speaker 2: and emotes just like our brain does. But we have
12:28
Speaker 2: a way in our brain or a thing in our
12:30
Speaker 2: brain called a prefrontal cortex that remembers things. and collects
12:34
Speaker 2: those memories and projects it onto the future to try
12:37
Speaker 2: to predict what's going to happen as a survival response.
12:41
Speaker 2: But those things aren't always true. Those things sometimes are,
12:45
Speaker 2: those projections are being made off false information. So I
12:49
Speaker 2: learned that when I'm able to connect my brain and
12:52
Speaker 2: my body, I can also connect to this thing that
12:56
Speaker 2: I was raised to be called the Holy Spirit or God,
12:58
Speaker 2: but now I just call it this energy that is
13:01
Speaker 2: inside of me that is embodied wisdom. And it's not woo-woo.
13:05
Speaker 2: It's not, you know, wooden beads and linen shirts. It's
13:08
Speaker 2: just when I take the time.
13:10
Speaker 1: I've never heard that before. I love that.
13:13
Speaker 2: When I take the time to be able to connect
13:15
Speaker 2: my body and my soul, my body and my mind,
13:18
Speaker 2: my soul, I have access to it as well. And
13:21
Speaker 2: it's just this beautiful process that I've shared with hundreds
13:24
Speaker 2: of men at this point.
13:27
Speaker 1: You talked about, from a very early age, the impact
13:32
Speaker 1: of being adopted and you kind of like what grew
13:36
Speaker 1: up knowing that some, sometimes kids don't know that, right.
13:40
Speaker 1: They don't find out till, till a later date, like intellectually,
13:46
Speaker 1: cognitively did, did, did, how did that bother you? Did,
13:51
Speaker 1: did you feel like, Oh my God, I need to
13:52
Speaker 1: find my parents or was that even a possibility?
13:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. So I, I, if someone
14:02
Speaker 2: would have asked me when I was a kid of
14:06
Speaker 2: being adopted, bothered me, I would have said no. I mean,
14:09
Speaker 2: logically it's like I have a mom and a dad
14:11
Speaker 2: and I mean, I grew up in a leave it
14:13
Speaker 2: to beaver household, man. I mean, we didn't, I didn't
14:17
Speaker 2: want for anything. I had everything I wanted. Blue collar family.
14:21
Speaker 2: Dad was a plumber. Mom was a stay at home wife.
14:25
Speaker 2: But the one thing that started to happen was, was
14:29
Speaker 2: just this unbelievable need to be wanted and this unbelievable
14:34
Speaker 2: need to be loved and desired that I could not
14:38
Speaker 2: get away from. And that is what turned into the
14:42
Speaker 2: sexual misconduct and turned into all manner of ways that
14:47
Speaker 2: I would try to, looking back on it now, soothe myself.
14:50
Speaker 2: So adoption, when someone is taken from their mother at birth,
14:56
Speaker 2: That is the original connection that we are all supposed
15:00
Speaker 2: to have. We have all manner of science now about
15:02
Speaker 2: breastfeeding or a baby being held against the father's bare
15:06
Speaker 2: chest or talking to the baby in utero or all
15:10
Speaker 2: manner of things that as an adopted child, you don't
15:13
Speaker 2: get any of that. You don't get colostrum. You don't
15:16
Speaker 2: get mama's first breast milk. You don't get mama's voice
15:19
Speaker 2: and her singing to you. You don't get to be
15:21
Speaker 2: soothed when breastfeeding. when you're crying because mama's not there,
15:26
Speaker 2: you're taken away and you're left to scream inside an orphanage.
15:29
Speaker 2: And while we would say, well, you don't remember those things,
15:33
Speaker 2: therapists would say, I don't recall them, but my body
15:37
Speaker 2: remembers them. And so, I mean, I lived in a
15:40
Speaker 2: hypervigilant state. So what a lot of people would call
15:42
Speaker 2: their baseline, I was way above that baseline. I mean,
15:45
Speaker 2: as you could tell by my words, I'm a high
15:47
Speaker 2: RPM guy anyhow. So that is not by choice. That's
15:53
Speaker 2: something that's wired inside of me. And, you know, many
15:56
Speaker 2: clinicians would say wired inside of me by adoption, a
15:59
Speaker 2: hypervigilant state to need to be connected, to need to
16:03
Speaker 2: be liked and desired and wanted. And so it's just
16:07
Speaker 2: how I've evolved over the course of my life or
16:10
Speaker 2: adapted over the course of my life.
16:12
Speaker 1: So let's kind of jump here a little bit. How
16:15
Speaker 1: do you get to the point where you're like, I
16:18
Speaker 1: want to start helping other people? What did that look like?
16:22
Speaker 1: When did that happen?
16:23
Speaker 2: Man, it's been in me my whole life, guy. That
16:28
Speaker 2: would probably be something that I do believe is a
16:30
Speaker 2: power greater than myself that put in me. I've always
16:33
Speaker 2: had that. I owned a plumbing company. I grew up
16:38
Speaker 2: in a plumbing family, and I couldn't make any money
16:40
Speaker 2: because I would give it to all my guys that
16:42
Speaker 2: worked for me. I always wanted to see them be
16:45
Speaker 2: the best version of themselves. When I went into the ministry,
16:49
Speaker 2: I planted what was called a cowboy church because we
16:51
Speaker 2: met in a barn on Tuesday nights because I wanted
16:54
Speaker 2: to help men who just would not go to church.
16:57
Speaker 2: I wanted them to have a spiritual medium. I went
17:00
Speaker 2: to boys ranches and worked with boys that had been abandoned.
17:04
Speaker 2: I've traveled. I worked in Uganda for 13 years helping
17:08
Speaker 2: building systems of sustainable economic growth in cities in Uganda. Yeah.
17:13
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just wired into me to help people.
17:17
Speaker 2: When I found this way of living, this way of
17:21
Speaker 2: being able to download this rational knowledge into my body
17:25
Speaker 2: and control my behaviors and become this, you know, to
17:28
Speaker 2: find agency, spiritual agency. I mean, I couldn't do anything
17:32
Speaker 2: else but help people. And at first I was helping
17:34
Speaker 2: people just free. I was just giving away and raising
17:37
Speaker 2: money left and right. But I have come to find out,
17:41
Speaker 2: as I'm sure many have that are in this industry,
17:44
Speaker 2: unless somebody has a buy-in, You know, it's costing them something.
17:49
Speaker 2: Many times it's very difficult for them to make any
17:53
Speaker 2: sort of progress. So now I have two expressions. You know,
17:55
Speaker 2: men can certainly come to Adventures in Recovery trips, go
17:59
Speaker 2: out into the wilderness completely free and learn these things,
18:02
Speaker 2: or they can hire me as a coach or come
18:04
Speaker 2: on a retreat. So I have kind of two pathways
18:06
Speaker 2: that allows me to still get away for free, but
18:09
Speaker 2: also create some self-worth through just charging for services.
18:13
Speaker 1: You listed several ways in which you were kind of
18:17
Speaker 1: helping people and giving back. During those experiences, were you
18:24
Speaker 1: still in your addiction, if we can use that term?
18:27
Speaker 1: You were still kind of struggling. Wow, interesting. But it's
18:32
Speaker 1: like you needed to reach out and help people still.
18:37
Speaker 2: I did. During that time. Yeah, I never lost that.
18:41
Speaker 2: That's always been on the forefront of my life. I
18:45
Speaker 2: went and did a degree in international community development at
18:48
Speaker 2: Oxford just so that I could better facilitate helping people
18:53
Speaker 2: in Uganda. It's always been in me. It's just part
18:56
Speaker 2: of who I am.
18:58
Speaker 1: So at what point, Jason, did you kind of formulate
19:02
Speaker 1: this business?
19:06
Speaker 2: So Adventures in Recovery began in October of 2021, officially.
19:14
Speaker 2: That's when we began Adventures in Recovery. I launched Sacred
19:19
Speaker 2: Grit officially in July of last year, but it had
19:23
Speaker 2: been kind of formulating itself just through the encouragement a
19:27
Speaker 2: lot of guys that adventures in recovery is like my
19:30
Speaker 2: family i mean i call it man church we meet
19:32
Speaker 2: once a month and go rock climbing or trout fishing
19:35
Speaker 2: or hiking we go we're going to colorado in june
19:38
Speaker 2: and or july we're going to summit 314 000 foot
19:41
Speaker 2: peaks they're my guy group you know okay now if.
19:44
Speaker 1: We may i'm sorry to interrupt but what, what adventures
19:48
Speaker 1: in recovery talk a little bit more specifically about that.
19:51
Speaker 1: I mean, there are a lot of men's, Wilderness programs
19:55
Speaker 1: out there, but what are you doing specifically?
19:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really not a men's program. What we do
20:02
Speaker 2: is we practice nervous system regulation together. Okay. So the
20:06
Speaker 2: guys are doing cold plunges, breath work, yoga, and they
20:09
Speaker 2: learned it from me, and usually on a hiking trip
20:12
Speaker 2: or on a day workshop. And so we have an
20:16
Speaker 2: app that's called Circle, creates these communities. You create communities
20:20
Speaker 2: on their app. Guys are posting back and forth. They're
20:23
Speaker 2: getting together on their own and doing cold plunges or
20:26
Speaker 2: going and doing yoga together. So it's more of a
20:29
Speaker 2: mindful masculinity community of men that are just practicing together.
20:34
Speaker 2: And we bring, so twice a year we do two
20:37
Speaker 2: backpacking trips where you can bring a buddy. So you
20:41
Speaker 2: come and you bring a friend. We supply all the gear,
20:43
Speaker 2: all the meals, all the everything. The guides, they can
20:46
Speaker 2: come for completely free. And we introduce these practices to them.
20:50
Speaker 2: Because we just want them to have the information for
20:53
Speaker 2: men to be able to heal. Sacred Grit is one-on-one coaching.
20:58
Speaker 2: It's retreats that I do at a retreat center. And
21:00
Speaker 2: it's my podcast. So those are a little bit more
21:03
Speaker 2: monetized ways that I make money to live. But yeah,
21:09
Speaker 2: Adventures in Recovery is completely free.
21:11
Speaker 1: You've got to live. What are you seeing out there?
21:16
Speaker 1: This is a broad question. I understand that. But the
21:20
Speaker 1: men who are coming to you on these retreats, the
21:24
Speaker 1: men who you encounter, the men who are listening, how
21:29
Speaker 1: are they showing up to you? What are you seeing
21:32
Speaker 1: that men are needing now?
21:37
Speaker 2: Men need right now a safe place to come apart
21:43
Speaker 2: until they can do it in their own body. And
21:45
Speaker 2: that's what I teach them how to do. I give
21:47
Speaker 2: them a safe place to come apart. They can cry.
21:50
Speaker 2: They can do whatever they need to do. And it's
21:53
Speaker 2: completely safe. No judgment, no bullshit. Just go ahead and
21:57
Speaker 2: break it down. But then from there I go, okay,
22:01
Speaker 2: we got it all laid out here on the table.
22:03
Speaker 2: Now we got to rebuild it. And that's when I
22:05
Speaker 2: give them the tools to hold the capacity to hold
22:09
Speaker 2: their sales, to be able to feel their emotions, their anger,
22:13
Speaker 2: their addictions, their, all their fears, all that inside their
22:17
Speaker 2: own body. But at the same time, be able to go, okay,
22:19
Speaker 2: wait a minute. Cause and effect thinking is what I need.
22:23
Speaker 2: And most of them, when they come to me, they've
22:25
Speaker 2: lost the ability to have cause and effect thinking. They're
22:27
Speaker 2: having affairs. They're stuck in a pornography addiction. They're shooting heroin.
22:32
Speaker 2: They're in immense grief from losing a child. They can't
22:36
Speaker 2: put one foot in front of the other. They're in depression.
22:38
Speaker 2: They're going through a divorce. They're losing all their money.
22:41
Speaker 2: They made all manner of terrible decisions. And so they've
22:45
Speaker 2: lost This ability to think through cause and effect. If
22:49
Speaker 2: I do this, that is going to happen. So when
22:52
Speaker 2: they come to me, it's all about, man, unpack it.
22:54
Speaker 2: And they fall apart. And that's fine. I mean, I
22:59
Speaker 2: enjoy just as much hearing that process of how they
23:02
Speaker 2: got to where they are and where they are. And
23:04
Speaker 2: that's what I just call honesty. And honesty is not
23:08
Speaker 2: about confession. Honesty is about really being honest about where
23:12
Speaker 2: you actually are in life. Where am I? I tell
23:16
Speaker 2: people all the time, a viewpoint is a view from
23:18
Speaker 2: a point. And the view that you have is determined
23:20
Speaker 2: by the point in which you stand. So you got
23:23
Speaker 2: to know how you're looking at the world. And once
23:26
Speaker 2: all those pieces are laid out on the table, I
23:29
Speaker 2: can give them the tools to be able to hold
23:32
Speaker 2: space for themselves and they can put their lives back together.
23:35
Speaker 2: And sometimes that means part of it has to be
23:36
Speaker 2: cut out. And sometimes it means we have to put
23:38
Speaker 2: new pieces in. But we can have the capacity to
23:41
Speaker 2: do that with intention and clear intention. Does that make sense, Guy?
23:46
Speaker 1: It makes a lot of sense. It's amazing to me.
23:49
Speaker 1: It's really inspiring to me. And there's a couple things
23:52
Speaker 1: here that just really strike me about you. Where the
23:58
Speaker 1: heck did all this wisdom, this energy, seriously, I mean,
24:08
Speaker 1: from listening to your story early on, it feels like
24:14
Speaker 1: you were this bottled up, kind of like we all are,
24:19
Speaker 1: but it just feels very present for me. You're this
24:23
Speaker 1: bottled up ball of wisdom and energy, not knowing where
24:28
Speaker 1: to go. And you went down this one route, but
24:30
Speaker 1: obviously you speak with such experience, boldness. wisdom born of experience.
24:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. I used to tell when I was a pastor,
24:42
Speaker 2: you know, I was struggling the whole time, but I
24:45
Speaker 2: used to tell people all the time, I would say,
24:47
Speaker 2: you know, if I get ready to climb Mount Everest
24:49
Speaker 2: and I walk into a bar in Kathmandu and I'm
24:52
Speaker 2: looking for a guide and on one side of the bar,
24:55
Speaker 2: there stands a guy and he's got a brand new gear.
24:58
Speaker 2: He's all put together. His hair's fixed. And he has
25:01
Speaker 2: a book in his hand that says, A Dummy's Guide
25:04
Speaker 2: to Climbing Mount Everest. And I go over to him
25:07
Speaker 2: and I say, hey, man, can you get me up
25:09
Speaker 2: Mount Everest? He's like, absolutely, I can. I have this
25:11
Speaker 2: book right here. And I might say, well, have you
25:13
Speaker 2: ever been up there? He's like, nope, but I know
25:15
Speaker 2: how to get there. On the other end of the
25:18
Speaker 2: bar stands a guy and his gear's falling apart. It's
25:21
Speaker 2: held together with duct tape. He's probably missing a finger
25:23
Speaker 2: and part of his nose. And you can tell he's
25:26
Speaker 2: been through some shit. That's the guy I want to
25:29
Speaker 2: take me up to the top of Mount Everest. So
25:31
Speaker 2: that's just, I mean, that's me. I mean, I've been
25:33
Speaker 2: through it, man. I mean, you know, from jealous husbands
25:36
Speaker 2: to bar fights. I mean, I've been through it. And
25:38
Speaker 2: so I understand when men come to me, this knowledge
25:43
Speaker 2: that I've gained through education, I have an undergraduate degree
25:46
Speaker 2: in theology and a graduate degree in international community development.
25:49
Speaker 2: And I read incessantly. I read all the time. But
25:53
Speaker 2: all of that knowledge has become embodied knowledge. And embodied
25:56
Speaker 2: knowledge is the definition of wisdom. It's not just something
26:00
Speaker 2: I've thought about. It's something I've, I mean, I tell
26:02
Speaker 2: people all the time, my body is my laboratory of
26:05
Speaker 2: my work. I try all this shit on myself before
26:07
Speaker 2: I ever try to teach it to somebody else. And
26:10
Speaker 2: I track it. Like, did that work? Did that not work?
26:12
Speaker 2: And I just, a self-reflective person. And so it just
26:16
Speaker 2: gives me this wisdom. I mean, I don't know. Maybe
26:19
Speaker 2: it's the universe. Maybe it's just how I was wired
26:23
Speaker 2: from birth. I don't know. But I'm happy to have it.
26:25
Speaker 2: And I'm very excited. Very humbled to be able to
26:29
Speaker 2: share it with other men and to see it change
26:31
Speaker 2: their lives as well.
26:32
Speaker 1: It's very inspiring. In what you're sharing and what you're
26:38
Speaker 1: speaking about, there's an invitation for us to, you know,
26:46
Speaker 1: you talked about honesty, to be open, to be honest.
26:52
Speaker 1: That's not easy. It's not easy for a lot of men.
26:56
Speaker 2: It's not.
26:56
Speaker 1: Let me ask you something. Was that difficult for you
27:00
Speaker 1: to get there?
27:04
Speaker 2: Not when the shit hit the fan, it wasn't. I
27:06
Speaker 2: was ready to vomit on whoever would listen. But yeah,
27:09
Speaker 2: leading up to that, it was. And usually what that is.
27:14
Speaker 2: What I have found is most men, when they're not
27:16
Speaker 2: ready to be honest, they're really not ready to let
27:18
Speaker 2: go of the behavior that they have. They're really still
27:21
Speaker 2: kind of digging having all the wild sex with the
27:24
Speaker 2: young girl. They're really digging, you know, getting high on
27:27
Speaker 2: methamphetamines or they're really, you know, they might say that
27:31
Speaker 2: they may be in a battle in their head. But
27:33
Speaker 2: it has been my experience that until we have come
27:36
Speaker 2: to a complete end of ourself, and when we do
27:38
Speaker 2: come to a complete end of ourself, honesty gets real easy,
27:42
Speaker 2: real quick. It may not all come out at once.
27:45
Speaker 2: It may come out in doses, but it just becomes
27:47
Speaker 2: less of a problem. All right.
27:50
Speaker 1: As we kind of wind down here, the podcast is
27:53
Speaker 1: called The Sacred Grit Podcast. What do you do on that?
27:56
Speaker 1: What is your purpose with that?
27:59
Speaker 2: So on Sundays, I give guys, I call them sacred Sunday.
28:03
Speaker 2: So there's this idea of maybe something you're dealing with.
28:07
Speaker 2: So maybe it's relapse or maybe it's depression or maybe
28:10
Speaker 2: it's anxiety. But I take that idea and I kind
28:13
Speaker 2: of tie the practice to that. And that's sacred Sunday.
28:19
Speaker 2: So I'm giving this practice that you can do. And
28:21
Speaker 2: then on Wednesdays, I call it gritty Wednesday. I give
28:24
Speaker 2: an integration practice. So one time is about creating theoretical practice,
28:29
Speaker 2: and another time is about taking that and moving it
28:32
Speaker 2: through your life. So sacred grit literally means having the grit,
28:36
Speaker 2: the wherewithal to access the sacred in yourself and to
28:39
Speaker 2: live that out. They're short. They're 10-minute monologues. They're never
28:43
Speaker 2: really that long. And I really try to think through
28:47
Speaker 2: and give guys, and I use a lot of different
28:49
Speaker 2: research tools to see as much as I can figure
28:52
Speaker 2: out what guys need. And that's what I try to post.
28:54
Speaker 2: So it's addiction, anxiety, depression, grief, you name it. I
28:58
Speaker 2: try to cover it all in different tools that they
29:01
Speaker 2: can use to try to battle those things. Awesome.
29:04
Speaker 1: All right, Jason, how do people learn more about you?
29:06
Speaker 1: What's the best way?
29:08
Speaker 2: The sacred grit.com is the best way. Everything is on there. Retreats, coaching,
29:13
Speaker 2: and the podcast. Okay.
29:14
Speaker 1: We'll have all that linked up here. The show notes
29:17
Speaker 1: page at the trauma therapist podcast.com. Jason, Come on. You're amazing.
29:26
Speaker 1: I mean, really.
29:27
Speaker 2: Thanks, guy. I appreciate it.
29:28
Speaker 1: You know, it's just so refreshing to speak with you.
29:31
Speaker 1: It's so inspiring. It's like you cut through the BS
29:36
Speaker 1: that uh where it feels like we're immersed.
29:40
Speaker 2: In well i appreciate that i try real hard i
29:45
Speaker 2: tell people all the time i'm trying to become the
29:47
Speaker 2: man i wish i would have had when i was
29:48
Speaker 2: 30 years old and if i would have had one
29:51
Speaker 2: of me around that just wouldn't bullshit me would just
29:53
Speaker 2: tell me plainly And give me some tools to use.
29:56
Speaker 2: I could have avoided a lot of pain. So that's
29:58
Speaker 2: what I'm trying to do.
29:59
Speaker 1: Well, really appreciate you being here and you're welcome back anytime.
30:03
Speaker 1: Take care.
30:05
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.