Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / When Men Go Silent: Understanding the Male Mental Health Crisis | Eric Robertson | LFRF 51

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When Men Go Silent: Understanding the Male Mental Health Crisis | Eric Robertson | LFRF 51 · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.
• 0:01
  Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of
• 0:06
  The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.
• 0:08
  Before I jump in with today's guest, I want to say a huge thank you to you, our
• 0:13
  audience, for helping to make this happen.
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  If you like what we do here, please give it a thumbs up,
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  like, subscribe, tell a friend.
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  It really, really helps us to make the pro.
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  To find out about our certification courses, online video libraries,
• 0:29
  books, and other courses, please go to rupertisaacson.com.
• 0:34
  So now let's jump in.
• 0:36
  Welcome back to Live Free, ride Free.
• 0:39
  My guest today is Eric Robertson, who was a family lawyer, a read into
• 0:47
  that divorce read into that warring family, civil war within families,
• 0:52
  frequently, sadly, and has now become a family therapist in Austin.
• 0:57
  Kind of drawing on that experience from the trenches of trying to resolve
• 1:04
  conflict rather than exacerbate conflict, and has now taken that into
• 1:11
  work specifically in the male domain.
• 1:15
  We've had a feminist movement over the last century, but we haven't
• 1:21
  really had any equivalent movement for males, and I think we're seeing the.
• 1:28
  Results of that in both my generation of males and the younger
• 1:33
  generations of males as well.
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  There is a, there is a, a sort of disorientation perhaps, I think
• 1:39
  is the easiest way to put it.
• 1:41
  So I'm really intrigued to have Eric come and give us his insights
• 1:46
  over a lifetime of working in the field of conflict resolution.
• 1:51
  So if you've, if you've been through a divorce, if you've gone
• 1:53
  through a divorce, if you're going through a divorce, listen up.
• 1:56
  If you are a, a male who feels, what's my place?
• 2:01
  How, how am I even relevant these days?
• 2:04
  Listen up.
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  Eric has a lot to say on these things.
• 2:07
  So, Eric, thank you for coming on.
• 2:09
  Can you just give us a bit of a bio on, you know, who you are and
• 2:12
  Eric Robertson: how you've arrived
• 2:13
  at
• 2:13
  Rupert Isaacson: this point?
• 2:14
  Eric Robertson: Well, I've, I've made a securous route to where I am today.
• 2:18
  I started out years ago thinking I wanted to be a psychologist.
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  I was in a graduate program working toward a PhD, and I was married at the time
• 2:28
  and my wife got accepted to law school.
• 2:30
  So I took my master's in psychology at that point and moved with her to Austin,
• 2:35
  Texas so she could go to law school.
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  I used to hang around at the law school with her thinking, well,
• 2:40
  you know, this is pretty good gig.
• 2:42
  Maybe I ought to try this.
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  So right after she finished, I went to law school, and from day one
• 2:48
  after I got my license, I started practicing divorce work and family
• 2:54
  law work, and did that for 33 years.
• 2:57
  And there was something about the conflict and everything that's going
• 3:03
  on in a divorce that at some point made me rethink where I was headed.
• 3:10
  And made me think about the, what had taken me into
• 3:14
  psychology in the first place.
• 3:16
  So I went back to school and, and got another master's degree in clinical
• 3:21
  mental health counseling and am now practicing as a licensed professional
• 3:26
  counselor associate in Austin, Texas with a focus on doing work with men and
• 3:32
  some marriage and family counseling.
• 3:35
  You know, seeing how people act in divorces was really eye-opening to me.
• 3:44
  As you can imagine in your listeners, probably can imagine men and women go
• 3:49
  through that prop a process differently.
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  And what I saw was pretty normal from my perspective with
• 3:59
  regards to women, but with men.
• 4:01
  They weren't doing a very good job going through it.
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  They weren't expressing the emotion that women did at the process,
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  and it really made me think about what's going on with men.
• 4:14
  And that kinda led to my interest in, in doing, doing the kind of
• 4:20
  work that I, I do now with men.
• 4:22
  And I wanna share with your listeners some facts that may surprise them
• 4:27
  or, or may, they may not, if they're, they're going through this kind of
• 4:32
  process or if I've lived some of this.
• 4:34
  But as anybody that's watched the news knows, boys and men are experiencing
• 4:39
  higher levels of loneliness and mental health risks than ever before.
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  Some of these facts come from the American Institute of Boys and Men.
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  But 15% of young men have recently reported not having a close friend.
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  That's a fivefold increase from what it was in 1990.
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  Now, when I grew up and when you grew up, we probably had mates
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  and friends that we were close to, and we developed friendships.
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  That's not happening now.
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  And there's, you know, there's a number of reasons we can talk about
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  but that, that, that doesn't happen.
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  And, and the question is, why is that important as we look at what's going
• 5:19
  on with, with men, and the reason it's important is that men are four times
• 5:24
  more likely to die by suicide than women.
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  That, and when I learned that that's a, I thought that's a pretty astounding fact.
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  In, in 2023, it was reported that 80% of suicides were men, and
• 5:40
  that men were far less likely to seek any kind of help for that.
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  Than, than women are.
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  And you think about that.
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  So in 2023, it's reported that 39,000 men died from suicide.
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  In the US worldwide that number was 535,000.
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  That's an astounding number and it shows what's going on in our society with men.
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  Loneliness and isolation may seem sad to some people, but their health risks
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  young men often feel disconnected from their community and emotional.
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  They have no emotional support.
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  And that contributes to anxiety and depression and all sorts
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  of other mental health issues.
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  So, and I wanted to know why is it that men don't get out there
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  and get the help they need?
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  And I think there's, a number of reasons for that.
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  Statistically, 67% of teenage boys between the ages of 15 and 17 reported struggling
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  with something emotional, but didn't feel they needed any professional help.
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  70% didn't even know what a mental health professional was.
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  So there's a lack of education in our society, in American society especially
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  about what to do when, when you're having mental health issues when it comes to men.
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  We don't, we don't, you know, we, we, we recognize that in women,
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  but we don't recognize that in men.
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  A lot of it's because men show up differently than women do.
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  When there's mental health issues society, societal messages play into that.
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  The Man up, men don't cry.
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  Work through it.
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  Just muscle through it.
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  Those are, those are the messages that, that I got growing up.
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  And I I suspect you did too, Rupert.
• 7:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
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  Eric Robertson: I, and did, didn't help.
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  Didn't help.
• 7:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Why?
• 7:38
  Eric Robertson: The other thing It's
• 7:39
  Rupert Isaacson: okay.
• 7:39
  Go ahead.
• 7:40
  Yeah,
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  Eric Robertson: yeah.
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  The other thing is, it was surprising to me as, as I went into this new
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  line of work, is that at least in this country, mental health professionals
• 7:49
  are overwhelmingly female dominated.
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  Ma men make up a minority of, of the practitioners, psychologists,
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  psychiatrists, therapists, counselors I think something like 26% of mental
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  health professionals currently are men.
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  26%.
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  And I don't know about you, but the likelihood that, that I'm
• 8:14
  gonna go in and lay out everything that's going bad in my life to a.
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  Another female is probably not attractive to a lot of men.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
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  Question.
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  What is the reason why many of these men or younger men don't even know
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  what a mental health professional is?
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  That's surprising to me because it's so much a part of the
• 8:48
  conversation on social media.
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  Social media is all about mental health, right?
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  Eric Robertson: Right.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Everyone talks about their mental health.
• 8:56
  Given that there's that exposure, how does that, how does that knowledge gap happen?
• 9:03
  Eric Robertson: Well, I think there's a couple reasons for that.
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  I think the traditionally
• 9:09
  men have been.
• 9:12
  Trained not to think of about problems that they have that might require a
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  mental health professional so they don't learn about that sort of thing.
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  I think that is changing.
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  You're right in, in social media.
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  That's a, that's a big deal.
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  And it's, it's changing somewhat, but I think that the, the messages that,
• 9:31
  that go out in social media about mental health issues and where to
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  find help for many, many years were oriented towards, towards females.
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  And as you mentioned earlier on, you know, we've had a feminism movement that's
• 9:44
  been going on for a number of years.
• 9:46
  And, and I don't have anything bad to say about that, I think in, in,
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  Rupert Isaacson: yeah, no, it's a necessary thing.
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  Sure.
• 9:51
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 9:51
  Yeah.
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  It's a necessary thing.
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  But men have been left behind and so the messages often are oriented towards women.
• 9:59
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 9:59
  Eric Robertson: Not towards men.
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  And the other thing is, is, as I'll point out a little bit later,
• 10:03
  the, the, the issues that men have.
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  Although they may be the same as the issues that women have,
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  they show up in a different way.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Can you elucidate on that a little bit?
• 10:18
  How, how do they show up differently?
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  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  The one of the things that that I think people don't recognize is that there is
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  a difference between men and women in terms of how they represent themselves
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  when mental health issues come up.
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  The, one of the one of the things that men tend to do is externalize their emotions,
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  whereas women tend to internalize those.
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  And for women that, that shows up as the, the emotional
• 10:53
  outbursts and the psychological.
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  Feelings of being extremely depressed and sad were for men.
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  It, it, it shows up in a different way.
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  Men show up the psychological psychologically, they
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  show up as irritable.
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  So, they may show a lot of anger.
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  They have a lot of emotional numbness or flatness.
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  We've all heard men, especially boys, when you ask 'em what's
• 11:22
  wrong, they'll say nothing.
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  It's fine.
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  I'm fine.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 11:26
  Eric Robertson: How are you doing?
• 11:27
  Well, I'm, I'm doing okay.
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  Or I'm, I'm angry that that's, that's what you get from men.
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  They're, they're, they tend to be withdrawn from their relationships
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  and activities when they get depressed rather than showing signs
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  of depression they, they turn that into overworking and maybe compulsive
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  productivity and inability to rest.
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  There's increased risk taking by men.
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  Okay.
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  Which you don't see in, in women.
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  ESCAP.
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  I've definitely
• 11:58
  Rupert Isaacson: been guilty of that.
• 11:59
  Yeah,
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  Eric Robertson: yeah,
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  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
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  Eric Robertson: Escapism all the, all the gaming, the porn the doom,
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  scrolling, isolation, those are all things that manifest for men in
• 12:12
  that's much different than with women.
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  Do
• 12:14
  Rupert Isaacson: you not feel that women also though, I mean, I've known
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  women who've been going through mental health struggles who've absolutely
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  been extremely irritable and who have also used those same escapist tactics
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  the exact same ones you described.
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  Eric Robertson: Right.
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  Rupert Isaacson: So what is the difference?
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  Because I, I do think one could say the same about both genders there.
• 12:39
  Eric Robertson: Well, I, I think you could, and I think that
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  with the advent of social media.
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  And artificial intelligence mm-hmm.
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  Everything that's happening to us digitally, that perhaps those
• 12:54
  behaviors are moving closer together.
• 12:56
  But generally and historically, I think that men have responded differently.
• 13:01
  And you know, I, I use depression as a good example.
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  With women, usually you get a persistent sadness or tearfulness.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 13:09
  Eric Robertson: You have excessive worry or rumination.
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  They show signs of guilt and worthlessness and self blame, fear of abandonment.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Those are not how men exhibit their depression generally.
• 13:24
  They, they generally exhibit that in a, in a different way.
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  How, how do
• 13:28
  Rupert Isaacson: they, how do men normally exhibit it, would you say?
• 13:30
  Eric Robertson: Well, they exhibit it with increased conflict with
• 13:33
  their partners and families.
• 13:34
  Okay.
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  Emotional distance or checking out difficult tolerating, perceived criticism
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  feeling misunderstood, but unable to explain why they're, they feel that way.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 13:46
  Eric Robertson: You know, they, they talk about being a burden.
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  They, they start giving away possessions.
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  When it gets to an extreme you know, they have, they manifest it
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  in physical symptoms like headaches, stomach problems, chronic pain, sleep
• 14:01
  problems, fatigue that sort of thing.
• 14:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 14:04
  Eric Robertson: Women are just, it's more externalized.
• 14:08
  And with men, women, it's more internalized.
• 14:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 14:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:12
  But you say that the suicide, figures are higher for men at this stage.
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  Yes.
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  Yeah.
• 14:19
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 14:19
  Rupert Isaacson: So that's so interesting.
• 14:20
  So, yeah.
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  'cause I, I'm just thinking if, if I was perhaps not male listening
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  to this thinking, well, hold on.
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  You know, I mean, both genders go through all this kind of thing.
• 14:30
  Okay.
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  You know, it's, we should, yes.
• 14:33
  Perhaps, you know, help men out more, but I think it's good to
• 14:37
  bring it down to a bottom line.
• 14:38
  If more men are killing themselves, then clearly we've got a problem.
• 14:47
  Are more people are more men killing themselves than they used to.
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  That's the, the next thing.
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  And do we have any statistics to back that up?
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  That you know of?
• 14:56
  Eric Robertson: I'm sure they're out there.
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  I don't know of those I've, I've kind of focused on the current, current
• 15:01
  state of men's lives right now.
• 15:04
  Uh mm-hmm.
• 15:04
  I think there's always probably been a skew towards more
• 15:08
  suicides in men than women.
• 15:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 15:12
  Eric Robertson: But that, that's something that would be interesting because it's
• 15:14
  Rupert Isaacson: so interesting.
• 15:15
  I, I know so many people who've made suicide attempts, but when I think about
• 15:21
  who they are, they're almost all female.
• 15:25
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 15:25
  Rupert Isaacson: The suicides that I know of that did it,
• 15:34
  just doing a little check here.
• 15:39
  I do think, yeah.
• 15:40
  I think most of them are men.
• 15:41
  It's true.
• 15:43
  And what's interesting too is that some of them were men who
• 15:45
  were outwardly quite successful.
• 15:47
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:47
  You know, it wasn't that they were necessarily lost boys in
• 15:50
  their mom's basement gaming.
• 15:52
  They were, they were men who one thought, well, hold on.
• 15:56
  You know, successful life ticked most of the boxes.
• 16:01
  In your therapy.
• 16:02
  So in both your family law practice and your now in your therapy practice,
• 16:07
  you must have come across many of these types of men to the fact that someone
• 16:12
  could even afford a divorced lawyer means that they've reached an economic
• 16:16
  bracket where that's even possible, right?
• 16:20
  Sure.
• 16:20
  Laws are not cheap.
• 16:22
  And then now that you are a therapist, you're kind of presumably often
• 16:29
  dealing with the same demographic.
• 16:32
  Why are successful men so messed up?
• 16:38
  Eric Robertson: I think they're a product of their own success in some respects.
• 16:42
  There's.
• 16:43
  I think one of the things you have to look at is what got them to that point?
• 16:47
  What drove them to be successful?
• 16:49
  What is it about their upbringing, their, their childhood, their life
• 16:55
  in general that pushes them and drives them towards that success?
• 16:59
  What is it that they're in their life that they're trying to fill?
• 17:03
  And oftentimes what you see is that these men
• 17:08
  succeed and they become successful, but they're not filling that hole.
• 17:15
  They're not getting what they're really looking for.
• 17:18
  Whether that's validation from, from people that are important
• 17:23
  to them or whatever it is.
• 17:26
  And is,
• 17:27
  Rupert Isaacson: is that, is that a, a thing that really comes
• 17:29
  up a lot validation from people that are important to them?
• 17:32
  Eric Robertson: Yes.
• 17:32
  Yeah.
• 17:33
  Rupert Isaacson: Talk to me about that talk that, that, that,
• 17:35
  that's not something I think we should just let go in passing.
• 17:39
  What's I express.
• 17:41
  Eric Robertson: I'm sorry,
• 17:42
  Rupert Isaacson: what?
• 17:42
  What are they expressing when they say that?
• 17:44
  And
• 17:44
  Eric Robertson: they
• 17:45
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
• 17:45
  Eric Robertson: yeah, yeah.
• 17:46
  They're, they're expressing that they're, they're doing all this
• 17:49
  and, and sometimes it's misplaced, but they're doing all this.
• 17:52
  And the people that are important to them aren't showing them the
• 17:57
  validation that they think they deserve,
• 18:00
  Rupert Isaacson: right?
• 18:01
  Eric Robertson: And oftentimes the people around them aren't doing that because this
• 18:05
  person is working 24 hours a day almost to succeed, and they are letting their
• 18:13
  significant relationships fall apart.
• 18:16
  They're not spending the time necessary to maintain those relationships
• 18:20
  or to grow those relationships.
• 18:23
  And so they interpret that when people, their spouse or their family or their
• 18:27
  friends don't spend a lot of time throwing admiration at them as a lack
• 18:33
  of validation when in fact they're probably too busy to receive it.
• 18:39
  Most of the time,
• 18:40
  Rupert Isaacson: have you suffered from any of this yourself, would you say?
• 18:44
  Eric Robertson: I think there was a time when that I had those
• 18:47
  feelings as well when I was at the height of my career as a lawyer.
• 18:51
  And you know, success is a tricky thing.
• 18:55
  You can get to the point when you're successful that you start
• 18:59
  to believe, if you'll pardon the expression, your own bullshit.
• 19:02
  And I, I think that, that that has some negative impacts on my relationship
• 19:07
  with my wife at that point, and on how I relate to my daughter.
• 19:13
  So yeah.
• 19:13
  Absolutely.
• 19:14
  Rupert Isaacson: What would you say in, in your own life, could you put
• 19:17
  a number of years on that period and at what point did you then notice?
• 19:23
  I think, and then from noticing to doing something?
• 19:25
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 19:25
  Yeah.
• 19:27
  I think that there was probably a, a period of about 10 years when I was at
• 19:32
  the height of what I would say was a successful career as a divorce lawyer.
• 19:37
  And I was more focused on maintaining that image than really spending time
• 19:44
  outside of my work environment listening to what's going on with my wife and
• 19:49
  what's going on with my daughter.
• 19:51
  And I think that that wasn't until maybe about five years ago when I started
• 19:56
  thinking seriously about making a change in careers that, that it really hit me.
• 20:03
  And I think that was one of the reasons why, why, why
• 20:04
  Rupert Isaacson: did it hit you?
• 20:05
  Like how did, how was it that you noticed?
• 20:06
  Why, why did you think Actually
• 20:09
  Eric Robertson: I had a, yeah.
• 20:10
  I had a kind of a dissatisfaction with what I was doing.
• 20:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 20:14
  Eric Robertson: As, as you know, I see clients all I well,
• 20:17
  seeing clients all day long and.
• 20:19
  Was dealing with not only my client, but the attorneys on the other side.
• 20:24
  And I, I started personalizing what was happening in my cases, which is a very
• 20:29
  dangerous thing for a lawyer to do.
• 20:31
  You know, you, I like my clients.
• 20:33
  I always like my clients, but you have to keep a distance between what
• 20:39
  you're doing for your client and your relationship with your client.
• 20:43
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
• 20:43
  Eric Robertson: And I, I started taking every every accusation that came across
• 20:48
  from the other attorney personally.
• 20:50
  Not only You hadn't
• 20:51
  Rupert Isaacson: done that before.
• 20:53
  Eric Robertson: Pardon?
• 20:53
  Rupert Isaacson: And you hadn't done that before, earlier in your
• 20:55
  Eric Robertson: career?
• 20:55
  I hadn't done that before.
• 20:56
  No.
• 20:56
  You know, for the first, why did
• 20:57
  Rupert Isaacson: it creep up on you?
• 20:59
  Eric Robertson: I don't know.
• 20:59
  For the first 15 years, it was just learning the process of being a good
• 21:04
  lawyer and going into court and doing my thing and doing it, almost wrote by
• 21:09
  memory, you just had this muscle memory of what to do in a case and how to do it.
• 21:14
  And it was not, not uncommon for me to get bad things from other attorneys about
• 21:24
  my clients, and I would just kind of sh shuffle those off and not think about it.
• 21:29
  But there was a point where I really started taking that personally, and
• 21:33
  it was almost like the accusation they're making against my client
• 21:38
  was a personal reflection of me.
• 21:43
  Rupert Isaacson: I wonder why that became that way if you could, because I, I,
• 21:50
  I should imagine that there must be a lot of men and we, we, we are talking
• 21:54
  about men at this point in middle age.
• 21:57
  And I think we should you know, after this, we should, we should
• 21:59
  begin to talk about young, the younger generation too, but just
• 22:02
  staying where we are for a moment.
• 22:03
  So the majority of your clients would've been men and middle age, or, and women.
• 22:08
  Do you think there's something in that age bracket that brought you
• 22:14
  to this point where suddenly it was personalized, suddenly you were
• 22:19
  taking it like a, a personal attack?
• 22:21
  Yeah,
• 22:22
  Eric Robertson: yeah, yeah.
• 22:23
  Well, it goes back to what I said earlier.
• 22:25
  There was, I was in this mindset that I was going to be one of the
• 22:30
  best divorce lawyers in Austin, Texas, if not the state of Texas.
• 22:35
  And I got myself involved in not only state organizations that supported that
• 22:42
  mindset, but national organizations.
• 22:44
  I mean, I got to be a member of the American Academy of Matrimonial
• 22:48
  Lawyers, which is this group of.
• 22:51
  Less than 2000 of the best family law lawyers in the United States.
• 22:57
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 22:57
  Eric Robertson: And I got to be on the, on the board for the Texas
• 23:01
  chapter of that, and the president of that and all that kind of stuff
• 23:04
  was going to my head and I'm thinking
• 23:06
  Rupert Isaacson: basis.
• 23:06
  Yeah.
• 23:07
  Eric Robertson: Gosh, I'm, I'm some level one of the best of the best.
• 23:12
  And again, you start believing that stuff and it drives your life and you, you
• 23:17
  think, okay, what's the next thing I can do to make it even better to show even
• 23:24
  more success at, at, at my chosen career?
• 23:27
  And it, it takes a hold of you.
• 23:30
  Rupert Isaacson: Do you think though that relationships are
• 23:32
  always more than one person?
• 23:34
  So do you think that also your wife and your daughter played
• 23:36
  into that to some degree?
• 23:38
  Were there expectations on you?
• 23:40
  Was love.
• 23:42
  To some degree con conditional to you showing up as this sort of,
• 23:48
  you know, millionaire provider?
• 23:50
  Or did you just perceive that it might be, or was there even some truth to that?
• 23:55
  Were you all
• 23:56
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 23:56
  Rupert Isaacson: Playing into that to some degree?
• 23:58
  Eric Robertson: No.
• 23:59
  I, I really don't.
• 24:00
  I think I was to to use a much overused term, I was caught up in
• 24:07
  my own narcissism at some level.
• 24:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 24:11
  Eric Robertson: And
• 24:12
  Rupert Isaacson: it's so interesting that you say that because I, I've
• 24:14
  known you for some years and I last, I think narcissist is, is the, is the
• 24:18
  last word I would use to describe you.
• 24:21
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 24:22
  Well I think you, you, you came along at a time when I had decided that all
• 24:28
  of that wasn't really what I wanted.
• 24:32
  And of course the other thing that really helped me was I had a good mentor.
• 24:36
  You, you've met him?
• 24:37
  Rupert Isaacson: I do know him.
• 24:38
  Yeah.
• 24:38
  Eric Robertson: And and, and he was he was always there reminding me that
• 24:44
  the, this is, this is not who you are.
• 24:47
  This is what you do.
• 24:49
  And there are other things in life that are more important
• 24:54
  than than, than being the best.
• 24:56
  Talk to us
• 24:57
  Rupert Isaacson: a little bit about Tom.
• 24:59
  Because I think, I think one of the things I'd like to go to in this is mentorship.
• 25:04
  I think mentorship is something that every human needs, like we need oxygen.
• 25:11
  And I think particularly for men, it's kind of fallen by the wayside.
• 25:16
  Talk to us about this mental,
• 25:18
  Eric Robertson: yeah.
• 25:19
  Yeah.
• 25:19
  So, when I started practicing family law, I practiced with my wife.
• 25:26
  We, she was a lawyer at the time.
• 25:27
  We practiced together for about seven years and we had an opportunity to go
• 25:32
  to work for another family lawyer in, in Austin, Texas, who had made us the offer.
• 25:37
  He was pretty well known as well, been around for a number of years and said,
• 25:41
  look, you guys come to work for me.
• 25:43
  I got all these cases coming in, you work 'em, and I'll take a percentage of it.
• 25:48
  And I had just tried a case against Tom in a court just up the road.
• 25:55
  And he, he kicked my butt pretty well.
• 25:59
  And so to her credit, my wife said, you know, before we even think about this
• 26:03
  offer from this other attorney, why don't you ask Tom about that and ask him about
• 26:09
  this guy, and if this is somebody that we want to essentially join forces with.
• 26:14
  And so I did.
• 26:15
  And he, he, you know, as gracious as he is, he, he came
• 26:19
  and picked me up at my office.
• 26:22
  When I called him and took me to lunch and I asked questions about this other
• 26:26
  lawyer, and he answered 'em honestly.
• 26:28
  And then he drove me back.
• 26:29
  And when he dropped me off, he said before you respond to this lawyer I want
• 26:35
  you to think about it for, for 48 hours.
• 26:38
  Don't rush in there and pick up the phone and say yes or no or whatever.
• 26:42
  Just think about it.
• 26:43
  And I did.
• 26:44
  And less than 24 hours later, he called me back and said I wanna offer you
• 26:49
  a job to come over and work with me.
• 26:51
  And, and my other partner at that time, he had one other partner and Tom Practice
• 26:57
  law with that partner and his daughter.
• 27:00
  And so, you know, I, I talked to my wife about that and we decided
• 27:04
  that's what I wanted to do.
• 27:06
  And it was because he was an incredible gentleman.
• 27:14
  The way he dealt with people including people on the other side of cases.
• 27:18
  I tried a case against him that, that one, I, I mentioned it was very contentious.
• 27:23
  I had a very bad client and he was incredibly gracious to
• 27:28
  me through that whole process.
• 27:30
  He was able to make the distinction between my terrible client and the
• 27:35
  lawyer who was representing him.
• 27:38
  And that, you know, when I came over and, and, and started working
• 27:42
  with him it was, it was just like stepping into another world.
• 27:48
  It, everything didn't have to be adversarial.
• 27:51
  He mentored me on how to deal with difficult attorneys on the other side,
• 27:55
  how to deal with difficult clients, how to deal with difficult judges.
• 28:00
  And that was probably the reason I rose to the level I did in the family
• 28:06
  law practice because of his mentoring.
• 28:10
  Rupert Isaacson: I think specifically what you're, you're talking about
• 28:12
  here is conflict resolution, right?
• 28:15
  Right.
• 28:15
  And we're so used to thinking of particularly divorces as
• 28:18
  defacto conflict escalations.
• 28:22
  Couple of questions.
• 28:23
  First question, what makes a terrible client?
• 28:26
  You said, I had a terrible client.
• 28:28
  Is a terrible client, someone who, who's going in wanting conflict?
• 28:33
  Is, is, is And that is, is that kind of what makes a terrible client?
• 28:39
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 28:40
  Well, let me tell you what, for me, made a terrible client early on in
• 28:46
  my career and how that's changed.
• 28:48
  A terrible client.
• 28:51
  Early on for me was one that was not open to taking advice that
• 28:56
  did things that just the opposite of how I advised them to do 'em.
• 29:02
  That created bad facts all along the way, including during their divorce.
• 29:08
  They would continue to behave poorly during the divorce, even though you'd sit
• 29:12
  down and explain to 'em that this isn't gonna come out very well if you continue
• 29:16
  doing the kind of behavior you're doing.
• 29:18
  Usually the a bad client's just one that doesn't listen.
• 29:21
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay?
• 29:23
  But that's still, that has to come from, like, you then have to ask the question,
• 29:29
  why, why doesn't that person listen?
• 29:30
  Right?
• 29:31
  If they've hired you, they're, they're spending all this money on you.
• 29:34
  They know deep down that you're trying to act in their best interest,
• 29:37
  Eric Robertson: right?
• 29:38
  Rupert Isaacson: So therefore, if they're not following your advice
• 29:41
  on a kind of pathological level, not perhaps on an impulsive.
• 29:45
  Angry in that moment, passionate, you know, expression of pain thing.
• 29:51
  But consistently then surely, does that not mean that what
• 29:58
  they're after is conflict?
• 30:01
  Eric Robertson: It could.
• 30:02
  It could.
• 30:02
  Okay.
• 30:03
  Yeah.
• 30:03
  And it, you know, there's, I, I recently wrote a, an article about why revenge
• 30:09
  wasn't a good strategy for a divorce.
• 30:12
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
• 30:12
  Eric Robertson: And
• 30:13
  Rupert Isaacson: why isn't it?
• 30:14
  Tell us.
• 30:15
  Eric Robertson: Well, it's, it's because it never comes out the
• 30:17
  way you think it's gonna come out.
• 30:18
  You're never gonna get it, number one.
• 30:20
  And secondly, at the end of the day, you're gonna pour all these resources
• 30:24
  into trying to get that revenge.
• 30:27
  You're not gonna get it, and you're gonna look back at what you did and
• 30:31
  feel incredibly stupid for doing it.
• 30:34
  And so, but those clients are out there.
• 30:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 30:38
  Eric Robertson: And the the choice is you can continue representing those
• 30:43
  clients and continue to give them good advice and continue to try to get them
• 30:48
  to focus on resolving their case rather than going war to see what happens or
• 30:54
  you can terminate your relationship with them and, and let them move on to
• 30:59
  somebody else who will have you done that?
• 31:01
  Take their money, take their money, and do do what they want 'em to do.
• 31:04
  Oh, yeah.
• 31:05
  The, you know, one of the things that my mentor told me early on was,
• 31:10
  firing a client is never a bad thing.
• 31:13
  If you get to the point where you can't communicate with that client
• 31:17
  effectively, and they won't do what's in their best interest that's not only
• 31:22
  good for them, it's good for you that they, that they move on somewhere else.
• 31:29
  Rupert Isaacson: I dunno if it's Confucius or if it's just an old Chinese
• 31:32
  proverb, but it, it's the one that says.
• 31:35
  When you begin a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
• 31:39
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 31:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 31:40
  And cycles of feud are so interesting because the, as you know, I've spent some
• 31:48
  years living with koan, bushman, hunter gatherer peoples in Southern Africa.
• 31:53
  So I've been lucky enough to see what the blueprint of human society is.
• 31:59
  These are the oldest societies on the planet.
• 32:02
  They predate agriculture, they predate ownership of things
• 32:07
  other than a few personal items.
• 32:10
  And they are a very good advertisement for our species
• 32:15
  because they, the entire culture is based around conflict resolution.
• 32:19
  And it really comes to a very practical thing, which is that if you are living
• 32:26
  out there in Africa with a spear.
• 32:29
  And your family.
• 32:31
  You are not the top of the food chain.
• 32:33
  You are mid-level.
• 32:35
  And the only thing that will put you on the top of the food chain
• 32:39
  is a community with whom you can communicate and strategize.
• 32:44
  So if conflict within the community and it will happen, gets beyond a certain
• 32:50
  point and the community fragments, then every single person will be eaten by
• 32:54
  hyenas without a shadow of a doubt.
• 32:57
  So over about 300,000 years, which seems to be about as old as this
• 33:03
  culture is, and we all from other ethnic groups share DNA, an old common
• 33:10
  DNA with this group of people, that goes back to a female actually living
• 33:13
  in what's now Botswana 60,000 years ago, which is still relatively recent
• 33:18
  by the, the standards of this culture.
• 33:21
  About every 10 days they have a shamanic ceremony.
• 33:26
  Where it's kind of like the psychic dirty laundry of the, of the
• 33:30
  group gets a chance to be washed.
• 33:32
  So that conflict just doesn't get beyond a certain point.
• 33:37
  And they're really good at this.
• 33:39
  And this is the entire focus as soon as agriculture came in, everything
• 33:44
  when the exact opposite direction.
• 33:47
  So I think a lot of us feel were, were sold a bill of goods growing
• 33:54
  up that about human nature.
• 33:56
  And we were all told that human nature is, is grasping and selfish and I want mine.
• 34:03
  And look at the conquest of the American West and look at England's
• 34:08
  colonial past and look at Rome and you know, it's all there in front of you.
• 34:14
  And while those things.
• 34:16
  True.
• 34:16
  They're not the whole truth.
• 34:18
  And I do think that everybody deep down actually wants to resolve conflict.
• 34:23
  Everybody deep down knows that it goes nowhere.
• 34:27
  Yeah.
• 34:27
  But they just can't get off that bandwagon.
• 34:30
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 34:31
  Rupert Isaacson: And when you were a lawyer, I guess you were trying to
• 34:36
  advise people to not climb onto that bandwagon, not burn the house down.
• 34:41
  I've, I've heard you say it's a great term, like resolve this
• 34:45
  without destroying everything.
• 34:48
  But now you've moved into the therapy sphere, presumably people are coming
• 34:54
  to you specifically for conflict resolution, or do you see the same cycles
• 34:59
  repeated where people are coming in and they're wanting affirmation from you
• 35:04
  for conflicts that they're involved in?
• 35:06
  And they're sort of wanting validation in that.
• 35:09
  What, what's, how's your experience with this?
• 35:12
  Eric Robertson: Well, yeah, a, a little, a little bit of both.
• 35:15
  People still come in initially with with ideas of what they want.
• 35:21
  You know, the therapist's role isn't to tell people what
• 35:25
  to do to make things better.
• 35:28
  The therapist's role in mind, dammit.
• 35:29
  I
• 35:30
  Rupert Isaacson: was hoping you were gonna do that today.
• 35:32
  Eric Robertson: The therapist's role is to try to get people to understand who
• 35:36
  they are and how they can resolve and come up with the strategy strategies to
• 35:42
  resolve their own mental health issues.
• 35:45
  So, you know, yeah, I, I do work with people going through divorces and.
• 35:52
  They're, they're, they're mad and angry.
• 35:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:55
  And they, they don't like what's happening to 'em.
• 35:57
  They don't like what, what they're gonna have to give up
• 35:59
  to try to settle their case.
• 36:02
  And, and we talk about that, but what we're talking about in the therapy context
• 36:06
  is a little bit different than what, what I used to talk about in the divorce
• 36:10
  lawyer context, in therapy context.
• 36:12
  We're talking about those emotions.
• 36:14
  I'm, I'm validating those emotions and letting them know
• 36:18
  that it's okay to feel that way.
• 36:20
  And trying to get them to understand that they have choices.
• 36:26
  They can continue to be that way or they can move into some other a mother arena.
• 36:31
  They're not, that's similar to some of the things that I did as a divorce lawyer, but
• 36:36
  from a divorce lawyer standpoint I was a little bit freer to say things like you
• 36:41
  know, I don't think you want to do that.
• 36:43
  And here's why.
• 36:45
  If you do that, the other side's gonna do this, and you're
• 36:49
  gonna get really pissed off.
• 36:52
  And if we, if we get to the courthouse and we have to have a trial in front of a
• 36:56
  judge, they're gonna be really pissed off.
• 36:59
  And you're going to feel the brunt of that, and you're gonna come out
• 37:03
  on the losing end of that stick.
• 37:05
  So don't do it in a
• 37:08
  Rupert Isaacson: Now that's really helpful.
• 37:09
  Is that not by its definition, conflict resolution, right there?
• 37:13
  Eric Robertson: It, it is, it's part of what what I would put in
• 37:18
  the umbrella of conflict resolution.
• 37:20
  But from a therapeutic standpoint, that's not what a therapist would do.
• 37:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 37:28
  Do you
• 37:28
  Eric Robertson: know now again, some of the other things, some of
• 37:30
  the other stuff I did that I do is, as we've talked about, is divorce.
• 37:33
  Divorce coaching.
• 37:35
  Okay.
• 37:35
  Which is which is helping people when they're in the midst of the divorce
• 37:40
  to provide them support as they're going through the divorce and to
• 37:44
  try to get them regulated if they're dysregulated emotionally, so that they
• 37:49
  can make good decisions and so that they can listen to what their divorce
• 37:54
  lawyer is telling them and follow their divorce lawyer's, legal advice.
• 37:59
  See that that's, that's the, the difference between being a divorce
• 38:03
  coach and being a lawyer is the lawyer gives legal advice and gives
• 38:07
  you a legal strategy and does all these things that the law requires.
• 38:12
  As a divorce coach, I'm, I'm there to kind of support them and
• 38:16
  help them understand that this person that you've, you're paying.
• 38:21
  Large amounts of money to, to help you through this divorce is
• 38:26
  giving you, for the most part good advice, and we need to understand
• 38:32
  why you're reluctant to take it.
• 38:34
  What is it that's keeping you from doing what your divorce
• 38:38
  lawyer is telling you to do?
• 38:40
  And, you know, I'm, I'm not really a therapist in that role.
• 38:44
  Yeah.
• 38:44
  A hundred percent, but I'm not, it's a
• 38:47
  Rupert Isaacson: great hybrid role.
• 38:48
  I think it's a really, it's a really needed one because I think
• 38:50
  you can, you can really help people to not destroy their families.
• 38:56
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 38:57
  Rupert Isaacson: And themselves.
• 38:58
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• 39:03
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• 39:10
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• 39:12
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• 39:25
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• 39:27
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• 39:32
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• 39:35
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• 39:36
  And she told me what to do.
• 39:38
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• 39:43
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• 39:47
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• 39:51
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• 39:56
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• 40:01
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• 40:04
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• 40:07
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• 40:10
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• 40:14
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• 40:17
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• 40:37
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• 40:38
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• 40:43
  live their best life, to live free, ride free, see what happens.
• 40:47
  What are your strategies do you have like a, a go-to, like do, I presume
• 40:53
  you must see patterns in clients like personality type one, personality
• 40:59
  type two, personality type three.
• 41:00
  Just over the years, these things must have, there's always
• 41:05
  patterns, you know, to everything.
• 41:07
  And then do you have.
• 41:10
  Strategy patterns.
• 41:11
  And I'm just thinking if someone who's watching this and listening
• 41:13
  to it, they might recognize themselves in one of those.
• 41:18
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 41:18
  Rupert Isaacson: And might be able to draw some really useful insights from that.
• 41:23
  And now as they're listening to, and, and then just before we go
• 41:27
  there to these patterns and how you approach them, is the divorce coaching
• 41:32
  thing quite a recent phenomenon?
• 41:34
  Because it's not something I've heard of before, but it does
• 41:37
  sound something very useful.
• 41:38
  Eric Robertson: Yeah, it, it's a, it's fairly recent phenomenon, I'd say
• 41:42
  within the last five to eight years.
• 41:45
  There's, there's not a lot of people out there that do divorce coaching.
• 41:50
  There are there are some unfortunately there's a lot of people that.
• 41:54
  Got into divorce coaching after they went through a bad divorce themselves,
• 41:59
  which is probably not the person you need to, you need to choose to do that.
• 42:04
  There are also hybrid therapies that kind of work along with
• 42:11
  things like divorce coaching.
• 42:12
  There's a a concept called divorce discernment counseling.
• 42:17
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 42:17
  Eric Robertson: Where couples who are having difficulty, who aren't wanting
• 42:21
  to go into marriage counseling, go into divorce, discernment counseling for a,
• 42:26
  a number of sessions, a finite number of sessions to determine whether or
• 42:31
  not they want to get a divorce or not.
• 42:34
  And I think at, when you talk about conflict resolution, that's
• 42:38
  one of the, the first places a lot of people might think to start
• 42:44
  in terms of divorce coaching.
• 42:47
  I don't know that I have any set strategies.
• 42:50
  I mean, obviously, as you know, every case is, is different.
• 42:53
  Every person that comes in the office is different, presents, different issues.
• 42:57
  My my mode of working with people is the first session we'll spend
• 43:02
  an hour to an hour and a half talking about their divorce.
• 43:07
  Normally they're already in the divorce, and what got 'em there what
• 43:12
  the issues are in their divorce what, what the the struggles are that they're
• 43:18
  going through in the legal process.
• 43:21
  And then we address each of those in the, in the subsequent sessions.
• 43:27
  And o oftentimes the first session is somebody coming in and just.
• 43:33
  Laying out every bad thing that's happened to him in the process leading
• 43:38
  up to the divorce and during the divorce, and how awful the other side is.
• 43:43
  And this is what I want to have happen.
• 43:46
  And then we have to talk about, well, what kind of advice are
• 43:49
  you getting from your attorney?
• 43:51
  Are you following that advice?
• 43:52
  Why not if you're not?
• 43:54
  And one of the things I've found over the years practicing law as a divorce
• 44:00
  lawyer was every client that came into the room, had five or six shadow
• 44:05
  advisors that were feeding stuff to them about what they ought to do and
• 44:10
  what they shouldn't do in their divorce.
• 44:12
  And so when that comes into the room in a divorce coaching
• 44:15
  situation, we have to unpack that and we have to talk about that.
• 44:19
  Who's giving you advice?
• 44:21
  Where did you get that?
• 44:21
  Who told you that?
• 44:23
  Why do you think that's important for you to do?
• 44:26
  And and then we have to really examine that in the context of what is best
• 44:33
  for you as you go through your divorce.
• 44:36
  Do you really think that you ought to be listening to your sister or to your best
• 44:41
  friend give you advice about your divorce?
• 44:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 44:45
  Eric Robertson: And, and, and most of the time people come around to the
• 44:47
  idea that, well, as, as I was fond of saying when I was a lawyer, you know,
• 44:52
  you're paying me $600 an hour for my advice and you're not taking it.
• 44:56
  Is, is that really a smart thing to do?
• 45:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 45:02
  I've got a question for you which I just wrote down here.
• 45:05
  So why is, is counterintuitive, why is someone who went through a bad divorce
• 45:12
  perhaps not a good divorce coach?
• 45:15
  Because let's say you're in aa, you would want your sponsor
• 45:19
  to be an alcoholic, right?
• 45:20
  Yeah.
• 45:21
  Yeah.
• 45:21
  So if they don't, if they haven't gone through it, what resources
• 45:26
  have they got really to offer you?
• 45:28
  Eric Robertson: Yeah, I just wrote an article about that, that was
• 45:31
  posted on a somebody's LinkedIn and I'm happy to share it with you, to
• 45:35
  share with your, your listeners.
• 45:38
  But
• 45:40
  I'm not saying you can never hire somebody that's been through a divorce
• 45:44
  to be your divorce coach, but what I'm saying is you need to be careful
• 45:49
  people that go through a bad divorce.
• 45:52
  Come into the process with a bias, they're already pissed off at the
• 45:57
  process or pissed off at their ex-spouse.
• 46:00
  They're mad and angry sometimes at, at their attorney or the judge.
• 46:05
  And so they come in with their own agenda and a lot of times they're
• 46:11
  projecting their own stuff onto your case, and the advice you're gonna
• 46:16
  get may not be the advice that you need from somebody that doesn't
• 46:21
  have that kind of emotional baggage.
• 46:24
  So you need to be very careful when you choose a divorce coach.
• 46:29
  And if somebody says.
• 46:31
  On their website or in their materials that they've been through a divorce, you
• 46:35
  need to ask them some strong questions about, well, how did that go for you?
• 46:40
  You know, ideally you'd, if you hire somebody like that, you'd find somebody
• 46:44
  that went through a, some sort of a collaborative process where they had very
• 46:48
  little conflict and they resolve things amiably and, and they're just there to
• 46:54
  help other people learn those techniques and go through the divorce The same way.
• 47:00
  You don't want somebody that the first thing they tell you after you
• 47:04
  ask them about their divorce was, well, my spouse was a real no good
• 47:09
  SOB, and I got taken to the cleaners and the judge gave her everything.
• 47:15
  And that's, that's the in no sure that,
• 47:18
  Rupert Isaacson: that, that I could see, but I could see someone
• 47:20
  of real value saying, well, no, I had a terrible divorce.
• 47:23
  You know, and but.
• 47:25
  During this, I tried to make it as un, you know, as un terrible as possible and tried
• 47:31
  to listen to my lawyer in this way and tried to resolve the conflict, you know?
• 47:37
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 47:37
  Rupert Isaacson: As we best we could and got did the best we
• 47:41
  could with the situation, you know, that would reassure me, you know,
• 47:45
  Eric Robertson: or somebody that recognizes that I went through a
• 47:47
  bad divorce and I behaved poorly.
• 47:50
  Right.
• 47:51
  And I didn't follow my lawyer's advice and I came out of it
• 47:54
  badly, but it was my own thought.
• 47:56
  You'll do what I did.
• 47:57
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 47:58
  No, that would make sense.
• 48:00
  So, okay, let's, let's go back to the, to the, your therapy hat.
• 48:04
  I think men from our generation, it's, it's pretty clear, you
• 48:09
  know, what the issues are.
• 48:11
  We were brought up brutalized I.
• 48:15
  I know, you know, I went to a certain type of military school in the UK where
• 48:21
  physical violence and assault was daily.
• 48:25
  And, but from every level, from the teachers, from the other boys, from
• 48:30
  the older boys to the younger boys from, and it was all encouraged.
• 48:33
  And it was, you know, actively the culture because it was supposed to make you tough.
• 48:42
  And what it did was it created all sorts of dysfunctions naturally,
• 48:47
  but its purpose was clear.
• 48:50
  It was supposed to be preparing boys to go out and run the British
• 48:54
  empire, even though the British Empire didn't actually exist anymore.
• 48:58
  And although you could argue it became a bank.
• 49:01
  But, and a lot of my friends went into the armed forces or into banking and.
• 49:07
  The point was that it was gonna produce an officer class of young men who would go
• 49:14
  out and like run a portion of the Sudan, possibly die at the age of 32 of malaria
• 49:19
  or killed in a tribal conflict, and sort of be able to do that with a kind of a
• 49:25
  confidence and a belief in themselves and a, a certain willingness to die.
• 49:32
  And we were told, we're gonna break you down to build you up.
• 49:36
  And, and they certainly did break us down and what we were re
• 49:45
  composited as was a motley collection of stuff.
• 49:49
  But I think that the stuff facing younger men today, and I'm the father
• 49:56
  of a 25-year-old, it's different.
• 49:59
  It's about an, as you said earlier in the conversation about
• 50:02
  anxiety, it's about loneliness.
• 50:03
  It's about isolation.
• 50:05
  And I think this is something I'd ask the readers and the, the, the, the
• 50:10
  viewers and the listeners to consider.
• 50:12
  If you are, are you, do you know, are you this parent or do you know someone
• 50:16
  who is this parent that you, they have perhaps two girls and a boy of young
• 50:21
  adult age and of the two girls, one is at college, one is beginning her
• 50:26
  career doing quite well, and the boy who's a young adult is in the basement
• 50:30
  and won't get off the computer game.
• 50:33
  Is this, is this a familiar scenario?
• 50:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 50:36
  I would posit that quite a few hands would go up.
• 50:40
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 50:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Give us your thoughts on this.
• 50:44
  Eric Robertson: Well, I have a, I have a couple thoughts on that.
• 50:46
  Number one, I, I don't think that.
• 50:49
  What you've explained about your growing up and to some extent the
• 50:55
  way I grew up in, in, in the United States is is completely gone.
• 51:00
  Yet I think that there's still this, these traditional norms of masculinity
• 51:05
  that we teach boys early on and you know, things like strength and
• 51:11
  equal self-reliance and we need to be in control with our emotions.
• 51:16
  We frame vulner vulnerability as often as weakness or, or dependency or, or mm-hmm.
• 51:22
  Some sort of failure, which it isn't.
• 51:25
  And so I, I don't think that those things are all gone.
• 51:29
  Rupert Isaacson: A hundred
• 51:29
  Eric Robertson: percent I do.
• 51:30
  Yeah.
• 51:30
  I do agree that there, there's this new thing that's come in that's, that's
• 51:35
  allowed boys to try to escape from.
• 51:40
  The world the, the video game stuff and, and social media and,
• 51:44
  and everybody's got a cell phone.
• 51:46
  And of course the, the kind of bullying that goes on, on social media
• 51:52
  with with kids is, is horrendous.
• 51:54
  And I think that, that, that drives a lot of young men into, into
• 51:58
  the basement with a video game.
• 51:59
  That's, that's where they can get away.
• 52:01
  They can get on these action games online and present whatever they think
• 52:08
  their view of masculine masculinity ought to be in that context.
• 52:13
  And they're, they're doing that on their own.
• 52:15
  There's no, you know, even though you might be in one of these games
• 52:18
  where you're engaged with other people online, there's no emotional
• 52:24
  connection with those people.
• 52:26
  There's no friendship.
• 52:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 52:28
  It's, it, you're not out there.
• 52:30
  With your best buddy talking about how bad things are at home or what,
• 52:36
  what's going on at, at school or
• 52:39
  Rupert Isaacson: sharing a goofy laugh.
• 52:40
  Yeah.
• 52:40
  Eric Robertson: Or sharing a goofy laugh with somebody
• 52:42
  that's, that's not happening.
• 52:44
  And I think you know, I think that that's problematic and I think, you
• 52:48
  know, for us to turn that around, I think the most important step for parents,
• 52:54
  and, and I would put this out to your listeners, is to start early developing
• 53:00
  some sort of an emotional literacy.
• 53:03
  With with your boys.
• 53:05
  This means helping them name emotions other than it's fine, or I'm mad,
• 53:10
  or I'm tired, and, and doing so, and doing so without shaming them.
• 53:14
  That's, that's the other part.
• 53:16
  Adults should model that emotional language and normalize all the emotions
• 53:21
  that that, that your kids your boys especially carry and not try to assign
• 53:29
  that as being some sort of a weakness.
• 53:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 53:34
  Yeah.
• 53:34
  Okay.
• 53:35
  Eric Robertson: One of the phrases I like is focus with boys especially
• 53:38
  focus on connection before correction, when, when they act out.
• 53:44
  Okay?
• 53:45
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 53:45
  Eric Robertson: Because I think in, in my.
• 53:48
  My growing up, you know, if I did something wrong as a kid, I got the belt.
• 53:52
  Okay.
• 53:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 53:53
  Eric Robertson: That, that, that dates me a little bit, but that, that fits in with
• 53:56
  the violence that, that you talked about.
• 53:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 53:59
  Eric Robertson: And when they act out, there's a natural tendency
• 54:02
  to want to scream and shout and, and correct the behavior.
• 54:06
  But we need to understand what's going on first, and that's
• 54:10
  where the connection comes in.
• 54:13
  Rupert Isaacson: You talked about mentorship.
• 54:15
  I think, I know, I observe that weirdly, this is getting harder
• 54:22
  and harder to find, it seems.
• 54:25
  And because we've had a feminist movement, I'm wondering if it's easier
• 54:31
  for females to find female to female mentoring, particularly intergenerational.
• 54:39
  The elders, you know,
• 54:44
  why, why don't we have that for boys?
• 54:47
  Is it because men are working too hard?
• 54:50
  They're too checked out.
• 54:51
  They're not available.
• 54:53
  They're not there.
• 54:55
  Why is it?
• 54:58
  Eric Robertson: I think that's part of it.
• 54:59
  I think men of childbearing age now are, are real involved with their
• 55:05
  careers and with other things and not necessarily available to mentor.
• 55:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Because it seems to me there's been a double standard,
• 55:14
  which is that, I mean, we, humans are great at double standards and I've
• 55:18
  produced many double standards myself.
• 55:20
  But the double standard is, is that as a male, now you're supposed
• 55:26
  to be available vulnerable.
• 55:28
  Communicative, compassionate.
• 55:31
  And absolutely, you know, equal rec, you know, work an equal
• 55:37
  thing between the genders and on.
• 55:39
  However, at the same time, you're actually still supposed to be the red
• 55:42
  winner and you're judged if you're not by females as much as by other men.
• 55:49
  And
• 55:50
  Eric Robertson: it's funny you should say that, that I, that is something
• 55:52
  I experienced as a divorce lawyer.
• 55:54
  So we're all familiar with this in the United States with the
• 55:59
  concept of the stay at home mom.
• 56:02
  She's a mom that stays at home.
• 56:04
  She takes care of the household, she raises the kids, she does
• 56:07
  everything in the household,
• 56:08
  Rupert Isaacson: and we honor that.
• 56:09
  Yeah.
• 56:09
  Yeah.
• 56:10
  Eric Robertson: And we want her there.
• 56:11
  And I'll throw this out to feminism, and she's not appreciated as
• 56:15
  much as she ought to be, perhaps.
• 56:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
• 56:18
  Eric Robertson: But.
• 56:19
  Every once in a while I would get a case where those roles were reversed
• 56:25
  and the female was the high wage earner and they had made an agreement
• 56:34
  that the male would stay home and be the house husband and raise the kids.
• 56:39
  And the, the, the funny thing that happened with that is in the context of
• 56:44
  the divorce, that female acted just like men act in, in the reverse situation.
• 56:52
  They took on the same traits as men.
• 56:55
  They resented the fact that this person stayed at home and didn't do anything even
• 56:59
  though they were at home doing things.
• 57:02
  They resented the fact that they had gone out and earned all this money
• 57:05
  and now we're having to split it with this person who stayed at home.
• 57:09
  And even though they made that agreement seven years into it, when.
• 57:16
  That she didn't like it anymore the female would have the same complaints
• 57:21
  that men had in the same situation.
• 57:25
  So what, what that told me was in those circumstances, there really isn't much
• 57:31
  of a, of a difference in how men and women respond in those circumstances.
• 57:37
  Although societally, I think there has been it's, they're more open to it now.
• 57:43
  There was a tendency to think that men that were staying at home doing that kind
• 57:48
  of stuff were kind of freeloading and not really living up to their potential.
• 57:54
  And, and of course I, like I said, I think that's changing.
• 57:56
  But it, it was, it always interest me that there was really, when you're in the
• 58:01
  thick of the conflict, the same things you hear from men, you'd hear from women,
• 58:06
  Rupert Isaacson: right.
• 58:06
  And, and.
• 58:07
  That's a good insight that it's, it's more a human thing than a gender thing.
• 58:11
  But that also, I think the gender roles that, and expectations that
• 58:16
  we're all brought up with can backfire I think to some degree on males
• 58:21
  because yes, you are still expected to behave in that stoic manner.
• 58:29
  You're still supposed to be more the strong, silent type you're still
• 58:34
  supposed to go out and earn and provide.
• 58:39
  And one of the difficulties about that is that, and that's why I asked you
• 58:42
  questions earlier in this conversation about whether there had been some of
• 58:46
  those expectations on you because, or whether they, they'd been projections.
• 58:51
  Because I think the reality is that for a lot of.
• 58:55
  Meant those expectations are still there.
• 58:58
  And what that does is it means that they can't actually be that available to their
• 59:02
  kids because the time that it takes and the energy that it takes to be that sort
• 59:09
  of stoic breadwinner, unfortunately, does take time away from where they
• 59:15
  could be vol, you know, a available
• 59:17
  Eric Robertson: mm-hmm.
• 59:18
  Rupert Isaacson: To their spouses and children.
• 59:21
  How does one resolve this?
• 59:25
  Eric Robertson: It comes down to making a choice about what's important to you.
• 59:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 59:30
  Eric Robertson: You know what?
• 59:31
  You have to examine your own values in terms of having a family and having
• 59:36
  children, and having boys and what you're willing to do to make sure that you
• 59:42
  raise the best possible young man you can with the best possible emotional health.
• 59:48
  That you can, you can instill in them.
• 59:51
  Mm-hmm.
• 59:51
  And you know, that's a different thing 'cause we're you know, I like
• 59:54
  to think of, of, as you put it, how man has developed over history.
• 1:00:01
  And we've moved from what you described with the bushman
• 1:00:05
  to an agrarian to society.
• 1:00:08
  And now I'm gonna get a lot of flack for say in this, but now we're a society,
• 1:00:14
  a world society driven by greed.
• 1:00:18
  Okay?
• 1:00:18
  That's the focus.
• 1:00:19
  The focus of life is making as much money and accumulating
• 1:00:24
  as much stuff as possible.
• 1:00:27
  Now, there's always exceptions to that and there's a lot of people out
• 1:00:29
  there that don't live that kinda life.
• 1:00:31
  But if, if you look at the news in the United States, that's
• 1:00:35
  what you see all the time.
• 1:00:36
  That's a measure of success.
• 1:00:38
  And as we talked about earlier, the way to get to that success is to work as
• 1:00:44
  hard as you can, as much as you can.
• 1:00:46
  And you know, there's 24 hours in a day if you assume that you're asleep for
• 1:00:51
  eight of it, you don't have a lot left.
• 1:00:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Exactly.
• 1:00:54
  Eric Robertson: To work and then to devote to to mentorship of
• 1:00:58
  your, of your children or, or other people's children for that matter.
• 1:01:03
  And so that, that's, I think that's the, that's the problem.
• 1:01:07
  I don't think there's an easy way to turn that around if you're
• 1:01:10
  not willing to make the choice.
• 1:01:12
  Now, one of the other things that I think is really interesting is,
• 1:01:16
  and, and I'm sure you know this, but fewer and fewer people are getting
• 1:01:19
  married today and having kids.
• 1:01:21
  In many countries, including the United States, the birth rate is down.
• 1:01:25
  And if you talk to people that are living together, or even some
• 1:01:29
  that do get married, they have no interest in having children.
• 1:01:32
  And that, that's a whole different issue.
• 1:01:35
  But I think we would, you know, five years from now, 10 years from now,
• 1:01:40
  we'll be having a completely different conversation about this because we'll
• 1:01:45
  have screwed up this generation and there may not be another generation.
• 1:01:50
  Rupert Isaacson: What conversation will we be having?
• 1:01:52
  Eric Robertson: I think we'll be having a conversation about why people don't
• 1:01:58
  want to procreate, why they don't want to have a, a son or a daughter,
• 1:02:03
  why they don't want to have children.
• 1:02:05
  What is, what is it?
• 1:02:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Why, why do you think it is?
• 1:02:07
  Why do you think people don't?
• 1:02:08
  Eric Robertson: Well, I think I'll go back to the greed thing.
• 1:02:11
  I think a lot of it has to do with, in, in Austin, Texas.
• 1:02:15
  I will tell you, a lot of it has to do with, it's so expensive to live here.
• 1:02:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm mm
• 1:02:19
  Eric Robertson: And that the idea that I can barely afford to live with this
• 1:02:25
  partner that I have, let alone bring another person into the world and
• 1:02:31
  have to cover the expenses of that.
• 1:02:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:33
  For a lot of people is is really daunting.
• 1:02:35
  Plus, I think that some of the things we've talked about, about how young
• 1:02:40
  people, young men in particular are pulling away from connection with other
• 1:02:49
  people is going to lead to some of that.
• 1:02:51
  You know, as I was going through the the, my last master's degree
• 1:02:57
  program, I did an internship at the University of Texas seeing college kids.
• 1:03:03
  And I gotta tell you, it was, a little bit depressing what comes into the
• 1:03:08
  room with college kids these days?
• 1:03:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Tell me
• 1:03:11
  Eric Robertson: they have difficulty again, these, all these same things.
• 1:03:14
  They have difficulty making connection.
• 1:03:16
  Even those that want it, don't know how to go out there and do it.
• 1:03:20
  And how to, how to connect with other people, how to find other people.
• 1:03:24
  There is probably twice as many women on college campuses now than men.
• 1:03:29
  And so the, the, the dating pool for men may be big, but if you, if you do the, the
• 1:03:38
  math on it there's, there's not a, there's not a, a girl for every boy on campus.
• 1:03:43
  And so there's, there's a lot of things that, and, and even in, in college
• 1:03:50
  after COVID when people were all kind of taken away from having any community
• 1:03:56
  Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm.
• 1:03:57
  Eric Robertson: To being online a lot of those people started.
• 1:04:01
  In high school and then transitioned into college during that period of
• 1:04:05
  time, they completely lost out the learning curve that they would've
• 1:04:10
  gained if they were going to school every day and out there in public.
• 1:04:14
  And
• 1:04:14
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah, that, that learning, the, you know, it's
• 1:04:17
  interesting 'cause I went to an all boys school for a long time, and I
• 1:04:21
  remember when I came out of that I was, I didn't go the full trajectory to 18.
• 1:04:26
  I got, I came out at 16 and went transitioned to a, an early college where
• 1:04:33
  there were girls and I didn't know how to talk to this alien species because I
• 1:04:40
  just had not been exposed to them at all.
• 1:04:42
  Yeah.
• 1:04:42
  It resolved itself over, over time, but it wasn't disrupted by something like COVID.
• 1:04:50
  I think that the, yeah, the inability to actually physically
• 1:04:54
  meet and talk to each other.
• 1:04:57
  Meant something rather cataclysmic for the our generation.
• 1:05:05
  And it seems though that it's not that girls haven't come out of
• 1:05:08
  it with that, with mental health problems, but it does seem that the
• 1:05:11
  boys seem to be more impacted by it.
• 1:05:14
  And I wonder why that is.
• 1:05:16
  Is it because young males need biologically seem to, need
• 1:05:25
  biologically to go out and sort of have these adventures together,
• 1:05:30
  these physical adventures together?
• 1:05:32
  Some people do it through sport and like heavy contact sports or some people do it
• 1:05:36
  right going hunting or some people do it through, you know, we're all skateboarding
• 1:05:40
  at the park and some people do it through this and some people do it through that.
• 1:05:46
  . I think that young men in particular need risk.
• 1:05:51
  They need risk, like they need oxygen.
• 1:05:54
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:05:54
  Because again, having lived with hunters and gatherers, what one
• 1:05:58
  observes is that hunting and gathering roles are not completely gender.
• 1:06:05
  Assigned, but they're largely gender assigned, just purely by convenience
• 1:06:09
  in that, let's say you have a baby at hip, you're not going to, or
• 1:06:14
  you're pregnant, you're not going to run down an antelope at that point.
• 1:06:18
  You might do it as a young girl before you got pregnant.
• 1:06:23
  But gender.
• 1:06:24
  And then of course when you go out gathering for wild foods, which ends
• 1:06:28
  up being a predominantly female thing, it doesn't mean you're never hunting.
• 1:06:32
  And interestingly, you know, as a male, you're, you are also gathering as you
• 1:06:36
  hunt and noticing where wild foods are and you're gonna report that back.
• 1:06:40
  And so, so there, there is crossover.
• 1:06:42
  However there, there are a certain amount of gender roles and young men
• 1:06:49
  know that they're going to have to face.
• 1:06:53
  Animals to hunt that will hunt them back.
• 1:06:56
  That's the crucial thing.
• 1:06:57
  So I've observed this when you go and you hunt some, it's not lions, you're
• 1:07:01
  not hunting lions, but you might have to go chase lions off a kill.
• 1:07:04
  Eric Robertson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:07:05
  Rupert Isaacson: And the lion will have something to say about that.
• 1:07:08
  And you will encounter an antelope like hems book or bush buck, that there
• 1:07:16
  are these particular types of antelope that are known that when they, once
• 1:07:22
  they figure out that you are hunting them, they'll turn around and hunt you
• 1:07:24
  back and they've got a pretty strong likelihood of getting it and you need to
• 1:07:31
  know how to dive, lean into that risk,
• 1:07:37
  et cetera.
• 1:07:38
  So it seems that over however many hundreds of thousands of years
• 1:07:42
  young boys have need risk taking.
• 1:07:46
  And it's interesting that you were talking at the.
• 1:07:48
  Early part of this conversation about elevated risk taking as
• 1:07:52
  a as a mental health deficit.
• 1:07:58
  But one thing I know is that risk taking is necessary as well, but it's
• 1:08:05
  supposed to be done under mentorship.
• 1:08:08
  You're supposed to go out with the older hunters, just as you go out with the older
• 1:08:13
  gatherers and say, no, not that mushroom, but that mushroom, that mushroom,
• 1:08:16
  there's gonna kill the entire family.
• 1:08:18
  That even though it looks similar to that mushroom there, you, you need that one.
• 1:08:21
  Similarly with the hunting, you don't just blindly go in and take these
• 1:08:25
  risks, but there will be a point where you will have to do it solo.
• 1:08:30
  And so you're gonna get there gradually.
• 1:08:34
  And this involves, of course, tribe.
• 1:08:35
  This involves community.
• 1:08:36
  This involves actual people showing you what to do and actual
• 1:08:42
  risk in a natural environment.
• 1:08:45
  So the boys at the skate park who are risking breaking their
• 1:08:49
  legs as they're skating down, you know, the courthouse steps mm-hmm.
• 1:08:53
  Are fulfilling a biological need and they shouldn't be chased off.
• 1:08:58
  Eric Robertson: Right.
• 1:08:58
  Rupert Isaacson: They're actually doing it quite creatively 'cause
• 1:09:00
  they're harming no one but themselves.
• 1:09:02
  It's why young men also go out and get into fights.
• 1:09:05
  It's, it's all of this stuff and it doesn't need to be antisocial, but
• 1:09:11
  whether you think it should be there or shouldn't be there, it's there.
• 1:09:15
  Yeah.
• 1:09:15
  And that's why the video games present as they do and all of that.
• 1:09:19
  So in the absence of that what, how do you help people?
• 1:09:23
  So for example, in my work, you know, so much of what I do is
• 1:09:27
  reconnecting people with nature.
• 1:09:29
  Eric Robertson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:09:30
  Rupert Isaacson: And saying before we have any discussion over
• 1:09:36
  your endocrine system, which is producing the moods that you've got.
• 1:09:42
  We need to be in an environment that's working for us, not against us.
• 1:09:45
  And I remember this when I was going through talk therapy and
• 1:09:49
  it wasn't really working for me.
• 1:09:51
  I remember asking the therapist, I can see the woods outside.
• 1:09:57
  Eric Robertson: Yeah,
• 1:09:58
  Rupert Isaacson: I know something about neuroscience.
• 1:10:00
  Please, can we not be in this?
• 1:10:03
  I'm sitting here, you're sitting there.
• 1:10:05
  Thing where I'm feeling, I'm itching to get out of my skin and
• 1:10:09
  I'm feeling a bit shamed anyway.
• 1:10:10
  And can we not go out there and walk under the trees?
• 1:10:14
  It will go better if we do.
• 1:10:16
  Eric Robertson: Sure.
• 1:10:16
  Rupert Isaacson: And I couldn't get this guy to do it.
• 1:10:18
  And finally I said, I'll pay you double.
• 1:10:22
  I'll pay you, I'll pay you for the, an extra hour for the 10 minutes
• 1:10:25
  it takes us to walk out there.
• 1:10:26
  And the 10 minutes walk back.
• 1:10:28
  And where I think he was uncomfortable with it is, I think it actually affected
• 1:10:32
  the power balance that he rather liked that this can happen in therapy.
• 1:10:36
  That, that the therapist has a certain power and.
• 1:10:41
  It became a little bit more collegial.
• 1:10:46
  So I couldn't really persuade him to keep going, but I probably, I know I got
• 1:10:49
  more out of the few sessions I managed to
• 1:10:52
  Eric Robertson: Sure.
• 1:10:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Bully him to go outside.
• 1:10:54
  If you made it this far into the podcast, then I'm guessing you're somebody
• 1:10:59
  that, like me, loves to read books about not just how people have achieved
• 1:11:04
  self actualization, but particularly about the relationship with nature.
• 1:11:10
  Spirituality, life, the universe, and everything.
• 1:11:14
  And I'd like to draw your attention to my books.
• 1:11:17
  If you would like to read the story of how we even arrived here, perhaps
• 1:11:22
  you'd like to check out the two New York Times bestsellers, The Horseboy
• 1:11:27
  and The Long Ride Home, and come on an adventure with us and see what engendered,
• 1:11:32
  what started Live Free Ride Free.
• 1:11:34
  And before we go back to the podcast, also check out The Healing
• 1:11:38
  Land, which tells the story of.
• 1:11:41
  My years spent in the Kalahari with the Sun, Bushmen, hunter gatherer people
• 1:11:46
  there, and all that they taught me, and mentored me in, and all that I learned.
• 1:11:51
  Come on that adventure with me.
• 1:11:52
  So talk to me about this because you know, you, you know as well as I do that Yes.
• 1:12:00
  Males kind of need this.
• 1:12:02
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:12:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Don't get it.
• 1:12:05
  It then turns weird.
• 1:12:07
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:12:08
  Rupert Isaacson: You are now in a therapy situation.
• 1:12:09
  What do you do?
• 1:12:10
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:12:10
  Yeah.
• 1:12:11
  Well, let me, let me start by saying this because I, I
• 1:12:15
  agree with what you're saying.
• 1:12:16
  I think that we need to provide male affirming spaces where boys
• 1:12:23
  and men can talk while doing
• 1:12:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:12:27
  Eric Robertson: And, and I, I, I think that in a, in a traditional therapy
• 1:12:31
  practice, that that is often hard to do.
• 1:12:33
  I mean, if you're lucky enough to have an office that's next to a a nature preserve
• 1:12:38
  or a hiking trail or something like that I think, I think that's, that's great.
• 1:12:43
  And I think that I'm, you know, as an attorney, there was definitely
• 1:12:49
  a hierarchy and a balance of power between the attorney and the client.
• 1:12:55
  And when I left that and got into therapy, I got into therapy with the mindset
• 1:13:01
  that I'm, I'm doing away with that.
• 1:13:04
  There's no longer gonna be a balance of power.
• 1:13:06
  It's just me and this person who's come to me with particular
• 1:13:10
  issue that wants to work on that.
• 1:13:12
  And I don't, I don't know more, any more about that issue that
• 1:13:17
  he's struggling with than he does.
• 1:13:20
  So I need to be in the room and present and acknowledge that that
• 1:13:27
  we're, we're on this journey together.
• 1:13:30
  You know, there, there's.
• 1:13:31
  Without going into all of the, the different modalities that, that
• 1:13:36
  I, I was taught in school or that I've picked up after getting outta
• 1:13:40
  school that I, I practice with you know, I, I like to use skill-based
• 1:13:45
  therapies where there's some engagement with the other, with the client.
• 1:13:49
  I've always thought I have an interest in, in weightlifting, and I always
• 1:13:53
  thought I, I would love to have my own gym
• 1:13:56
  Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm.
• 1:13:57
  Eric Robertson: And have a therapy for men that, like that kind of thing.
• 1:14:02
  Because I think that's, again, that's what you're talking about.
• 1:14:04
  You're, you're engaged.
• 1:14:05
  Yeah.
• 1:14:05
  Rupert Isaacson: Why not do that?
• 1:14:06
  Why not do that?
• 1:14:07
  Yeah,
• 1:14:07
  Eric Robertson: yeah.
• 1:14:07
  Yeah.
• 1:14:08
  Rupert Isaacson: I know, for example, you're also a boxer.
• 1:14:10
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:14:10
  Why
• 1:14:10
  Rupert Isaacson: not?
• 1:14:11
  Why not introduce that into a therapy session?
• 1:14:14
  Eric Robertson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:15
  Well, for me right now, the, the problem is just having the facilities to do that.
• 1:14:20
  Now again, that, that, that's a, that's something.
• 1:14:24
  That I, I think would be great, and I'd like to do that and, and perhaps at
• 1:14:28
  some point would be able to do that, but I, I think it is, I important that you
• 1:14:33
  explore those things with the client.
• 1:14:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:14:36
  You know, that, that's parting to getting to know the client in the very beginning
• 1:14:39
  is what is this client all about?
• 1:14:41
  What do, what do they enjoy?
• 1:14:43
  What do they like to do?
• 1:14:44
  Unfortunately, therapists see a lot of clients that are just so
• 1:14:49
  disengaged with the world that they don't know what their interests are.
• 1:14:54
  And so a lot of what we do is try to explore that.
• 1:14:57
  What are your values?
• 1:14:59
  What are your goals in life?
• 1:15:01
  Where do you want to be in five years?
• 1:15:03
  And to get some idea of who that person is.
• 1:15:06
  But I, I, I hear what you're saying and I think it is important, and I would never,
• 1:15:11
  Rupert Isaacson: there's, there's been, there's been some interesting
• 1:15:12
  science come out of it lately.
• 1:15:14
  You know, as you know, I do a lot of work with equine.
• 1:15:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:15:17
  A recent study got published which is to do with domestic violence and perpetrators
• 1:15:21
  of domestic violence, by the way.
• 1:15:23
  Both male and female.
• 1:15:25
  And
• 1:15:28
  the results showed that after a five week intervention, it was once a week, I think.
• 1:15:36
  This is through the University of Bournemouth in the uk.
• 1:15:38
  There was a 51% decrease in re-offending.
• 1:15:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:15:47
  A year after finishing that short intervention.
• 1:15:53
  And that most of the people who had attended that equine thing had
• 1:15:59
  dropped outta talk therapy because they just didn't want to do it.
• 1:16:03
  And what they found was that not only did the horses provide all
• 1:16:08
  these interesting metaphors and.
• 1:16:11
  There was nature going on, but that the relationship that the people formed with
• 1:16:18
  the horse made them want to come back.
• 1:16:22
  But they couldn't really empathize with the therapist.
• 1:16:24
  So the therapist could get out of the way and they could form
• 1:16:27
  a relationship with horse.
• 1:16:28
  They actually wanted to come back and spend time with this horse.
• 1:16:31
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:16:31
  Rupert Isaacson: And so therefore they finished the program.
• 1:16:35
  'Cause as you know, a lot of people in programs drop out and I wonder about this.
• 1:16:40
  You know, we had recently here on the farm where I'm living, a
• 1:16:44
  friend of mine brought her son who was not coming out of the room.
• 1:16:49
  And we were lucky.
• 1:16:51
  We had three weeks.
• 1:16:53
  And I said, just bring him, because the way of life here, I think
• 1:16:56
  will begin to sort it out because there's no heating in this house.
• 1:17:03
  And if you want to be warm and it's winter, now you have to cut wood.
• 1:17:08
  And you have to make a fire.
• 1:17:10
  It, there is just no alternative.
• 1:17:12
  There are no radiators.
• 1:17:14
  It's a 500 year old house and it has never had heating.
• 1:17:17
  Mm-hmm And to get the wood, we have to go up on the mountain and we have
• 1:17:21
  to cut it and we are not doing it in a kind of a depressed, oh shit,
• 1:17:26
  this is terrible sort of a way.
• 1:17:28
  Right.
• 1:17:28
  We're having a bit of a laugh while we do it, but if we
• 1:17:31
  don't do it, we won't get warm.
• 1:17:34
  And that's before you look at the other things that we do on the farm
• 1:17:37
  that there is just this bottom line.
• 1:17:39
  And it was very interesting.
• 1:17:43
  We left him alone a bit at first and then he came out of the room saying, I'm bored.
• 1:17:50
  And we said, great.
• 1:17:51
  Let's go do something then.
• 1:17:54
  Or you can go back to your room if you want.
• 1:17:56
  We went force.
• 1:17:56
  Be
• 1:17:56
  Eric Robertson: bored.
• 1:17:57
  Yeah.
• 1:17:57
  I
• 1:17:57
  Rupert Isaacson: don't want to go back to the room 'cause I'm cold.
• 1:17:59
  Fantastic.
• 1:18:00
  I have a solution.
• 1:18:02
  We were just about to go up the mountain to get some wood.
• 1:18:05
  I don't really want to do that.
• 1:18:07
  Okay, fine.
• 1:18:07
  No worries.
• 1:18:08
  You don't need to do that.
• 1:18:09
  We'll go up there and we'll bring some down, but we'll see you in an hour.
• 1:18:13
  So of course that happened.
• 1:18:14
  And then the next time he came up the mountain, and then before you know
• 1:18:17
  it, he was up there chopping wood.
• 1:18:20
  And what was interesting is that when he went home he then became more
• 1:18:24
  and more engaged in what was going on and then went out and exploring.
• 1:18:28
  He's now gone back to his suburban context where he doesn't have those resources
• 1:18:35
  available to him outside the front door.
• 1:18:37
  So he said to his mom, oh, but don't worry if I fall back in, I, I'll always go back.
• 1:18:41
  I can go back to that farm and reset.
• 1:18:44
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:18:45
  Rupert Isaacson: So what I'm wondering is, because you know
• 1:18:48
  the value of these things.
• 1:18:50
  Yeah.
• 1:18:51
  And you now have this new career in front of you.
• 1:18:54
  Are you looking at partnering with nature-based things and
• 1:18:57
  equine things and that sort of thing and sports-based things?
• 1:19:00
  Eric Robertson: Sure, sure.
• 1:19:01
  And
• 1:19:01
  Rupert Isaacson: and
• 1:19:01
  Eric Robertson: yeah, to the extent, to the extent those are out there,
• 1:19:04
  and I can find those, I think those are something that I would like
• 1:19:07
  to integrate into my practice.
• 1:19:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:19:09
  Eric Robertson: You know, I think programs that combine mental health
• 1:19:13
  support and mentoring and coaching and vocational identity and other
• 1:19:18
  activities are very important for men.
• 1:19:22
  I think they, they, they have a very good chance of, of higher engagement.
• 1:19:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:19:29
  With men especially.
• 1:19:31
  And obviously as I go forward and, and build a practice with that
• 1:19:37
  focus, that's gonna be important to look out there for, for that.
• 1:19:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:19:42
  The, the kids that were coming to you in the.
• 1:19:45
  That internship that you did at the university?
• 1:19:49
  Eric Robertson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:19:49
  Rupert Isaacson: How many of them had gone, had parents
• 1:19:51
  who'd gone through bad divorces?
• 1:19:54
  Eric Robertson: There were several.
• 1:19:55
  There were several.
• 1:19:56
  Yeah.
• 1:19:56
  I, I couldn't say it was a majority, but there were several.
• 1:20:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Did you notice a pattern there?
• 1:20:01
  Were there patterns of certain types of behavior or emotional
• 1:20:05
  state that you could say
• 1:20:07
  Eric Robertson: Yeah,
• 1:20:08
  Rupert Isaacson: that,
• 1:20:08
  Eric Robertson: yeah.
• 1:20:08
  Not, not that we're significantly different from those whose
• 1:20:12
  parents were still married.
• 1:20:14
  Okay.
• 1:20:14
  Now, again, I don't know you know, you're, when you deal with young
• 1:20:20
  people, it is sometimes difficult to get them to give you all of the
• 1:20:26
  information that you would like to have.
• 1:20:29
  So I don't know how many of those people whose parents were still together.
• 1:20:34
  Or could describe their parents' relationship as being a good one, right?
• 1:20:37
  Or not?
• 1:20:38
  Yeah.
• 1:20:39
  You can ask those questions and a lot of time they say things
• 1:20:42
  like, yeah, they're, they're fine.
• 1:20:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:20:44
  Eric Robertson: That, that doesn't give me a lot to work with.
• 1:20:46
  But that's just the nature of
• 1:20:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:20:49
  Eric Robertson: Dealing with somebody who's frontal
• 1:20:51
  cortex isn't fully developed.
• 1:20:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:20:54
  Eric Robertson: And that, that's,
• 1:20:55
  Rupert Isaacson: talk to us about that actually, because not
• 1:20:56
  everybody knows that neuroscience.
• 1:20:58
  So, talk to us about the development of the frontal cortex versus the
• 1:21:02
  limbic system and why this matters.
• 1:21:04
  Yeah.
• 1:21:04
  Eric Robertson: Well, the, the frontal cortex doesn't fully
• 1:21:06
  develop in humans until they're in their mid to late twenties.
• 1:21:12
  Rupert Isaacson: And what does the frontal cortex do?
• 1:21:14
  Eric Robertson: The con that, that is the higher level of thought.
• 1:21:18
  That's where your higher level of thought comes from.
• 1:21:20
  And your rational thought comes from
• 1:21:23
  Rupert Isaacson: figuring shit out,
• 1:21:24
  Eric Robertson: figuring shit out.
• 1:21:25
  The limbic system is that part that, what I call the reptilian brain that is
• 1:21:31
  involved in the fight or flight, right?
• 1:21:33
  When you're faced with something terrible, you either shut down you,
• 1:21:37
  you explode and fight, or you run off.
• 1:21:40
  So the, for young people, they're not operating on all cylinders, so to
• 1:21:47
  speak when, when they're faced with a crisis and they're not able to to
• 1:21:52
  really think through rationally what their options are and how, how they're
• 1:21:56
  gonna solve the, whatever the issue is.
• 1:21:58
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:22:00
  Rupert Isaacson: No, absolutely.
• 1:22:01
  And this is obviously something in our work, we look at all the time that yeah,
• 1:22:05
  it's a little bit like in adolescence.
• 1:22:07
  Your nose gets a bit big and then another part of you gets a bit big
• 1:22:10
  and then the rest catches up and it's exactly the same in the brain.
• 1:22:14
  And when the limbic system is ahead of the CEO of the brain, the, the frontal cortex.
• 1:22:23
  Things get funky and people get overactive and self-absorbed.
• 1:22:28
  And then we are hard on young people for this, but actually it's
• 1:22:31
  exactly how nature has designed it.
• 1:22:34
  They have no more choice in the matter, right, than a toddler does.
• 1:22:38
  Right.
• 1:22:38
  She's going through actually a similar type of thing, and as you
• 1:22:40
  say, it doesn't resolve itself until the mid late twenties.
• 1:22:44
  So that thing of figuring shit out and handling your shit, emotional
• 1:22:47
  regulation, you can't do that actually when your limbic system
• 1:22:52
  is in, is overtaken in the race.
• 1:22:56
  But now some people seem to stay there though.
• 1:23:00
  You know, one, one meets quite a lot of 56 year olds who are still mentally and
• 1:23:05
  emotionally where they were at 12 to 15.
• 1:23:09
  What do you think is going on there?
• 1:23:13
  Because you see those clients, those are the clients that are
• 1:23:16
  not listening to you as a lawyer.
• 1:23:18
  Yeah.
• 1:23:19
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:23:19
  You know, it, it's really,
• 1:23:23
  I don't know that I can say that the development hasn't happened so much
• 1:23:27
  as sometimes the Olympic system just kind of overwhelms the court, the, the
• 1:23:34
  frontal cortex and, and they just, they get so overwhelmed with what's going on
• 1:23:39
  around them that it kind of goes offline.
• 1:23:43
  Rupert Isaacson: What is your strategy for helping them get it back online?
• 1:23:49
  Eric Robertson: Well, we do a lot of emotional regulation.
• 1:23:52
  We, you know, a lot of times people come into the office and
• 1:23:55
  they're just so dysregulated.
• 1:23:57
  We have to do some breathing exercises to begin with, or we have, I have some
• 1:24:00
  other exercises that that I, I use to help some tapping, self-tapping apps
• 1:24:07
  exercises, which are that come out of the EMDR area that help people tell us about
• 1:24:14
  Rupert Isaacson: tapping.
• 1:24:15
  Why does tapping work?
• 1:24:16
  Eric Robertson: Bilateral tapping allows people to, not really sure
• 1:24:21
  how it works, but it allows people to to regulate their emotions in the
• 1:24:26
  moment and to bring themself back to a more state of stasis and calm.
• 1:24:34
  And it, it's worked.
• 1:24:35
  It's worked for a lot of my clients
• 1:24:37
  Rupert Isaacson: and it's a guided process.
• 1:24:38
  Right.
• 1:24:39
  Eric Robertson: And it's a guided process.
• 1:24:40
  Yeah.
• 1:24:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:24:41
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:24:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Just take a two, a minute or two, guide me
• 1:24:45
  through one, take me through a
• 1:24:46
  Eric Robertson: time.
• 1:24:46
  Okay.
• 1:24:47
  Well, I actually happen to have one right here that I use with the client.
• 1:24:54
  This morning.
• 1:24:56
  And
• 1:24:57
  so we start with identifying whatever the issue is that is causing the distress.
• 1:25:04
  And we bring, we name it, you name that in the room.
• 1:25:07
  I'm having s severe anxiety because I failed a test.
• 1:25:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:25:11
  Eric Robertson: And then you rate the intensity of your
• 1:25:15
  anxiety on a one to 10 scale.
• 1:25:18
  And then with the tapping, you can just start by one easy one is just
• 1:25:23
  tapping the top of your head and repeating a little mantra that it,
• 1:25:30
  even though I deeply, or even though I feel or think or have anxiety over
• 1:25:38
  this test, I deeply and completely love, forgive, and accept myself.
• 1:25:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Even though I'm having anxiety over this test, I deeply
• 1:25:49
  love, forgive and appreciate myself.
• 1:25:52
  Eric Robertson: Yes, and then you move down to your temples
• 1:25:56
  and repeat the same thing.
• 1:25:58
  Even though I feel or think or have anxiety over this test,
• 1:26:03
  Rupert Isaacson: even though I think or feel or have anxiety over this test,
• 1:26:07
  Eric Robertson: I deeply and completely love, forgive, and accept says self.
• 1:26:12
  Rupert Isaacson: I deeply and completely love.
• 1:26:14
  Forgive and accept myself.
• 1:26:17
  Eric Robertson: Move to your forehead.
• 1:26:18
  Same thing.
• 1:26:20
  Even though I feel thank or have anxiety over this test,
• 1:26:25
  Rupert Isaacson: even though I think, feel or have anxiety over this test,
• 1:26:29
  Eric Robertson: I deeply and completely love, forgive, and accept myself.
• 1:26:34
  Rupert Isaacson: I deeply and completely love, forgive and accept myself.
• 1:26:40
  Eric Robertson: Then we move down to right under your eyes and you do the same thing.
• 1:26:46
  Even though, even though I feel, think, or have anxiety over this test, I
• 1:26:52
  Rupert Isaacson: feel, think or have anxiety over this test,
• 1:26:54
  Eric Robertson: I deeply and completely love, forgive and accept myself
• 1:26:59
  Rupert Isaacson: I deeply and completely love, forgive and accept myself
• 1:27:05
  Eric Robertson: then right under your nose.
• 1:27:09
  Even though I feel, think, or have anxiety over this test,
• 1:27:14
  Rupert Isaacson: even though I think, feel or have anxiety over this test,
• 1:27:18
  Eric Robertson: I deeply and completely love, forgive, and accept myself
• 1:27:22
  Rupert Isaacson: I deeply and completely love, forgive and accept myself
• 1:27:27
  Eric Robertson: and then under your mouth, on your chin.
• 1:27:30
  Even though I feel, think, or have anxiety over this test,
• 1:27:36
  Rupert Isaacson: people have anxiety over this test.
• 1:27:37
  Eric Robertson: I deeply and completely love, forgive and accept myself.
• 1:27:41
  Rupert Isaacson: I deeply and completely love, forgive and accept myself.
• 1:27:49
  Eric Robertson: And if the person isn't fully regulated,
• 1:27:52
  we'll go through that again.
• 1:27:54
  Rupert Isaacson: It does feel better.
• 1:27:56
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:28:00
  Rupert Isaacson: I would argue that there's yeah, a creation of endorphins
• 1:28:02
  there and what's called BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor creating of
• 1:28:10
  new neurons, novel movement, new pathways.
• 1:28:14
  But I can definitely feel a difference.
• 1:28:16
  And you know, I've, I do know people that do this, but I haven't actually
• 1:28:19
  done one of those for a while.
• 1:28:21
  And I have done them in times of high anxiety and they really do work.
• 1:28:25
  Do you find that men resist this stuff, or,
• 1:28:28
  Eric Robertson: yes.
• 1:28:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:28:29
  Okay.
• 1:28:29
  Yeah.
• 1:28:29
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:28:30
  You gotta get past that touchy feely.
• 1:28:34
  Kind of mentality.
• 1:28:35
  How'd you get
• 1:28:35
  Rupert Isaacson: past it?
• 1:28:36
  Eric Robertson: Well, a lot of times I say, Hey, I do this, I do this.
• 1:28:43
  I used to do this before I'd go to trial.
• 1:28:45
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:28:45
  Eric Robertson: I'd be so overwhelmed with anxiety going into the
• 1:28:48
  courtroom that I would find a space someplace and I would do that.
• 1:28:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Did you get overwhelmed with anxiety going into the courtroom?
• 1:28:56
  Eric Robertson: I did.
• 1:28:57
  I did.
• 1:28:57
  Yeah.
• 1:28:57
  I, I would tell I, same thing.
• 1:29:00
  I would tell my clients, I would tell any lawyer, any young lawyer,
• 1:29:03
  if you don't get nervous or if you're not nervous when we're walking into
• 1:29:08
  the courtroom, I'm really concerned.
• 1:29:12
  Okay.
• 1:29:13
  That's, that's an instance where anxiety.
• 1:29:17
  Is probably helpful.
• 1:29:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:29:20
  Eric Robertson: Now you don't wanna be so anxi anxious that
• 1:29:23
  you can't answer a question.
• 1:29:25
  Or you can't as a lawyer, you can't ask a question.
• 1:29:27
  But I would do that to relax myself before I would start a trial.
• 1:29:31
  Rupert Isaacson: This actually could be quite healthy to people listening.
• 1:29:33
  What is healthy anxiety?
• 1:29:36
  We're generally told that anxiety is unhealthy.
• 1:29:39
  What is healthy?
• 1:29:40
  Anxiety?
• 1:29:40
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:29:41
  I, I don't believe that all anxiety is unhealthy.
• 1:29:43
  An look we evolved with anxiety.
• 1:29:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:29:49
  And anxiety serves a purpose.
• 1:29:51
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:29:51
  Eric Robertson: Using your metaphor of hunter gatherers out on the,
• 1:29:59
  on the field.
• 1:30:01
  If you're anxious, you're hyper aware of what's going on around you.
• 1:30:06
  And there's a protective aspect to that.
• 1:30:09
  If, if you're in a bad situation and you're anxious and there's,
• 1:30:13
  you're, you're hyper aware of what's happening, if you are faced with an
• 1:30:17
  emergency, you're not gonna get stuck in some fight, flight or freeze mode.
• 1:30:23
  You're gonna be able to think about how I'm gonna get out of that.
• 1:30:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:30:28
  So yeah, healthy, healthy anxiety allows strategizing,
• 1:30:31
  Eric Robertson: right?
• 1:30:32
  Rupert Isaacson: But if you have unhealthy anxiety, something like this, emdr,
• 1:30:36
  Eric Robertson: it overwhelms you.
• 1:30:36
  It overwhelms you, and you can't think, and you can't
• 1:30:39
  figure out what you need to do.
• 1:30:42
  Rupert Isaacson: It is interesting.
• 1:30:43
  I was going through a really anxious period and I know someone
• 1:30:49
  who does EMDR and I said, hit me.
• 1:30:52
  Let's see if this works.
• 1:30:53
  Which was a slightly different, you, you know, it's a slightly different
• 1:30:56
  one where you are doing bilateral stuff with your eyes and, and, it
• 1:31:01
  took my anxiety about this particular thing from a 10 to a two in about
• 1:31:09
  10 minutes.
• 1:31:11
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:31:11
  Rupert Isaacson: And I was quite shocked at the simplicity of it actually.
• 1:31:15
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:31:15
  Rupert Isaacson: And reassured,
• 1:31:19
  I know that you need to wrap this up shortly, that you actually, it's the
• 1:31:23
  middle of your working day and you have a client that you need to go and see.
• 1:31:26
  Do you have any closing advice for men, young or old or fathers or, and
• 1:31:35
  people, men going through conflict, whether it's internal or external?
• 1:31:39
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:31:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Leave us with your elder advice.
• 1:31:47
  What to do.
• 1:31:48
  Eric Robertson: What
• 1:31:48
  Rupert Isaacson: to do.
• 1:31:48
  Well,
• 1:31:49
  Eric Robertson: I would say this when we look at the things that actually help men.
• 1:31:55
  There are things like learning how to normalize emotions without
• 1:32:00
  forcing verbal vulnerability.
• 1:32:03
  That's, that's difficult for a lot of men.
• 1:32:05
  Rupert Isaacson: How does one tread that line though?
• 1:32:07
  Because how do you not become emotionally vulnerable when you
• 1:32:11
  Eric Robertson: Well, that they may at some point, but when you're working
• 1:32:15
  with men, your role is just to normalize whatever emotions they're feeling.
• 1:32:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:32:21
  Eric Robertson: And with, without trying to force them into, I see
• 1:32:24
  vulnerable position focus on function goals and relief rather than feelings
• 1:32:32
  talk initially when you're with them, as you, as you pointed out, sometimes
• 1:32:37
  talk therapy just doesn't work.
• 1:32:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:32:39
  And it's interesting too, I think as a bloke, I definitely like to be focused
• 1:32:43
  on solutions and strategizing solutions.
• 1:32:46
  Eric Robertson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:48
  Allow parallel processing.
• 1:32:50
  This is the talking while doing.
• 1:32:53
  That we talked about.
• 1:32:54
  I think that's real important.
• 1:32:56
  Reduce the shame by validating effort.
• 1:32:59
  Not the weakness, by not talking about the weakness, but
• 1:33:03
  validating somebody's effort.
• 1:33:05
  And gosh, you showed up today.
• 1:33:08
  I'm, I'm really glad to see you good thing, that sort of thing.
• 1:33:13
  And then frame help as skill building, not ne necessarily pathology.
• 1:33:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:33:21
  Eric Robertson: You're here to learn how to cope.
• 1:33:24
  I want to help you.
• 1:33:25
  I want to give you the skills that you can use to help you cope with that, with
• 1:33:32
  this situation, rather than saying, well, you're, you're depressed and we need to
• 1:33:36
  figure out how to treat the depression.
• 1:33:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay?
• 1:33:43
  Yeah.
• 1:33:44
  All of those resonate with me.
• 1:33:45
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:33:46
  Men don't need less empathy.
• 1:33:49
  They often need empathy delivered differently.
• 1:33:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
• 1:33:56
  Yeah.
• 1:33:57
  I guess we're all a bit autistic.
• 1:33:59
  Yeah.
• 1:33:59
  We learn differently.
• 1:34:00
  It's so true.
• 1:34:02
  And because even though Yeah, psychotherapy, that whole field started
• 1:34:07
  with men, Freud young, as you say, it's become a largely female dominated
• 1:34:13
  field and perhaps the approaches need to be modified for our gender.
• 1:34:20
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:34:21
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:34:22
  So work in progress.
• 1:34:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
• 1:34:25
  Well, I look forward to seeing how it develops.
• 1:34:30
  Eric, thank you posted so much.
• 1:34:31
  This has been
• 1:34:32
  Eric Robertson: You bet,
• 1:34:33
  Rupert Isaacson: extremely insightful.
• 1:34:34
  Eric Robertson: Thank you for having me.
• 1:34:36
  Rupert Isaacson: My pleasure.
• 1:34:37
  I shall see you in Austin, Texas.
• 1:34:39
  Eric Robertson: I'll see you in April and Austin.
• 1:34:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Now, before you go, just the plugs.
• 1:34:43
  How do people contact you?
• 1:34:44
  How do they find you?
• 1:34:45
  Eric Robertson: Www.robertsonct.com.
• 1:34:51
  It's my website.
• 1:34:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Robertson ct.com?
• 1:34:54
  Eric Robertson: Yes, as in Robertson Counseling and therapy.
• 1:34:57
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:34:58
  And if people want to reach out for you for, as a client, but also for
• 1:35:02
  mentorship, all of that stuff, do you offer trainings of any kind?
• 1:35:05
  Do you offer workshops?
• 1:35:07
  Eric Robertson: I don't, but I'm actually with encouragement from
• 1:35:11
  somebody that I've been talking with over the last couple of months thinking
• 1:35:15
  about writing a book on divorce, coaching oriented both towards clients
• 1:35:20
  and towards people that wanna do it.
• 1:35:24
  Rupert Isaacson: I would encourage you to write that book.
• 1:35:26
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:35:28
  I would,
• 1:35:31
  I would also encourage you to, to create some workshops and retreats around this,
• 1:35:35
  Eric Robertson: yeah,
• 1:35:35
  Rupert Isaacson: I think there's a, a massive need and I think that
• 1:35:38
  the outcomes for families and the kids involved in all of that could
• 1:35:44
  be very positively impacted by
• 1:35:47
  Eric Robertson: Yeah.
• 1:35:47
  Rupert Isaacson: What you're doing.
• 1:35:49
  So thank
• 1:35:50
  Eric Robertson: you.
• 1:35:50
  Well, perhaps I'll start a podcast.
• 1:35:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Hey, great idea.
• 1:35:55
  Get it
• 1:35:55
  Eric Robertson: out.
• 1:35:55
  Alright.
• 1:35:56
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, my friend.
• 1:35:58
  Eric Robertson: Thank you,
• 1:35:58
  Rupert Isaacson: Ruper.
• 1:35:58
  I'll see you soon.
• 1:35:59
  Bye-Bye.
• 1:35:59
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• 1:36:00
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