Nuanced. - 80. Kylie Bartel: Overcoming Financial Stress, Anxiety, Depression and Addiction

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

Aaron and Kylie Bartel sit down to discuss anxiety, depression, addiction and other mental health challenges. They go on to discuss meaning, purpose, flow states and other positive mind sets. Near the end Kylie talks about animal therapy, and how horses play a role in her counselling practice. Kylie is a counselling therapist and rider mindset coach from Chilliwack, BC Canada.  Kylie is an avid horseback rider and wilderness enthusiast so she specializes in integrating horses and outdoor activities into counselling therapy and coaching.Kylie also works with horseback riders to navigate pressure, stress, performance anxiety, tension, lack of motivation, trouble with focus, and relational communication. By helping riders understand themselves more, Kylie empowers riders to connect more deeply with their horses and reach for their highest goals.  Kylie has worked intensively with seasoned horsemen and enjoys blending performance sport psychology with relational horsemanship. Whether it’s asking the tough questions, building skills, or swinging up into the saddle, Kylie believes that generally speaking, it’s better outside.Visit Kylie Bartel's Website: https://www.kyliebartel.com/Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/EcfMp8AaLeUSend us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

So my name is Kylie Bartel. I am a registered clinical counselor and Canadian certified counselor. So the registered clinical counselor designation is for BC specifically. It's an association that once you have your master's degree, whether it's in social work or counseling psych, or there's a couple different ways you can qualify, you apply, and you become, you have to kind of check off a certain amount of credentials to make sure that you have the adequate training to call yourself a clinical counselor. and then you can say RCC on the end of your name, so those are what those letters mean. And then the Canadian certified counselor designation, the CCC at the end of the name, it's a Canada-wide designation. It's a similar process. So from the Canadian Counseling Psychology, or no, sorry, Canadian Counseling and Psychotherapy Association, the CCPA, you apply with them again if you have

a graduate degree in a related study. And then it's just basically a way of helping the public know the difference between someone who has gone through formal training to be a counselor and someone who might just be more of a life coach or on a different level. There's lots of different services out there that can be really beneficial for folks. But specifically in BC, the term counselor isn't regulated. So someone could, theoretically, just put up their little shingle on their lawn and say, hey, I'm a counselor. And they're allowed to do that because it's not a regulated profession in BC in some other provinces it is. But just, yeah, to let people know why those letters come in. And So I'm a clinical counselor, but I'm also a horsewoman and a horse enthusiast.

So I've spent a fair bit of time trying to learn more about horse training and relational horsemanship and then blend therapy and horse work together. So that's probably the main focus that I would say, like, who I am, what I do. I'm a therapist that specializes in equine-assisted therapy. But then the other little side note to that is I also love nature. So being out in nature is a really big part of the way I see therapy impacting people, the way I see people healing, and especially living in Chilliwack. We live in one of the most beautiful natural places in the world. A good friend of mine is Sam Waddington, who owns Mount Waddington's outdoors just down the road.

He's traveled a fair bit. We actually went to high school together, and I remember him one time saying, he's like, I've traveled all over at all the different continents, and he's like, I keep coming back to Chilawak because it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. So sometimes we can almost take that for granted when it's all in our backyard, but there are so many mental health benefits for being in nature, connecting with nature. And the cool thing about horses is that you have to go outside to go be with the horses, which is a little different than like if you brought a therapy dog into a classroom where you could still interact with an animal and have that therapeutic impact. But when you have to go outside to be around the horses, you get the benefit of the horses, you get the benefit of nature and moving your body. So those are sort of the main focuses in the way I approach mental health as a clinical counselor. That's fascinating. When did you decide you wanted to help people?

When did, like, supporting other people, seeing that other people are struggling and need someone to talk to. When did that become a passion of yours to want to support others? That's a great question. It's almost hard for me to probably think back to a time when that didn't exist. I feel like that's been more of my approach to life. always been a pretty relational person. I also have roots growing up in the church. And so there's a lot of emphasis on service and caring for others and loving others that you're taught. But I think I also resonate with being like a highly sensitive person. There's like an HSPs or just

about 15 to 20 percent of the population whose nervous system is a little bit more responsive and sensitive to input from the environment. And so I've always noticed as like a HSP, a highly sensitive person or an empath that I've often felt or picked up on vibes and feelings from people around me really easily. And so when I was younger, I think that that actually kind of created some stressors for me a little bit. Like I'd be in a busy classroom and I'd get a little bit overwhelmed with the sound input and things like that. But I think what that also did is it gave me a heart to feel when people were doing well and feel when people were struggling. And so that draw towards helping people just came from being sensitive to where they were at and having a bit more

of an intuitive read on where someone was at. And then honestly, I think I had a few really special mentors, youth leaders, different people in my life when I was growing up who poured into me and I really valued that. I think it's one of the things I think is so cool about your podcast, that desire to bring voices, to bring mentors to people that don't always have access to them. And there were times when I felt like I didn't have people to talk to and there were a few times when I did. And so I think that that experience of having someone who was in your corner that you could ask questions to mattered a lot. And so that kind of idea of what goes around, comes around, like wanting to pay it forward. And one of our family values was just try to leave

things better than you found them, whether that's people, places, or other spaces. And so I think that that nature, that desire to help others came from some of those places. We often think of being empathetic as an untrammeled good. But there, there's a danger in it, which is that you can end up feeling so much that it's hard to get things done, it's hard to leave, work at the door, it's hard to let people make their own mistakes, because sometimes somebody will complain or vent or talk, and then you want to help them, but they don't want to help themselves yet. And so you kind of get stuck in, like, now your stressors are on my shoulders, and now I'm thinking about it, and it's 10 p.m.,

and I need to go to sleep, and now I'm worried about where you're at if you have all the supports you need. Totally. And it's something where we don't do, we're doing good at saying empathy is important. I don't know if we're doing a good job of saying it's not all good. It's, you need to manage it. And boundaries are huge. And boundaries can be like physical boundaries around like how I engage in physical space. Actually, that's a really big piece of when I work with horses, teaching people, how do you be able to like hold a physical boundary with a horse so you don't get stepped on a safety piece. But that also plays into human relationships too if you can build those skills.

but often like emotional boundaries or energetic boundaries. So when I use the word energy, I kind of, that's a word I'll sometimes use to kind of get at. Like emotions tend to be how we feel. It's kind of coming from our heart. And energy can be more of like our presence, like our soul or vibe.

Like some people are a little more sensitive to that than others. But sometimes it can be a lot when you're around people who are struggling and you want to help. And then that heaviness kind of sits on you at the end of the day. And so that's actually one of the pieces that I will sometimes talk with people about in sessions is how do we have mindfulness practices so that we can meet people where they're at, but then also at the end of the day, like, release that. I think that's one of the beautiful things that horses teach us all the time that horses are very present-minded. And so, like,

if something spooks them, let's say, I just had a session yesterday where some cows wandered up to the fence and one of the horses got scared. They weren't quite sure but what to do with the cows. So the head comes up, all of the stress responses, like eyes get big. There's tension in the top line and we read that and we find a way to help the horse. And then horses don't pack stress beyond the present moment typically. So they will do a lot of embodied things that release stress, which include they'll lick into their jaw to sort of loosen up their cheek muscles. They'll yawn as a way of actually releasing tension. It's not that they're tired or bored. It's that they're releasing stuff. They'll often sometimes shake and literally like roll on the ground to let go of their

stress and tension. There's a really cool book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. And it's because they embody the release of the tension that they feel because they're very present-minded. And I think that we as humans have a lot to learn from that. Now, we have different brains. So our brains will like remember stories in a different way from yesterday and a week ago and a month ago that horses don't have the same prefrontal cortex. They don't have that same catalog of time remembering that last week at this time this thing happened. But they also, yeah, they're just continually embodying or providing an example. of what it would look like to not only be sensitive in the moment,

but then not carry that forth for months and months beyond that interaction. That's what's interesting about people is that it's not just encountering like a big cat that will terrify us or a gorilla or something dangerous. It can be how your boss talked about you. It can be things that you kind of go, well, technically, I'm not in danger for my life, but now I'm overwhelmed with stress because my boss just said, oh, we're going to have to make some cuts. and I'm wondering if that's going to be me and you carry that forward and it doesn't come to an end and then you try and cope and so many people unconsciously choose tools and mechanisms that we call vices.

They rely on things to distract them. So after your boss makes that comment, you want to go have a drink of alcohol to kind of let go of the stress, not realizing that alcohol seems to have the exact opposite effect. It seems to compound that stress and it seems to make you act out in ways that aren't productive. Instead of going and saying, you know what, this is stressing me out, I'll go start to look at some new jobs or something. You just kind of take it out on your family or you say the offhanded comment to your spouse or you're inconsiderate to other people. We don't always consciously think about how something just affected us. How do you kind of help people to begin to bring that to the forefront of their mind?

Because that seems like step one is like, what are the things that ail you that stress you out? That seems to be something that so many people push down and push down. And then your cashier is super rude to you. And you're like, I'm just trying to order my tomatoes. Like, this is all I want. I didn't want you to be frustrated with me. How do we bring that to the forefront of people's mind? Well, that's a great question.

I think part of what comes up for what makes me, or my mind jumps as you describe some of those interactions, is a lot of the work that I love to research and share with my clients is around emotional intelligence, so EQ. So when someone's like feeling off or you're feeling off, what do we do with those feelings? Because I think in more recent years in school curriculums, they're starting to teach more about emotional vocabulary and how to be able to name and shape and understand your emotions. But I know when I went to school, we learned our alphabet, we learned a lot about math, but I don't think we ever had like a feelings chart on the wall that helped us develop our vocabulary around emotions. And unfortunately, like, when we feel things and we don't

A, know how to put them into words, B, understand where they came from, and then C, know how to get the underlying needs met to be able to sort of regulate those feelings. They end up often spewing out sideways on the people who feel safest to us, but often bear the brunt of things in a way that's unhelpful. So some of my favorite resources with that, there's a great book called Permission to Feel by a guy named Mark Brackett. He is the director at the Yale University Center for emotional intelligence, and he's got a great little way of unpacking emotions, but there's also a really awesome video on YouTube called Alfred in Shadow, a short story about emotions, and it's these two cute little owls that talk about the feelings of emotions, or they talk about why emotions are

important. And basically, anytime those types of things come up, whether it's stress, whether it's anger, whether it's sadness, whether it's fear, the biggest piece is being able to understand that our emotions, they're not facts. So this is a tricky thing, is sometimes people, they feel this like, oh, this, they hear, they hear that note from their boss that, oh, we might be making cuts, and then the anxiety bubbles up. And then, then all of a sudden, now the emotions taking them on a rabbit trail that may or may not be true about what their future is like with the company. But being able to, like, notice that it's, A, first of all, anxiety that's bubbling up, and then B, and there's a, there's a really awesome,

resource that I found in one of my internships when I worked with the child and youth mental health floor at MCFT in Abbotsford. And it's called emotion coaching. And they have this really awesome handout where they just have like anger needs validation and to assert boundaries. Like anxiety needs support for exposure to approach the thing you're anxious about. Because otherwise your world ends up getting small. Sadness needs reassurance, a hug. And I think when we start to understand that our emotions are just cues to us where our unmet needs are lying. It gives us actually a really practical way of being able to meet the unmet need underlying the emotion. And then the emotion gets a lot less intense. Like, and then it becomes, then we can kind of get back to our rational

brain and problem solve. So even like, for example, let's say I had that note that like at work, my boss might be making cuts. I feel the anxiety bubble up. And like, what would be tempting would be to spew that out on the grocery store person or on my family at home that feels safe. instead I feel anxious about not knowing what's the future of the company maybe having support to approach that would be talking to a trusted colleague in a way that's productive saying hey I'm really worried about these like have you heard anything else and then they're like I'm not sure okay how can we like support each other to approach understanding what's going on and maybe you ask your boss and be like hey you mentioned this is there a timeline when we might know more information

about these decisions and then then maybe you find out more information maybe we're having a week and you're like, okay. So it's not going to be pleasant between now and then, but at least now I know when I'm going to find more information and then I can practice some self-care and self-soothing in the interim. Yeah. And then there's an opportunity to say, is there anything I can do to prove my value? And that's like the objective side of me, which is like your feelings are like a warning sign, like a yield sign. Like, hey, you need to review. Pay attention. But there's steps you can take that are logical and reasonable going to your boss and saying, hey, we sell chicken and so how do I go find more distributors so you're making your bottom line so my job

can exist more and that's where I think like bosses leaders have trouble because you don't want to go to your staff and say you only get to keep a job if you keep selling chicken like you don't want to put that on them but that would be very helpful to them if you were willing to come and say hey I hear that we're going to have to make some cuts I'm wondering if there's anything I can do to support the business so that the business continues to exist and my job continues to exist. Totally. It makes me think a little bit around. Brunay Brown is another person I quote often. She's got a couple great audio books and hard copy books. And she has one about having daring conversations in the workplace. I believe the title

is Dare to Lead. And it's all focused on how do we have more honest, authentic and courageous conversations in the workplace because it's a huge part of our lives. We spend so much time with the people we work with. And if we had, if we had something productive to do with that uncomfortable feeling, um, then maybe we could find a way to find, like, find a win-win for everyone. But I think it's when we turn away from each other, when we retract and we kind of fester in the fear by ourselves. Um, it doesn't actually serve us well. And it's interesting, you kind of mentioned how, um, like in current day situations, these are the things that bring us stress. And so initially, like when we were more like hunter-gatherer types of people

and we were like on the trails, if we, you know, at one point we were walking down to one trail and the bush rattled and a bear jumped out and then I would be very aware of the fact that that's a threat to myself. And then if I was walking down the same trail another time of the bush rattled again, the anxiety that would come to me would say, give that, give that bush some space because that could be a potential. It might, it might just be a bird, but it might be a bear. So the space, the avoidance, the urge to avoid would be very adaptive in that physical threat environment. Where we get stuck and where we struggle is when those initial urges and kind of like very

fundamental responses that have been baked into our DNA for a very long time when those get applied to situations like a conversation with a person where it's like technically your physical self isn't at risk, but it still feels like a threat to yourself and your ability to provide for yourself. And then we apply that same urge, I'm going to avoid, I'm going to avoid that person, I'm going to avoid my boss. I'm not going to show up or I'm not going to respond to that email or I'm going to ignore that call or whatever. And unfortunately, you know, if you are on trail and it could be a bear, I say like if the urge, the avoidance matches something that's going to help keep you safe, it's probably something to pay attention to and listen to. But if the urge to avoid only creates more chaos and more stress in your life, chances are.

we might need to do an opposite action, which is to approach. Yeah. This is fascinating to get kind of your analysis on the process of somebody being at risk of losing their job. Since we're there, I'm interested because inflation is increasing. People are seeing it in the stores. They're starting to have to shop differently. My partner and I were just watching a really good John Oliver piece where he was sort of talking about. He showed this clip of this lady saying, I'm at the grocery store.

my kids are watching me put things back on the on the thing and they're putting things back knowing that we don't really need it but it's something they were used to having that we have to start to draw these lines on that can bring about deep shame um it's real that your kids are starting to feel the the purse strings tighten uh growing up i experienced that and knowing that we didn't always have enough food on the table and so there's this weight that is no fault of the individual person. They're not making less money. They didn't get fired,

but their money isn't going as far as it was. How do you think people can best cope with that stress? Because you can't get rid of it, because just having more money isn't just going to fall out of the sky. So you have to approach people properly. But this is where we see intentions to not want to be alive anymore, to distance yourself from your kids, because you don't know how to talk to them about how this isn't your fault.

So do you have any thoughts on how people can think about this? Definitely. It's a brilliant question. My goodness. I feel like it's, yeah, I'm just going to jump writing because I think this can connect to a lot of topics. But the first thing that comes to mind, you mentioned shame, specifically shame. Again, knowing being able to name emotions and being able to understand where they come from is a really important part of knowing what we do to move forward with them in a productive way and get our needs met. And so Bernay Brown does a lot of really cool work around shame. That's one of her main focuses. And she'll talk a lot about being able to to differentiate between shame and guilt. So for her, based in her research, shame would be a focus on self. I am bad. I didn't. The problem is me. And guilt is a focus on behavior. I did something bad. I did something that doesn't align with my values or who I want to be. And in all of her studies, there is a very strong correlation that shame is highly associated with depression, anxiety, suicidality, addiction and guilt is actually inversely correlated with those things. Guilt is actually an incredible motivator for changing things. And so if our self-talk in that moment that you're sitting in the

grocery store is as you're putting food back is, I'm not enough. Like, I'm such an idiot. I can't believe, I'm such a loser. I can't even give my kids these dunkeroo's that they're used to having in their lunchboxes. If that's like a direction itself, then our only real way of fixing that answer is probably either to withdraw or to numb. Oh, my goodness, there's so much that goes into numbing as well, whether you can pick your poison, but the concept of just, this is too painful, I don't know how to hold it. But if the focus is more on guilt, which is like, you know, you can almost look and like, did I do anything wrong? It's like, no, you know, did I lose my job? Did I act in a way that didn't align with my values? Like, did I do something

that put me in this position, you know, and potentially maybe someone had, who knows, maybe a bit of like an alcohol problem or a gambling problem and they lost a bunch of their money and realized that through those actions now I can't put food on the table and they realize, you know what, this isn't the type of parent I want to be. And maybe that realization, like I and myself, who I am is valuable. But this action that I did put us in a tight spot financially, I don't want to be like, I want to change my behavior to align more with my value. If we can make the focus more on the behavior, it actually can help motivate change as opposed to be with self. And sometimes they're like, we didn't do anything wrong.

And that's where I think some of the research or the or theology or philosophy that I've really enjoyed digging into is a therapy called existential therapy or existential analysis. It's essentially how do we find the meaning in our existence and how do we find the meaning in suffering? because sometimes actually, you're right, sometimes there is no good answer. Sometimes you can't just like, poof, more money comes in and that's the answer. But the interesting thing that I found not, so there's a sweet spot, I think between validating this is really hard. Like, you know, if I were to sit with someone in that circumstance, I'd be like, that, that must feel potentially, I'd want to know, did it feel embarrassing?

Did it feel humiliating? Did it feel, did you feel ashamed? Did you feel guilty? Like, all of those different things would help me understand how some, is conceptualizing this and how they're interpreting and internalizing it, which is important. And if they're kind of at a place where like, I'm good with me, I'm not the problem, but this is just a really hard thing, then a lot of times what I'll do is I'll kind of like ask questions, like in this hard moment, like what would your greater yes be? Like you wish you could say yes

to like giving your kids all these things. And at this point, we have to say no. But there are a lot of things that we can do to love on our kids and to make them feel special that don't require money. You know, like I remember when I was growing up, my dad, he went through, my dad went back to school when my sister and I were young and it was tight for a while. And I remember one of my favorite memories was we didn't have a pool or anything, but he found some old plywood in the back of the farm and built us a little like probably five by five foot pool with some scaffolding that he had from the barn and just put this massive tarp inside and filled it up with the hose. And I swear that afternoon, we have, I have a photo of it, which is still like I must have

and six and we were just, we kept running through the grass and there was, it was kind of a mess by the end of the day, there was grass in the pool, but like my sister and I, uh, and my dad just had the most fun playing and it didn't really cost a penny. It was just using what was around. And so I think at the end of the day, um, human beings are wired for love and belonging. Like, we don't survive very long as infants if we don't have a family system that can feed us and care for us, and they don't typically do that unless they love us, and we belong with them. And in the absence of love and belonging, there is always suffering. And so I think that sometimes, you know, it can, in our consumer culture, you know, we have

a lot of advertisements being thrown at us all the time about what will make us happy. But the longer I sit with folks, the more I notice that love belonging and presence are the things that matter most at the end of the day. When I attend funerals, which I think is an important thing to do, is a part of culture, We tend to turn away from death and dying, but there actually are a lot of existential questions that we can bounce up against and find kind of our realignment of priorities by encountering death and suffering. We kind of get forced to look at what's the most important thing.

And so I think for those reasons, like figuring out how to do hard things, how to dig deep and find greater yeses in the midst of tough things is a really valuable and meaningful endeavor and pursuit that I've watched people walk through. This is one of the hardest interviews I've had to do. You've just opened so many doors. Let's start with numbing. Let's start with the idea that there are some people who are trying to just turn off the empathetic side, the emotional side.

When I see people with very bright colored hair, dark makeup, to me, they stand out as somebody who's crying out for help in a non-verbal way, but you're not, for Following these social norms, which is fine, they're just norms. But to me, it's like, it's a call for help. It's a call for there's something wrong. And the way I'm going to express it is not through me saying something's wrong. It's through having green hair, yellow hair. It's like, this is such a bold statement.

You must be trying to say something. And it's like they can't always verbalize it. Some people are going to be like, I do it because I love it. Sure. But some people are going to be in that category of, I don't know how to ask for help. I don't, I've said that I have a problem and people have gone like, oh, you'll get through it, kid, you're going to be fine. And then we have these people who, to me, stand out as people who just need love, presence, support, and seem to show through how they're dressing that they're somehow lacking that. Yeah, that's a great, great question.

And it makes me think a lot too, like, so after I finished grad school, I did a year and a half of working in a nature therapy program. for high school students and they were nominated to be it was a leadership focused program leadership and resiliency it was a really cool program I really enjoyed being a part of it but a lot of folks like that like I would notice sort of these these bids for connection or some people call them cries for attention I call them bids for connection this idea that I really wish I could be seen and heard and valued and that someone cared and then it's interesting social media has created a really interesting impact on our current society that I think we're only going to start to understand the impacts of

in the decades to come because it's still a relatively new introduction. But one of the things, when it specifically comes to numbing, there's lots of different reasons why folks numb. A lot of times it's like there's some kind of pain and I don't know what to do with the pain. And so I can't make it go away. I'm just going to sort of go offline. And there's an excellent head talk. It's Brenne Brown, her most famous TED talk, it went viral, is called The Power of Vulnerability. I recommend it. It's great. But my actual personal favorite TED talk that she did is called the price of invulnerability. And the quality of the video isn't quite as crisp and things like that. But the content, I think, is really cool. Because she gets into some of the things, like, why are we numbing?

The fact that, like, when you look at the stats, that I think it's mostly, most of her research is based in the USA and the United States. but just that we are the most obese, in debt, addicted, medicated adult cohort in human history. Like, we're numbing. Like, we are numbing. And what's at the root of that, a lot of times, it's an intolerance for vulnerability. So this idea that we often see vulnerability is a negative thing, that it, you know, it kind of makes us feel uncomfortable. It makes us feel weak a lot of times. makes this feel unsafe. But when we also look at the research, vulnerability isn't just, yeah, it is associated with feeling weak or feeling uncertain, but it's also the birthplace of joy, connection,

and all the most valuable things that we find in life. So when it comes to someone who's kind of caught in a state of numbing, there's a, there's a great, someone who does a lot of awesome work in Vancouver, Dr. Gabour Maté, he's known for a lot of working in the addictions. I've heard him speak live twice. And he'll say, I don't ever ask, like, why the addiction. I ask why the pain. Like, what's the pain about? And so I think that, um, whether it's addiction or expressions of, uh, just needing attention, um, one of the things that came out, I think it was in that specific TED talk from Brunay is that in our culture, we have somehow come to the decision or the belief that living in ordinary life is an

unimportant life that we have to be, you know, you have to have 300,000 followers on Instagram to be important. Or you need to, you know, there are certain like levels that you have to reach in order to have made it and be somebody. And if you're just normal and average, then that's somehow bad. Or, you know, even in, there's a great TED Talk by Kristen F on self-compassion and this idea that in school, how many times when we look at grading systems were told that you want to be above average. And, you know, if someone were to say to you, oh, like, you're an average student, that would be almost like kind of an insult, like, well, no.

But the problem is, is a logical impossibility if everyone needs to be above average at the same time. Like, there's always this one-upping and there's always this shooting for getting higher up or getting more recognition. And so I think that if we could maybe shift a little bit of our focus away from achievement or recognition, or things like that, and really get to the heart of presence about being seen, attunement. Like, do I feel like you see me, you get me, you're listening, you care, you're here? You're not just physically here, but you're like, you're here, you're mentally here, you're emotionally here. I think those are the things that we're wired to crave as human beings. It's kind of like the glue, the attachment glue that binds us as families and as groups and as communities.

And interestingly enough, too, what I've noticed, so I've done a fair bit of counseling lately with some of the farmers and the folks hit hardest by the floods that we had last November. And a lot of times when we're dealing with crisis on the surface, we think there's this struggle and we're kind of numbing and we're navigating all of these stressors. But underlying, this is one of the pieces that I learned in my crisis class at grad school was that an acute crisis is often the unlawful. underlying issue is a crisis of community. Like, I don't have enough of the connections and the supports to know that if, let's say,

I couldn't afford to have groceries this week, that so-and-so, my neighbor wouldn't pop over and bring me a casserole or maybe invite us over for dinner if I just, but it would require being vulnerable to maybe let my sister know that it's been a bit tight until I get my paycheck next week and she might invite me over for a barbecue. Like, that's the power of community. Yeah. Yeah. That seems like something we, the church community.

does a better job of, which I find interesting. Like, we've never had someone bring over a casserole to our home. It doesn't feel like that is a norm in modern culture to do stuff like that. And like Rebecca and I always make a point if we're going to dinner at somebody's place to bring something as not just to check a box, but to say, is there something they lack that we could fill this gap in to show that we're invested in the evening and the person beyond that? And it just, from my perspective of having so many people over regularly now, it seems like we don't know how to do that very well. I do feel like it's a bit of a lost art. And I think COVID has really impacted our ability to sit down and share meals and have that kind of community with each other too.

So I think that there's like a couple compounding variables between, you know, social media, I think, is really what I hear from a lot of the students is that they're still really, they're more connected than they've ever been before. but they feel more lonely than they've ever been before. And it feels maybe a little bit cliche to be like, we need to be off our screens more and be more present with people and things like that. But I really do notice a correlation between the more that kids are on screens and things like that. Like we lose the focus and the energy and the modeling of going over to someone. Maybe when someone passes away, we bring them a casserole or things like that. um that is very uh like that would be very commonplace even like both maybe within the church

community and outside of the church community if we were to rewind like 50 to 100 years ago um that would probably have been more commonplace and when um yeah we would just know our neighbors a little more if i needed a bit of sugar i might pop over to ask for an egg or two or something like that um and so with no shame in comparison with no feeling of like oh my god i lack like to me to go over to a neighbor's place and ask for eggs. There's like a, why can't I just go to the store? What's wrong with me? Why didn't I just buy them in the first place? Yeah. And I remember I came across one quote on Facebook of all places that said something along the lines of ultra independence is a trauma response. Like this idea that like if I've been through hard things and I didn't have the

community support or the family support that I needed, I learned that I have to look out for me. It's all on me. And so then the next time something hard comes around instead of turning toward someone who ideally could be there and help shoulder the load, I just look to me. And it kind of, again, it kind of makes our world small. And sometimes there can even be, when I chat with folks, there's a bit of pride in that. Like, I depend on me. Like, I don't need anyone else. Ego.

And there's a sweet spot. I do think, because there's a spectrum, right? Like, I do sometimes talk with some folks, you know, sometimes I listen to podcasts as well on victim mentality, people who have a hard time doing anything for themselves. They're looking for everyone to rescue them. And so I think that there's kind of the spectrum of like the ultra-independent on one end who is like very individualistic. And I do notice like in North America a lot of times like Caucasian, North American culture tends to be a bit more individualistic. And I loved that I got a chance to do an undergraduate degree in communications.

I actually did a three-and-a-half week trip to Kenya and Uganda to study cross-cultural communication and communication in cross-cultural contexts and understanding that different cultures have a different view and value of individualism versus collectivism. I think we can all learn different things from each other. And so, you know, you kind of have the individual all the way to one side of the spectrum. And then you have the collective all the way to one side of the spectrum. And there's pros and cons to both. But I think the ideal is trying to find a sweet spot somewhere in the middle where I know that, like, I have to be responsible, especially as adults, like we want to be responsible for how we show up in the

world, the ways that we contribute, hopefully leaving it. better than we found it, but also being able to turn towards each other and ask for help is a vulnerable thing to do that is actually a skill that is like so important and something that I notice is really hard to do in a lot of different communities and populations I work with currently in today's culture and climate. Yeah, because it's not just asking for help, it's how you communicate it, it's whether or not you're reciprocal. Like, it's a whole developmental skill to develop relations with people where they want to continue and um i'm sure you've heard of jordan peterson yes the idea that it's it's a long kind of game that you're investing in that it's not oh you gave me

sugar for a dollar and i gave you eggs with it to where a dollar 50 and now you owe me 50 cent is the wrong side but understanding that you're like this is my beef with gift giving because gift giving is just trash now. It's like, oh, if you're going to buy me something for $100, and I'm going to buy you something for $100, well, let's just not, and we'll just both save our $100. This is commonplace now. This is the norm, which is to kind of calculate things in that way. The idea that you find something, make something, do something that is thoughtful, that you actually put time into and say, hey, they really love tennis. And I think that their potential and tennis is great. And so I want to support them in that. What do tennis?

players use? Do they use these shoes? Do they use these shorts? Do they need a new net? Do they need a new racket? If they're going to get a new racket, should I get a gift card so they can choose their own racket and their own size? Like, thinking everything through seems to be the part we've just fallen away from. And we kind of go, oh, like, it's all about like the financial cost of purchasing a product rather than the thought behind, hey, I see that I could help in this area that you're not going to prioritize and that could mean something to the person of like I had a leather worker on and we talk about his passion for leather work so many people underestimate oh it's just a hobby oh you're just doing that in your spare time like you're just chilling out and for me it was like

this seems to matter to you so I'm going to treat it like it matters and I'm going to listen and be curious and really take an interest in where do you buy the leather how much does it cost how does it get shipped to you like take an interest in the process and then I understand something about them and can learn ways to support them better as a consequence of actually paying attention. It seems like we really suck at this right now. Totally. And you know what's so cool.

I love how you describe that because I was just like, you are essentially like knocking it out of the park when it comes to attunement, like what we call attunement. So when we're little babies and we're still figuring out like what is this world that we're in and how do we live and survive in it, we find out who we are in relation to another. There's a lot of studies, not a lot, but because it would be super unethical to deprive babies

of human contact and reciprocal attunement just to see what happened. But they've done studies with orphans in Romania or kids that get severe neglected when they don't know about it and they study it after the fact. And so like when a baby smiles and then you smile back, that's a like, I see you. You did something that impacted me.

Like, I'm with you. you. I'm paying attention. And if something were to go sideways, if you needed something, I'm here. Like, that is how we are wired from our earliest days to be able to function well. And some of the things I noticed that are the hardest for people down the road is if they experience, it's interesting, um, a lot of times neglect is actually more psychologically damaging than abuse. Because at least when I'm experiencing abuse, it's still terrible. Not okay. Don't get me wrong. But at least you acknowledge that I'm here. And people will take, that's why people will stay. abusive situations longer than just being off on their own because, you know, there's actually

a cool study that like they did this with plants where it was like, we said to one plant, I love you, one plant, I hate you and one, you don't even matter. I didn't acknowledge it. And the one plant, like the one that died the quickest was the one with neglect, not the one with hate. So I'll have to come back to this saying that like attunement, really big deal, really big deal for us to grow in attune. Well, and it's kind of fun that what you just described with that leather worker made me think of one of our family mantras in the Bartel family. I don't remember if my mom or my dad came up with it first, but this little saying we have that if it's important to you,

it's important to me. And the underlying words of that is that because you are important to me. So I love horses. Some people join me in that. Lots of people out there just kind of look at me like I speak a second language when I really get into the excitement I have for speaking about horses. But I notice that when people take the time to actually like, listen, it's not that I, even if they don't have a personal interest in horses, it's like,

you know that this matters to me. So you're making space for it because what you're telling me, it's like the difference between content and process, basically. The content could be horses, it could be leather work, it could be all these different things. I think we don't understand, or sometimes we, we don't realize that the process of just like, I care about what you care about. That's attunement. And it can be, that's where like, when I've done nature therapy, with kids and things like that and we're out on a hike and all of a sudden they're like whoa this fern is really cool do i personally care about ferns or think that they're really interesting not really but this kid's found something that was like kind of they found intriguing or interesting about that fern and so when you come alongside and you're like show what do you see like what do you think all of a sudden they feel important they feel seen they feel attuned to and it starts to bolster this this feeling that i matter that like i'm worth talking to that i have important

important things to say. And I think, like, in modern psychology, too, there's this movement towards self-care. You need to be able to do it for yourself. And, like, there's almost this resistance to, like, oh, I can't tell you you're important because you need to be able to tell that to yourself. And I would say from all the studies that I've done or what I've, and even just what I've noticed in practice. And I have friends who do a lot of work with children and stuff, is that we have to have it modeled to us before we can internalize it and embody it. So, like, I need to experience it from the outside of me first and then in time it becomes my my responsibility to be able to do that for myself as I become an adult but a kid that looks up and is like like a

five-year-old that's like look at this drawing I did like it's it's not usually helpful like what do you think if they're basically asking what do you think and free to be like uh what do you think like they actually need us to be like that's awesome I really like this way you use this color and that's really cool. And then maybe you invite into, what's your favorite part of it? And it's part of the dialogue. But our voice really needs to be in there, to be able to say, I see you, I think these things are really cool. And it starts to help them develop their sense of self so that they can grow into people who feel somewhat whole and have a sense of who they are. So one big part that you landed on, Neil deGrasseons made this comment, which is we spend

the first couple of years of a child's development teaching them to stand up and speak out. And then we spend the rest of their childhood telling them to sit down and shut up. Totally. And you see this so much in grocery stores, at dinners, where people don't know, because like there's this period of a child, which is the why. Yeah. And it's never ending. And the beauty to me is it's a gift to admit we don't know.

Totally. There is an off point at which we don't understand how carbon operates and how like photosynthesis came about and how all of this kind of. exists today is sort of miraculous. And so that is where to me, oftentimes religion jumps in and says, we don't have all the answers and that's just okay. But we feel pressured to have answers. And I see that a lot when we're talking about social media of people having positions on issues. You're not a scientist. You're not this. And it's okay to have a policy position that people disagree with. But we're not all experts and everything. And even the experts will admit that they

don't know everything about the topic and so there's this feeling that we should understand what is right, what is wrong at all times and whether or not we should have all the green cars in the world and then somebody pops their head in and goes well actually if we were to do all battery charged cars we'd run out of minerals on the planet and then we don't know how to dispose of them and then they go oh okay well this is called everything's complicated there isn't final answers to any of these things but that makes us uncomfortable and so when our kid goes why why is that why is that and we go okay just stop. Like don't bother me with that. Like we don't know how to process. I actually have no

idea and that's just okay. I love that that's where you landed with that thought because I wish that as adults we could say more often to kids. I don't know. And then to say like maybe we'll find out in the future, maybe we won't, but like to be okay. Because that every time there's uncertainty or we don't know something, that is inherently vulnerable, especially when we feel like we're supposed to be the ones that have it all together. But how often even if you were to think about it in an employee or employer relationship and you're an employee and you're like what's going to be happening with our quarterly earnings and are we getting cuts? And, you know, would you rather have your boss out of like a, if they have no tolerance for vulnerability to snap it, you'd be like, stop asking

questions that are above your pay grade. I'll tell you when I tell you. Versus something that's like, you know what, maybe a more vulnerable response and a more genuine response is like, you know, for them to still own the fact that they're running the ship and to not fall apart, but just to be like, you know what, we just don't know yet and I'm working really hard on it and I will tell you as soon as I can when we have updates. Is there anything I can do in the meantime? Or whatever.

Yeah. One of the areas I think is a challenge for mental health practitioners is we're looking at them to fix these problems. We have anxiety. We have depression. And we're like, well, we need more mental health resources. But I think what we failed to understand

is that the role of the counselor is, or the psychologist or therapist, is to give the person the tools to reconnect with the people in their own lives. So the secret ingredient is actually the family, the loved ones, the community, not the counselor, but we're like diverting of like, well, you're attending counseling. Well, if the counselor is helping the person, and then the person goes back to their family and goes, hey, I just learned about how to like communicate better, can we have, stop this, leave that to your counselor like keep that at home like there's this whole feeling of like you go do that there you change there but you don't change here um like Rebecca faced a lot of adversity in trying to change how the conversations take place because we've always done it this way like why what what you're changing I'm not changing I'm the same person and there's this desire for everyone to stay the same for the dirty like stuff under the carpet to just stay there and we won't we won't we won't mince words and why do you have to bring up those problems from 10 years ago and it's like well it still

bothers me it still eats me up when you're standing there talking to me and so i have to we have to deal with this and then we can put it in the past totally but it seems like we're just diverting to like well we'll just hire 10,000 more counselors and they'll fix the problem and it's like we're like off putting the problem where maybe we're part of the solution families people humans are part of the solution oh that's so good Aaron uh I can hear it I can think of friends and other in my life that are like, yeah, like you're plotting you as you say things like that. I, one thing I wanted to start right off the bat with is that I'll often try to let folks know when I'm working with them that on the day they come into my office and say, hey, Kylie,

like, I've enjoyed our time together, but I don't think I need you anymore. That's a day we celebrate. I'm never personally offended this whole idea that, like, as a counselor, I hope, and sometimes it's a little harder than just this black and white idea. But ideally, I hope that I'm always working myself out of a job so that I'm empowering folks with skills that they can take back and apply to their friendships and their family relationships, where they get to where they get to the point where the social and emotional supports that they need just naturally exist in the social ecosystems that they live in. Like, I wish that counselors weren't a job that was a needed job. Like, I wish that our communities just had the skills to be able to listen empathically and to hold space and to attune to, to, each other as we talk through these things. And yeah, like, I've even chatted with folks about how

do we just do courses on like empathic listening for just the average person so that we need less counselors for some of these things. Um, that being said, I do think that like, uh, specifically in cases with trauma or more complex things or family systems that are more complex. Um, we often, you know, as humans, we, we learn behavior by what is modeled and we inherent like a relational blueprint from our family systems and there usually comes a point and when you're in your teens or your early adulthood when you have enough space or ability to to think in your world like do this blueprint that I've inherited when it comes to relating and communicating from my family does this work for me or what I like to make some renovations and that's a really great time to go to a

counselor and be like this is the blueprint I notice these patterns and if I don't do something intentional, I'm going to repeat what I don't repair, especially if there's like trauma or something that's a lot, like, there's, you know, there's different levels of, of challenge or dysfunction. But I think that being able to empower folks, being able to, yeah, try to create a change with someone when you speak with someone and then have them take it to their world, ultimately we can't change the behavior of the people in our world. But I had this awesome analogy. I remember I was working with a couple one time in one of my internships. And one of them was a little more on with change and trying to communicate more effectively, and the other one was kind of like,

yeah, it's fine. Why do we need to change? Kind of a similar dynamic. And I kind of was like, well, how do we make, if this person would just change, it would get so much better. Like, we could make this a lot better. And my supervisor gave this analogy of like throwing a ball back and forth, that relationship is like throwing a ball back and forth. And so long as that other person, maybe they're not so much invested in their own growth or change, but as long as we're throwing the ball back and forth and this person is kind of moving towards growth or healthier ways of relating. If this person wants to stay in relationship and keep throwing the ball back and forth, they at least have to pivot. And maybe in the process of pivoting, they see something that

they never even realized was a possibility or didn't even know that relating or talking to someone could look that way. And sometimes there will come a point where the distance gets so stretched that we just, unless someone takes a step towards the other, we're not going to be able to continue relating. And you just hope at that point that at that point, the person who's doing their growth might be able to say, like, I really would love it if you could take a step toward me. I wish you could come with me. Those are vulnerable bids for connection. Those are like ways of showing up. And that's granted that this is a safe person and not an abusive person. That's kind of an important part to also note. But that idea that I, it's not my job to change that person, but as I change and embody something better, maybe I could just peek their curiosity a little. And like, maybe there's a better way to. do this. Better seems like a challenging idea for some because we act like every root is the same is acceptable. Like coming from a single mother, a lot of people are trying to normalize that, that that is just okay, that all walks of life are to a certain extent valid, but not better. And the idea that there's a best makes people uncomfortable because if they don't match that

ideal, then they're not enough. And it's hard to negotiate because so many people have desires that they want their kids to have the best, like, and give them the world. And then they're not the best. Like, we know that having a mother and a father that love the child is best case scenario. I don't hear that very often anymore. If that's an uncomfortable thing for so many who are getting divorced, who want that to be okay, the often comment is, I'm doing this because is it's best for me. And it's hard to square that because to a certain extent, if you're being abused, insulted verbally, whatever the circumstances, fair enough.

But how do we differentiate between that isn't ideal? That isn't our preferred route. And so if you take this route, you're taking extra risks. I just, I feel like we're not allowed to say that a two-parent household is a good thing, that one parent's staying at home and focusing on their child is the right thing. Like, these are things where people go, well, I have to, like, there's this feeling of, like, how dare you say that to me? And I don't know how we bridge these things, because behind closed doors, once the cameras are off, people are a lot more honest about the fact that they think we do have some problems in this society. We could do things better.

But out in public, at a conference, in group settings, it's uncomfortable to say that there is a better, that there is a best practice, that there is a best path. Yeah. That's a great, a great comment. It makes me think a little bit on like, so to be a counselor, to be an ethical counselor, you have to have a theory, like what we would call your theoretical orientation or a main theory through which you help guide people and has to be based in research. So someone comes and sits with me. I'm not just like preaching from the book of Kylie, like, oh, this worked in my life. You should try this. Like that's not, that's quite unethical. So you have to be able to be grounded in a theory that's well research. but you can also pick from different theories and different theories will have maybe different approaches on how they believe a personality develops, how they view psychopathology, and how they view therapeutic change. So as long as you can adhere to one, that's where like cognitive behavior therapy, CBT would be one. A humanistic client-centered Rogerian, he's like a, he's a kind of a very, Carl Rogers was a big thought leader in being able to do therapy in a very relational way. There's like tons more. I tend to work in a pretty client-centered way of

working with people where kind of one of the premises that we would bring in is that you get to be an expert in your own life in the sense that like even though I as a counselor would be attuned and really wanting to ask questions and understand to the best of my ability what your life is like, I don't sleep in your bed and I don't know what I can. It would be impossible for me to know all the detail of your life that you that you know so it has to be a collaborative effort for sure and then on that other piece of like you know i think i think you're i think you're on to something quite interesting there and i haven't had it articulated quite that clearly before but sometimes we see these maybe less than ideal circumstances maybe there's a pain a painful experience of

having a single mom or a household that's not as ideal and then we almost want to justify it or say or we want a silver lining it and say you know what that was hard but i learned like i became resilient because of this or I overcame, you know. And that's not a bad thing either. I think what probably is needed most is this balance, a balance or a genuine dialogue or encounter where people can say, you know, I think there can be space for both to say that, you know, in my single parent home, I learned a lot about like overcoming things or certain, like, it made me, it maybe gave me a depth of character that I wouldn't have had if I had had more, more of a traditional upbringing and also to be able to say, I really, I really enjoyed being able to be at Christmas

and have both my parents there. You know, I think being able to balance to like lived experience and research, that's another piece that's always coming out. But I think for me, um, when I sit in those tension points are like, yeah, it's a, it's a pretty hot question. So I'm going to be like, what is ideal? What is best? What is better when it comes to relationships? Well, you can find, you can mind articles that say the exact opposite of things. But what I think of what I've found personally quite valuable is that so in existential analysis, so humanistic and existential therapies are kind of like cousins. They kind of go hand in hand.

It's kind of like humanistic would be I value the human being as a person that is valuable and deserves dignity and respect and all those types of ideas. And then existential is how do we find the meaning in existence? And in existential analysis specifically, the way we understand people is through a process called phenomenology, which is essentially just like trying to encounter the phenomenon and let the phenomenon in front of me inform my understanding of it. So it's not like I'm taking all these other preconceived notions and trying to apply them to this person. I'm trying to really encounter them in their essence, have a dialogue with them, and then let what is essential emerge. so one of the analogies they use is like if you found this like really intricate raw gem out of the mountain and pulled it out and you only looked at it from one side you would see certain like elements of it but what you would do if you started to look at it from every angle like took a 360 view of it you would start to understand it in more depth and people are kind of like that in the same way that like it's it's it's a process that takes longer because um like phenomenology itself takes longer because it's it's counter. It really tries to resist reductionism. So the idea, reductionism, the analogy they use is

that if you had a sphere, a ball, and you reduced it to a circle, you could learn certain qualities about the sphere from the circle, but you lose something. You lose some of the depth. You lose some of the detail. And so I think when it comes to understanding people and what is best for people, I would look at it like, I want to hear from them primarily. I want them to be able to like really speak to their experience and then also I start to bridge point I start to bridge connections to like different articles different research pieces and and want to have dialogue there and at the end of the day if someone tries is like really really passionate or determined to convince me that their their upbringing was awesome that in and of itself is kind of a like we start there like that that's that's where

probably being more of a client-centered therapist would differ from maybe being more of a psychoanalytic therapist or someone that would take a bit more of a of an expert approach depending on different approaches so i also think that people really struggle with the idea that their life is finite that it's okay so like um my grandmother and like putting things into like a broader context of understanding how you fit into things so like for me when i did counseling it was like my grandmother attended indian residential school she was given all the worst tools of how to cope with life. Then she has children. And with some of those children, she drinks alcohol with them in the womb. As a consequence, my mother is born with fetal alcohol syndrome disorder. Now she carries

a sense of shame that that happened to her. And that personally breaks my heart because she shouldn't feel that way. To me, what happened was her prefrontal cortex is less developed, as any person in psychology would argue. But her empathy shot to hundred percent and she is the most empathetic person that I know and that was basically how I was raised was like really wanting to come to every pack meeting come to every event come to all events make sure that every opportunity to get me to experience what it means to be a normal kid all of those doors are opened and she would be very upset that she couldn't take me to castle fun park because she doesn't drive and she'd carry shame in regards to that but now I understand

what full empathy looks like it wasn't a disadvantage when people find out that i was raised by a single mother they often go oh that must be so difficult you must have and it's like i got to see someone fully try and be two parents at once like what if some some people that i know have two parents who feel neglected by both totally it isn't an untrammeled good to have two parents if they don't give a shit about you totally i your mom sounds awesome i just Yeah, like that was the first impression I just had as you're describing. I was like, oh, like, yeah, there's just a genuine. I could just feel this like respect, admiration and just like, dang, like she sounds kind of like a badass. Like she just could take and stuff. And, and I think that's where some of those pieces, we talked a little earlier about like shame and resilience or sorry, shame and guilt, how this whole idea that like if I'm the problem, like if, you know, if I'm such a, you know, I'm such a problem that can almost. deter us from things. But the thing with fetal alcohol syndrome is it's actually, like, it's a brain injury.

Like the folds and the prefrontal cortex have bigger gaps between them if that happens. So, yeah, being able to problem solve or remember different things or whatever, there are pieces that make it tricky from just like a very physical brain and like neurobiology standpoint. Yeah, sorry, just to go back to that. Yeah. My mindset is just that, like, looking at what she went through, I can make something different for our kids.

Totally. There's no bar of like, okay, I started here. This was my starting place. There's no reason that my children can have way better than that and be an improved circumstance. Totally. And that doesn't take anything away from me. Well, and this is what I just noticed, a theme is just a theme of overcoming and resilience in each generation continually trying to build on the legacy of that before. So a lot of times when I sit with people, whether it's a religious thing or a non-thing, like I just ask about values.

Sometimes, you know, just what is it that you value? What is it that moves you? What are you drawn toward? And this is a piece that I think it's pretty cool. And we learned this, I learned this from existential analysis, which has its roots back to World War II from a Jewish psychiatrist named Victor Frankel. He wrote a book called Man Search for Meaning. And he was thrown in Auschwitz and survived a concentration camp. And prior to being in the concentration camp, he actually worked with people who were suicidal. And he studied, like, who had the mental resilience to get through hard things and who made it and who didn't. Then he gets thrown in the concentration camp and then had like a crazy, like just observed and just watched who made it and who didn't. A lot of the times people that had maybe the best physical strength to overcome hard things mentally broke sooner. And people who mentally had something to live for and had meaning in their suffering fared much better. And when he went in, part of that greater yes question that I mentioned earlier is very much from this idea because he went in, he was a little older, he didn't have the physical capacity. to do the work. But he had two things to live for.

One, he wanted to know if his family was still alive somewhere out there. And he had his life's manuscripts, his life's work. And he said, can I please keep these? You can take all my other things, but let me keep these papers. And they didn't let him keep them. They burned them. And he's like, I need to survive this so that I can republish my manuscripts and have my life's work be continued on with life and to humanity.

And here it is. And so this is the whole idea that, like, I think what they talked about is almost these like kind of a picture of a mountain and there are certain things that motivate us that are drives. I have to. I must. I have to put food on the table. I must go to work. I should do this. And those are, I mean, those are important things to think of. But in the existential analysis, we would say that if your entire life is driven by I must, I have to, I should, that's actually the most fertile soil for psychopathology to grow. Like that's where our anxieties and depressions tend to get way worse. Whereas a pole, and I get to, I want to, I value this,

I'm moving toward that, um, that's a different type of motivator. It's the type of motivator that, like, if a baby's trapped under a car and a mama bear, like, lifts the car off their baby, it's like, I, I want to save my baby. It's a different type of motivator. And they'll say that the more psychologically healthy we can be, the more aligned we are with our, with our poles. And so I think that it sounds like I just I just hear a theme of a value for your mom of just like being involved being showing like showing up being present and that's a legacy that like has now been passed on to you and it you know the more that we can build on these things in the same way that like if we don't have a conscious understanding of the patterns that or even not even patterns but

just even the trauma that's contributed to our suffering we tend to repeat what we don't repair. And also, I'm so inspired all the time by stories of folks who were like, I got dealt this hand in life. I had like one good card and like six really crappy ones or no good cards. I tried to play them to the best of my ability and part of that idea of like trying to set my next generation up for a little bit better and a little bit better. It's kind of coming back to that leaving things better than we found them. I think if we could think about that a little bit more in the world, I would be really excited to see how our community. communities and our relationships might change and grow a little, flourish a little more.

It's something I don't understand, though. I don't understand how people can absolutely love Harry Potter, the Avengers, all of these different, like the Lord of the Rings, all the main characters dealt terrible cards. Totally. We love it. It is the cornerstone of everything we watch, yet we're in a victim mentality state right now, which is a complete juxtapestate. position to the idea that we love the underdogs. Our favorite thing is, like, when we watch the UFC, we don't care who wins the fight. We love hearing the story of the fighter going like, oh, I'm going to, like, I started from nothing. I started from these terrible streets, and now I get to fight in the UFC, and I get to main card this,

and I'm going to take care of my family through this. Like, that's what we love. People will be like, how do you watch the fighting? It's like, it's a chess match with impossible odds. Like you're fighting for your safety. Like it's a fascinating moment, but the most beautiful part is the story. And it seems like we don't know, like within my indigenous community, I think I can use them as an example of like, we were dealt the worst unfair hands, completely unreasonable, done by government institutions, to a certain extent, churches all played this terrible role in taking away every good tool we had in our toolbox. all the coping mechanisms, all the strategies on communication, all the parenting advice, all the

family recipes destroyed. And that's terrible. But getting out of this is not just pointing the fingers at government or churches. The way out isn't that that path. It's the individual. And that sounds so unreasonable. It sounds so unfair because you're going to say that, like, I look at clients as a native court worker and I go, this starts with you. And they go, well, where's my native judge and

where's my indigenous lawyer and where's my indigenous resources? And it's like, I want all of those things for you. Like, I don't want any barriers in your way. But this starts with you. It doesn't start anywhere else. And if you want to stop hurting the ones you love, if you want to start making a difference, it starts with you. There's no government program that's going to give you the will to persevere. And it seems like what we suck at is like, I'll get you into treatment. Why? Well, I'm not going to give that conversation any space. I'm just going to send you to treatment and then you fail three weeks in because you don't know why you're there and why this matters.

And there's no broader understanding of this is for you. This is for the improvement of the quality of your life. And you're the only one who can chase that. And it just, it seems like our favorite thing is like the Lord of the Rings TV show just came out. And it's like, everybody's so excited about it. And then we don't take any of the information from that and apply it to our own lives of like overcoming adversity is a good thing.

how I choose to live my life, I can make a difference in the quality of life I live. Like, I just don't understand how we have such two separate worlds. I, well, you know, I think that our enjoyment of the underdog story and our, and our affinity and our pull toward these, these fantasy, Lord of the Rings, all these overcoming the odds, I think that's an unconscious longing that we consciously haven't quite made the connections to some of the time. Like, I think that is totally a trend that I notice. And I think what you're actually, what sparked my mind is you were describing that is a challenge or a struggle with engagement, like this idea that, like, am I really engaged

with my life? Like, am I really showing up in it? Or am I waiting for everyone to tell me what to do? Because I think that when we wake up later on in life and realize we've been doing it all for other people, that's where, like, the midlife crisis comes up. It's like, I was told I should do this and this and this. And finally, I'm like, my life is passing me by and I'm not showing up. Like, that to me is one of the greatest tragedies.

um that that yeah like that's that's a really tough thing and that's where like on that mountain analogy like when it's i have to do this i should do this usually those are external voices those are the voices coming at us from outside to me that's like malfoy like to describe it it's a character that in only the last movie does he ever make a decision that's conscious that he actually wanted to make and like you can look at the characters and go who the heck am i in this and everybody wants to be the good character but who are you actually in the in the story yeah And there's actually an analogy from horses that I think a lot when it comes to engagement. So when we ride horses, there's kind of two main ways of training them. One is called like more of a held frame. So the idea when you're riding a horse, it's kind of like they tend to be more comfortable to ride in the same way that like there's a proper way to do like a deadlift at the gym where you want to have like your core engaged and you don't want to throw your back out and stuff.

There's a similar way you want to train a horse to carry themselves when they're carrying the weight of a rider. So you want them to be able to move. You want them to push off with their hind end and sort of like round their neck and almost pick their shoulders up underneath you and they're carrying you. There's kind of two ways you can get them to do that. One is like you can just drive them forward and hold them up and held frame. And to the point where if you were to then let go of your reins, they fall flat on their face because you're the one holding them up. Or there's another way of training them called self-carriage where essentially you teach them to carry themselves and you teach them how there's a couple ways I won't get into the biomechanics of it because horse people would probably be like, tell me more about. about that, but I'll hold that.

Okay. Sorry, excuse me. When it comes to training a horse in self-carriage, there's three key components, and it tends to do with biomechanics and alignment. So the first thing that has to happen is their shoulders have to be square. Excuse me. I'll start that again. So the first thing that happens is their shoulders have to be square.

And this is a really interesting piece. There's a whole metaphor that I get into on this when it comes to the aneogram and our centers of intelligence. but I find it interesting that shoulders are near the heart, our heart center, our feelings and our emotions, coming back full circle to emotion regulation. If our shoulders aren't balanced or our emotions aren't balanced, it's really hard to feel like we have our feet set grounded underneath us. The second stage of self-carriage for horse, once their shoulders are kind of straightened and square, and as a side note, they tend to pitch their shoulders defensively if they're feeling like they have to guard themselves. But if they feel safe, they'll kind of square their shoulders, especially if you're on kind of a curve or a bend. Then the second stage is that you have to rotate their pole joint. So it's almost like, and the pole joint is where their spine meets their skull, and it's the closest to the brain, the thoughts, the mind, the center of intelligence, the thoughts. So once our emotions are balanced and our shoulders are square, we want to turn our thoughts or our eyes towards what we're focused on, towards our values, towards our goals. That's the point in which we want to talk about, like, what are we moving toward?

And then the last stage, once that's aligned for a horse and you're riding them is to engage their hind end. their power center. It's like their engine. Interestingly enough, their hindquarters close to their gut, their gut intuition, their thing that moves them. And when they can be set up biomechanically like that to ride, when you ride them, there's just this, like, it's like floating on air. It's like the prance of the horse that comes into battle. It just feels incredible. And the cool thing is you'll know you've got it right when your reins are light. They're holding themselves. You're directing them through both your body language, your energy, you're aligned. but ultimately, like, they're responsible for caring themselves.

And I think that when I think about the engage, engaging a horse in that way, as opposed to the held frame thing, especially when I even, like, work with kids coming through the school system and stuff, it's so much of, like, did you get the right answer? Like, did you do the thing I wanted? There's so much about, like, I'm holding these kids, like, a lot of people are just, they're held in frames by their jobs, their family systems, their, their school, their education. and they are never really like asked to bring themselves to the table to bring themselves like their own creativity is a huge part of being psychologically healthy I think the way we express ourselves and in create when creativity doesn't have a place to go it can really create a lot of problems so all of that analogy is to say that when I work with people and when I encounter people just in my day-to-day life my hope for them is to be

able to feel like they can show up authentically and to know that and to validate that if they can't a lot of times when we experience trauma we have to disconnect we have to compartmentalize and shut off or dissociate just as a way of getting by but this is also one of the pieces that the horses are so good at inviting us into because when I have someone in a session and I'm telling them if I'm telling them hey you have to go put the halter on and they're not really feeling it The horses are like, like, horses can sense that, like, presence and engagement super well. They're just really attuned to that. I think it's partly because they're prey animals and partly because they're herd animals.

They're very attuned to each other. And they respond super well when you're able to bring your presence and they're like, I want to do this. And they're like, oh, what are we doing today? It's just this really cool feedback in real time. So, yeah, I think engagement. And that's just my lens coming at it from a horse nature therapy lens. But I think the question of engagement is a huge one in our culture today with all the different things we're facing.

Yeah, I think of, I think it's like statistically like 30% of the time we're like covering up how we actually feel with words. And we don't realize because you go, well, I want to have a conversation with you that all of our verbal cues are to help us understand each other. And I think sometimes we underestimate the fact that how somebody's sitting if they're slouched over, if they've got their head down, is all way more telling. And if they go, no, no, I'm fine. It's like everything in your behavior, if I mute you, it's telling me a completely different thing that we're not as good at that. Maybe COVID impacted that, but even just being aware in conversation, it seems like it's a struggle for people where there's, I have to go check that text message, then I have to go pick up cream. and then I have to take this person to school. It's like our whole goal is to do so much

that we do have to, to a certain extent, focus on the task at hand and then we become the less receptive when somebody's experiencing something real. Agreed. And I think this was one of the other pieces that really stood out to me when I was listening to Brené's audiobook,

The Power of Vulnerability. She's got a six-hour audiobook version. I think this is coming out of there. But the importance of white space. So what she would call white space is just like when, if you had his calendar or like a white or a blank calendar in front of you and and having like a chunk of time that's not spoken for, that's what she would call white space in her calendar. And she intentionally, or like white or blank space and she will intentionally put blank space in her calendar and book it and maybe call it something different. So no one feels like if her agent's looking at her calendar, they can't say, oh, like, you know. And she intentionally leaves time for her mind to be bored and to be just blank. Because I think we used to have that all the time. Like, with the addition of technology and our probably our last, like, I don't know, 20 to 50 years, there has been so much more content readily available all the time. But prior to that, like, if you went to dinner with your family and you didn't think the

conversation was interesting, you had to learn to sit there until dinner was done. Like, our capacity to be bored to let our mind wander is really important. It's also a crucial prerequisite to creativity and coming up with authentic and original ideas. But I notice whether you're a highly sensitive person or just a regular human being, our schedules are so jam-packed these days that going from thing to thing, no wonder we're a little disengaged because it's just a lot. It's quite overwhelming.

And I think that's also why getting out in nature is so important going on a hike, letting your own two feet carry you for a couple hours, sitting by rivers, by moving water. I always find it like, that to me is like, Brene's. definition of spirituality is just something greater than yourself that connects you to other people. And I find like when I walk down better trail and see in like maybe the evening or the early morning when there's a bunch of fishermen just lined up, like that to me feels spiritual. It's like everyone is connected to something bigger than themselves and sharing space in a way that's a little quieter, a little slower. And I think those are some of the practices and

things that we're going to have to actually intentionally plan into our lives moving forward because if we wanted to, there would be no ending or no shortage of content on Netflix to binge and to just occupy our prefrontal cortexes all the time, and it's not helping us. Yeah, it seems like we're struggling with the depth. Like if you're at the Veta River, if you're at a local river near you, and you see those fishermen, those are fishermen fishing for fish that have traveled that route for a very, forever. Sure. And there are people who have fished along that river forever, and there are bears and there are deer.

and there are eagles and they've had migration patterns forever in terms of your life like it's thousands of years that they've been doing this stuff and so there's a depth that you get to see and that is one of the secrets for me for the podcast is like the secret is everything is way more fascinating than anybody ever realizes uh like going back to the fern comment it's like how many types of ferns are there what have we used ferns for how do they function like i have none of the answers to any of these questions, but they are intricate in our ecosystems. They are relevant. They play a role and they connect us. And we can so easily think life doesn't matter, what is this all for until you realize it's been going on forever. And there's knowledge

and experiences people have had that you can learn from. And so I'm interested, I have a suspicion it's going to connect to religious ideas, but this idea of like that there's values, that people have that are unconscious. The idea that life is suffering, these are also things I feel like we are really terrible at talking about. Like to, and I did try this, but I don't think the person understood,

I was talking to a skier, and they were talking about flow states. Yes. And I find flow states fascinating, because to me, that is where the meaning of life is to be found. It's like when everything comes together, you've done so much work, and then you get lost in a moment.

And you, as an operator, in your own life, get to take a passenger seat. Yeah. While every, you're still doing things, but you're in a passenger seat. Yeah. But it's because you put in so much work that you're now in this moment that everything does get to coalesce and you get to enjoy the experience. It seems like the, the antithesis of depression and anxiety.

It seems like if there is on one side this, that the other side is a moment to flow state where everything is coming together. And to put it into context, because a lot of people link it to just exercise. Yeah. At family dinner. when you're the person who made the dinner and you're sitting in the background and everybody's eating the food and relaxed and happy and you can hear good warm conversations and you can feel love in the home you're in a flow state in my opinion of like everything all the work all the hours finally get to come together but what i see is hosts go how is it is it good i probably overcooked this and they get so lost in in the art of making the food that they forget that what they were really making was a pleasant evening for everyone and that that's the gift. And so how do we think about the meaning of life when it is suffering?

That's so good. Well, and to be fair, I really feel like each person has to be able to answer what is the meaning of life for themselves. Like I really, and that's going to be a combination of the family you come from, like the values that have been brought to you, the values that you have found in dialogue, both like what fits for you from what you've been brought. to and what doesn't. I love that piece around flow states. So like for for you being in a flow state is a really kind of like that that peak or that that that meaning of life. I've also fascinated flow states. I did it actually like postgraduate. I did an online course with Stephen Kotler does a lot of research on flow states and he has a course called the flow research collective and it's from the flow research collective and it was a intensive course on flow states. So I'm just like

going to tangent on that for a second because they're very powerful. And I think you're right. There's a lot of pieces in there. Um, uh, the transient hypofrontality, which happens in a flow state, which is essentially where our prefrontal cortex gets a little bit quieter and we're more embodied. We're more in our feelings. We're more present and things just seem to happen. Like, I think if I were to bridge what I understand from the neuroscience of flow states and like maybe some of the existential themes we've covered around values, there's a sense of peace, there's a sense of ease, there's a sense of presence, and there's a sense of connectedness with a lack of suffering. Like there's like there's an adrenaline rush. There's a, there's a,

there's a, there's a feeling of being truly alive that I think is very powerful. Um, and so I know, you know, um, I love that you differentiated between like sometimes people find their flow state skiing and other times people could find it after they've cooked a meal and there's that hum and I think I think this is actually why great like I feel like again I'm learning so much in this conversation I'm loving I'm going to go away and think about this for days which is going to be awesome this idea that what is it what is it to be human what is it at the end of the day I think there's this dialogue between, we each get our own, like, it's going to be different strokes for different folks. Like, for some folks, it's like making the meal for some. It's skiing. I know for me, horseback riding is a huge flow state activity because you're like, there's a bunch of criteria that trigger you into flow states. And there's novelty. There's a bit of risk, but you also have to be, like, very attuned and in your body.

It seems like there's rules, though, like with a good, like you can't play a game of chess without rules. Yes. And so there's restrictions. And this is, where I love Jordan Peterson, because he goes, it needs to be in your best interest, it needs to be in the best interest of your family, it needs to be in the best interest of your community, it needs to be in the best interest of society as a whole, like the world. And then not only that, so that's sufficient restrictions for most people. Now it needs to be in the best interest of you today, of your family next week, of the people for the next year, of the people for five years. And if you could do it where it was in the best interest of the next seven generations,

that would be swell. So there's, like, there's rules to, you can't go murder people because that distresses you. Like, there's rules and restrictions that we follow. Yes. So you can go horseback riding. And if you do it, like, you don't destroy the horses and hurt them. You have a reciprocal relationship with them.

You know, it's actually crazy. You're saying that, and that was where my brain was going to jump to. Part of why, so I, I've ridden horses since I was a kid, since I was five, and I've gone through kind of like hunter jumper pony clubs. I did local eventing, which is, it's a sport where you do three phases. And I was noticing the more I was doing horse therapy that the horses didn't like it. And something about that didn't sit right with me. Like they felt kind of like some of the kids camps and ranches. They were amazing places. We did some really cool work and the kids really benefited. But a lot of times the horses would be a bit sour by the end of it. They felt a bit used up.

And I was like, something about this doesn't quite fit with my value, which is kind of like, leaving things better than we found them. And also just trying to, beneficence is just the idea of trying to do good, trying to like make things better. And that can come from a variety of places. But a lot of times it comes from like, I appreciate when people act that way towards me. So I want to perpetuate that in the systems and the relationships that I'm in. And so that's why I kind of went on a deep dive, trying to find a horse trainer that could help add some pieces to the way that I work with horses that would help the horses come out better in the end too. And this is what I really love about my private practice.

And Agassi right now, we have two rescue horses. Both would have probably been destined for the dog meat factory or whatnot had they not come here. Sorry, is that a euphemism or are you here? No, like they actually can be like, yeah, I mean, either they go to like different factories for different things to be processed for different purposes. But yeah, like that's still something. I don't know like all the nitty gritty of things, but like not all horses just get.

That just blew my mind. Yeah. And maybe that's outdated. I don't know. I'm not super current on it, but I do know that depending on how you euthanize a horse at the end of their lives, depends on what their bodies can be used for. So that is definitely a reality.

Yeah. And so these horses, well, and the one came from a rescue. So he probably would have ended up somewhere, but one was really neglected underweight and the other one had an injury and just wasn't able to be ridden anymore. And so they came to, the little farm that we have in Agassi. And the cool piece is that most of the time when I go to horse therapy programs,

it's the idea that the horses have to be trained and safe, which is definitely important to interact with them. But the cool thing that I interact or that I incorporate in our therapy sessions is that when someone comes in, they're also helping train the horse to leave the horse better than we found them and helping the horse progress in its own ability to regulate emotions and to feel comfortable in their own skin and to have a purpose. whether that's riding or liberty work where we take all the ropes off and we just work with them free.

And so, yeah, it's just, I think, to kind of come full circle and to say that, like, ideally, I think there are ways to relate with people where we can try to leave, not only I come out better, but you come out better too. I think that usually comes out of a place of encounter where we can kind of authentically show up and be engaged in our own ways. and I think like for yourself you mentioned how flow states are so huge when it comes to that meaning in life or or even like overcoming suffering or things like that I do think that different themes come out for different people depending on their stories and honestly I feel like it all kind of boils down to love and connection like you know I don't know a lot of folks who get to the end of their lives I have some clients who are kind of older and in their senior years And typically when we get to our last days, the things that matter most are relationships

and kind of those impacts and connections that we've had. And so, however, those kind of, that can, you can use that as a jumping off point. But I think the thing that flow states often allow us to do is connect to ourselves in a way that maybe we don't always get to. And when you come off, I don't know, but you, like, when I come out of, I've gone to, like, go move 100 cows and, like, one took off and then I had to gallop to bring it back or something. I come back. Like that was a flow state, but then I come back with a sense of presence that when I come back to my community and I tell them the story and they're like, oh, that's awesome. And we high five. Like being able to be in a flow state helps me engage in life in a way that feels more authentic and present and congruent. And then that just makes the relationships that I have that much sweeter.

Yeah, that was what the comment that Jordan Peterson made, which was wherever you find yourself getting lost in time where all of a sudden four hours flew by and you didn't even notice. focus and find more time for that and try and expand that in your life, and you'll have a better quality life. Like, that is one of the secret ingredients to finding the meaning of life is figure out where you don't even realize the time is going by. And some people, it's cooking and some people, it's going for a run. Some people, it's like having good friendships with people playing a game or something like that. But you have to go find that. And it has to be something that means something to you. And that's going to look different for different people. For me, often getting lost in really good conversations, which is why I enjoy doing this is because

my secret sauce is I'm genuinely interested in what the person has to say. And the terrible thing to watch for me is seeing somebody ask 10 questions based off of like a form that they printed out to ask interesting questions. And it's like, this is so disingenuous of you. All of your kind of like laughter towards whatever the person said, it's not genuine because you're reading off the same 20 questions, you ask every person and nobody is ever going to be able to come through fully if that's sort of your approach. It has to feel natural and honest. What are your thoughts on how religious ideas can help people reach their potential? Like it seems like we're afraid of that topic right now. Yeah. But when I think of like Kane and Abel, you can think

of the characters like Thor and Loki. You can think of like different characters that just embody these ideas. But the idea that you make bad sacrifices from Kane and Abel is true whether or not you believe Kane and Abel are real human beings or not. The idea that innocence can be sacrificed, which is sort of the story of Jesus Christ, is true. The idea that we don't always value those who are most vulnerable, those who do good, that sometimes we're resentful of those people. You're doing everything right. Everybody wants to open the doors for you. They believe in you. Like, aren't you just like the worst person to that person because there's a certain level of resentment? And these stories seem to offer us insights on the human condition. But that

makes us uncomfortable, particularly within the indigenous community. It's the bad actors played a role in where we are today, the churches. My counterpoint, and it's not a stable one, but it's just that nowhere in the Bible did it say what they did was good. Nowhere did it say hurt children. Like, those are the tenets of an evil person and evil people will pick up whatever they can use to justify their behavior. That doesn't indict the benefits of playing it out. And then the other one is like, people who say they go to church every week and don't act it out, to me, aren't religious. The people who are actually religious are the people who make good dinners and create good communities. These are people who are living religiously in the belief that

community, love, warmth, are good things. But we often go, well, I'm not religious because the people who go to church are often the worst actors in society. And it's like, that's a terrible, that's the worst argument for that the ideas behind it, at the root of it are bad because the idea of like being thankful, being thoughtful, the idea of even just how a church operates, where people play a role, you have the ushers, you have people who are doing the greeting, like, you have a job to do within this community, and you don't get paid, you do it because you care. Like, we are just sucking at that right now, and it's just, it blows my mind because the ideas seem good. They seem like they worked. Totally. And we're not allowed to talk about it right now, or at least that's

the vibe I get. Yeah. The fascinating thing to me is the only area where people still talk about their religious perspectives is in the counseling world. Yeah. You're not going to hear it from lawyers, judges, and perhaps for the better teachers, we're not going to hear that. But counselors can still say, I bring a Christian ethic to it. And I just go, where else are you allowed to say that right now? This is a great question. Well, one of the, one of the questions, even in one of Bernays talks, she'll be like, uh, the difference between it, people can say they're spiritual, but not religious, right? Like, how many are you, how many people are religious or not spiritual? You know, that's a distinction we make because a lot of things associated with the word religious have

been really, really painful and really traumatic and terrible. Um, and, and I think, oh, I, it's interesting. As far as, like, if I can be a little more, like, candid in my own personal journey, you know, being raised in a more religious Christian home, you know, there were a lot of values that were instilled that I really, really value and still appreciate to this day, love, forgiveness, a lot of things you talked about. And then I remember reading a book. I didn't get all the way through,

but I read the first part of it, The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz, I believe is his name. And it just talked about in the very beginning how, kind of similar to what we're kind of getting at about the blueprint we inherit, when we come into the world, we don't actually get a choice in the system and the culture and the time and the family that we happen to get dropped into.

That's, we just, we get dealt a certain hand of cards and that's what we get given to play. And so in order, because as humans, we need to belong in order to have our needs met, we have these like different agreements that we make. Like, we have to agree to belong in our family system. Otherwise, we just don't survive very long. And then eventually we get old enough to a point

where we get to say, do I still actually agree with these for me or would I like to adhere to another set of agreements? And then in the book, he has four recommendations for what his agreements for all humanity would be. And there's different weights and different thoughts behind that. I noticed that in my own journey, I was like, you know, a lot of these values come through, but I actually went through my own season of struggling with dysthymia, moderate depression, with some major depressive episodes in my early 20s. they were kind of connected to like, I was raised in that idea of service and being kind to others

and giving and giving without any boundaries. And then I came up and had some roommates and some different close friends that really struggled with mental health. Like the suicidality pieces, the self-harm pieces were pretty intense and they, as a feely person, really got, got to my heart and not to, not to their fault, but I didn't know how to have boundaries to keep myself safe. And then I went through my own sort of spiritual, I wouldn't call it a spiritual crisis, but it was definitely like a wrestling, a rumbling, just this kind of like, what works, what doesn't, what still aligns. And I think there was actually what really drew me to psychology was this desire to see, like not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. There were a lot of values in

the faith that I grew up in that was super, that were super valuable. But then there were these missing pieces around, you know, when we learn in psychology that when we feel resentment towards another person, that's actually a clue to us that we've given up our space. and we didn't hold a boundary where we should have. So how we could reset and be more clear moving forward, resentment is a me problem, not a them problem, things like that. Like, I see lots of issues within the church. And I think you also hit a note, too, that resonated quite strongly with me

where you said, you know, the church was connected with state and there was powers, especially with the history of the residential schools. I don't know a ton about the history, but I actually did one equine therapy group in my internship for residential school survivors, and I'm always trying to hear more of those stories. because reconciliation is a value that matters a lot to me that ties in with the love that I've been taught from a church upbringing from very young ages. So it's kind of interesting how these, again, these are issues that like, they're just, if I think about that gem, there's a lot of

sides to them. There's a lot of pieces to them. And so it's interestingly enough, you kind of ask the question, like, where do we have spaces for spirituality, have some, having some of these questions talking about religion because it seems like it's like almost unpopular out of taste to really own those spaces. And at least for me, what I found was that I got to a point of probably there was a season in my life where I was like, you know what, all these values from like my religious upbringing, I'm going to pick the ones that still matter to me and I'm going to live by them, but I'm not really going to lay claim to a religious, like I'm not going to necessarily call myself religious. I don't really go to church as much anymore. There's a season I was like

that more in my late 20s in my early 30s now. And I started to feel a little bit like I was being like a little bit spiritually plagiaristic almost. Like I was taking things that I had learned from places without giving the notes and the reference references. And I really had to kind of wrestle with like why, why do I feel like I don't want to like affiliate with a Christian label when I still like think that love is the most important thing at the end of the day and I learn that in the Bible. And so kind of, I've lived what you're just saying. Like, I lived that, like, it's unpopular to talk about, like, the religious piece or the spiritual piece. And I kind of hit a crossroads where, like, do I just let it all go where I don't? And I think the thing that I

kind of came to for my own piece, probably also because I'm an academic at heart, I enjoy being a learner. And just in the same way that I, I don't think it's cool to take ideas and to steal them for my own without citing my sources, I was like, for me and my lived experience, there was definitely proof in the pudding with my faith upbringing. Like, as much as like my family isn't perfect and my family isn't perfect, like when we would mess up, we would come back and ask for forgiveness or we would make a point of prioritizing love and experience together over, you know, holding the, holding each other to that, like, kind of like that gift giving thing you explained but earlier, like I gave you this and that and now it's off of balance.

It was more so of a value of generosity and just trying to give. So I hope, I kind of hope that we can take back more ground in those spaces, especially because I've learned things on a spiritual level from friends of mine who come from all different faith backgrounds. Like, they teach me things about faith all the time that are really valuable to me. And so having more conversations, I think what it comes back to for me is the value of dialogue and encounter. Dialogue, encounter, and engagement. Like, there's a lot of these skills that you can look at the different content applications, but if we can get down to the process of do I get to feel like I've met you and you've met me

and we've shown up and had a genuine encounter. Like, that's the kind of stuff that at the end of the day, I think, makes us feel like life is more fulfilling and purposeful. My big fear is that you can't get rid of the religious element. That is my big fear. So when we think of like raves, which are very, very commonplace now, concerts, these are religious experiences. You, and like even previously a thousand years ago, people would do drugs, get together in a community,

and have a religious experience, sometimes on mushrooms. Like, there's great documentaries on Netflix now about sort of those processes. You go to a rave and you're on drugs, you're not thinking normally, and then you're in a room being influenced by other people. people. The music is so loud that all you are doing is experiencing that. And then you see like photos of people just standing there like in like a state of awe. Yeah. They're having a religious experience and then saying that they're atheists. Like to me, we're, we're terrible with our language because we're blurring all these lines and we're not good at understanding

that this is the human experience. Like you need a certain amount of loud music, of community of um getting lost and typically churches have been that place they've sort of some suck at doing the music but you like i've heard of like youth groups in chilaac where they're very focused on like playing the loud music so that the youth can come there and listen to music and not do drugs and so there's like an element of like having a religious experience that has nothing to do with one organization yeah it's just an experience feeling warmth and love and being like, wow, I don't want this moment to end when you're at dinner with family or with just close friends, that there's an experience there that you can't not have if you want to

avoid being nihilistic and depressed and hating the world and resenting everyone around you. You need those sort of moments. And that's where it's like religion or the religious ideas kind of give you the basic tools and then you have to figure out how those fit in because they're old books. They're crazy old books. Like they're not. going to perfectly match to your day today they didn't have nuclear bombs in there or any of the things we have today yeah so it's different but it's like what can i pull from this that would be useful that would change how i see people because the big one for me is like you deal with annoying people in the day people who inconvenience you and it's so easy to just want to write people off and just go like

oh that person like when i'm standing in the grocery store my pet peeve is like looking at which ketchup I want, not specifically ketchup, but it's sure. And then somebody reaching right across my face and like grabbing what they need or bumping me out of the way to grab their thing because it's just like how is there not enough time in your day to just let me choose my ketchup and move along

with my day? Like I'm not I'm not hanging out. I haven't been here for 20 minutes. I just want a second grab my ketchup and leave. And so those moments frustrate me and in those moments you see people get really bitter towards other human beings and I think it's a huge danger of big cities which is like people aren't people anymore.

their inconveniences just popping up everywhere And when we even went to Vancouver briefly It's like how much people don't look at you like human beings anymore Is a trip like it's just so crazy to You're walking down this hallway There's no waving there's no I care about you But in Chilliwack still you go into like a business And it's like you're still a person

How's your day going? May I hold the door for you? Like there's certain elements of like you're a human being here Don't know at what scale if we had $150,000, $200,000 where you start to lose that. But that is like a key part of like my value. And it seems like we're given tools of like everybody's on their different path. And that's what religious ideas try and tell you at a very early age. And they give you some tools.

And it seems like we're just really struggling right now with are there any, like the people who say take it literally. I just don't understand why that's the benchmark for like whether or not It's used like, is Harry Potter real? No, is there stuff you can learn from it? Yes. And, like, that's what I just, I don't understand about how that area gets written off. And then it scares me when we write all of those people off because then there's an us versus them mentality where they're like, oh, you're from this group of people.

So you must hate that I'm religious. And it's like, I don't think that's, like, I don't have any quorums, but we're getting into this weird time where we're really ostracizing those people. And if what happened in the Soviet Union is anything to be said, you go too far down that path. You ridicule people's belief systems too hard and you say nobody gets to have them and we're all going to be atheist. We seem to go down terrible paths. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it makes me think of the documentary on Netflix about social media, the social dilemma.

It's a brilliant documentary around polarization and how essentially we've lost our capacity for dialogue, you know, that idea and tolerance that like I might have a different, position, different background, different idea. But if we can respect each other as like we each are like human beings worthy of dignity, respect, and there's actually, it's kind of cool. And in the counseling world, we have like an ethics code. And just like that whole idea, like the first ethical principle is just that like all human beings are worthy of dignity, respect and autonomy. Like, it's kind of like human beings. Like just basically like basic stuff. And then you get back into some of the other ethical. And that's a Christian idea. Like, in indigenous culture, we had slaves. And a lot of people don't know that. But indigenous culture did have

slaves. I interviewed a historian who explained that we had that process. And the idea within law, the people have a divine element is one of the weirdest things in my brain that it's like, I get stuck there because it's like when you disagree with someone, when your neighbor cuts down your tree or does something very inconvenient to you, they're not innocent until proven guilty, they're guilty until proven innocent. And you don't care. But yet our justice system, based on a Judeo-Christian ethics, said no people are divine. We can't just kill people arbitrarily. We need rules. And a lot of the rules are so logical that we just hop on board now and go, why would we ever do anything else? And it's like, right, but when we had mob, like, we think of,

like, social media as mob mentality. Imagine mob-mob-mentality. Like, where you actually just go take a family out because you disagree which trials like we had a time where we sucked at that and then this belief system came about this said no all people matter yeah no matter the robert pictons of the world where we go no like we don't want you to ever integrate with society ever again but we're not going to we're not going to off you because you matter like what like it seems so crazy it is crazy and it makes me think of a couple things interesting so a lot of people don't know this about me but i was actually born in papua new guinea so that's like an island above australia half Indonesia, yeah, and then half Papua New Guinea.

And in Papua New Guinea, like, tribal warfare is a really big deal. An eye for an eye is a really big deal. And they'll say things like when people are moving there from out of the country and they don't understand the culture, they'll say things. Like, if you hit someone in the streets, like don't stop because if the family of the person you hit finds out who you are, they in their culture know that it's their right to come kill you because you've hit someone in their family. So, you know, it's kind of, it's just interesting.

interesting, again, different cultures have these different beliefs and different ways of coming about. I think it actually comes from Jordan Peterson stuff where he'll look at like just the general population of like different cultures and countries in the world and the ones that tend to have the highest quality of living are often based on some of the Judeo-Christian legal systems and whether those are coming, you know, how much they're really connected to the religious pieces or whatnot. Like there's a quality of life there that most people are fairly easily. It's pretty acceptable, pretty, and it makes sense to them. But interesting, it made me think of, as you were describing, actually, my fiance, he's doing his master's in marriage and family therapy, and he works as a pastor. So he's often integrating therapy and theology and all these kinds of things. And one of the things that we've chatted about that I've really enjoyed talking about, he's like it's kind of like the job of each generation, at least within the Christian community, to like re-contextualize the faith or the Bible,

so that it applies and is actually practical and useful and helpful. for the current community as it stands because yeah, there are no scriptures around social media use or guns or bombs or things that didn't exist when it was originally written but I think it kind of comes back to your point where it's like we can learn whether it's Canaan Abel or Thor and Loki or you know there's these themes

that come out in different narratives and different stories that can really help us get towards how does it feel to kind of back to that personal experience of how does it feel to be in these communities because I know that even though you know, my parents lived in Papua New Guinea for three years. I came along on the tail end of that as a bit of a surprise. My mom had just a piece that it was going to be okay. Most people told her she should have gone to Australia to have me, but it's kind of a cool like outside the box way of coming into the world. And that's actually shaped my whole blueprint of how I've walked into the world of a lot of people assuming that like I'm kind of just mainstream and I've never really felt like I've fit in the box. I've always kind of felt like I see things a little bit differently, which comes out in why I'm an equine therapist, not just a traditional therapist and all these other places. which is kind of cool, kind of how I've learned to know myself. But just all of these themes coming together, I think that when I hear them describe their experience of living in Papua New Guinea,

you know, they're just lived experience of the fear of what it's like to live in a culture where an eye for an eye is the standard. You know, it doesn't feel super good. And there is this, yeah, like, to, they felt like there were, there were homes that they stayed in at certain times that felt really unsafe. And when they got to move onto a compound that had walls and gates and security, that made them feel safer in connection to the school my mom was working at down there. And so I think that like, even though, you know, there's a lot of great minds out

there that can debate ideas, religion ideas, you know, principles, values, there also needs to come down, at least for me, to this point of like, where's the proof in the pudding? You know, a cousin of mine who does a lot of work and finance, we have some cool discussions too and she's like, you know, I think when it comes to religious ideas or faith ideas, there's a lot of good and, like, the intention is

good, the execution is often poor, and that would probably be how I would probably comment on some of the residential schools and stuff. Like, I don't even, I, and even some of the intentions were not good and there, but I think there might have been some good intentions. I don't, I don't want to touch that too much, but execution

was very poor in a lot of places. very evidently. And so being able to to hold intention, what are intentions, what are the hopes, what were the executions, and then what's the lived experience? Because, you know, I think Canada is often kind of now looking at, like, within the reconciliation acts and things like that, like, this was not good. And it feels bad. Like, it doesn't feel good. And that feeling, how we handle our emotions, our emotions are giving us data, feedback about our met, our unmet needs and our values about how to move forward and they're like extreme you know there's always kind of like the sociopaths or the extreme outliers that we we see is you know there's a lot of things that go

into that but for the general population i think there is kind of that that sense of what feels good in relationship and then how do we essentially to quote averse treat others how we'd want to be treated yeah that's the area i think we can make a lot of progress on now which is i agree the intentions of the Bible itself could be good, how that's interpreted, as random as can be for a lot of people. But indigenous culture can offer a lot more insights as well. Like, there isn't a strong emphasis, maybe Noah, but the emphasis on elders is way bigger within indigenous culture than it is in Western culture right now. And the idea that you can learn something from your elders seems so crazy to people because they go, well, my,

My grandpa doesn't know how to use social media. And it's like, yeah, but do you think he knows about Ukraine and the wars that have happened in the past? Probably. Do you think he knows about the Great Recession and how we approach inflation today? Probably. Because my grandmother was infamous for always saving things until past the expiration date. She knew what it was like to have nothing to have food that you needed to last until

the very end. And there are insights on how to have a good meal, family recipes, that we can learn from our elders. And it's a fascinating thing. When I was talking to the leather worker, Tim, we were talking about the idea that you could eat a meal that somebody else made a hundred years ago. And you could eat it and get an inkling, a taste, an idea of what it would have been like to be during that time because you're sharing a meal with somebody who's not there anymore. And that's such a fascinating kind of concept to kind of think about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, a, that again, connection to something greater than ourselves through something that's tangible and practical, you know, I think that there's, um, yeah, those, I think, I think it's, what I notice, actually, when I work with kids who have been adopted or have had, like, early attachment, um, disruption and they don't necessarily know where they come from, like, the traditional foods or, or those pieces, like, there's a real, there's a grief and there's a real sense of, like, who am I? Like, what, what brings me?

into who I am. And so, yeah, I, there are so many threads to this conversation that I love. And I wish, actually, just like, almost like as a little microcosm of what we've talked about, I wish these spaces existed more in the world, that we could have more conversations like this with our friends, with our colleagues, with our family members. One of my favorite podcast hosts is Chris Williamson. Okay. He's really interesting because he was a club owner, made a lot of money.

and then realized he checked all the boxes of like what society kind of says is success and he felt completely empty inside. So he followed in the footsteps of the Jordan Peterson's, the Joe Rogans of Let's Have Conversations, and he found that incredibly meaningful. And one of his pitches more recently was like, everybody should try and do a once a week podcast. You can record it.

You can not record it. But start to figure out what you think and do that with another person regularly. Yes. to develop an understanding and then you can go, oh, my first episode, I said I believed this, but now I'm saying I believe this. So how do I square the two? And I think that that's really important for people to start to just have conversations, but how often do people really look at each other and have a quality conversation? Well, and this is where I've loved. So my foundation for working with therapy would be that kind of client-centered starting point, but

then it quickly moves into existential themes often. And I did like a two-year training or a multi-year training post-grad school in existential analysis. And all of this idea, the big emphasis in it is finding the meaning in your existence, finding the meaning in suffering through dialogue and the idea to knowing what you think is no small task. The amount of times I actually sit with folks and I'll ask like, which one, like, would you like this or this or this? Or did you like this or that? And they're like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And it's actually very immobilizing. It's very hard to make decisions. And so interestingly enough, one of the therapy, like the way that we work therapeutically with existential analysis is essentially what we do. In order for someone to build

a meaningful existence, you're trying to essentially build a table with four legs, or in my analogy in horse world, a horse with four legs. But the idea that we kind of go through four pillars to build and the first one is just the question of, can I be? Like, do I have enough safety and support in my world to be here and exist? Because if I don't have the basic like things to support me and like to exist, all the other questions of meaning and stuff are nice, but like I need to know, safety, support, food, like basic needs. Like, can I be both physically and emotionally and mentally here? So that's the first question. If we can establish that in a sense of that, then we move to do I like to be? Do I like my existence? That's where a lot of, so the first one, if someone says,

no, I can't even be here. Usually anxiety is the biggest issue that they're struggling with. Then we get to do I like to be. Do I like my existence? Do I, um, yeah, and that's what do I like and don't like because behind everything what I don't like, there's behind every no, there's often a yes. So we're always trying to hunt the yeses, but sometimes we have to start with the noes. I don't like this. I don't like that. I don't like when that person talks to me like that. Okay, well, why?

Like, what's the value? How would you prefer to be talked to? That's important data to consider as you map out your relationships and your goals in life. And if they don't like their existence, that's, I don't like what my life is like. That's usually where most of the depressive themes come out. So we have to try and figure out how do we start to shift those to just liking life more. Then the third pillar becomes, am I allowed to be me? Like my own one self individual, my own person, as differentiated from another.

So like while I don't like disown my family or whatnot, but like can I be Kylie? Like Kylie likes horses and was born in Papua New Guinea. And there's these unique things. Am I allowed to be me? That's a really important part of understanding who we are just as our own. own selves. And if people struggle, if they don't feel like they're allowed to be themselves, they don't have their sense of who they uniquely are. A lot of the personality disorders, they struggle there, just like all the things that crop up there. And then the last pillar is,

I am me for what purpose? Like, I can be, why am I here? And that's where it's basically like, okay, so I can be, I like my life, I am myself. And then now for what purpose? Like, that's now the space we can start talking about those themes. If those other ones aren't built, it's pretty tough to get to there. And if people struggle, if they have those other three met, and then they struggle in that fourth pillar, a lot of times, that's where it struggles with addiction and stuff pop up, because it's kind of like, I can be here, I like my life, I'm myself, but there's not really a purpose to a greater tie. Like, there's not really, like, and then so like, what does it matter if I just drink myself every night, a bottle of wine, drink myself to sleep? Like, there's a lack of,

like, either it's, like, relational purpose or other things. Like, that's where trying to find how can you uniquely contribute to this world and engage in a way that you bring your full self? And the hope is that by building those four pillars, then you can engage with life, have a dialogue with life, encounter others throughout your life. And hopefully when you get to the end of it, if you see it coming, have the chance to reflect, can feel like, you know, it wasn't maybe perfect, but I lived it well and I lived it to the fullest. Brilliant. And the idea that the point of life is to pursue happiness is something I feel like

is predominant in our culture right now. Rebecca's mom is considering moving all the way to Mexico because it would make her happy. And our response is like, that is probably not a big enough analysis when we talk about what's good for your family, what's good for your community, what's good for the world around you, what's good for, like, so are you going to have a relationship with your grandchildren? Are you going to be that person where it seems like right now the choice of like, well, just do what makes you happy is often tied to being very selfish, being very short-sighted and being very kind of one-minded. How do you see that when you're working with people where so often, well, what makes me happy is getting lit and drinking alcohol? How do we think about that?

It's a great question. Well, it's interesting enough, like initially what made me think is you're describing that tendency, because I see that often in our culture, that happiness is the benchmark of you've made it. You're psychologically healthy. If you can be happy, that's the goal. Interestingly enough, when you look back in psychology and some of the fathers of psychology, some of those schools of thought were more based on if you can just like have pleasure, whether that's sexual pleasure of like Freud's psychosexual stages or different things, like that is the purpose of life. if you can just, like, procreate, pass on your jeans and have a good time, that's how you've made it. And that was kind of, that was, that was, that was a big number of theorists were supporting that idea. And that's where Frankl came in and was a bit of like another option, this idea that maybe instead of a will to pleasure, we actually are motivated most by a will to meaning. And that's where the connection to suffering comes in where a lot of time, you know, you think of like a movie like Braveheart.

That's just iconic because there's so much meaning. And there is suffering, but there's a lot of meaning and purpose in it. Um, and so I do think that, um, like, I think as you asked that initial question, what do you do with folks that maybe are just like, yeah, I get lit and I get drunk all the time and it feels good and I don't care. Like that's, that's meaningful to me. Um, I always start with curiosity. I always find that like curiosity gets me so much farther than judgment, uh, in those spaces. Because I genuinely, that doesn't resonate with my experience. So I'm just genuinely curious. Like, tell me more. I don't really know. That would be more the counselor approach to things. But I think of when I worked with like my, the high school program that I did and we were working, it was funded by a crime prevention grant and a focus was on leadership.

And so substance use was a piece that came up all the time. And some of those things. And sometimes, you know, you talked about even if we rewound back to the people who walk around with like weird colored hair and they say they're, you know, one thing, but they're kind of, maybe there's a little bit more behind that,

that front. I don't know if I've ever actually sat with a person who used a lot of substances and numbed a lot and partied really hard and said, I just really love and feel like really fulfilled in my life and have really meaningful relationships. And one of the questions, it's kind of like an existential question I like to ask people, but like if you got to your 100th birthday, how would you want people to talk about you in their speeches? Like those are kind of the questions I like to ask people and it's like would you want them to say oh they were a really good time they always had the best thing the best hookups um and a lot of times they're kind of like oh you know like usually in those questions if they're like you know the less they're cracking jokes or things

like that most people say things of like i want to be known as someone who showed up when everyone you know who lent a helping hand when it was needed or who brought over the meal when someone passed away or things like that. Yeah, I just, I think it's interesting how we can get, we can take a lot of ideas so far, but then when we boil them back down to the lived experience and the lived reality of what it feels like, yeah, I just see more cases for that need coming back to love and belonging at the end of the day or the pieces that humans tend to need and thrive on most. Yeah, one of my favorite thought experiences was, I don't know if you've heard of David Goggin.

but he's an ultramarathon runner he's broken some really crazy records of like the pull-up amount you can do in 24 hours so he did like thousands and then he lost so he did it again and then he had to do it a third time in order to break the record so he's just a crazy person but he was abused growing up he had a terrible time and one of his thought experiences was like at the end of life if there is a pearly gates if there is a person who goes through your list of how you lived your life. He wants that person to be astonished by all the things. Like, you weren't supposed to run five ultramarathons in four weeks. You weren't supposed to do, like, write a book. You weren't supposed to do these things. And the idea that we have this potential, it seems like

we say that, but it's such a more profound thing than I think we're able to comprehend, A, at a young age, but then we don't say it later in life. Because, well, you're here and you did it, and now you're working at save on foods or whatever it is and we stop thinking of you as like a thing that has tons of potential yeah the fascinating thing for me is like when you see one of those grocery store clerks we've dealt with a few who have like a really strong sense of humor that are constantly trying to make jokes and to me what I see is like you're in too intelligent for your own job like if if you had it gone differently you'd be a lawyer a judge if things had just if the cards were dealt a bit differently you'd be there because you've gone

the intelligence and you're losing your mind because you don't get to exercise that muscle that is so large and so powerful that you just don't get to fully kind of share that with the world and so it comes out in funny sassy comments but it's a sign to me of like you are capable of so much more and people forget that because now you're 40 and you're working at a grocery store so so we kind of forget about that well and I think the other piece too is that I think I track with what you're saying. And also, I think one of the things I loved in one of Brené's books was when she said, you know, sometimes we don't have the luxury of being in a job that really like brings all of our giftings and strengths at the table that really like enlivens our

purpose. And so sometimes our job is just an investor in our dreams. Like our day job, just what that pays the bills can then be the thing that gives you enough stability to invest in potentially the hobbies or the things you do in your own time that light you up. And she's like, so for some people, like if your creative outlet is making candles and you just sell your two candles on Etsy and you have to work your whatever job to be able to give you that time, like, you know, purpose is the cool thing about purpose is that it is very subjectively laid out. And the sense of it is the same. Like purpose for me feels similar to a sense of when someone else feels purpose, but what does it for me will be very different and unique to what does it for you? And even I think of

someone who is in a position like that, like maybe if they found purpose and knowing that they could just brighten different people's days as they went along, you know, it takes, maybe it's not about, that's where it's not necessarily about, uh,

being able to remember all the codes or be the quickest cashier, but just to be like, I made that person smile. I'm like, I'm, I'm making the world a better place. Yeah. And you don't even know how many doors that opens when somebody goes like,

I think the world needs competent people. Yeah. And so if you can be a competent person in a role that other people underestimate, the thing I miss is like when I was growing up, I don't know if it's still that way. When you'd have that first job, people would be like, if you do a really good job, like you don't know if somebody's just going to offer you a new job. It's going to be way better. It's going to be exactly what you want.

And I don't know if that's still like a cultural trend, but I think it's key the idea that you treat the person on the other side. Well, you don't know what doors could open as a consequence. Like, again, if somebody sees your potential and goes, I'm looking to fill a position. in this role and we need someone kind and thoughtful. If you're working and dealing with thousands of people a day and still being a thoughtful, kind, considerate person, like, dang, you're going to kill. And there's a reason that we say McDonald's gives you all those basic tools is because you're dealing with people at scale.

You're dealing with thousands of people. And you mess up everybody's order. You've got some very unhappy customers. And people who eat at McDonald's are often the people who are willing to go inside and complain to you for messing everything up. So it's an area to test yourself on what could you deliver. liver and every time Rebecca and I get good service it's just like wow like it's a breath of fresh and it does make your day better because you go like our food is hot like it's fresh it doesn't

taste like it's old um the people were kind and considerate you didn't have to repeat yourself seven times they weren't like sorry what was that and it's like oh i just i just want my food so i think that can have a huge difference horses i think what we lack in society a lot is humility. We don't, with light pollution, we don't see space as much. We forget we're hurtling through space and don't have control over that. We forget that a volcano could erupt and level us down to nothing again. We need humility kind of fed to us. Now we have to go look for it, whether it's through physical adversity, challenge, but I feel very uncomfortable around horses. They intimidate me a lot because one of my early interactions was somebody being like, be

careful where you stand because if you're behind them they could kick you and poke a hole through your whole body and I was like oh well that that does make sense I guess it could kick so hard that it would just poke a hole through my body and change my life forever but they do have like obviously they're not doing that all the time um cows are more actually known for that I think of being able to have the capability of like break your ribs and stuff but there's something to me humbling about being around a horse same with whales same with grizzly bears it's like oh you are much more powerful than I am, you could easily just trample me down to nothingness, and it gives me a sense of humility.

How did horses come onto your radar? When did they become a passion? They've been in my DNA. I have no family members that nurtured me into liking horses. They've just been, at nature, I was like the three-year-old with my face plastered against the car window when we would drive by fields of horses going horses. So, and like Adventures of the Black Stallion was a TV show when I was like three. that I was glued to without fail every week.

So something just, yeah, by nature, in me was always drawn to them. We just sometimes joke in our family that the horse gene has to skip a couple generations every so often, because otherwise if you had too many horse people in one family, you'd go bankrupt because they're expensive. But it's just, it's always been in me. And interestingly enough, as you talk about humility and being in the presence of bigger animals, my mentor, Josh Nichol, so he's a horse trainer, he's a cowboy out in Alberta, and from September of 2019 to September of 2020,

so over when COVID hit, I actually lived up in Athabasca, Northern Alberta, and just was working for him doing some social media communications work and just trying to learn as much as I could about his approach to horsemanship, because every time I watched him interact with a horse, it was like the horses liked him best. Out of all the trainers, I watched handle horses,

like the horses liked Josh. And I was like, that matters to me. I want to learn from a horse trainer. that horses like, not just that other people like. That was important. And so I was out there learning, and I can't remember if it was, I think it was initially his apprentice, Brooke, who said this quote to me, but I think it was originally from Josh, just this idea that what horses have to offer, or what we have, as people, have

to offer horses is our prefrontal cortex, our ability to see the world without fear, to know that the tarp flapping on the fence post isn't going to eat you, like to be able to see and understand the world in a capacity greater than what you would come with by yourself. So what we have to offer the horses is our mind and our understanding and what they have to offer us is their power, like the ability to fly, the ability to like gallop across a field, travel ground, do jobs. Like there's a strength to their embodiment that when we partner and team up with them, that is quite profound. And it is, it's quite humbling because it is amazing what a horse will do for you when they feel taken care of and safe by you. And it is

amazing what they will refuse to do and will not do when they feel like you're trying to force them or disregarding who they, like, you're just not meeting their needs, essentially. And so this is one of the reasons why I actually think horses are so therapeutic for people who've experienced trauma is because, you know, there's a PTSD diagnosis. Like, there's a, there's a criteria for what we would call trauma in the DSM-5 or the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders where it has to be like life-threatening, bodily harm things like that. So there's big criteria for what we would call a big T trauma, but one of the professors I had in school, his definition of any trauma was just anything that's negative and unexpected

that leaves you feeling confused, overwhelmed, and powerless. So that could be an interaction with like a bully at school or it could be a car accident. Like it kind of expands the definition a little. And the thing when we heal from trauma, so if it's negative and I expected and the feelings of it are confusion, overwhelm, and powerlessness. We want to try to find ways of facilitating corrective emotional experiences where we can feel powerful. We can feel like we understand instead of being confused. And instead of confused, overwhelmed and powerless, instead of overwhelmed, we have resources. We have other things that we can do so we don't feel overwhelmed. But the horses just have this like way. It's sometimes hard to make or help someone feel powerful without having to be

against someone else. Like, you know, sometimes we feel powerful when we like put that person down or we beat that person or whatever. But the cool thing about horses is it's a way of feeling powerful without having to take from anyone else. It's like this really beautiful kind of we talked about like this kind of symbiotic where we like give each other like a kind of a yin and a yang, like a mutually beneficial exchange. And so I think when it comes to humility, horses have humbled me like crazy. And I think it's interesting. I had one professional are also that he did a bunch of studies on virtuous relating, and his definition of humility wasn't necessarily about knocking yourself down a peg or two. It was about accuracy. So his definition

of humility was just having an accurate understanding of both your strengths and your weaknesses. And so, whereas pride would be an overinflation of your strengths and self-degradation would be like, I'm degrading myself to be less than what I am. Kind of is similar to Brené Brown's mantra for authenticity is don't puff up, but don't shrink down, stand your sacred. ground. And I find that the horses, like, when they puff, when people puff up, they're like, um, no, because they're a thousand pound animals. Like they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they've watched horses humble people that walk in with arrogance. And it kind of, you know, I don't wish ill on anyone, but I also am thankful when horses can like, you know, communicate some of

those pieces or offer feedback in a way that's constructive and helpful. Um, but then there's also this piece around like self-degradation also isn't true humility. Like, when I shrink down, when I belittle myself when I make myself less than. It's also not really, really authentic or not really congruent. And the horses also don't really resonate with that. A lot of times, that's when horses will ignore people and try to be with their buddies instead, because it's like, I don't really know what you have going on. You're not really confident. I'd rather be with the other horses because I feel safer with them than with you. And we often find that we have the most success with horses when we can kind of stand in that true humility or authenticity where it's like, I'm not going to get super big at you,

but I'm also not going to shrink. I'm going to like stand my sacred ground. I'm going to let you feel me. And then we do some cool work around like liberty work where they can come. And then when they loan us their power and we bring them our ability to see the world without fear, really cool things happen. That is really, really fascinating. I find it interesting that we co-evolved with some animals. Oh, totally.

With like dogs. And horses are huge with that. Yeah. And it's interesting because cats go in their own category. because we didn't need them for the warmth and the love and the connection. And so they still have, what we needed them for was to go get rats and mice out of our field. So we developed so differently with them because we don't have, some cats are obviously way different,

but like the typical cat is pretty independent and I don't need you. And like, you feed me and I do whatever I want. Whereas with dogs and horses, there's this mutual relationship that has a level of, like, love to it. And I find that really interesting because it's not communicated verbally. It's something you experience. And so often people will say, I love you, like, have a good. And it's like, it's so not heartfelt. Yet to experience it with none of the words is a fascinating thing, because you know it and you know you have feelings towards it. But there's no agreement of the mind in that regard it's only through action which some people it seems like that needs to be

the starting places like proof that love is possible without demands without yeah and then you'll like I love you and you're going to take out the garbage right oh yeah and then you'll do this right like that expectation that can often come with loving remarks is often very discouraging yet with an animal it's like it's mutually beneficial it means something to you to be able to see it eat to see it feed to see its needs taken care of and then to see it come through for you in such a meaningful way. And again, that's where it seems like we lack in gift giving and eating meals together. Yep.

Well, it's just interesting how, like, you know, if we looked at scripture, you know, that idea of like unconditional love is that idea that we try to treat others, how we want to be treated with unconditional love. In client-centered therapy, the phrase would be, unconditional positive regard. So Carl Rogers is like one of the core needs for all humans to be able to thrive in relationship as they need to have unconditional positive regard, accurate empathy, and genuineness. And then there's a couple other pieces too. Those are kind of the main core ones. And so it's just interesting how a lot of times, even for folks that I've sat with who've been

through traumatic stuff and hard, hard moments with humans, that unconditional love that a pet or a dog or a horse brings. And I think dogs are like especially good at unconditional love. I think horses are very good at presence. So horses is interesting when they stand in herds. They don't really like touch each other very much, but they have a lot of presence. And I think I just notice it's fun when I've worked at different ranches where there are multiple animals available because the animal that a person is drawn to also says something about what they need at that point in their healing journey. Say more on that.

So like I have one person who like she loves both dogs and horses and she's gotten a dog and it's been great. But right now horses are where she's resonating most and being able to do most of her work because part of her piece is a bit of a sensory input piece like the highly sensitive person. There's a little bit of overload with that, a bit of social anxiety. And the horses are just, there's a, there's a resonance there that her dog is, when she tries to connect with her dog, that's her place where she has to kind of push herself to grow. But the horses are where she like, it's like her cup filler. It's like the place where she's able to just to be.

And that's why I actually find it so valuable to work from a client-centered perspective when I do animal therapy because if I were to have someone, someone to give me their intake form or whatever and I'm like, I think you should be with this horse or this dog or this animal. Like, I actually miss out on this potential really cool interaction when the person resonates to where they might need to be and then they actually get a chance to a express their voice and B, learn about like, what does it look like kind of like that self-carriage idea? When I bring myself to the interaction, how do I navigate when I'm going to need moving forward? So another way to say that, too, would be so depending on which animal someone's drawn to, that says something about what they need.

So some people that are more drawn to dogs are really more into touch. They're a little bit more vocal. They might be a little more playful. The horses are really, they can be very peaceful. They can be more like, and dogs are prey or predator animals where horses are prey animals, that kind of creates a different interaction too, depending on. Could you explain that a little bit? Yeah, so dogs work in packs and they're hunters, they're predator animals. So they, they are carnivores.

They typically would eat meat like wolves, all those kinds of things. So they have eyes more towards the front of their face. And they're the ones that are looking more for when they, when, even when they rest and sleep, they have, you know, a dog pile. They're all on top of each other. They're touching. They're like there's a lot of, um, there's a lot of bonding that happens in that way. For a horse is a prey animal. They're always, their first thought in the world is just how do I make sure no one eats me?

Like, how do I avoid getting hurt? Um, and I think that, you know, depending on someone's personal story, like if they've been a victim of abuse or something like that, like sometimes they resonate more with the horses who have been preyed upon and felt preyed upon and they feel, you know, by being able to ride a horse, let's say, especially when you like interact with a thousand pound animal and you're like, can you move back or can you move sideways and they listen? Does something to the brain around like, my voice matters and like you should listen. And it's just, it's cool to see how that interaction goes a little

differently than maybe with a dog, where the dog might just be more about, like, love and connection and play. Like, horses don't really, like, they'll be playful, but they don't quite, like, they won't wrestle in the same way a dog will or things like that. So, depending on the person, depending on what they need, this is where I think when people are like, well, what is animal therapy? And I'm like, every animal therapy session I do looks unique based on who the person, like, how that person shows up on that given day and how that horse shows up on that given day. Do you have an example of an experience working with a person that stands out to you? It seems like a trip to have someone gravitate towards a certain animal.

Like, I find that really interesting to think about, like, which one are they going to choose? Oh, my goodness. So there's a whole type of psychology or therapy called object relations, so the relationships between objects and stuff that plays more into this idea as well. But I totally have a story. There was one time, so at the ranch, I worked at a youth. ranch out in Alberta for a number of summers starting in 2010 and then I went there as a graduate intern for an internship in 2017, 2018, no, 17. And I think it was actually during my summer there.

I was the head wrangler there in 2015 for the whole summer. And we would do a Horses of Hope program. So there was like regular summer camp like kids programs and if kids had a hard time keeping up with the regular programming, they could come for one-on-one sessions with me. Sometimes strategically did that if They needed, like, if they were particularly rambunctious during, like, archery, maybe they'd come for horses with me when the rest of their cabin group was doing those activities. Anyhow, I had one camper who, you know, I had one prof that told me this, that all behavior makes sense.

You just might not have all the puzzle pieces. And so that kind of inspires more curiosity than judgment when someone's doing things that you don't quite understand. She kept running away from camp. She kept trying to get back to the city. And we were like, you just got here. Like, we want to make this comfortable for you. and she wasn't really sharing what was going on.

She was supposed to go on a canoe trip. She wanted to be with the horses, so we were trying to find as much time for her to be with me and the horses. And I had like a, I had the trail lineup of horses that would take kids on trail rides that were like strong and able. And then I had like a mix of horses that were injured or just, you know,

they were the ones that we would stand and brush and do these one-on-one therapy, kind of like pseudotherapy sessions with. And they were just kind of one-on-one time. And I had in mind one horse that I was going to pick. Like she was kind of an older horse that was, really calm and I knew this girl had been really stressed and trying to run away. So clearly there's a lot of anxiety and stress going on. And so we walked out to the pen and I'm trying to catch this horse. Usually she's pretty easy to catch and she was like, would not have it that

day, which was weird. I was like, Blue, what are you doing? Like come over here and she's like not having any of it. And I hear behind me, this girl pipe up. She's probably around, around 15 years old. And she goes, can we work with this one? And I turn around. And in her hands is this horse that's like one of the unbroke colts. So he's probably about four, never been ridden, super skittish, super jumpy. And typically, like, I don't let the little kids anywhere around him, because I'm not sure if they would trample, if he would trample them or whatnot. And she just has this horse that's, like, asleep in her hands. And I'm like, uh, and part of me, my gut reaction was like, get away from that horse. But then I'm like, well, that horse is sleeping. So it's okay. And he was

okay to, like, walk around and halt her and stuff like that. But anyhow, um, I'm, I just looked at her and I was like, well, that one's not trained. Like, we can't ride that one. Like, he can't do any of the normal things with him. And she was like, I don't care. I just want to spend time with him. I was like, and this is where being a client-centered therapist was like very valuable to me because I like had my little lesson plan in my head.

That got chucked out the window. And I just had to stay present with what was in front of me. And I was like, something's happening here that's important. And we're just going to see where it goes. And so anyhow, she, yeah, she, she just loved on that horse for the rest of that week she she bathed it she brushed it she braided its mane and like that horse like very few people ever gave it like gave it to like like another second of their time or attention it was interesting horse we had it in a trade

and it had a big jagged scar along its hip so i think at one point it actually had been attacked by a cougar or something and it survived probably why it was so skittish um but some kind of like physical trauma we could see from the scar. And it was just a really cool piece where I didn't end up hearing the fullness of her story until later. I don't remember. I think she might have been pregnant or something. I was facing some fears about why she wanted to get back home and didn't know what was

going on. But for that week, it's interesting how there's a difference between content and process. And I didn't get a lot of content from her about her life, but there was something really important in the process of that week where she felt attuned to by the horse that horse just felt attuned to by her and then i just did my very best to stay out of the way but to keep them safe and facilitate that space for them to be seen and to be felt and to feel understood um and yeah it's crazy she i you know i i i dabble in photography that's one of my past times and before she left i asked can i take some pictures of the two of you together and i have some really cool photos actually of just you can't see her face but she was just like standing with the horse and this horse was just like asleep in her hands again. And I don't know if I could ever like put exact words to why that was therapeutic.

If I had to like write up a report about why that was impactful, all I know is by standing there by the side of the fence, all I wished was that I could have just given that horse to her and let them be together forever. But in that moment, just knowing that the week they had, the time they had together was really impactful and it gave her a window of feeling seen, of feeling felt, and just letting everything slow down a little because I think she just needed some time to be herself. And that horse, the cool thing about horses is they don't care what you wear, they don't care what you look like, they just care how you feel. And it was a really

cool moment to encounter and just to be a part of. So that is really a beautiful story. Do you find different age groups of people interact different with the horses. I know you work with veterans. I know you've worked with farmers. It seems like a different age group, perhaps, than youth. Yeah. I got my start with kids and youth.

I think that was just easier because I did my grad degree in my late 20s, and I had worked a lot with kids. So that was kind of where I started. But we get into different themes and different activities based on age groups, for sure. The biggest common thread is simply there are some folks. that don't thrive in an office sitting or an office setting sitting face to face with a lot of eye contact. And the tricky thing, like once you start to study trauma more, a book that I recommend to everyone if they're interested more in the mind-body connection and understanding trauma is

called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. It's an excellent resource. And once you start to understand that like when we go through trauma, we don't really have access to the part of our brain that does speech and logic. So talking about stuff only gets us so. far, but when we can actually have like corrective emotional experiences and when we can embody a different alternative to some of those traumatic experiences, that, that, that, that hits our brain almost at a, at a deeper level. And so, yeah, I, it's still kind of a mix of trusting that when people show up, just trying to be attuned to what they need in the moment and whether they need to sit with the horses, work with the horses, just talk, like, there's lots

of flexibility in the way I work, but I've really enjoyed that, like, in the last probably two to three years, there's been a shift of working, I still work with some kids, but I work a bit less with kids, work a bit more with adults, because what I often find actually that when adults struggle, if they're, especially if there's an emotional trigger, and I like to sometimes ask the question, like, how old do you feel when your anger is like raging? And they often don't feel their chronological age. A lot of time, it's like the little kid inside of us. That's really struggling that's creating the struggles as adults. And so a lot of times it's almost like when we do the inner world work, if I can, in the same way I would work with a kid, if I can help

meet the needs and bring some peace and bring some healing to that inner child that sits within a lot of folks, the work actually looks a little similar. But then trying to integrate that with our adult self and move that forward looks a little different when we get into how do we take some of these good feelings that we feel here at the barn out into our everyday world. Yeah, that is one comment that I've really liked. I know Joe Rogan can be a controversial figure, but one of his comments is that, like, one of his big turning moments was when he started looking at people like they were babies. And it seems silly, like it seems like a rude judgment, but you realize that some people's tools haven't advanced since they were eight years old. Some of their coping mechanisms haven't been updated.

And so having that humility of like, this is a person that was once a baby. They grew up, but they didn't get this tool. It's easier to cope with when someone's rude, disrespectful, and consider it, when you can go, okay, this is their life, though, because often we treat them like they are who they are in that moment, and we go, oh, what a terrible person. We hate that person because they can't, they don't even know how to communicate. And it's like, right, but they, that you're like, look at who they are and how they developed and maybe they didn't have loving family members who taught them all those tools and all of those different things, slowing that down and recognizing that people. grew really fast, maybe they're expert at math and they're killing it at that, but then they didn't have to go and get the tools on how to communicate properly, how to listen, how to be considerate. Totally. Yeah. Um, you know, I, I just, uh, oh, I had a thought there and that was good.

Oh, one of the therapies that, um, are, are gaining more traction all the time and are becoming one of the therapies, but that's becoming more popular in trauma treatment is called lifespan integration. And the whole point of lifespan integration is to build a timeline where all the parts of you at all different ages are online, are conscious of each other and then integrated so that we can bring like the three year old, the four year old, 17 year old me into the present day. And not that they all like it to like bring all their emotional like stuff into today and spew that on whoever's in front of me. But the idea that to have a fully integrated self helps us tend to function better. Usually when we have trauma, we

tend to get split up or parts of us get stuck developmentally. And so then being able to heal requires being able to, A, become conscious of the fact that there are multiple voices at play that part of me wants to be able to hold it together and part of me would really like to just chew out that person in the grocery store. So consciousness is the first step. Then they have to those two parts have to be able to communicate kindly to each other because if they're at odds,

that's only going to create more anxiety and internal tension. And then last, they need to cooperate and work as a team because chances are that angry part has some valuable pieces to bring to the table when it comes to asserting boundaries or holding people to higher standards, but it needs a chance to work as a teammate and cooperate with the part that can also deliver that in a kind way that people can hear and actually want to try. Indigenous people have that, but it's for families. You're supposed to, part of the steps for seven generations is to know who your parents are, who your grandparents are, who their grandparents are, and so on. Awesome. So you understand, to me, like, from a psychological perspective, it gives you the tools of, like, where was the lacking for the past four generations? And for Rebecca, she often talks about how communication was something that lacked in terms of, like, not quantity, but quality, the depths in which they dive.

And so that's what her fascination is. It's, like, really deep. She's like, I don't want to touch small talk. I want to have the really deep conversations because it's been missing. And so seeing where people's lacks were, it allows you, like, I could be mad at my grandmother for how she acted. But I understand where she was coming from. And if she had been like, I don't want to have kids now because of the terrible things that happened, I wouldn't be here today. So it was like a brave process for her to have kids, even if she didn't do everything perfectly, because it allows the trauma of a family lineage to move around and to change.

for a different path to be taken, but it takes risk to kind of continue on. And so it's interesting that there's like your life integration, but how you and your family fit in together is also key because so many people's biggest influence is their grandparent, not their parent, who helps shape them. And so understanding where that person came from and then, oh, what did they go through? And again, it goes back to that understanding history and the people who are involved. Totally. And that's where I notice so often, too, when I work with kids who have been adopted

and don't have access to some of those pieces, it requires a lot of work. And there's sometimes actually a, like, a grief process and not knowing. And so not taking that for granted, being able to notice that that is really important. And it totally shapes how we step forward into today. Do you see that there's a bigger difference for people, depending on, like, what aspect of the horse? Is it most meaningful for most people to ride the horse?

Is it, like, does it hit home to clean the horse? to help it meet its needs? Is there a sense of service in that that taking care of them? Go ahead. All of the above, yeah. I do find that, like, we pick different activities with the horses based on therapeutic goals. So, like, for kiddos with, like, ADHD or ADD, riding is really important because their brain leaves where their body is.

And so when they're on a horse, A, they can't run around to all the other things that physically keeps them in one place a little differently than if they were on their own two feet. but also it helps, like, um, the bilateral stimulation of riding. So, um, is really important for grounding and bringing emotion regulation. So there's a therapy called EMDR where you use light, uh, or paddles or different things to stimulate the brain left, right, left, right. It's called bilateral stimulation of the brain. And it helps treat, um, treat trauma. It helps reprocess traumatic triggers and things like that. I'm trained in a therapy called OEI, which is similar. It works on a similar neurobiological principle where we use one eye at a time to process things.

But anytime I can integrate walking left, right, left right, with our feet on the ground, kayaking, paddles left right, left right, or horseback riding, swing in the motion of left right, left right can be incredibly therapeutic and beneficial for people. So that's one thing I'll integrate if it suits and fits with their goals. Boundaries work I find tends to come out more in the groundwork. So like when I'm working with, can I get the horse to back up? Can I get them to move sideways? Can I get them to come with me? How do I present requests and follow through on those and then make sure that I don't get literally run over top of? Like there's a very literal application with horses that can be metaphorically adapted to conversation all the time or bridged conversation all the time. And then sometimes, yeah, just like the grooming, the brushing, the touch. I had one client who, has some learning disabilities and part of her work is also trying to figure out what jobs she might be able to do because there's going to be a limited ability or a limited number of jobs

she can do. But part of her stuff is she does, she puts the feet together and she contributes by taking care of them and she feels a sense of purpose and pride because she's had some hard experiences when people have told her she can't do things. She gets to come to the barn and feel like she's not only, not only is she capable, she's actually really good at like connecting with the horses and feeling their sensitivities. And so being good at something, building self-esteem, learning new skills. There's lots of different ways that things come together with that. So, yeah, it's just, honestly, it's part of my creative process, actually, is just meeting

with people, hearing their goals, listening to their struggles, and then suggesting ideas about what I think would be valuable and beneficial. But they also get to then say, that one sounds good. That one, maybe not so much. Let's table that one for. later because that dialogue is really important to me in the way I work therapeutically. And I kind of see myself almost like a hiking guide. Like someone comes into the office and says, I want to get to that peak.

And I'm like, okay, there's probably multiple ways we can get there. We could go this way, this way, this way. What do you think? And then they get to speak and say, like, this might be good. And then hopefully in the process, they learn how to hike mountains. And maybe down the road, they hike their own mountain and they bring someone else on their own path. I think like the wilderness analogies and metaphors as to how we navigate count.

counseling are pretty endless. They're pretty cool. That's what I was actually just going to ask you, is like, how do people get away with doing all of this in an office all the time? Like, I don't understand that. My understanding is EMDR does work when you walk in. When you're talking about an issue and you're looking back and forth, first you go from focus mode, which is when you're reading a book, you're splicing time so small that time actually often slows down to landscape mode where you're taking in so much content the time sort of flies by, then you're reflecting on an issue you went through and that EMDR starts to kind of arise naturally. Yet I've never heard that said other than just sort of

realizing that that process is occurring. It seems sort of crazy that more people don't try and integrate some sort of outdoor activity with their counseling practice. I, you know, I've, the more, the longer I do this work, the more I start to like feel like my sense or my radar for dialing in on what needs to be sat down and talked about and what needs to just be walked out and embodied different people, different personalities need more or less of one or the other. And I think, yeah, being able, I think the biggest thing or my biggest hope for folks as they navigate their own personal growth, whether they're accessing therapy or considering it, or maybe they work as a therapist or work in mental health, is to just

be able to let all the options be available and then be able to like notice what resonates and what doesn't with the person who's walking their journey because um i just personally am at the point where i don't know how i could do a like it would be hard for me to do therapy without any access to embodied activities um that's part of like just part of the worldview i come in with i just notice how much it also helps me anecdotally just staying and embodied um but Um, yeah, I, I think sometimes, just because we've always done it one way, we, it typically therapies always look like we go sit in an office and we sit in chairs and we talk about feelings that has its pros and its cons. And just because we've always done it that way, doesn't mean

that we can't try some other options. And I think that's one of the things I noticed most, um, about, uh, people in maybe the current communities and stuff like that is we, we spend a lot of time sedentary. We spend a lot of time sitting on screens and things like that. And I think that I often lean on the way I've been taught to understand the medicine wheel of like mind, body, spirit and like heart, like heart, mind, body, all those four quadrants. When we, we're health when we're trying to pursue health in all four areas. And so being able to move our bodies is like, to me, it's pretty integral. It's pretty important. foundationally. Do you think it's hard for people to build relationships with these animals

and then say goodbye and have a closure date? Do you think, is there a process you have to go through to let, like I just think of that youth you talked about, like, how do you ever want to leave that moment? They're hard. It don't get me wrong, like, some of that sometimes goodbyes are necessary and they're hard. You know, I always try my best to like prepare and advance, like, create realistic expectations. A lot of times when kids come for a week, they understand they're going home at the end of the week, so they know a goodbye is coming. But also, like, what a beautiful opportunity to practice goodbyes. That's also a skill that we don't really do.

We have an epidemic of ghosting in our culture because we don't want to say, hey, you know what, I've appreciated the time we've spent, but I just don't want to move forward from here. I wish you well, all the best. So, you know, it's just another opportunity to practice and put those skills in place. And I do think that practicing with an animal sometimes is a little less scary. It gives you a chance to try it out and just to play. with some of these skills before you try them with other people who may or may not respond

with as much grace or as much peace. Yeah, funerals seem to be an area in which we really don't know. We have some of the beautiful aspects of the tradition and not a good, deep, thorough understanding of why we do things. How do we appreciate someone's legacy? How do we take pride in that and carry that out on ourselves? and then we miss out on human beings alive, 90 years of a person's life. And it's all, and like they say people die twice when they die,

and then the last time they're spoken of. And it's like we don't always know how to talk about people or what they did in a healthy way. That's a powerful quote you just said right there too. I have to almost like sit with that for a second. That's pretty cool. Shout out to McLemore. He was the one I heard it from. Right.

I was like, I think I've heard that before too, but I forgot that. that was where it was from. I love that. Yeah, you know, talking about legacy, talking about purpose, I feel like those have been big themes of our conversation today. And, you know, one of the things that I really valued in one of the courses I had at school was we didn't, it was on couples adults and older adults and older life. What do we do with some of those conversations that come up towards the end of life? And I think if we're going to ask the question, what does living well look like?

we also have to ask the question, what does dying well look like? That opens a whole other kind of worms that we probably don't have time for today. But just that idea that, yeah, I think legacy and purpose and saying goodbye are our important skills. And it was actually, I was at a funeral a couple months ago, a month or so ago, one of my uncles, he actually was a counselor and he worked in Abbotsford counseling in the cancer center, helping, like, counseling people through their end of life. end stages of life or fighting cancer. And then he ended up having his own battle with cancer

and passed away at the age of 57. So it was pretty profound, but like, super sad in so many ways. But the thing that impacted me most from the funeral, I found out the news of his passing when I was away at a work event. I was away at a horse expo speaking. And then I didn't really have time to process it at that time. And I really knew in my mind, I was like, I'm going to make a point of going to that funeral so I can spend the time to really like let myself feel the feelings and really like just reflect on the things that that impacted me from his life because even though we weren't maybe we didn't hang out a lot or spend a lot of time together he was a counselor he did the same grad program I did I felt a lot of connection to him in my own way and I went to the

funeral and I cried and I think some people were actually surprised at how much I cried because I didn't necessarily spend all that time personally with him but it was a really important process to me because it was my time to let, let myself be moved. So one of, um, in the existential world, um, Alfred Lingle, he, uh, he's one of the kind of the fathers of existential analysis. He mentored with Victor Frankl for years. And one of his quotes, he, he speaks German, but so sometimes when they translate the quotes over it, they sound funny, but they actually have more impact because of the weird wording. And one of his quotes is that tears are the kiss of life. That's how you know you're moved. And I love that because so often tears are,

something that we resist or we're uncomfortable with. But also, like, if you think about a life where you never cry about anything because you aren't moved enough by things to cry is kind of sad in its own way that's kind of problematic. And so to cry and to say goodbye and to grieve was a very, like, you know, it was a precious memory. It was like a very valuable experience to me. And I looked around and, you know, most of the people there were around my parents' age, which makes sense because my uncle passed at 57. But I just found it interesting that, like, I don't know how many, unless we're taught or unless we talk about the importance of funerals and saying goodbye and grieving, I wonder,

I worry a little for my generation and the generations coming up behind us that I don't, I don't know how much they're going to turn toward grief. And we might miss out on some of the wisdoms, you know, and you talked about the wisdoms of our elders, like, I think that's vastly important. I actually really love sitting with people who are years, chapters ahead of me in life and gleaning from their experiences and their wisdoms and and I don't see that tradition happening as much anymore so yeah yeah Richard Dawkins does a good job he talks about this idea of memes and you see it

every once in a while with people's kind of statements of like how are you doing living the dream like we get these kind of one-offs like oh I just lost someone oh they're in a better place like we have these lines that we use and we can just reuse reduce recycle these words and not really be present with the person, we just get to kind of fly through the conversation and have like a one sentence thing that doesn't mean anything in depth. It's not like they're asking, who was the person? How did they impact you? What did you learn from them? It's just like, oh, they're in a better place now. Have a good day. And we're very bad at kind of letting people sit with how they feel.

And we get these kind of quick ways of communicating that are empty hours. Underlying that, it's almost the message of like, I'm not going there with you. That's good for you. I'm not going there with you and I think what we crave most most in our relationships is like can I fully show up can I fully be and like will you be there with me yeah yeah that's really important for people the final questions is going to be they often say the first step is the hardest yes what advice do you have for people to take that first step like specifically with counseling are you thinking or in what way like that first step whatever that looks like I think of counseling is a is a likely first step for many, but to start to address the underlying problems, they have a mess of a

life and they don't know where to start. How do they take that first step? Yeah, that's a great, a great question. Let me think about that for a second. I, so when it comes to taking a first step, makes me think actually the words turn toward and lean in, those two phrases. Those are pretty powerful in some of the processes that I had during grad school. And so a lot of times, depending on if we've been through hard things, if we come from family systems or workplaces that value kind of dig deep, get or done, that's kind of a cowboy one, you know,

just like push through some of those things. I think sometimes, you know, don't get me wrong, I think that being resilient and having a hard, like a strong work ethic and things like that are beautiful qualities. I value those. I do pursue those in my life. And sometimes first step to me would be like, you know, we've been coasting for so far and maybe we got our truck or our vehicle caught in a bit of sand or quick sand or mud. And the harder we try, the more we spin our tires and actually the more we're getting ourselves stuck.

And so the first step means like maybe opening the door, getting out and looking at the situation and assessing. It's like turning toward the problem instead of being in denial and just keep trying, you know, the definition of insanity if we try the same thing over and over again. expect different results. So I think that first steps usually involve turning toward what's happening, leaning in to what's happening and really being in dialogue, whether that's with yourself, with the circumstance, whether you have a trusted friend that you can talk to to to be like,

you know, this hasn't been going well in my life. You know, this is, I've really been struggling here. Showing up, letting yourself be seen, that's courageous. And especially like finding people that you can trust. And that's no small, no small task.

And so I think that's where, so first steps could mean going to see a counselor. It could mean turning toward a close friend. It could mean just even like going out and sitting in a quiet field or by a river with a journal and some music and like letting, I sometimes we'll do, sometimes it's really hard to know what we're feeling and to know what's going on. And so sometimes I encourage people to do lyric pages. If you have certain songs that keep getting stuck in your head, like take some sharpies, some colors, and just like as you listen to the songs that you're really drawn to, write out the lyrics that stand out to you.

And then at the end of a couple minutes, like look at that and then reflect on what's the theme? Because it just gives it something practical and tangible. And so when it comes to first steps, I think the piece, oh, excuse me, but I think when it, so when it comes to first steps, I think that, like, one of the things we notice even with a PTSD diagnosis is that if two people go through something traumatic,

the biggest difference between someone who develops PTSD and someone who doesn't is the ability to ask for help and to turn towards and stay in community. And so, as human beings, we're wired for connection, we're wired for a relationship, we're wired for attachment. And so those first steps kind of need to look to at like a lot of times I like to think of each person is sort of like their social networks or like a spider web. And sometimes you might only have one point of connection. But if the wind of the wind of life blows, there's not a lot of stability in the web if we're only holding on by two threads. So first steps can look at like what does like who are some of the people we could add more connections to? how can we add some more points of anchor points around our web? And then from there we can talk about what kind of web do we want to build,

what kind of direction do we want to move? But I think first steps are being able to notice that your inner world is a little bit, it's different than your outer world and turning toward yourself and getting curious about what's happening on the inside. Because I think sometimes we turn away from our inner experience, because we think we're going to get overwhelmed by it. We feel powerless to change it. We don't think there's a way.

to make it better. And I'll speak from both my own personal experience and from the people I walk alongside of in my work all the time is that turning toward ourselves gives us an opportunity to have a conversation that could be like,

oh my goodness, it could be the fork in the road to like the most amazing mountain peak or kind of trudging through the thick of the forest. That is really good advice. How do people choose a counselor? Do you have any advice? It seems like so many people,

people want to rush through, pick any old body to talk to. But with your level of kindness and generosity towards your clients and understanding them, how do they choose the right person? That's a great question. I remember the first counselor I ever saw made me feel judged and alienated and I didn't want to go back. And then I was so desperate with my different, you know, just feeling depressed and all the other pieces in my early 20s that I forced. I called the agency that or the office and I said, I need to see someone else and I demanded it. I was desperate enough that I was able to advocate for myself. And the second person was incredible and we just matched really well. And that's not to say that the first counselor was a bad counselor. I think

just in the headspace I was in, she had a different approach that was just not what I needed. And the second counselor was a lot more relational. And that was what was really helpful to me. And so the thing that I would say is that, um, know that finding a counselor, is similar to like finding a good coach. Like there can be lots of other coaches in certain sports that are good at different things. But ideally, when you find one that's really aligned with A, what you want to learn and be your style of learning, you're probably going to make progress quicker. It's going to cost you less to because it won't take as much time.

So I really kind of reflect back to people like, trust your get. Like, and don't feel afraid to be able to say like, hey, I'd like to like either you go to one session or you do, sometimes they'll do free consultations over the phone. or whatever, and you can kind of just get a feel and notice that as much as I would like help, I'm kind of like interviewing this person to see if they would be the best fit for me. And if they fit, great. And if not, there are a lot of counselors out there. I actually really delight in providing referrals or giving suggestions because I tend to know of

more people out there just because of the circles I dabble in. So sometimes, like for me right now, my private practice is full. I have a wait list for individual work, even though I still have space for doing groups and other things. But yeah, sometimes when people reach out and ask, I just ask a little bit about them. And then I like sending them to different referral sources. And yeah, just trust your gut. If it feels right, proceed. And if it feels off, then set them free and find another one. You have a great website, a great Instagram page where you share incredible insights like you have today. How can people connect with you? Oh, yeah, thanks. Through the website, my email's on there. And

can send a direct message or find me there that works great and what is it called my website is kiley bartell.com so pretty simple pretty straightforward and then my instagram is just at kiley bartel so yeah Kylie this has been an absolute blast this definitely goes up in my top three favorite interviews i've done since starting this you have a clear wealth of knowledge there are some people I sit down with and they're great people but you can see at the at a certain point their expertise their sense of confidence is starting to deplete, and then there's people like yourself where it's like, I can see five more episodes. I can see clearly that we've just scratched the surface of all the years. When you're able to reference people, give examples, put things

into context for people, it means a lot and it shows your wealth of knowledge and passion for the topic. Your love for animal therapy, but you're understanding that every animal, every person's different. So the process is going to be different. You embracing the complexity, I think, reminds us to do the same in our own lives, whatever path we're on. And I think a lot of the information you've shared is inspirational to people so that they can go, wow, like there is people who genuinely care, who understand how to do things properly. Again, I think we live in a time where everybody is the same and all counselors are created equal because they all have the same certification. You, in my opinion, are in the league of your own in terms of the care and the thoughtfulness that

you put into every single client individually in that mindset. Some of them, it's you're paying my bills. You haven't even shown a hint that anything in terms of what you do is a business, yet at a certain point it is. And so that's a fascinating thing to see in a person, their passion for the topic and their belief that things could be better. And so you're going to try and steer things in that direction. And so I just really appreciate this conversation. Wow, you could, I could feel a little bit of almost the tears welling up, almost behind my eyes as you share those beautiful words. Thank you for that encouragement. I was just so honored when you reached out and was like, hey, could we sit down for a conversation? Because these are spaces

where a lot of times in the past, when I've hosted events, I'm the one that's hosting and asking the questions. And so just the fact that you, yeah, felt inspired to bring more voices, more mentor voices to the community was something. I just thought was a beautiful idea. And I'm so honored that you asked. And I had a similar thought, actually, partway through the conversation. I was like, hey, I'd like to ask you some more questions. And B, I feel like there are a lot more potential conversations that could jump off of some of the topics. But at the end of the day, thank you so much for the questions you're asking, the people you're bringing, you know, from the Chilat community, but then sharing with the world. Some of the, yeah, some of the things and the

ideas you're sharing are so inspirational and I'm so excited to see where the podcast continues to grow to. I appreciate that. Can I ask, are you at all considering one day writing a book or starting your own thing? Like, you have such a wealth of knowledge that's, that's, you're not really, you don't have any competition. I'm just curious. Yeah, that's a great question. I, I, I get excited about writing books and creating more content in the future. That's actually sort of the shift. I feel like I've been a student for quite some time now, and it's been kind of in tandem with working and still learning.

And it's kind of exciting to see. I've got some ideas for some online course stuff and partnering up with Josh Nichol, who does a lot of work with the relational horsemanship piece, and then for me to bring some of those human psychology pieces. I'm excited for those bits. But, yeah, I suspect that in the years to come, they're going to come, but it's pieces like this that really get my brain kind of excited about.

I just feel all the seeds that are taking root and sprouting. So one day, we'll see. I'll keep you posted. Well, thank you again for coming on. This has just been an incredible conversation. Yeah, thanks for having me.