The Taproot Podcast - 🧩Tamar Stone Interview: Voice Dialogue and Body Dialogue

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

Subscribe to the captivating podcast: 🎧🔥 #GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Find more free resources on the website: GetTherapyBirmingham.com 🆓🔍 #FreeResources Discover the expertise of J. Tamar Stone, M.A., C.H.T., a renowned psychotherapist, consultant, and consciousness teacher: 🌟🧠 #TamarStone Explore the transformative Body Dialogue Process and Selves in a Box: 📦💫 #BodyDialogue #SelvesInABox Tap into Tamar's teachings at respected institutions worldwide: 🎓🌍 #ConsciousnessTeacher #VoiceDialogue Connect with Tamar for a deeper sense of self and fulfillment: 🌟🤝 #DeeperSelf #Fulfillment Visit the Taproot Therapy Collective website for additional information: 🌐📚 #TaprootTherapyCollective Remember, the provided resources are not a substitute for professional mental health treatment: ⚠️❗️ #ProfessionalHelp Contact qualified mental health providers or emergency services if needed: 📞🆘 #EmergencySupport For appointments and scheduling, use the provided contact information: 📅📞 #Appointments #ContactUs #Psychology #Therapy #Psychotherapy #Jung #DepthPsychology #Trauma #Therapist #Introspection #MBTI #Existentialism   Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml Taproot Therapy Collective 2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216 Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone] Email: [e-mail] The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

yeah what well I appreciate you sitting down with me today I want to be respectful of your time so just to get you introduced to have Tamar stone am I saying that correct Tamar Tamar Stone, am I saying that correct? Tamar. Tamar, okay. Yeah. Thanks, I've only seen it read. And so I want to get to your work and some of the stuff that you've done, but also a lot of the podcast is kind of trying to give people an idea of the history of the profession. There's not a great understanding of that, even among clinicians. So going back to kind of start with your dad, you have, you know, your dad is a Jungian analyst who actually goes through one of the Carl Jung Institutes, which is not a quick or cheap process. You know, you have to have been in analysis for seven years. Then you've got to do what, four years of study that you pay for?

I mean, it's like a master's degree. And then after that, they had, you know, the blessing of the Institute. And then he gave that up to start his own model. And jump in and correct me anywhere here, because I'm going based on what I understand. Yeah, that's absolutely correct. And so the model is called Voice Dialogue, and the Embr the embracing ourselves book is kind of the manual for that But then there's a whole lot of other resources and I wanted to talk to you because When I first got into therapy they were just teaching us all this CBT in school and it was the cognitive behavioral stuff

And I was just like I don't understand this like how would this ever make anyone change? This is just common sense stuff the ego would try Before going to therapy like i don't want to tell somebody this in therapy like and i i just didn't get it and the first kind of you know jung i got into later but he's kind of overwhelming and in school all you get is this guy came up with the collective unconscious moving on you know if you get anything that's what you get you know in the education now and when i I picked up Embracing Ourselves and was going through it, I was like, I like this a lot. And I like this a lot more than internal family systems.

I think internal family systems is great, but it's very popular. And the voice dialogue stuff was so intuitive that the concepts made sense with every single person that I talked to. People really liked it. And then it kind of set me down a road to depth psychology and somatic psychology. So I was really excited to get a little glimpse into maybe the formation of that. Do you have any insight into their process or secrets about that? Wow, big question. Well, I could tell you that when I was in my teens, my father used to sit me down in the living room and, you know, and talk to my parts. And, you know, it probably, you know, it was one of the few, if only households, you know, where this was happening.

And my brother would walk in the room and want to watch. And it was like, no, don't sit there. My, you know, whatever self was sitting there. And so he, you know, he, he was a very deep and rich thinker. And this body of work, I think, really did come out of, you know, his Jungian roots and ancestry, if you will, you know, he was in the lineage of the conscious mind, the collective conscious, and the voice dialogue work has evolved over the years. It's not like he started something and then it got,

it didn't ever reify and it still doesn't feel reified because when he brought it to the world, I mean, he conceived it. And then in his relationship with my stepmother, Sidra, they really worked the work together. They walked the walk. They talked the talk. They facilitated each other and really took the work out to the world. And so one thing that I think is important to distinguish is like, so the voice dialogue is really the technique of giving voice to your inner selves. But the philosophy is called the psychology of selves and the aware ego process. And the premise being, for your listening audience,

that we all have selves. They're universal. Everybody has selves. You know, the pusher, the critic, the perfectionist, the pleaser, the accommodator. But the difference at the personality level is that we over-identify with certain selves and repress and disown others. And not only that,

but for every self that's dominant in our personality, or that's primary, we say, in our personality, we are repressing or disowning its opposite in a very mathematical way. It's a mathematical precision. The degree to which we identify with oneself is the degree to which we repress or disown its opposite. So then it becomes kind of more juicy and interesting and kind of exciting to explore. this isn't just random. This is actually mathematical. And I use the term repress and disown separately. That repressing, well, let me start first. Disowning a self is actually where it's off the radar screen of our consciousness. We don't even know that it's there. It's sort of like a fish in water. Repressing a self is sort of like we kind of know it's there, but we're just not giving it energy. It's, you know, it's, yeah, more or less.

We're disowned as it's literally off the radar screen of our consciousness. So furthermore, you know, that we have all these selves and the personality in a traditional sense is sort of like what we call like or what's referred to as the ego or the operating ego and, you know, is in voice dialogue terms, whatever selves are running the show at any given time, you know, it might be one, it might be more than one. It's, it's the lens that we're seeing out of. It's, it's, it's how we see the world and how we're seen by the world. So, um, in, in the voice dialogue, psychology of selves perspective, there's the concept of an aware ego, which is a healthy. I mean, in the psychology of selves, we don't negate the ego. It's not a bad thing. It's a survival thing. These selves have been born usually in our family of origin to help us survive and survive, not necessarily physically, but emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. You know,

we have to survive, you know, any kind of issues in the home, if there are issues, birth order, you know, you know, poverty, community, school, religions, you know, that these selves are born in us to help us survive. And that's really important. And they deserve to be acknowledged and valued for the role that they've played in our lives. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, please. No, go ahead. Please finish. Well, one more thought with that.

And so what happens with these selves is that they're born usually early in our lives. And they have helped us in many different kinds of ways by, you know, like, you know, lending their support, you know. But what happens when we grow up is some of ourselves are still like frozen in time, and they're continuing to function as if we're still children in our family of origin. And so from the voice dialogue perspective, we just want to like update those selves, acknowledge them for the role they've played and update them, even like update their job description, you know, just like they don't, they don't, they don't need to function as if we're still children. That's not necessary, you know, and that's the update. And it's, it's often

the least used, you know, parts of self that we're the least comfortable with. So when they come out, they're very rigid and they have a very, you know, strong hold over us, you know, because we avoid them until they're unavoidable. In my experience. Can you give an example of what you mean? Well, I think like you've ever seen John Beebe's like shadow model of the MBTI. He's one of those Pacifica kind of young. I guess he's getting older now too but um he talks about you know that on the mbti which i think there's a lot

of overlap with the link with the language of the voice dialogue system and then ways that mbti works but you know for anyone not familiar with it it's generally saying that our brain can can think or solve problems in eight different ways but each one of those ways is directly opposite of another type. So I can't be saying, what's going on inside me? And what do I think about this? And what am I feeling at the same time that I'm going, what's going on out here? What are they thinking? What are they feeling? Those are those are introverting or extroverting, you know, you can switch pretty quick, but you're doing one or the other. And so, you know, there's eight of those. And BB says,

you know, as you stay in any of the therapy models that work, the numbers get closer together. You get less comfortable being like, I have to, you know, me, I was just intuitive all the time. I mean, I could not do detail-oriented work. It was like, I couldn't learn math in school because I was like, a computer could do this. Like, why? I don't want to do this. What's important is figuring out and making connections and creating. And, you know, that's pretty rigid, you know, you know, and I needed to be more

comfortable with detail oriented thinking, I needed to be more comfortable with, you know, a rote process that was probably meditative and trying to pull me back into my body more than I want to admit, you know, it's easy for the ego to just say, No, I'm creative, I'm intuitive, you know, like, I don't like that, you know, really, there's probably some fear there. And so I think like a lot of times when going back to your question, like when you have a part of self that's very young, that was very rigid in the house, you know, a controlling part or a protective part that kind of pops up to keep you safe, you usually don't use it very much. You know, it's not something that you're seeing all the time or you're very conscious of.

So when it comes up, it's very strong and reactive. Yeah. Or that it's used all the time and you cease to see it as so. When someone's enmeshed with the part, when the A-type is always, you know, controlling us, that's an option too. And you said a beautiful thing about your own process is like how that it was important for you to integrate the rational. And that's what's true about this philosophy and how it was held by my father

and it continues to be held by Sidra and myself. It's almost like we attract what we disown in our lives. You know, if we're really identified with a certain self or set of selves, what are we going to attract in our lives are people who carry the opposite energy. And that's not like a punishment. We marry our shadow. Exactly. Exactly. And it's an opportunity. It's like an integration. Or another way of saying it is we want to be able to take the homeopathic dose of our opposite, our you know our you know our partner our friend our neighbor because they're they're caring that's how we become really whole i mean whole in a real way is integrating the things

that that are foreign to us or that we disown or repress or yeah so it's beautiful it's a consciousness model really and i i think that that one another concept that you have used before is that the the shadow is always a paradox that for every part there's a direct opposite part yes and i think that's an interesting idea um we use that a lot could you say a little bit about how you apply that yeah well like one thing the way i hold shadow is that that um you know i know shadow gets kind of a negative kind of rap you know in some methodologies you know oh the shadow and it's like as if it's bad but it's not it's just what what's you know what're not seeing. That's what's in the shadow. When we're walking in the sun, we have a shadow and we turn around to see it and

the shadow's now back there. So our shadow can be what's repressed or disowned, but our shadow can equally be what's so dominant in our personality that we just cease to see it as so. So I have a wide range of how I hold the shadow. In voice dialogue work, in the technique of giving voice to these cells, we always start with what's primary, what's dominant, what's protective, because that's the safest way of gaining access to what's on the other side, what's repressed or disowned, is you go through the other side after you've honored the part that has created a lot of protection and run a lot of interference. And yeah, so that's the way to get to the shadow is it's really, you know, through the primary and it's really, really safe and it's really, really honorable. Yeah. I think the tension of those opposites, when I work with a lot of dissociative disorders,

and, but really with everybody, there's like, when you get somewhere so quickly, when you offer somebody that doorway, because somebody may sit and talk forever about like, I'm so afraid of being judged. I hate other people judging me. Why can't everyone just be nice? about like, I'm so afraid of being judged. I hate other people judging me. Why can't everyone just be nice? You know, I hate judgment. And, and then, you know, you say, okay, let's look for the opposite of that. And you know, there's going to be, this is very strong. So there's going to be an opposite piece, you know, and then slowly, they're able to be like, wait a minute, I judge all these people to protect myself from judgment,

you know, like, this is actually this this paradox where if I just sat there, you know, both of those things are in you, that seems to get people there quickly. If I just sat there and was like, do you think you're a judgmental person? I mean, there would be a, you know, animal-like debate for hours about, no, I'm nice.

It's the world that is bad, you know. But the idea of opposites somehow is less threatening to the ego, I think, to see some of that stuff. Yeah. And that also in the opposites, it's not that we need to become the person we're judging. It's not, you know, it's just to see that they hold an energetic opposite energy. It's not that, you know, we need to become, you know, our enemy or our people. We want to claim or

reclaim the essence of what that part. So if I'm judging someone for being a slob, it doesn't mean I need to become a slob. I need to recognize what the essence of slob is. And I had that in my own life with someone. And, you know, what I found was the essence of slob was someone who, so the difference between, you know, it's like, you know, I don't need to be, I mean, I'm more identified with perfection or organization and order, but it doesn't mean that I need to become a slob. I need to be, have access to what slob represents for me. So it's not like when we see what it is we're, you know, because we can learn about our primary and disowned selves. Well, we can learn about disowned selves by who we judge, who triggers us, who creates an aversion response. But again, it doesn't mean becoming that. It doesn't mean we have to be like them. We just have to find what the essence energy is kind of interesting to me is that you've got analysts who do kind of what Sidra and Hal did.

They leave the Institute from the late 60s to the early 80s and then start models of Jungian-based therapy that are more somatic and more experiential, like voice dialogue is, you know, this direct encounter, it's not an analysis as much. Do you have any, do you, I mean, one, did, do you know if those guys talked? I mean, did Art Mandel ever talk to the voice dialogue people or the bioenergetic? Did they, I mean, they're kind of doing a similar thing. And then two, do you, can you speak to maybe the frustration with the Institute or the limitations to peer analysis that was leading people to, you know, leave something that it was hard to do, took a lot of time. Yeah.

You know, it's a great question. Um, I, I don't know if there was much communication in all these different people and modalities. I don't know that there was actually. There could have been, but I don't know. for me, I mean, I see it as evolution, you know, like everything is sort of evolutionary. And so it's not, I mean, it's not to me a negation of Jung or even analysis because there's still a place for it for some people. And, you know, and jung still has this like father of psychology kind of place and he always will i think because he was a forerunner you know not that freud wasn't also but um so part of it to me was just evolutionary you know that sure you had these other people who were like carrying the mantle like there was you know they was young in their in their bloodstream but they were you know evolutionary and the thing i would say about voice dialogue

in particular is one of the things that hal and sidra did or didn't do you know that a lot of other modalities did is they didn't certify, they didn't reify the organization, you know, they have an organization, I mean, but they, you know, and I, when I train people, I give certificates of completion, but there's no certification. So what they did that's different, and I'm not even saying good, bad, right, wrong, but what's different is they didn't reify and voice dialogue has therefore become like open source software. People who learned it and ideally learned it

in a really kind of lineage way, like in a pure way, and even if they didn't, they have been able to run with it in lots of different creative ways. And it has, it's not institutionalized. And, and I, I, I have a lot of respect and admiration like that, that was kind of cutting edge of how and Sidra, you know, to do it that way that wasn't done and I think it's what keeps this body of work kind of um a little bit like in it not of it it's not

confined reified or tied down in in a certain way it's really like or open source software yeah and I think that that was one of the reasons it's so interesting is the people taking Jung's view of the psyche, which I think is other psychologies, it's not that they don't work, you know, it's like Adler had something he was noticing, you know, the compensation, you know, instead of you can use that language to set attention to the opposites or, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy is ego management strategies, but Jung did something that takes a long time to learn, but it is the most complete psychology out there. It kind of describes a lot of people like, well,

here's my suspicion. I don't know. One of the things that happens in the 70s to academia is that it becomes kind of like, especially the soft sciences kind of become insecure so you see things like the direct practice doctorates in mental health that are just now coming back because we're kind of fixing a lot of damage that was done to the profession in the 80s like they just go away you know you're not allowed to study the thing as a practitioner you have to do it as the the psychology of the thing so that you can teach in academia and publish papers and raise your t-score and all of this stuff and I think that hurt the profession it kind of overly intellectualized it and I wonder if that didn't creep into the Institute's because when you read the things that are getting published

they're incredibly analytical and they're they're very they're not based in experiential stuff. And it's strange to me that that is the case because Jung wasn't like that. A lot of the earlier Jungians like Hillman weren't like that. You know, Hillman would make people find the physical root of the archetype. And Jung is so phenomenological, you know, he only writes case studies and then eventually does the Red Book to map his own self. But you don't see the spirit of that left, you see people that are kind of insecure, kind of, like, very academic, very theoretical. And I wonder if there wasn't just not a place for people doing experiential type modalities. And that's why you see that in the

70s and 80s. But I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure either. You know, I'm not sure either. It is it's a great question. A living question. Well, I think that they were so ahead of their time. I mean, a lot of the neuroscience now is starting to say, well, you have to use the body and you have to use the subcortical brain and, you know, direct experience is better. And it's just like, somebody already said that. They said it 40 years ago. Like, you know, you guys wrote it off as not evidence-based because it wasn't a number that you could put into a study. And again, there's the evolution that like, you know, maybe we could get further to the

experiential because there is a Jung and a Freud and an Adler, you know, that there's this rich terrain which, you know, all these modalities have grown out of. We did an interview with Peak Neuroscience and they have this proprietary technology, basically, that is kind of interesting. And it will map the brain and you wear a EEG an active EEG and it tells you you know what's going on and then they can stimulate different areas so like with autism you can take the part of the thought thalamus is trying to signal hey this is how you handle sensory input but the longer term memory portion of the brain there's a signal gap it's not learning how to hand thrill the sensory stuff so they can kind of zap the information

from over here over there and it's it's neat stuff. But they were saying that the brain, essentially, it has these wavelengths, and you can see how it's thinking based on the wavelengths and what they mean. Hey, I'm sorry, we keep disconnecting. Yeah, it's a mystery. I don't know if it's my computer or yours. And yeah, that's really odd. So what's the last thing you heard there? About the neuroscience and, and, you know, the work that they've done, like with autism and. Yeah. So, so they basically were saying like the brain, it won't, the problem is that it wants to think only in one of these wavelengths, but that you need all of them to be more whole. And so they were saying like, okay, so the theta the theta wave that's how when you're trying to

study for a test and you're trying to concentrate but you're concentrating so much that you start to overthink it you feel bad about yourself and you become obsessive we would lower the theta and then you need more of a and it was like they sounded so much like voice dialogue you know you know conception or MBTI kind of you know balance functioning yeah yeahTI kind of, you know, balance functioning. Yeah. Yeah. And balance is such a great word. And, you know, like in voice dialogue, we want kind of to integrate all ourselves. We, you know, ourselves are this inner family and we want to have access to all of them. And balance doesn't mean like a fixed balance where you don't move, you know,

like, okay, got it, don't move. It's more like it's a living, you know, it's fluid. And, you know, and this aware ego process versus an operating ego is that we have an objective awareness of ourselves without judgment. You know, it's like we can hear what all of ourselves are saying at any given time at a content level without identifying with it, without, you know, like without even a value structure. It's just objective witnessing. And we can also feel what ourselves are feeling, but again, without judgment, without like saying this is good and this is not good. Just feel what ourselves are feeling, hear what ourselves, know what ourselves are saying or wanting, you know, with ourselves. It's this aware ego that's not judgmental, that's not values-based, you know, like, and it gives us a sense of choice. I mean, real choice. In every given moment, we're making choices, but if these, with access to ourselves, where we're not being pulled down under the waters of life, where we're conscious and intentional, there's a kind of freedom and liberation in that.

It's very powerful. So, I mean, now could you talk a little bit about your work and the body dialogue process and selves in a box, you know, all the ways that you do your process? Yeah. So my main work is one-on-one with individuals and couples. And then in addition, I do trainings in voice dialogue, level one, level two, level three. And then I created an offshoot of voice dialogue called body dialogue. That's about giving voice to the overall voice of the body and all its parts, that the body has a voice and all the parts of the body have a voice and that there's a very safe and honoring way of giving work that I created as an offshoot of voice dialogue. And then I also created Selves in a Box, which is a card deck, kind of like a psycho-spiritual tarot deck.

But it's, you know, using selves. I chose 52, and I think there's an infinite number of selves out there, but I chose 52 to represent in the card deck. And the guidebook that goes with the card deck is like a graduate study of consciousness, where I teach work, and then I show all these different ways that you can use the cards and explore your own psyche and consciousness using the cards. So yeah, that's kind of my thing is I kind of live and breathe this work. And I'm very grateful, grateful to my father and my stepmother and that I'm in, as you are, in a life work that I love and live. Well, and so there's two parts of the voice dialogue, like, system that I don't do. I mean,

one of them is chair work. I mean, they originally did was like gestalt, and that you would sit here and talk as the inner critic, sit there and talk as the pusher, sit over here and talk as the authentic self. And when you were, you were moving around to, there was some psychodrama. And then the other part of it was, it was a group practice. You know, they would do groups a lot of the time. From what I was reading, I mean, do you do either of those? Or are those necessary? Yeah.

Well, in my work, I do voice dialogue with people. I mean, not all my clients necessarily want to do, you know, the technique of giving voice to the inner selves. You know, sometimes it's just more a philosophical conversation in regards to their life where they get the consciousness model, but they don't want to necessarily do the technique. But I do, even on Zoom, I do, you know, 75% of my work is voice dialogue where we, and it's not kind of random. I really get, you know, I follow the thread of the person I'm working with, like what's primary. And we always start with what's primary and then go to its opposite. So it's done in kind of an honoring and balance. And, you know, there's a methodology and a safety, you know, to doing that. And then I do group work too.

And I do, I have a dream group and I do a selves in a box webinar where I do readings for people using the cards. I have an online version and yeah. So there's lots of different, even in the group work way back, you know, Hal would actually do voice dialogue with people or he'd have, he'd teach on dreams and consciousness and then he'd have people break up and do the voice dialogue with each other. So voice dialogue is always sort of being done for people who want to do it.

For the people who do it, it's usually a positive addiction. They love learning about their selves. It's really quite exciting. But you add the somatic part to it. You bring the body into that process. I do for people who want that. I don't, you know, require it for anyone. But if I am working with someone, you know, where I feel

that the body is sort of being negated or repressed or disowned or, you know, calling for help, you know, I'll bring up, you know, I think it might behoove us to do a body dialogue session. Or some people just hear about me, you know, it's like there's so many doorways into consciousness. You know, people are struggling with the end of a relationship. So they enter a therapeutic relationship with someone, or people have an illness or an injury, and they enter into a therapeutic relationship with someone to, you know, to kind of how, hold it all. And there's a lot of doorways in to consciousness. And yeah, so for some people, it's the body, you know, and for some people it's, it's something else. So yeah, I do it all. You know, I just look,

whatever someone is wanting or needing, I, I, I, you know, even couples work, I do a lot of work with couples because I love doing couples work from the psychology of selves perspective, which is equal responsibility, equal accountability, that there's no like, well, you're right and you're wrong. No, there are a lot of moving parts. There are a lot of cells involved and it, and the, the, you know, it's, it's an equal journey. Yeah. Well, and do you want to say anything more about your process or the cells in a box system? You know, I saw that was for sale through the website. That looks like an interesting addition to our clinic. So. Yeah. It, it's currently, I mean, it's for sale through Amazon. I'm actually just in the midst of like my third reprinting and I am kind of updating, refreshing the box. So that's probably about maybe six to eight weeks out. And then the new version will be available. I think I only have about like 25 boxes left at home and then Amazon has about maybe 30.

So, but yeah, I mean, that's available through Amazon and I think it's a great tool, a tool for consciousness and a tool in working with other people's process. And- So is it like an introspective tarot deck almost? Exactly. Like using that to understand the self?

Exactly. And learning to understand, you know, your relationship to your own selves and also to understand your relationship to other people's selves. It works in both ways. Well, and I saw you had done a talk on Jung Platform. Did you have a good experience with them?

I haven't heard it yet. Yeah, yeah, I am. And I'm going to be doing another one in, I think, October on just the inner critic. So, yeah, I mean, they, you know, approached me and, you know, because of the origins, you know, and my father's, you know, lineage, I just felt very honoring of, you know, the request to do voice dialogue. Coming from them, that's really beautiful. So, yeah, I try to, you know, again, open source software, like go where the energy is. Like you reached out to me. It's like, oh, an opportunity to connect with someone else in the world, you know, on the consciousness path.

And how beautiful is that? Yeah, it's interesting. They had reached out to me, I think, like a year and a half ago. And then I got underwater with everything and had never really put anything together. But it's still on a short list to do. There's some really interesting stuff on their site. Well, I think that's what I have. I mean, I was just kind of curious if you had any insights into that.

And I think giving even clinicians a sense of the history and dynamics of the profession is important and something we leave out in education a lot of the time. Do you have anything else you want to add or, or, or, or pitch that you're working on and we can link to anything that you'd like to us to link to. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I am working on a book on the body and you know, my history with it and, you know, body dialogue and, and all like in what, you know, my history with it and, you know, body dialogue and all, like, you know,

that the body has, you know, to your point, an important role in all this. Like, it's sort of like without planet Earth, we won't be here. Without our bodies, we won't be here. So, you know, I do really value that. And, you know, I, I, yeah. So that's something I'm working on. Yeah. I think I, you know, it feels complete. It was a real honor to meet you, Joel. And I really appreciate, you know, you and the work you're doing and you know, what you're bringing to the world. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you sitting down.

It's always neat to, to, you know, hear people that have direct experience with, you know, parts of the profession, because not all of it, I don't think it's the exposure that it does. I mean, there's kind of it should, there's kind of a bias that I think is changing, where if something isn't objectively measurable, we don't research it. It's effectiveness because it's harder to research it. And so you get people saying, well, the gold standard is the simplest modality because the most research has been done on it where, you know, I don't see the A to B there, you know. Exactly.

Yeah. Well, and do you ever do any eye movement therapy, EMDR or brain spotting? I've done it myself personally and very much respect it and and i think you know gosh i believe in all modalities it's like you know to reach out to sort of the one you need at any given time you know so yeah i i have personally experienced i'm not trained in it myself but I have the utmost respect for it. Absolutely. Yeah. MDR has a kind of rigidity to a lot of the protocols, but with brain spotting, I find it fuses really well with parts-based stuff. I mean, we use, we'll find the inner critic physically. How does this want to move your spine? You know, do you want to stand up and fight? do you want to hide you know what what is that and then that opens a gateway to go really far in but it's the parts-based language that help

people find the what's in their body so we use those together quite a bit yeah lovely and then um because i you know internal family systems is real big now. You see it in a lot of treatment facilities and stuff. I mean, it's almost the same system as voice dialogue with maybe a little bit different methodology and different vocabulary. But there's a lot of overlap in that they're both parts-based modalities. I mean, what do you think the biggest differences are?

Or are the voice dialogue community even aware of IFS that much? Not really. And honestly, I'm just being honest, I'm not that aware. But I think maybe the biggest piece is that in voice dialogue, there's really the strengthening of an aware ego process and not the aware ego as a self. It's not a self. It's a muscle. It's a process. It's our capacity to stand between opposites.

And I think that may be one difference. And the other difference is really separating from self. Like when I work with someone with voice dialogue, I have them move over. They don't have to move far, but I have them move over and make a physical separation so they can experience the self as a self and separate from. It's like a disidentification from that we see, you know, this, this critic, you know, it's strong in me, but it isn't me. And that separation is really, to me, important. And then coming back and having a sense of, you know, an aware ego process where, you know, I'm in it, but not of it. Yeah, I think voice dialogues language is a lot more intuitive i think you're i mean and i'm

kind of pushy i want to move quickly and the more time i'm spending teaching somebody vocabulary or parts of the brain or the the language of a model is time that we're not spending doing work and with voice dialogue there's very little that you have to explain because all this stuff is readily apparent and familiar and you know differentiating between a firefighter and a protector and an IFS is... I think the model is good, but I also, I'm not wild about the language. And the thing that I'm the least fond of is the name because this whole idea was like, well, internal family systems, there's a whole family of different things in your head and you can use family therapy to make them talk or whatever. But it's like, when you say

internal family systems to somebody, they think you are doing therapy with their family. It is not clear that it is an individual therapy modality. That's so funny. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I always just say IFS if I'm gonna say it. But yeah, thank you so much for sitting down. And we'll link to the website. Do you want us to link to the in-platform talk or anything else that would be? Yeah, not necessarily. I am up doing or redoing my website.

Hopefully, you know, by September, I'm going to have a new, fresh and more user-friendly website. So, you know, september i'm going to have a new fresh um and more user-friendly website so you know people can learn more um but yeah no i think that's kind of it and then you do you see people um across the nation or can you practice in any state via online yeah i i have an international client base i i work with people all over the world and I'm an early riser, so I can adjust for my international clients by getting up early. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, so that is another thing, you know, anybody listening to this can

call you up if they're interested in that work. And we usually put the video on youtube and then release the audio as a podcast so the reach you know is a lot well thank you so much and um i think appreciate you sitting down and and um we will uh and wake it up early uh and my pleasure all right well uh we'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Okay. Bye-bye.