Ep. 40 | From Meth Addict to Healer: Ryan Hassan on Trauma, the War on Men, and the Failings of Rehab
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Speaker: Hollie Wild
Speaker 2: Ryan Hassan
Speaker: We have Ryan Hassan here in the podcasting studio today. The virtual podcasting studio. Ryan is a co founder of the center for healing who I have trained through. And anyone listening to this episode would likely have listened to Melissa's episode the week previously, which is Ryan's partner.
So this is cool to be able to give, both of their stories. So Ryan is founder and CEO of the center for healing. I'm just going to read his bio because I actually loved it. I thought it was really well worded. So his passion for helping people with mental illness and addiction comes from his own pain.
Ryan suffered from anxiety for as long as he could remember. And that manifested in many destructive patterns throughout his life, culminating in a hardcore drug addiction. That's actually hard to. picture you with a hardcore drug addiction. This is, it's crazy. Your story,
Speaker 2: but you can get back to my bio in a minute, but I'll, uh, it's so funny.
Cause you know, I remember going to a cafe after not long being clean and they asked him, Oh, what do you do? And I'm like, Oh, [00:01:00] I run this addiction clinic and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Oh, what got you into that? And I'm like, Oh, I was a drug addict. It was my lived experience. I was lucky to come out the other side and now I want to help people.
And they looked me up and down and went, Oh, What was it? Some fancy prescription pills or something? And I'm like, I'm like, no, no, methamphetamine and GHB. They're like, really?
Speaker: Yeah, it's, it's really hard to picture that. And I do believe your story, by the way. I know you're not lying, but it's just I'll send you
Speaker 2: some pictures and videos, Holly, afterwards.
I've still got some old evidence on the phone.
Speaker: Holy cow. It's just like talking about, yeah, two different people. It's crazy. Especially, yeah, to methamphetamine and GHB. Like that's, yeah, hardcore stuff. Whilst this addiction took everything material from Ryan's life, it was also Ryan's greatest blessing, which I can't wait to get into that.
He was forced to face up to his mental and emotional demons. And, And he overcame not only the addiction, but also his anxiety to feel peace for the first time. This led him to completely immerse himself in how people end up in emotional pain and how it's possible for anyone to be free from it. [00:02:00] This led him to open the center for healing, which as I mentioned, I've trained through absolutely big advocates for to help people who have found themselves in the pain he once was.
Ryan has been a trauma therapist for many years and has successfully helped countless people get past their addictions and mental health issues. Through his experience, understanding, and knowledge. He's also a co creator of the healing modality embodied processing, which I'm a part of at the moment with colleague and friend, Matt Nettleton.
Ryan has been training various modalities around trauma and alternative healing, as well as more traditional counseling and coaching. So first of all, welcome. It's so awesome to have you on the podcast. Like what a story.
Speaker 2: Holly. Absolute pleasure to be here. Like I said, it's great to actually. Yeah.
Speaker: I would love for you to expand more on your story.
I'm genuinely intrigued and I know everyone listening will be, if you can just take us back, say as much or as little as you want, but [00:03:00] just, yeah, let us know your life story. Cause it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it got crazy for a while there. It's so funny how you said it sounds like a different person and it really it was a different person back then.
I think we are ideally changing and evolving as human beings in this life. I don't regret one thing that happened with my addiction or my anxiety or other destructive behaviors that came from that. It's not better or worse than me now. It's a different experience. And I started, my bio there, you heard about feelings of anxiety.
If I could recollect when that started, it was probably around the age of 10. I just remember, having this feeling inside me that my probably word for it back then just would have been yuck. Look, I didn't like it. I never had the language. Now, this is the work that I do. And now we live in a world where there's so much more mental health awareness that we understand things at a better level than we have in the past.
But I had no language for it back then. I just knew that there was some feeling inside me that felt terrible. And it was propping up, I guess, more so in social situations at school and because I never was able to express what I was feeling and have a [00:04:00] safe container for that. I internalized those feelings.
And when we internalize big shock, horror, controversial comment on the controversial podcast, when we internalize things, they tend to get worse and not better. And so over time, that feeling inside, bled to other areas of my life, more at school, outside of school, it started to prevent me from doing things that I wanted to do in my life.
I was sport crazy as a young kid. Like a lot of Aussie boys in this country. And I remember quitting football halfway through the season. I was captain of the team and everything. And I remember quitting not because I didn't love football. I did, but I just couldn't deal with like getting up in the morning of the game and having to go through all that process.
It would just about ruin me. And so, these feelings inside of what I now know to be anxiety was stopping me doing things. I then found this liquid. They call it alcohol, in my teenage years, and I found this liquid that I, when I drank it, it made those feelings go away, not fully, but it definitely dulled them, and the more I drank, the more it dulled, [00:05:00] those feelings of anxiety may come back the next morning and may come back with interest on top.
However, that experience of relief, if only for a few hours, one of my favorite quotes in addiction circles is Keith Richards Keith Richard he said, The contortions we'll go to just not to be ourselves for a few hours. And that sums up addiction and alcoholism so well. Like I remember, we'll get to my story more down the line, but I remember just the absolute chaos and drama and putting myself in incredibly difficult and risky situations just to try and score drugs.
And you look back and go, what would I go through all that? But those few moments of relief are all worth it for someone who's in extreme emotional pain. So I really had this love affair with alcohol binge drinking. That is the culture here in Australia as well. And so that sort of suited me really well.
I graduated, to elicit substances from there. I started using speed and ecstasy. And they worked great, for my issue that I had, I thought, Hey, the liquid, the alcohol works [00:06:00] pretty good. These other substances work even better, so let me pursue that path.
And that led to experimenting with a whole host of other drugs, a bit of methamphetamine, GHB, opiates ketamine, barbiturates you name it sort of, I tried it. It's interesting. There's so many different types of addictions, and I've just talked about drugs and alcohol. I haven't spoken about the food.
Sex, codependent relationships, shopping, gambling, all of those things, we tend to, when we're in emotional pain, we tend to work through the different behaviors that can be addictive to find what works best, for some people, drugs don't work. They don't take away the pain that they make it worse or don't do anything.
Whereas gambling does do it for them because someone else it's a workaholism, we'll tend to try and whether consciously or unconsciously trying to find what will help us be free from whatever pain is going on inside. Throughout my twenties, I would call myself probably a functional drug addict.
I was completely dependent on drugs, but I was somehow able to hold a life together. From the outside, I was very good at sort of [00:07:00] wearing a mask. So everybody thought that I was okay. So from the outside looking in, you go, man, Ryan, he's doing great. You know, he's a person I would go to for advice. He's got a nice steady job as a tradesman.
You know, he's met a girl, fell in love. He's gotten married. He's got the house and the mortgage. They got the dog and You just got to have the kids and right off into the sunset really, but whilst I was tipping all these boxes I basically just still felt like crap inside. I still had all this anxiety.
I had sadness, anger, all of these kinds of things chewing in here, which I really didn't know what to do with apart from escape them. I always tell people, it's like, When it comes to, pain and addictions, like, let's say that we're friends, Holly, and we're hanging out and all of a sudden you decide that you don't like me anymore, then you've got some options.
You can tell me to get the hell out of your house or you can leave if we're at my house. You can create physical distance from me. In order to not experience me anymore when we hate ourselves because we have all this, unprocessed emotions. We have nowhere physically to [00:08:00] go. So the only way we can escape is to alter our consciousness.
And we do that through different behaviors. And as human beings, we've been doing that since. I believe since we were monkeys, licking psilocybin mushrooms off of dumb, it's been happening for as far as we can tell back in human history, we're trying to alter our consciousness, but a small subset of humans who start that process can't stop.
And in my experience, it's the ones with all this unprocessed emotional pain happening within the system. I then went from functional drug addict to dysfunctional drug addict in record time. It was very impressive looking back on it. My marriage broke down. So I had a separation, something that I.
I guess we have these black and white or solid ideas in our head of how life's going to be and things that we assume are going to happen or going to continue. And for whatever reason, I knew life was chaotic, but I thought this relationship would survive and last till the end. And when it didn't, that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
And that's when I Left my job started using [00:09:00] on a daily, on the daily uh, in very high amounts uh, I started dealing to support my habit and that just led to a I say it's a it's, it's a simple life, but it's not an easy one because literally all my days consisted of was buying, selling and using drugs.
Speaker 3: But
Speaker 2: that was incredibly difficult because there's a lot of issues and trouble that comes along with that. Troubles with the law, being arrested high speed car chases, overdosing on GHB almost every day, one of those with the wheel of my car on a freeway which I thank God that, no one else was hurt.
I just ran into a barrier in that instance. I was living in a like a commissioned kind of drug house out in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, a place where People came and went all the time and, no one really slept. Like I would be awake for anywhere from three to six days at a time.
And then I would sleep for 24 to 30 hours. And then to start the whole process again, it's a testament to how resilient this human body is. It's incredible after all the abuse we put it through, how in most instances it can recover when we do the right [00:10:00] things. So, it got to the point where things were, Was so unmanageable that I was just putting myself in just insanely risky situations.
And this one time that I got arrested, I remember losing everything, like all the money and drugs I had on me. That was all I had in this life. And that was taken away. And I remember sitting in a hospital In a holding cell. It's so interesting. It's this little office. I've got now. It's like white brick walls.
It was one of those white, you know, brick walls in this cell with no windows or anything. And I remember sitting on the floor, starting to withdraw um, from the drugs. And I thought, how did I end up here? You know, how did But what happened along the way that led me to here, I still, I couldn't connect the dots.
I just couldn't see that I was trying to run away because so many people and I went to, you know, court ordered treatments, care and recovery workers, drug and alcohol counselors, different programs and all that. And everybody with the addictions and working with the addiction, back then.
The vast majority of them, they just see the drug or the behavior as the problem. And that's how our current sort of rehab system is [00:11:00] built. It's like, well, we take the person away from the drug, get it out of their system physically, and then we'll just go, yeah, we'll send them home and they'll be fine.
Over 90 relapsing within the first few months after they get out of that, and a much higher percentage down the road. I was just very fortunate enough, and you had Melissa, my amazing partner on recently on the show. I was lucky enough to end up in her office one day, and that was very synchronistic, the way that happened.
I didn't like doing anything that wasn't with other drug addicts, and so the fact that I would take myself into Port Melbourne to this office, you know, on one of the main roads in there, you it was very interesting. I remember walking in and I remember like later on down the line, like a year or two later, she'd always tell me like, yeah, when he came into the office, I was like, cause I'd met her like a few years back.
When I still had the facade and the mask on and anyway, so she had seen me previously, but she goes, yeah, when you walked into my office that day, I thought, man, he looks like shit. And I remember I made such an effort to make [00:12:00] myself look good that day because all I did was wear like torn trackies and stuff.
I'm full drug addict. And I'm like, nah, I'm putting my nice stuff on, but obviously still didn't quite look right. Well, shit was probably, probably better than how I was doing. So maybe that was a compliment in some way. Groups. You know, I walked in there and I spent about three hours in her office that day.
And we spoke about drugs for like two minutes at the start. So it wasn't the main focus. All she said to me is she goes, Hey, here's all these emotions that we experience as a human being up here. We have hope, courage, willingness, love, you know, enthusiasm and all that stuff down here. We have guilt, shame, anger, fear, sadness, hurt.
You're riddled with that stuff at the bottom. You have 30 years off, you know that unprocessed in there. So whenever you use, you cover that up and you get to experience some of these higher states, but whenever you stop and it's probably worth pointing out that my issues weren't just drugs and alcohol over the years.
It [00:13:00] was Jim, you know, I'll be extremely obsessive about the gym going every day, weighing every gram of food that was going in my body. I never forget one time I was weighing up boiled chicken and I had the scales and everything and I needed 250 grams. And there was like 251. So I pulled one of the small cubes out and cut a bit off and made sure it was 250.
It's just so obsessive, it's just trying to control you know, women after my marriage did fall through, like just completely off the charts, you know, in that respect. And so addiction has taken many forms, gambling for probably a year or two there as well. So it has switched a lot, but I ended up with drugs.
And um, she basically said, yeah, whenever you stop these behaviors, all of this stuff just comes to the surface, all of these heavy emotions. And at that point it's like not a matter of being open. I'd exhausted all avenues where I just couldn't argue with that. Cause I was always, I'm very intellectual and I could always, I'd talk to people who were counselors and care and recovery workers.
I'd tell them [00:14:00] exactly why I was the way that I wasn't all this rubbish. And but that day, for some reason that kind of broke through and I went, you know what, you're right. And I don't know what to do about it. And you know, we went through a process there of jumping into all the emotional pain and emotional trauma from my past, which I would have sworn that I didn't have,
Speaker 3: which
Speaker 2: is a classic, you know, no, nothing, nothing going on back there, nothing.
We need to look at her address. And, we uncovered, even in that first session this deep sense of not only didn't I like myself, I just hated who I was as a human being. And I had for since I was about four or five years old. Um, And like I said, if we hide ourselves, we. We're running out of options in terms of how to cope with that, apart from a coping mechanism.
Um, We realized that I, you know, I had these strong feelings and beliefs that I couldn't be vulnerable, that I couldn't actually show emotion, hence the 30 years of suppressed stuff. You know, I hadn't cried in um, something like 15 years, you know, before that session, because I wore that as like a, you know, a pride, like a badge of honor, like, you know, [00:15:00] boys don't cry, you know, we keep it together and all that kind of thing.
Which is just insanely unhealthy that level of suppression and so, you know, I remember that session. Once the tears started to flow, it was, it was terrifying at first and then just just liberating, you know, the fact that I could, I could feel emotions, I could let tears out of my face and not only would it not be bad, it would be great, you know, I would feel very good afterwards.
And so, um, I'm one of the lucky ones in the things happened for me quite quickly. Once when I say quickly, like I went through a lot of stuff. Yeah. And pretty crap treatment and everything to get there. But, in that first session, I basically stopped using drugs from that point forward. And the reason for that was because there was a moment when I sat there and I processed this whole sense of hating myself since I was four years old.
The fact that I couldn't be vulnerable, all the stuff from my marriage breakup, which I hadn't properly processed. So I'd had this, you know, it's a lot in a short amount of time. But after I went through that. [00:16:00] I remember we, I had my eyes shut. I was on the classic therapist couch and I'm laying there and I can't remember whether it was 30 seconds or five minutes, but it was just silent.
And I remember Melissa going to me like what's, what's happening now? What are you experiencing? And I remember saying, and I'll never forget it. I said, I'm completely and utterly with myself and there's nowhere else I'd rather be. And I get goosebumps saying, and I've said it that many times since when I'm telling the story, but it's like that moment of peace that I hadn't experienced.
And it was like, I remember I was like, Oh my God, this is what I've been looking for.
Speaker 3: The
Speaker 2: drugs, the alcohol, the women, the gym, the gambling, the blah, blah, blah, insert the blank. This piece that's been in here all the time. That's what I was searching for. I was just barking up the wrong tree. And so that was the moment where I'm like, Oh, there's nothing here to actually run away from, and I remember I came out of that session and I sort of walked out of that, her office with this sense of logistically, My life's a fucking mess. [00:17:00] I'm up on serious criminal charges. I'm a drug addict. I have no money. I'm in debt. All of this stuff, but I had this sense that everything was going to be okay.
I just knew, I'm like, it doesn't matter. You'll work it out. You know, you'll work it out. And and I did, you know, I worked it out. I, I left her office. I spent the next probably day and a half cutting ties with all the people in that world. I was dating a girl who was a drug addict as well. I ended things with her.
cut ties with all the people, everything that I needed to do to settle wages and all that kind of thing. And then I went home and slept for four days. And then, uh, and then I, I, I woke up and figuratively and metaphorically, and I thought to myself, all right, Wow. What else have I got going on in here?
In what other ways have I been holding myself back throughout my basically my entire life? And so, I started seeing Melissa every week. I was unpacking more and more. After the maybe six or seven weeks or something, we were doing some work and I just had a very, [00:18:00] very clear vision in my mind that I was going to open up a center to help people who were in some sort of situation where they're struggling, be it anxiety, worry, depression, addictions, stress, whatever it was, and that was just clear as day.
That was my path, you know, and I said, no one's going to stop me. And all my close friends and family, like they out of a place of love, they would say, like, are you sure this is a good thing to do? Like you've been clean for like a couple of months, like maybe five months or four or five months. Shouldn't you be just focusing on your recovery?
But for me, I'm like, I'm like, no, I've got to do this. And I don't recommend that to everyone. Sometimes I've seen clients and they've gotten clean and now they're working out the next steps. Like, oh, should I open up a center? I'm like, no, we're all different, right? We're all, that for me, that was the path for you.
It might be a different path and we can work that out. But for me it was that. So I put my head down. I studied, I studied traditional mental health and AOD. Um, and that that further reinforced all of the shortcomings with the [00:19:00] traditional modes of therapy. Now, I believe there's a place for everything.
I believe in mental health and addiction treatment. We should have a big menu of options as opposed to the two that we have right now, which is a mental health care plan and medication. But for me, I went down that traditional path and I'm like, look, this didn't do anything for me. I've been with addicts for years.
It doesn't do anything for them. I need to start to study a lot of, you know, what I went through, trauma, emotional pain working with memories, all of that kind of stuff, hypnotherapy, all that. So I went and I did all that. I asked Melissa to sort of teach me everything that she'd been through and that she knew.
And then the day that she said, all right, I've taught you everything, was the day I went, all right, I'm opening up a center. And then for her, that kind of, it got her. Excited about something bigger. You know, she was she had a she was working a lot with like business owners and working with people around different blocks and that kind of thing.
But after working with me and I'd sent her a few people with some pretty heavy issues as well and working through that, that got her pretty excited. So she said, Hey, if I can, help you in any way, let me know. And I'm like, Hey, let's start this thing together. [00:20:00] So we started the center for healing back in 2015.
And we had this little like retro seventies office in Bayside of Melbourne. When I look back on it, I'm like, why did anyone come here? Like, it was so like seventies, but it's all we could afford, you know? And like, we couldn't even afford the first month's rent. We just like signed off on it. And went, yeah, let's do it.
And then I remember I think we had to, you had to borrow money off my mom to pay. And I which I paid back, but um, to pay for the first month's rent. So we would just like, you know, very, very much. We knew that it was going to work out. We were very confident, you know, and it did, you know, we had just after we opened the Herald Sun, the main paper down here in Melbourne had a big two page spread on me and my story in the Sunday Herald Sun, and that kind of got the phones ringing.
And then from there we got clients and people started getting results and they started telling other people and You know, we introduced ourselves to all the local health care professionals in the area, and they didn't like us very much. We would go into the doctor's clinics, it was so funny, we'd go into these different doctor's [00:21:00] clinics simply to go, Hey, we've just moved in around the corner.
This is what we do. Yes, it's not mainstream. But here's our information. If you think there's anyone who might be, you know, get benefit from it, then send them our way. That's all. But we go in, there's this one doctor's office and we go to go in there. You have to go in there at lunchtime and bring them lunch.
Otherwise you couldn't talk to them. And Melissa's like, oh, on the way in, we just have to get sushi for 26 Sushi for 26 people, I could barely feed myself. And so I'm already a bit on edge. And so they, we get these huge platters of sushi and we go into this doctor's clinic and go into their lunchroom, put them all out.
We've got our flyers that we made on fucking Vistaprint, you know, ourselves and I'm all excited and then. Everybody comes in, grabs a full handful of sushi, and everybody but three piss off.
Speaker 3: And then
Speaker 2: out of the three, after about five minutes, one more pisses off. And and out of the two left, one of them was the actual owner and the manager of the clinic.
And he goes, man, you got some [00:22:00] balls, you know, coming in here. And I'm like, what, like, I didn't, I literally, I'm like, what are you talking about? We're all on the same team here, you know. And he's like, I know that if we have a client come in who has addiction issues, I have a referral pathway. I send them to, I won't say the name, but we send them here.
I knew the rehab and I know they're going to get the care that they need. And I'm like, have you read the stats on that particular rehab? They have about a 94 percent fail rate at that rehab. So yeah, 94 out of a hundred people aren't getting the care that you're saying. And I remember he looked at me in the face and just goes, well, I wouldn't know the numbers.
I'm like, and I said to him, maybe you should, maybe that's part of your duty of care. So we kind of, that's when we sort of distance ourselves from the mainstream because we wanted to work with mainstream, you know, we even went to a, a meeting early on around government funding for rehabs and that kind of thing.
And, and we clearly saw that everybody, all they're doing with their clinics is trying to tick all the boxes. So they get their funding for the next year and they get that [00:23:00] funding, not based on outcomes, based on the amount of people through the door. You know, which, which it's so shit. It just encourages a revolving door of people going back and back again.
And that was what I saw with all my friends in addiction. You know, Matt, who runs AP with me, Matt went to rehab 17 times.
Speaker 3: It's like shortly
Speaker 2: after 16, you're like, well, maybe this isn't the right one. The right treatment method for someone in addiction. He was lucky enough that he, after that 17th time, he got hooked up with someone who understood trauma, understood the nervous system and all that, and was able to work with him there.
So yeah, we, we, we started off very small, just me and Melissa. We've got great results. We moved into a bigger clinic. We trained other therapists, we had kinesiologists there, nutritionists all of that kind of stuff. We had a real holistic program, float tanks, infrared sauna, all that. and then.
Me and Melissa got together at some point. That's a whole nother story. I won't get into the love story, but
Speaker: We briefly did with Melissa, briefly.
Speaker 2: Oh, did you? Okay, good. I don't have to talk about it or conflict with her story. [00:24:00] But we got together along the way and then, and then we had a son, you know, in, at the end of 2018.
And so we started to, and so lucky once again, like we ended up closing up our center to move online. At the end of 2019, start of 2020, months before good old COVID came along where we would have been forced probably to go online anyway.
But you know, after having our son, we decided we wanted a different lifestyle.
You know, we wanted to, and one thing I always challenge clients with is I want to challenge Society's norms. I spoke earlier about the ticking of the boxes, you know, safe and secure job, get married, get the house, you know, have kids just for a lot of people. That's incredibly unfulfilling and not the way they should actually live their life.
And I'd sat with that many men as their therapist. Who would be bawling their eyes out, just wishing their dad was around when they were a kid, instead of just working and trying to make money. I'd be the biggest hypocrite on the entire planet if I then did the same thing with my son. So we, we went online, we went traveling, we lived on coast of [00:25:00] Nui for about a year and a half.
While he was young. Yeah. We were kind of stuck there. I'm doing inverted commas. Like during COVID we were not trying to get home. Every time I'd call friends in Melbourne, the most fucking locked down city on planet earth. I'm like, so should we try and come back there? What's going on there? Do not come back there.
I'm sitting there on a bloody tropical beach. They're like, please do not.
Speaker 3: Um,
Speaker 2: And so we really put, we built our business over there in, in, in Thailand. We built it online and now we're we're everywhere. You know, we've got students, Australia, New Zealand America, Canada, all over the UK and Europe was starting to get more in China and India and that kind of thing.
And we just live, uh, They live a banana's life now at the minute, you know, we just got back from Bali. We had a holiday and then also had a two day conference there with some practitioners and I'm just meeting and hugging all these people who are like, yeah, we've been, you know, done this course and this course and love what you're doing.
We had this incredible experience. And I sometimes sort of just sort of look in the mirror and go, all right, guess this is life now. It's it's been a [00:26:00] journey.
Speaker: Oh, your, your story is. It's, I hate even calling it story because it's your life. Like your life is incredible. The, the, just such a contrast, such a contrast.
And. Yeah, as I said before, like it is, it is hard for me to, to hear you speaking now to picture what life must have been like for you back then, even how you said that, you know, you struggled with vulnerability and you didn't cry for so long, like, and now you speak so vulnerably and so like openly, it's just like, you, you must be such a different man.
One of the things I encourage,
Speaker 2: I encourage anyone to do that by the way, because I've lived both. It's so much easier, like, I, and I, now I'm so honest that, you know, Melissa can probably attest to this, I'm so honest that sometimes I do rub off the wrong way sometimes with people, but it's just, it's so much easier just to be open and honest, because I remember always having to think about, like, being a drug addict, it's like, hey, who did, who did I tell this story to, and this story to, and You know, and [00:27:00] just on the, before I get to the question, just the vulnerability thing, it's, it's important for people to, to realize, you know, an example of this, I was living in that drug house in Melbourne, and none of my actual friends knew or family knew where I was, I hadn't spoken to them in, in a long time, I just, because once again, I couldn't be vulnerable, I couldn't let them see me, so much shame.
I don't want them to see the way I am. So I just like, I was running and then this one day, my two best friends had somehow done some detective work and found out this commission house that I was living in and I'm, I'm in the house and it was very rare, but I'm in the house by myself for some reason, everyone else was out and there's a big knock at the door.
We didn't welcome big knocks at the door of that house. That was, that was not a welcome. I'm like, fucking hell. Was that police? And anyway, I hear this husser. That's, uh, and that's what my friends call me and I could see my phone just lighting up just saying we're at the front open the door because I could see my car in the driveway and I'm there with my dog and I'm like, I haven't seen actually seen me yet.
So I got, I could see them walking around the back of the house to look in [00:28:00] windows and stuff. And I remember crawling from the bedroom to the hallway. There was a hallway in the middle of the house with no windows. The only place that you couldn't be seen and I sat in that hallway with my hands over my head like this.
And after about 20 minutes that they gave up and they left. And it's such a great illustration of the shame that we can go through in life in that I'm clearly struggling at that point in my life. I'm really struggling. My two best friends, people that love me to the death and would do anything for me are about 10 meters away, begging to help me.
Yet I couldn't physically go and open the door and confront them.
Speaker: Wow. Actually, I'd love to touch on that because there will be people listening that, that I know for a fact are addicted to substances. Alcohol is a big one here in Australia, whether it's drugs or, or something that it could be workaholism.
Like there's so many different addictions, right? But I do think alcohol is huge in this, in this country in particular, even drugs, prescription medications. But there'll be [00:29:00] people listening that are highly. Functioning individuals. There are people that I know personally that listen that have their own businesses work high up in corporate jobs, you know, our parents.
Whatever it may be in society, like really on the outside look like they have it all going for them, but are struggling and it's that shame component. If we know someone who is deeply struggling and we know, like what is the worst thing that we can do and what is the best thing that we can do for someone that is addicted to say a substance or whatever it may be, because I do think shame is, like you said, is such a big part of it.
What, how can we help and what's the worst thing we can do?
Speaker 2: If it's our loved one, that's going through the issue.
Speaker: Yeah. Loved one or friends. I'm not talking about clients, loved ones or friends.
Speaker 2: We, Matt and I, one of our early courses we made, it's called Families of Addictions. And we made this course, this six video series on if you have someone that you know, who's addicted.
And what we spoke about in that is it's [00:30:00] always the underlying intent, whether someone can pick it up or not. Consciously, unconsciously, we can pick up on the other person's intent, right? Now, people who are truly struggling with an addiction, they have guilt and shame just They're riddled with it in their system.
They're judging themselves as poor. And even some people in addiction, they can come off like they don't care and they're selfish. And I've worked with those people. I've not met one yet, but underneath that's a, that's a facade. That's a mask of crip. I normally that the higher, the more strong that mask is, the more they're riddled with guilt and shame.
And so we always have to come from a place of. You're not broken. I'm not trying to fix you. You're not fucked up in any way. Yeah. But I'm just here to listen because I had so many, I would get at our clinic, like so many family members coming in and going, give me a script, you know, tell me exactly what I need to say to this person to be okay.
It's like, If I give you the exact correct script, but you're still coming from a place that this person's broken and they need help and they need to be fixed and then come [00:31:00] back, doesn't matter what I tell you to say, it's going to fall on the wrong ears and come from the wrong place. Shame, shame, there's a saying, shame dies in safe spaces.
Speaker 3: Mm.
Speaker 2: Where we can openly and vulnerably tell our story to people that we are not gonna feel judged by. And that was one of the great, you know, successes of our center when we had the physical center because I was very, very open about my story. So then people can start to say things, oh, well I was, I did this in addiction and nah.
And they would look at me and there's not a hint of judgment. And it's like people go to say something and it's what they're trying to, they say it and then they're like trying to, you know, protect from the comeback. Yeah. And when they don't get judgment coming back. And that promotes them and encourages them to be open again.
Now, with family members and loved ones, it's really hard. We have so much issue with them and that kind of thing. So sometimes, as like a really close friend or family member, it might be, if we can't create that safe space for them to be open, then we need to point them in the direction of a safe space for them to be open.
Whether that's a practitioner or a therapist, [00:32:00] preferably with lived experience in that area, or whether it's a group, you know, I, I have a lot of, Not a lot. I have some critical things to say about AA and NA and 12 Step Corner meetings. But one thing they definitely have going for them is that they have all people in a very similar situation and a community can be created there.
I always encourage people to do a lot of deeper one on one work in conjunction with that. But there's so many groups now, online groups, in person groups, we need to point people in the direction of where they're not going to feel judged and be able to share their story. But as soon as we, as soon as someone feels like we're telling them what to do and they're wrong in some way, it reinforces what they already think about themselves and they'll get defensive and that's when the back and forth starts and things can get pretty nasty.
Speaker: Yeah. And I can understand that. Cause if I feel like I'm being told what to do in life and someone's forcing me into a corner and not even, you know, addiction related, just in general, it's like, you get your back up instantly and you feel like, why are they trying to control me? Why are they trying to judge me?
Like, it's a natural human response. [00:33:00] And I think especially us Aussies, we're a bit like stubborn like that. Like you're not telling me what to do, mate, like, no.
Speaker 2: Especially a lot of people as well with addictive behaviors. They normally have a strong, strong like the archetype of the rebel, like a rebellion kind of thing.
So oftentimes we, that it's even that on steroids, you know, it's like, yeah, my backup, it's like, how dare you tell me what to do. Let me tell you all the things wrong with you. And then that starts the argument and we don't get anywhere because I know there's one example that I use and cause When I speak to a family member or a friend of someone addiction, I try and explain a bit of my story, but also what drives addiction.
I've already spoke about it on this podcast. If we can see instead of a person that has a problem and is a problem and needs to stop that behavior, if we can see a human being who's in emotional pain, then we can automatically soften and have compassion for that person. Even just doing that, now I'm actually bringing a different energy to the dynamic in the relationship.
Because I had this one lady who I remember came in and her daughter was working with us at the center. Daughter was [00:34:00] struggling with methamphetamine addiction. And and I remember the mother came in and she was telling the story. Oh, she did this. Then she started using drugs and she was emotionally detached.
Like it didn't even matter that her daughter became a drug addict. But she got really emotional. She goes, but the reason we've come into your clinic is the rest of the family just found out. And now my, my cousin and my sister, they know that she, so now she's more concerned about the perception of family members and the actual health of her own daughter.
Tried to get the mother into therapy, but funnily enough, she wasn't having
Speaker: it.
Speaker 2: And it was interesting that years later, I, I ran into the daughter and she's doing great off drugs. She's married about to have a baby. It's like, makes me feel the best when I hear those stories. I was like, what about your mom?
She goes, don't talk to mom anymore. I'm like, probably a good thing.
Speaker: Yeah. Not surprised there. Holy cow. Mom's too busy micromanaging the perceptions of all the family members than worrying about
Speaker 2: exactly. Exactly.
Speaker: Holy cow. I'd love to talk about men's [00:35:00] health in particular. I did a podcast episode that was all about the war on masculinity.
Now, this is me saying this. I'm not putting this on you at all. This is just my perception, but, um, I do see a very targeted war on men and their masculinity. And I know a lot of people listening to this podcast have said the same thing. I get messages and there are a lot of men that are really struggling.
I've got a lot of comments on like YouTube, but that YouTube video in particular, where they're saying, thank you for talking about this, like men feel quite targeted to the point that there's, it seems, I mean, you're a man. You can, you can explain these better than I can. But it seems from my perception that men are now too scared to speak.
Otherwise instantly the label of toxic masculinity gets thrown out. And that episode that I did was all about how, in my opinion, masculinity cannot actually be toxic because the moment that it's expressed, it's no longer masculinity because at the core of masculinity is protection. And, you know, I went into a whole, it's a whole episode on its own.
It's episode 32, if anyone [00:36:00] wants to listen to it, but. I can see where men are so scared to express themselves and, you know, bottle up anger or rage or whatever it might be, because literally the moment that they say anything, they're shut down. And I'd love to get, and by, again, I'm not saying that that's your perception.
That's my perception, but I'd love to get your opinion from a man and especially working in the trauma space and having the center for healing, what you can see and how we can help. Men in general, when it comes to this conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's, it's a great question. I've seen in one on one work. I've seen men are desperate to express themselves.
They want to express themselves. They want to express what they've going through, gone through their fears, desires. They're pent up anger, all of this kind of stuff they want to express in a safe space like we all do. So I guess there's a difference between this sort of one on one context and collectively in group as well, because now real popular things being, you know, men's groups and all that kind of stuff, which is great, you know, it's needed, [00:37:00] but we literally, when we were in Bali the other week, The lady organizing the conference for us and everything, she goes, Oh, you should run, you know, men's groups and retreats.
And I'm like, fuck no. She's like, why not? I'm like, cause I know a lot of men who run them and I don't want to be one of those guys. Because I find a lot of men running these groups now, not all, but the majority aren't masculine men. And it further reinforces the idea of getting a few nods here from Holly,
Speaker 3: which
Speaker 2: is further reinforcing the fact that we can't be masculine.
When it comes to any emotion, the two extremes of the end here that are not healthy in terms of expressing our emotions are suppression and overexpression. There's a balance in there. When we can hold an emotion, we can express it without attacking or putting it onto someone else. And it's this middle point that a lot of human beings struggle to be with.
Right now, I think masculinity was probably displayed in an, uh, this side, you know, in an overexpressive way in unhealthy [00:38:00] ways for a lot of our, you know, the past however many hundreds of years. And now the pendulum has swung this way where now a lot of masculinity is being suppressed and I would say too much being suppressed which means that.
We are afraid to speak up as a collective, not me, but men as a men as a whole are afraid to speak up. We keep being told to speak up, but then getting attacked for speaking up. So it's like speak up, but only in the way that I want you to speak up. And that's actually what's true and authentic to you.
You know, and that's why I think these one on one context is so important. You know, when I'm working with anger and rage in a man, it's like, we need that anger and rage to express itself. Like, what does it actually want? What's it afraid of? What does it want to do? When was it hurt? And if we bring that up in the wrong group context, I mean, we got problems.
We're going to get attacked, you know, viciously in most situations. So it gets hard to judge in what environment and around what people am I able to actually express what's truly happening inside of me. So it's confusing. You know, I [00:39:00] think, I think if I tap into like the male collective at the minute, it's like confusion.
I feel dizzy, you know, like, where do I go and what do I say? And so, I think we're in the process of as a whole collective as humans as trying to work that out. Because all of a sudden we said, okay, masculinity is a problem. We found that a problem, the collective. Now we have to squash that problem, but there's insanely healthy aspects of masculinity, as well as insanely destructive aspects of masculinity.
And instead of determining which ones are healthy and which ones are destructive and trying to have that really nuanced discussion, we tend to go, well, all bad. Let's, let's push it down and push it away. Which is why now I see a lot of men's groups is like, You know, you know, man bums up top here and speaking in very high tones and, you know, no one wanted to show any type of aggression because it seemed to be an ugly or not a nice emotion.
Speaker: Yeah, and one of the things I pointed out in the episode that I did is as a woman, I actually don't feel safe around a man [00:40:00] that has suppressed that anger and that rage that much because It's almost like it's going to be explosive at some point. Like it's, it's just too much. It's bubbling up that much that one day it is going to explode in a very dangerous kind of way.
I actually feel more safe around a guy who can actually, like who does, as weird as it sounds, a man who has the capacity for aggression. For instance, when it's needed to protect, to, you know, if, if a fight broke out and I'm standing there that, you know, the man would protect me type thing. So has the capacity for aggression, but isn't seeking out aggression, isn't seeking out violence.
But I find that if a man has just constantly suppressed all of that rage and same for women, by the way, but I'm just speaking specifically to men, that if they're constantly suppressed that anger and that rage that you actually, I don't feel safe around them. I actually think it's, it's doing the reverse.
And it is a shame because like we, as a woman, I can say that like, we need that strong masculinity in society. And I, I think it's. [00:41:00] devastating the impact it's having on men, that men are told that it's now dangerous to be a man, that it's unsafe for you to be a man. And it's, you're a blight on society for just being born a male.
And it scares me for young boys. Like you've got a son. It scares me that they're being raised in a society that is telling them that you need to apologize for being born a male. Like that's insane to me. That's literally what is happening now where they're being taught that there's something wrong with you for being a boy and that you are a danger to society.
to society. And it scares me where that can go. But yeah, so that's, that's, no, no,
Speaker 2: I, I agree with all you're saying, because all that does is tell a young child that you're wrong
Speaker 3: in
Speaker 2: some way. And so all of so much of the work that we do and what we teach is like, we have an identity structure and that identity structure, if I'm coming in to do work with some sort of dysfunction showing up in my life.
I'm feeling a bit depressed, anxious, I'm stressed, I'm drinking too much, I'm doing drugs, whatever it is, I've got a pattern in relationships or money, then part of my identity structure is creating that.
Speaker 3: Now,
Speaker 2: [00:42:00] our identity structure is formed in our formative years by what we're told by people that we look up to and we respect.
And what happens with most human beings is, Instead of being told that, Hey, that behavior over there is wrong. That's not good enough. We tell the child that they're not good enough. And they, when we, when they're told that enough times, they internalize that there's something wrong with me or that, and that becomes such a pivotal part of their identity.
And as soon as I feel like there's something wrong with me, then I'm going to run into all sorts of sabotage patterns later in life. So, you know, that's, that's, It's a big problem. Just saying, Hey, you were born, you had this particular chromosome makeup. So that's, that's wrong when you need to apologize for that.
And the kid's going, what? But kids, have you seen kids play? They barely even recognize who's a boy, who's a girl, who's black, who's white. None of that. That's all these adult constructs, which is made up of all these fears and things that we've suppressed. You made a good point. We never successfully suppress anything.
We might be able to hold it down for a while, but it has to come out has to come out [00:43:00] either in outbursts or unconscious behavior. And it happened. I've seen it a lot. I've had a lot of men come into me who have had that suppression for a very, very long time, and they are running into health issues, relationship issues weird kinks, all that kind of thing.
And so it's coming out in very odd ways. And if you look at us as a species as well, I mean, overall, our testosterone over the last 50 years as a collective is doing this. You know, which people equate testosterone as, as being a problem because it causes aggression. No, no. Suppressed anger and rage is what causes these outbursts and destruction, not, not just testosterone.
Speaker: Yeah. Which is, which is going to continue if, if men are continually told that they are wrong for being men. Yeah. It's a big, it's a real big issue at the moment. It's massive. I um, I'd just love to briefly touch just back to addiction, just something that popped in my head from what you said earlier. Are we all, this might sound like a negative, I don't mean it in a negative, but are we all [00:44:00] addicted to something if we're constantly, like, as a form of numbing from running away from ourselves?
Do we all have an addiction, whether that is a drug addiction or that is seeking validation from others? Do all of us have one?
Speaker 2: We all have addictive tendencies in an addictive nature. I believe it's part of being a human being.
We, we can pull, we call it the the compulsion to escape.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
It's like
Speaker 2: this, this mechanism inside us and we all do it to varying degrees. And whether you define that as addiction, you have to create a definition. At first in able to say, do I make that criteria or not? You know, the best one that I've heard is any behavior. So right then, we don't just talk about drug and alcohol, any behavior that I find craving to do get relief in once I engage in it, and despite it having negative consequences in other areas of my life, I am unable to stop.
And so. At that point, if you asked a group of people, like, who's ever experienced that in their life, most people, if they're honest, would go, ah, yeah. [00:45:00] But you know, if you look at this there's three layers. Okay. I'll try and I'll try and break this down. I've got a diagram, but I, I'll just break it down.
So on top here is, let's see, we have someone with an addiction. That's the addiction that we see on the surface. And that can be drug addiction, alcoholism, all that stuff we've spoken about. And so what happens, mainstream society sees that addiction and goes yeah, that's the problem, fix that, you know, get rid of that.
But then what drives this addiction? And this is like a, addictions are funny, they're a real shared experience. I kind of think of them as an archetype. It's like, you know, I remember I bumped into people at different events and whatnot and they were former. Meth or GHB addicts and I could make a joke that no one else will get apart from another meth addict and we laugh and you know, and Matt can do the same with heroin and all that kind of stuff.
It's, it's really interesting. Then what drives that addiction is the compulsion to escape, which is the next level down. And like I said, all human beings have the compulsion to escape who hasn't wanted to, you know, After a tough week at work, just have that bottle of wine and put on Netflix and just [00:46:00] forget about the stress until Monday morning when it starts all over again.
You know, who doesn't want to have the kids screaming all day and that kind of thing. Just, you know, yeah, same thing. Have a wine, Netflix, whatever it is. We all have that in us. Yeah. And we do it from time to time, but we can't avoid that. No one's perfect. And so this compulsion to escape, and it's like, what?
And the compulsion to escape is like a dial. You know, it's not a switch that's on or off. It's either ramped up really high or it's down low. And it's like for most people, once it gets over a certain point, then addiction starts to come into play. But what drives the compulsion to escape is the amount of pain that we have in our body and our soma, emotional pain.
You know, and so many people are walking around with grief and sadness and hurt and all these things from decades and decades ago. And that affects us. You know, we don't, we don't, we don't, It's like we're born with an invisible backpack, you know, and yes, we have genetic prints and genealogical imprints and all that, but forget about that for a minute.
We're born with an invisible backpack. Every time we go through an event that's heavily emotional and we don't [00:47:00] properly process it because there's not a stable resource present, it's like we throw a rock in the backpack. And, you know, some of them, some of them are big rocks, some of them are little stones, some of them are, you know, Medium size.
And as we grow up, this backpack gets heavier and heavier because we never got an instruction manual when we're younger to say, Hey, this is how you deal with events in the moment that are highly emotional. This is how you deal with your fight, flight and freeze response. This is how you process stuff that's happened in the past.
We don't get taught, you know, so we, this backpack gets heavier and heavier. And then for a lot of people, especially. A lot of people who struggle with addictions and mental illness are highly sensitive by nature. There's about 15 to 20 percent of the human population that have a really highly attuned nervous system, which means we just, things affect us more, both good and bad.
And so those people, these backpacks get so fucking heavy that we get to a certain age as an adult. And it has to manifest as something, it has to, depression, anxiety, addiction, stress, physical issues, you know, autoimmune disease, all of these kind of, it has to [00:48:00] manifest as something. So what we do and what we teach is like, let's address the rocks and the pebbles and all this stuff in the backpack, which as we move through and start to process that and give people the skills and the tools and the frameworks to deal with stuff that happened in their life in the future, that compulsion to escape dial, um, You know, over time starts to go down,
Speaker 3: go down,
Speaker 2: as the dial goes down, the addictions on the top, they start to disappear because what was driving them is being what's dealt with, because otherwise if I just deal with, yeah, we take methane, I do the thought experiment, right?
Because people say drugs are such a big issue. If I click my fingers now, I had a magic power and got rid of every illicit drug on the planet. Like, would that mean that everyone who was addicted to drugs just leaves a happy life? They're just riding off into the sunset. It's like, no, no, they'll find something else to do.
They'll, you know, they'll work out that if I hit my head with a rock at the right spot a certain amount of times, I'll, I'll feel an altered state of consciousness. You know, that's, that's just how it works.
Speaker: Yeah. And it's so right [00:49:00] because it would be replaced with something else if the root cause is not addressed at the end of the day.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and you're right. I, I, it's true. Like the more that we, I always say come home to ourselves, some people might find that super corny language, but that's what I feel like it is the more that we're coming within ourselves and addressing whatever it is that's underneath, whatever the root cause is, the more that those compulsions, like I can even say within myself, whether that was, I used to have a full blown bone addiction where I could not even walk around the house.
Without it being in my hand and I, I was so confused. I'm looking at my hand and I'm like, why is, why am I holding the phone when I'm just going in the bedroom to make my bed? Like, why do I need the phone in my hand? And it just, it was like this almost separation anxiety from my mobile phone. It had to be near me.
I had to. It was so bizarre. It was just this compulsion to constantly be near my phone, scrolling my phone. And I'm like, holy cow, like what is underneath this? And when that was able to be addressed and, and in timing be released, I was like, I don't feel the compulsion to need to carry my phone 24 seven.
Like, you know, if I went and got [00:50:00] therapy for it and was talking about it for the next 20 years, I'd still be holding my phone, walking around my house. Like nothing's getting to the actual root cause. So this is why I love it. Good
Speaker 2: example though. Cause that's one that so many people these days can identify with that.
Of the phone there, Michael Singer is one of my favorite teachers and he explains it so simply. It's like something's not okay in here. So you spoke about coming home. If I come home to my direct experience of being Brian in this moment. And I don't feel okay, like not okay, then I'll want to try and do something to make myself okay.
Speaker 3: Yes. We're all just
Speaker 2: trying to feel. Okay. Yeah. So it's like you can give, you, give someone, say, write me a list of, of what you need to be. Okay. And it's like, I want a million dollars and I want this relationship and I want this body and, and blah, blah, blah. It's like, what if you cut out the middleman and just worked out while you weren't okay in the first place?
Speaker: Oh my God. Then you'd,
Speaker 2: then you'd, then you'd be okay with everything and that's a superpower.
Speaker: Yeah. And then you're okay right here right now with all, without all the things that you think that you need or think that, you know, we need, I'm including myself in [00:51:00] that, like the things that we think we need often aren't the things we actually need.
It's the inner healing work that it's the kind of home to us. Which
Speaker 2: doesn't mean then you don't go, Hey, I actually want that car or that relationship, but I'm not doing it because I'm not okay. I want to experience that. That's a different, I'm here to experience things as a human.
Speaker: Yeah. And it's not a running from ourselves.
It's an adding to our lives. Cause hell yeah, I want all the things in life as far as you can go. Like go for it. Thank you so much. My, I just want to touch real quickly just on embodied processing. Cause that's what I'm currently studying. I'm a part of that. I think it's incredible. I also mentioned when I did the recording with Melissa, I am certified in root cause therapy, the course that she created.
And I think both those courses are just fricking incredible. The work that you guys are doing. Is so impactful, but not just for the people that are receiving the work, but the fact that you're actually training practitioners in this is just, yeah, it's so awesome. So how can people find out information about the work that you do?
And my other [00:52:00] question is, do you do one on one work with clients or no more at all?
Speaker 2: Uh, no, one on ones at the minute every now and then I'll, uh, I'll open up a few places. Yeah, yeah, I got a lot on, you know, but I get asked a lot and sometimes I will have like, yeah, I'll do that, but I'll normally I'll have one or two clients
Speaker 3: and
Speaker 2: then if if, if, if one finishes up, I'll, I'll bring someone else.
I'll be, I tend to say no, just because otherwise I won't be able to do anything else. I just
Speaker: feel like people are going to ask me after listening to this episode. So instead of me receiving a million emails saying, can you, can you put me in contact with Ryan? You've heard it from him.
Speaker 2: There's many practitioners on our practitioner directory at the center for healing who are much better than me.
So I, I highly recommend that. So center for healing. com and body processing and root cause therapy. There are two modalities that we teach both different, but very similar as well in that we are turning towards our emotions and our experiences both now and from the past. So we can start to process those and move through them and do exactly what I've been talking about in this [00:53:00] podcast.
And also learn tools and frameworks to manage as we're moving forward. We also have a bunch of other courses on there. We've got a. Trauma informed certificate, which is free. So anyone I encourage them to check that out. We've had like nearly 100, 000 people take that course now from all around the world.
So, and that and it's just it's applicable. For anyone. It's like, I'm just, if you understand trauma and traumatic imprints and the things we hold from our past, then you really understand human behavior and our motivations and why we react the way that we do. So, that's probably a good place to start, but yeah, the center for healing.
com, the center for healing on Facebook, Instagram. I think we have a TikTok. I'm not sure. I don't have the app, but I'm pretty sure we have one of those as well.
Speaker: Wise, man, . That one's a mine. A mine scroll. Once you're on TikTok, you could be there for like five hours. It's insane. . Um, yeah, I'm gonna link all of that in the show notes.
And the the trauma, what was it, what, what was it called again? The, the one trauma
Speaker 2: informed certificate. It says, that's what I started with. It says Trauma informed certificate for coaches, but like. You take it. If you're not a [00:54:00] coach, take it.
Speaker: It's awesome. Highly recommend it. I'll link that in the show notes as well.
And thank you so much for your time. Honestly. Thank you. I so appreciate you. That was such an Epic chat. We could have gone on for another five hours. That was really, really.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If you, if you let me roll, I'll just keep talking. Thank you. And for putting on this podcast. Thanks for having, you know, real authentic conversations.
Cause like I said, we spoke about shame and people I'm struggling to be vulnerable, but sometimes they'll just hear a story
Speaker 3: and go,
Speaker 2: Holy shit, I can see myself in that person and now they're doing okay. And they've changed. Maybe that's possible for me. Because as soon as we think, as soon as we have hope, then we'll we'll, so, so I had a little bit of hope, which led me up into an office in Port Melbourne back in, you know, 2014 or whatever it was.
Right. But if I was completely closed off and thought there was no hope for me, I don't leave the bedroom or the couch, you know? So when we hear a story and we can identify with it, maybe someone listens to this or one of your other episodes and goes, fuck, maybe I can do this. Then they go to that class, see that person, do whatever it [00:55:00] is and, and turn their life around.
That's my hope.
Speaker: Oh, what an epic way to end this. Thank you so, so much. I appreciate you.
THE SHOW
