You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Speaker 2 (00:00.078)
People need the opportunity to unplug from that negative, repetitive cycle of leaning into what they're dissatisfied about, or what they want to change or be different in the life of their loved one or whoever it is that we're interacting with. So what Pursuer Distancer does is if I'm approaching it that way and I chase my child in that way, then my child is going to...

retreat further because of the mode of interaction that we're in right there and then I'm going to turn up the volume and pursue harder and then they're going to retreat further and maybe move into secrecy more. And that's not moving us into a relational context that's going to resolve the problem ultimately for the child or for the family. And it unintentionally reinforce those things. Pursuer-Redisensor is at work everywhere all the time. It's just an incredibly pervasive relational pattern. It's just part of a natural rhythm of human life. When it gets out of control, it can

get messy and we become entrenched and then we don't have off-ramps anymore, we don't have directions we can move anymore to get to a healthier place. I think that's very much where we've ended up culturally at this point as well, to bring it back to that broader context discussion. You must be some kind of therapist.

Speaker 1 (01:12.142)
My guest today is Jonathan Cogburn. He's a licensed marriage and family therapist in Texas who provides school counseling support and recently launched a sub stack at his handle, Systemic Texasm, which is also his handle on X where some of you may have seen him before. Today, we're actually gonna have a spontaneous discussion, I think, in keeping with the times that we're living in. So I'm curious to see where it goes. Jonathan, welcome. Thanks for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me. I've just got to say these kind of platforms and these kind of opportunities to get to meet face to face with people who I've interacted with for months or years sometimes are really, really great. It's nice to get to interact with you live after a good while of just kind of messaging back and forth and commenting on X.

Well, you're very sweet. think you're a sort of Texan gentleman to say such complimentary things. And, you know, I want to frame this up for our listeners because the day that we're recording this is September 15th. And right now we are in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And I don't know about listeners, but if their experience is anything like mine, that's all that everyone is talking about.

thinking about, feeling about. And if you're listening or watching this, this is one small piece of all this online content that you're consuming. And out of the online content that you consume, there's a lot of stuff that people make spontaneously in the moment, low to no budget, just speaking their mind on social media. And then there's some stuff that's really high end, well produced, high budget where

they're able because of their budget and resources to kind of work on the media that they provide 24 seven. we're getting, you know, a lot of the commentary about Charlie Kirk is very timely as it should be. This is a low budget podcast, but it's also thoughtfully produced, which means that you're not going to get that kind of rapid turnover where something major happens.

Speaker 1 (03:25.716)
And we're there the next day with, you know, not only a well thought out commentary, but a well produced show on it. That's just not how this works as a one woman show here. And so I don't know how long it'll take for this to come out or if this will still be timely. I hope it's still timely because I think that the assassination of Charlie Kirk has had a huge effect on society. And I'm speaking this, you know, within a week of the assassination, we're all feeling it. And I think many people feel like.

for his death to not be in vain, we all need to let this touch and move us to be inspired in ways that might shape how we act for years to come. So I hope that this still feels timely when it comes out, but I feel like I'm learning Charlie a lot better in the wake of his passing than I knew him while he was here. And it just goes to show, you know,

as a podcaster and just the way that I think I kind of get to know people one at a time. And I always have on my radar all these people who, you I know their name or their face. I have a vague sense of what they do. And it's like someday maybe I'll get around to talking to that person. And when we sit together for two hours and get to know each other, that's when they'll become, you know, someone I have actually on my mental map. And I think Charlie Kirk was one of these people who was on the distant part of my mental map, like,

Someday I'll get to know more about that person. And I never thought that that someday would be after he was murdered in cold blood. But here we are. And I'm very grateful for his work and his heart, his motives and mission.

And now I'm figuring out what to do with everything I already had on my calendar, right? Like this conversation that we are going to have today. When we planned this, you and I, Jonathan, this was a few weeks ago. And I think you had some ideas for where we might go. And we might still go there. This is also just our first time talking. I think we've been following each other on social media for a couple of years now. We have some mutual friends, Ryan and Soad and all these people. By the way, I'm wearing Soad's t-shirt. Yes, I noticed that.

Speaker 1 (05:48.916)
make therapy sane again. It's hidden by the mic.

Shout out to TherapyZena. That's what all the bros call Sowed. That's our nickname for Sowed. So I hope she, I hope she listens to this. I regularly drop GIFs in her comment threads of Zena doing very powerful, womanly things, engaging in battle.

They call her Therapy Xena.

Speaker 1 (06:12.942)
she's a force to be reckoned with. And it gives me comfort to know that I'm not alone, that there are other women therapists like Sowad out there who have our backs. But one of the reasons that I decided to kind of hit record right in the middle of a conversation we were having there, Jonathan, is that as much as we might talk about some of the things that you have expertise in, obviously school counseling, for example,

you were just sharing that you are in a process of actively questioning what you share about yourself in the world, how you put your views out there. And I feel like so many people are feeling the same way right now. It's not only the things I see on social media, it's also, I went to a Charlie Kirk vigil last night and milled about meeting people and got to hear that from people in person too.

There was this woman, was funny the way she described it. She kept saying that she's punked out. I don't really understand what that slang meant to her.

Meet some minimal encouragers and clarifying questions for that one.

Well, I had a therapist friend there who was trying to understand what she meant and she just meant she was calling herself a coward is what she was doing. She was saying, I've been cowardly and expressing myself and I could just tell that her gears were turning. She was actively in a process of figuring out when and how and what do I want to speak. So I think a lot of people are feeling that right now. I'm certainly also in a process of questioning

Speaker 1 (07:54.89)
when to unleash my fire, for instance, because there have been times in the past that I acted impulsively and regretted at least some of the consequences of showing up in a way that could easily be framed as unprofessional or overly emotional or overly personal. But at the same time, I think I can also go too far in the opposite direction, where I'm so concerned with showing up with

poise and grace and dignity and not overstepping or not saying anything true dramatically or not giving bad faith actors anything to work with in terms of misinterpreting my statements, which is, I mean, it's a lost cause. If someone wants to distort what you're saying, they will find a way no matter how eloquent you are. Charlie is proof of that. So I think that's what's in the mix. I just, sorry for the long preamble.

But what are you grappling with, in your process? Because you just launched a sub stack. You've also felt inspired lately. What are some of those questions that you're grappling with in terms of self-expression?

So I've got active with the overlap of my professional identity and political beliefs really probably about five years ago. And that's actually when I met Soad. I was in a thread where somebody had posted, a professional person had posted this statement that, we should be writing letters for people to receive

transmedical intervention after a single session, because to do anything less than that is gatekeeping. And I'm sure you've seen some of these posts from therapists out there on social media, right?

Speaker 1 (09:46.574)
So, more than that, a lot of experience with that. go on.

You've worked a lot more closely in that, in that area than I have, for sure. So I didn't even reply to the original poster. I hopped in because there was a second person there who was just saying something I thought was totally reasonable, which was, Hey, I was taught in grad school that it is not ethical to issue a letter for any purpose after a single session, which is completely true in traditional therapy ethics that are, you know, that are sans

all of this critical theory and gender theory stuff being overwritten on top of it. And so I just chimed in in support of the person who said that who was getting dogpiled in the comments and called all of the nasty names that we typically get called, right? And so I started to get dogpiled. But then I got a private message from somebody who said, Hey, tell me a little bit about what you what you believe, like what your beliefs are. I didn't I didn't have conservative attached to my

like personal identity at that point in time. I was very apolitical at that time. But I, my beliefs aligned with conservatism for sure, as far as, you know, absolutism on the First Amendment and Second Amendment, you know, and religious beliefs and faith being very, very strong in a traditional sense for me throughout my whole life. And, and so I told her like, Hey, I'm pretty apolitical, but here's, here's what I actually believe. And she said, I think

We've got, you know, I think there's a group of people that you'd like to meet if you're willing to join and if you're willing to say, hey, I, you know, I agree to these things as far as like some statements of belief. It's like, that's fine. And that was when I met Soad. And I don't remember if Pamela Garfield Yeager was already a part of that group of people at that time or not, but she was pretty quickly after that, if not. And so both two really powerful

Speaker 2 (11:46.806)
ladies, and Soad doesn't even know this, so I really do hope she hears this. I decided to put conservative on my Twitter bio at some point, because Soad really inspired me with her boldness to be totally unafraid in front of people that there's nothing shameful about what I believe personally. Other people may want to mischaracterize it as that, but

But it is not. And I have to be able to operate from a firm, like solid foundation of personal identity, because that needs to be pushed against. I recognize, part of the problem is people are not attaching their beliefs to themselves publicly enough. And I need to exist out there in public and be an anathema to that mischaracterization, if I can, to

to just say things like, hi, I'm conservative and I'm a therapist. And then weather the storm that's gonna hit me of name calling. And so my favorite one of all time, by the way, that I've been called, and I intend to put it on a T-shirt at some point, is a mediocre white man. That's my favorite mudslinging that has come my way.

Can I just say, interrupt with the total non-sequitur here, well, no, it's a sequitur, it's a trivial point. But you saying mediocre white man, I immediately thought, you know, for some people that would actually be a good thing to aspire towards relative to what their current aspirations are. And then I thought about how in grad school, I mean, talk about classic training.

I was taught in grad school that we should all aspire to be normal neurotics. Like that being a normal neurotic is better than the alternative. If the therapists in the audience are going to get that, hopefully, if you don't, I'm worried about you. The non-therapists, don't worry. You don't need to get that. But mediocre white man, normal neurotic, you know, these are things that are actually decent aspirations, I think, relative

Speaker 2 (13:41.841)
Yeah!

Speaker 2 (13:47.345)
I would say so.

Speaker 1 (14:06.766)
to what some people are doing right now.

And this is a very good point. I like this reframe that you're taking with that. I'm going to ponder that for quite a while, I think.

You should put a shirt with mediocre white man on one side and normal neurotic on the other.

Perfect. Well, maybe, maybe Soad could help us with that too. She's got the shirt market, the therapist, the base therapist shirt market cornered, seems, so far. She's the only one I know, but that's a pretty good corner on the market. I love that. I love that normal neurotic.

By the way, will say, I'm going to be totally tangential and interrupt a lot today. I apologize. It's just my mood. last night at the Charlie Kirk vigil, there's this big black guy with a bright red MAGA hat, bright red MAGA shirt. And he was going around showing people pictures of himself in his other shirt, which said, it's okay to be white.

Speaker 1 (15:02.988)
which like he was just talking about how basically scrambles people's brains. Like people are so indoctrinated with the white guilt, especially in liberal cities that they see a black man in a shirt that says it's okay to be white and their brains just like explode.

Yeah, I would definitely have to talk to that guy if I saw him out there somewhere. Like, that's amazing. Amazing. I think that's such a powerful thing. Here's another tangent, but it makes me think of it. I heard Sue Johnson one time make the statement that women and female therapists needed to not pathologize normal male sexual desire and pursuit. And I heard her say out loud,

emotional bonding and sexual intimacy are, how would, how did she say that, inextricable from each other. And I thought it was so powerful for a woman and a consummate researcher to be the one to say that out loud, like to kind of offer the welcome and the acceptance there. And that's the same kind of, of bridging of gaps of the guy that you're talking about that you saw out there yesterday. Like, Hey, I recognize there's a divide here, and I can be the first one to invite somebody across.

And just for the non-therapist listening, Sue Johnson is a very prominent couples therapist. She's the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy. So it means a lot coming from her, a real respected expert in the field.

Yeah, she's amazing. I have looked up to her tremendously.

Speaker 1 (16:35.573)
And she's not afraid of conflict either.

No, no, not at all. Well, and so that that kind of ties back to what we were just talking about there a minute ago. I believe in trying to pursue healthy deescalated conflict with other people whenever possible. I have a Jonathan catchphrase that I came up with when I was doing private practice before I was in the job I'm in now. And it goes something like conflict is necessary and it's even healthy if conducted in the right way.

And of course, because the alternative is resentment, accumulating resentment. And so we can either do healthy conflict, or we can live in relationships that suffer from accumulated resentment and increasing distance. And that is not a healthy relationship. And, you know, just for my own life, I came, I came from a place where, like, my parents would start to argue, and it would be a

fairly, I mean, really tame argument compared to some that I've dealt with in professional life. And they would go behind a closed door. And I wouldn't ever know what happened. And so that was, I think, my dad's effort to keep me from experiencing intensity that he experienced growing up. But I also wasn't exposed hardly to conflict. So I was much like an avoider for a long time. And it was actually becoming the therapist that, that made it possible for me to do conflict at all.

Because I just had I had no chip for that for many many years and I would say my you know My approach to things is probably looks a lot more cautious than than many others or maybe slow But I think through things and that's how that's how I got to the point that you brought up earlier so, you know, I'm this person who I want a presence of somebody who's conservative to be out there somebody who

Speaker 2 (18:33.056)
If you blow up at me, I'm not going to blow up back at you. I'm going to ask questions. I'm going to, I'm going to avoid engaging in contempt. I'm going to try to invite the other person to deescalate as well as much as possible. I'm going to offer as many concessions as I can, you know, in kind of a healthy debate sense of that term. And I just thought that was important. I thought maybe if I get out there and do that,

some people would kind of have a novelty response triggered in their brain to go, wait a second, I think that people who look like this are bigots, they're Nazis, they're mediocre white men, but this guy's not acting like that. So that's kind of the personal intent that I've carried about just the way that I engage. And sometimes I'll hop into a thread on X that I know is controversial and I know I'm gonna get dog piled in. And I don't do that all the time. Gosh, I would be.

like depressed and worn out, maybe, you know, maybe a couple times a month I try to do that, because, because you're going to get run over, you know, just to have more comments than you want to have to deal with. But, you know, a little, a little dent here and there, a little novelty response, maybe even in somebody just glancing at one of those threads, might, you know, might contribute to somebody waking up from this, this very intense fundamentalist view that all conservatives

or anybody who doesn't espouse my particular morality is bad.

Have you seen that work?

Speaker 2 (20:06.734)
What's that?

this optimistic idea that someone's going to have, like you say, that novelty response, have their brain light up, or I guess the way I'm hearing you describe it is like a moment of cognitive dissonance, of becoming more aware that the person in front of me doesn't fit the stereotype in my head, and so let me expand my worldview. That seems like an optimistic thing to hope for, and I'm wondering if you've seen that, because right now there's

There's a pessimistic voice in me that wants to point out how charitable that perspective can be at times to the point of risking naivete that at the worst extreme gets us hurt. And I think this is one of the things that we all need to be grappling with right now because of what happened to Charlie, because of who he was, because of how exquisite he was at balancing

charity and kindness and offering people olive branches and bridges, but also knowing when to be fierce, when to fight. And I'm seeing you, this really sweet guy with, it feels like a very innocent heart, and you're talking about a more beautiful world that you want to create through your actions, and a part of me is right there with you. Like, yeah, absolutely. I...

want to give people off ramps and bridges and olive branches. But at the same time, when do you recognize that someone spewing vitriol, someone being so comfortable calling you a race-based insult, for example, or something like that, that that tells you something about their character and their motives and that they're not so innocent.

Speaker 1 (21:58.19)
And that in fact, mean, and this is part of what I warned parents about in my coaching and in my program, ROGD Repair is that when we have formed an unkind view of someone and then we start treating them accordingly and we feel righteous in that, then we're now invested in reinforcing our view of the situation because to do otherwise would be to have to face guilt and remorse for how we misjudged them and mistreated them.

So I guess that's what I'm grappling with and I'm wondering, does this work for you or are there times it backfires?

wouldn't say, I wouldn't say it's ever backfired that I know of. Now, I'm in Texas. And so that's different. Some of, some of the friends that Sowed and Pamela and I have in common have had licensure, have had to defend, to defend licensure board complaints in their states because of saying things like what I've said on social media are less controversial. Texas, the board tosses all complaints that are the result of social media posts.

They don't even entertain anything that is outside of a client or a client's family member making a direct complaint about a care problem. So I have a little bit more luxury.

That's great. And how long has that been the policy in Texas?

Speaker 2 (23:18.766)
As long as as long as they've had a social media policy as far as I know Now I know like the professional organization in Texas TAMFT is very is very woke You know pro gender affirming care according to W path and all that But the board doesn't operate that way the state in fact the state laws that have just passed are like it's gonna be really hard to do that for a long time Because there's they're codifying bans on DEI and education. They haven't

codified anything in mental health care, but it doesn't, it's, how would I say that? The board rules really don't address that at all. And I don't think that the people who want to pursue that sort of leftist praxis really want to bring it up because they'd be on the radar. And so, you know, I think there's probably a lot of under the radar things that are going on. And that's, that's kind of a tangent to the main point, but

Well, just on the, I'm sorry, today's gonna be very tangential, I can just tell.

We're going to free associate. We're going to go with subconscious leading. That's fine.

appreciate your willingness to hold space for that and also to bring it back to your main points when I lose track of where you are starting to go. But I will say that in Oregon, and I've said this on the podcast before, but I know not all my listeners listen to every single episode. So I think this is important for people to know. Oregon's board released a statement, I don't know how long ago it was, within the last three years, probably about two years ago.

Speaker 1 (24:54.286)
in one of their quarterly newsletters saying they will not be investigating complaints based on social media. And I think the complaints about me played some role in that, whether it was 1 % or 10 % or 50%, I don't know.

tired of dealing with false complaints against this Stephanie Wynn lady. So we're going to make a rule.

Basically, I mean, I have no idea how many other Oregon licensed therapists have had complaints about them based on things they say in social media. I just have no idea. But I was very relieved to see that because yeah, I mean, what an administrative headache anyway. What a misuse of limited resources.

totally. And, and mental health professionals who know that a lot of unwell people spend a lot of time on social media and have inappropriately strong reactions to stimuli. So that ought to be a norm policy, I think, across, across the nation, probably. That, that was a compliment, by the way, for, for those listening. I know you probably took it that way, but that you're causing enough trouble and healthy pushback to the trends that people would complain enough about you.

that they might actually make a Stephanie Wynn rule for... Like, I think they would make a that named after Soad probably too for such things. And probably Jake was skirching in Nevada. He'll be glad I didn't put a W in at that time.

Speaker 1 (26:21.262)
What was it? What do mean?

he, it's not Nevada. It's Nevada. He doesn't mind correcting his friends on that, OK. He's a fun guy. I had to give him a shout out, too. So many good, there's so many good people, Stephanie, like in our circles of people. I'm just constantly blown away by how, how brilliant and how wise so many of these people are that we, that we get to interact with out there. OK.

So I can bring this back, I think. You had asked if it back, did it, has it backfired? I don't think it's, I don't think it's backfired. I would say I've, I've directly seen it make a change in the person a handful of times that I was interacting with directly a handful of times, maybe a dozen. Um, and, and it's very, it's one thing that makes it very hard is I think it's a text-based environment. And so, you know, as we know, as therapists like tone of voice and posture,

and facial expression are really important, and that doesn't really make it through there. So I'm missing a of communication process that could help tilt the scale a little bit more. Context 2.

I mean, therapy is so personal. You're going to say something to someone in one moment that would be totally inappropriate in a different moment with a different person. So much of it is relational, contextual, and social media is a completely different context.

Speaker 2 (27:53.738)
It is, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's for a particular purpose, that context. So I suspect, you know, that beyond that dozen or so, I've seen it change the demeanor of the person I've interacted with. And I assume those were probably real people. Because I tend to think maybe bots don't behave that way. The other thing is you don't know if you're talking to a bot or not half the time. Holy cow, I wish there was a way we could know that. You know,

But my hope is that there's, you know, at least maybe twice that or at least maybe three times that worth of people who might have seen the thread. And it, you know, it just caused that cognitive dissonance for a second, just long enough that that might be a seed planted in their mind for a change at some point. I know for just personal transformation, sometimes it takes a lot of those little moments. And so that's part of how I measure

My sense of what i'm doing or my status whatever satisfaction I might drive from doing that is my expectation is that not that i'm going to change anybody's mind in that individual moment of interaction, but that I plant a seed for You know two months from now that person is interacting with somebody else Who maybe treats them in a similar way as I did and and they it breaks their ability to continue seeing

things so, in such a binary. And, and I'm OK if I don't change somebody's mind, you know, right off the bat in that. One of the sayings that I've relied on a lot in my practice is, I want to always treat someone as if they're capable of doing the thing I need most from them. And it's that gap-bridging idea that I was talking about that, after, after you brought up the example of the man you saw at the, at the vigil,

that guy's walking around with that shirt on, and he's, he's treating people as if they're capable of relating to him and connecting with him, in spite of how different he may look, or how, how stereotype-breaking someone like him being in that kind of place would be to somebody who encountered him. And that, it is, it is doing the, the change in the system that would be present on my side of the street.

Speaker 2 (30:21.612)
before the other person does. That's how I hope it functions. That's kind of like the general systems theory conception of it that I have in my head. You know, if Steve de Schaeser is, he's the founder of Solution Focus Brief Therapy, you know, if he's, if he asked me, know, how would you, how would you hope things would look if they were better, if they were healthier, culture-wide? Well, it would be that everything would be deescalated. OK, so then what's my responsibility at that point? Well, I'm going to conduct myself in a deescalated way whenever possible.

And I'm going to try to invite other people to join me in that because that is my responsibility as I understand responsibility in the context of general systems. so it's, it's, don't, it, how would I say that? I do think it is a little bordering on naive. But it's not, it's not a naivete of, of not understanding, but, just a naivete maybe of, of hope that

that what I believe in works ultimately and that what I believe in has the end that I, that I desperately hope it does at some point further down the road. And so I keep doing it because it's what I believe will work.

I you've made a really important point that I want to underscore and you worded it slightly differently than how I express a similar concept throughout my course and in my coaching work with parents. So you talked about treating people as if they're capable of doing the thing you need most from them. I like that way of putting it. So the way I describe this in my course for parents of gender distressed youth,

is alter casting. That's not a term I came up with. I think I might've learned that from Chris Foss. A lot of my techniques are adapted from Chris Foss techniques. Okay. But it speaks to the same principle. And for the therapists in the audience, what we're talking about here is projective identification. So that's basically a fancy clinical way of saying that humans are deeply interpersonal beings and how we see each other

Speaker 1 (32:34.998)
affects how we treat each other, which affects what parts of us come out. know, humans are multifaceted and malleable and no one is just one single thing, right? So it's this interpersonal aspect of, are you bringing out the best in someone or the worst in them? What kind of response are you provoking? And so for parents,

This is especially important because you are the most influential people in your child's life. And they are a work in progress. We're all a work in progress, but especially adolescents and young adults. Their character is under development, under construction in a way. So, you know, sometimes the early stages of the work I do with parents is basically troubleshooting what's gone wrong so far.

and what they need to stop doing as soon as possible. That's kind of like it's damage control. Because parents come to me having made some pretty big mistakes at times. And one of the ways that I help them deconstruct some of the things they're doing that are backfiring is, okay, based on what you said or how you treated your kid in that interaction, what kind of person are you framing them as? You might not be conscious.

But think about it, if you said that or if you did that, that conveys unconsciously that you see them as a person who, fill in the blank. And then they're gonna reject that self-concept that you put upon them if they don't like it. So if you're treating them as someone who is stupid, that's not gonna work, right? Nobody likes to be treated as stupid. And similarly, I mean, here's the thing, a lot of these kids that I advise parents about,

they have a sense of moral and intellectual superiority that is defending a fragile ego. So if you wanna work with that ego and not spark a defensive reaction, you're gonna have to allow them some of their sense of a moral and intellectual superiority. You're gonna sometimes have to say, you're right about whatever they're right about looking for areas of agreement, even if you can't endorse everything that they said, you're gonna have to let them feel like the expert sometimes and let...

Speaker 1 (34:53.958)
Let them see that you see the parts of them that are good because they are defending their sense of goodness. And unfortunately, they've linked their sense of goodness with the movement that tells them what's good and bad, right and wrong, and that movement is incorrect. So, in the course I described this through the lens of Altar Casting, the lesson is called something about working with the ego. And sometimes in the early stages of coaching parents, I will actually have them make a list of qualities.

that their kids sees in themselves, that the kid aspires to, and qualities that you would support. And we're not gonna get into the weeds of whether you think your kid is fully manifesting that right now. Of course they're not, right? Okay, your kid thinks that they're so righteous and just, and to you their ideas are laughably stupid. Okay, well, you know what? That's called being 16, but we're gonna take the good part, which is that they care about justice. It's not bad to care about justice, right? We're not gonna get in the fine print right now.

We're going to acknowledge, I see how passionate you are about justice. That's at least a decent starting.

Yeah, yeah, about wanting to be a good person. Because I think that may be an even deeper level of, of personal identity than, than the, than the terminology, you know, or the buzz verbology that we end up assigning to things that are, that are maybe more universal sometimes. Yeah, definitely. I was thinking about, so one thing that I try to sneak into every, every podcast with, with Ryan Rogers that I'm on,

is an observation about pursuer-distancer pattern. You know this, right? Did you study this in school?

Speaker 1 (36:32.792)
Well, I mean, yeah, mean, mostly in the context of close personal relationships, romantic relationships, especially, well, attachment relationships, parent-child, but I'm hearing that you're describing that in some greater context.

Well, just, just, I mean, you were making me, you were making me think of it just then when you were talking about, this parent is in a, in the role of a pursuer, and they see something that they think needs to be changed in their child's life. But they're approaching it from what is wrong and what they're dissatisfied with. And that tends to form the content of their communication. And so they're talking to their child, and what their child is hearing is an overwhelming negative message about their parent's perception of them.

And that's not where consensus is built, and that's not where emotional bonding is built. It's built on commonality, on universality of experience. And so people need the opportunity to unplug from that negative, repetitive cycle of leaning into what they're dissatisfied about or what they

what they want to change or be different in the, in the life of their loved one or whoever it is that we're talking about interacting with. So what Pursuer Distancer does is usually if, if I'm approaching it that way and I, I chase my child in that way, then my child is going to retreat further because of the mode of interaction that we're in right there. And then I'm going to turn up the volume and pursue harder.

And then they're going to retreat further and maybe move into secrecy more. And that's not moving us into a relational context that's going to resolve the problem ultimately for, for the, for the child or for the family. And it may unintentionally reinforce those things sometimes. And so it just, what I, what I have said to Ryan about it is a Pursuer Distancer is at work everywhere, all the time.

Speaker 2 (38:37.588)
It's, it's just an incredibly pervasive relational pattern. It's just part of a natural rhythm of human life. But when it gets out of control, it can get, it can get messy and we become entrenched. And then we don't have off-ramps anymore, and we don't have directions we can move anymore to get to a healthier place. I think that's very much where we've, where we have ended up culturally at this point as well, to bring it back to that broader context discussion.

And it's very interesting, because I feel like the left have been the pursuers. And if I was to describe my part, I have been a distancer. And I'd kind of distance by just silencing and keeping my head down for a while, you know, kind of before that time frame that I talked about when I started putting conservative in my bio and all that. And now I feel like what I'm trying to do is an emotionally differentiated interaction with people online who are a part of this really rigid

ideology that, that, that does not have the capacity to see me as like, I'm a normal person or I'm an acceptable person for what I believe. And so it's like, I'm hoping modeling that emotional differentiation, that, that ability to stand there and not take on the negative labels that are assigned to me and recognize that that's really intended for some guy back over there behind me that actually believes those things that they, they're talking about, that actually believes in Nazism, that's not me. And to just let that flow past.

That's how differentiation works in my brain anyway. And of course, there's a limit, like I said, like I can only do so much of that. And then I get I get worn out of saying the same thing over and over again, like, OK, I believe this and this. Can you can you explain to me how that connects to Nazism? I don't really see a connection. And it that gets tiring to keep doing over and over again. So I do it for a little bit and I take a break.

Since the events of last week, I have pulled back a little bit on my willingness to just go with that forever. I will give people about two chances in a comment thread, let's say, to kind of back off the intensity of the name calling. And then I will just either say, OK, I'm not willing to discourse with you further because

Speaker 2 (41:02.87)
You're not willing to exercise any goodwill toward my intent or even hear an explanation of what I believe my intent to be. If you'd like to talk more, I'm here and you can come, you can come back if you're willing to entertain that I might not be a Nazi or that I might not be a bigot. Where before I would just kind of go and go and go, you know, for a while, not forever. But, you know, I don't know, eight, 10 comments per responder sometimes.

And I just think, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to close a little bit of a door there, because here's another axiom for you. This is from Salvador Mnuchin. Repeated failed attempts to solve the problem become a part of the problem-maintaining cycle of interaction. So I'm going to put a stopper on it, because I don't want to convey to that person that continuing to call me a Nazi or to call me a bigot is acceptable behavior to me, because it is not.

I'll let it flow past me a couple of times and then I'm done. So that's one thing that I decided to change.

I think you're more patient and charitable than I would be in these instances. You're talking about zero to a hundred escalation to name calling that there's nobody on the internet, say maybe a 13 year old accessing stuff that they shouldn't be seeing for the first time. I'll excuse the kiddos who stumble into this, but for the adults in the room, there's nobody out there.

that doesn't know that we don't appreciate name calling. That this is not how you win the flies, so to speak. We've been over this. We've been over this. is not someone who cares about being effective. This is not someone who cares about finding the truth or knowing what's right. This is, in my opinion, the moment that you show that you're willing to call someone names like that.

Speaker 1 (43:06.464)
you are demonstrating one thing and one thing only about your character to other people. And that's that all that matters to you is your own feelings of self-righteousness. And I think of that as like an addiction and it's an addiction that can get really ugly the way people get so high on their own supply of ego. I just don't have patience for it.

Yeah. And, and I don't, I don't blame you at all for, for feeling maybe a little bit differently than I do about that. Although I don't think you and I fundamentally disagree about the idea that it's, the behavior is unacceptable. It's absolutely untenable. You can't build society on that. It will not, it will not function. It is, it is by definition, contemptuous communication, which is destructive. It destroys relationships. Something

you know, so something needs to be done. Hey, can I throw you a curveball? Yeah, I'll take, we'll do a little roleplay swap, and I'll be the interviewer for a second. But I'm just curious, I'm really curious what you think about this. I've seen you post a couple things about it. And I'll share, I'll share first, just to be, this is your show. I'll share first to be upfront. So, so it's definitely not a trap, and it's

I don't know what we're talking about yet.

I'm thinking, I know, I'm building suspense right now. Give me a second. It's, it's all of these, so you've seen these websites about, hey, send information about so and so your coworker who's glorifying the death of Charlie Kirk, and we'll follow up on it. I've been seeing those. And I have somewhat mixed feelings about those, to be honest. Like, part of me goes, that feels a little bit too much like,

Speaker 2 (44:56.32)
like, a version of leftist cancel culture that is now kind of a systemic reversal of force that's being applied now in the other direction, in the opposite direction to what it was. And, and so, and that part of me is like, Well, man, you know, I don't want, I don't want to do the same thing as was done to people like me. On the other hand, I think there are some things that are really structurally different about

the way it's happening on the right versus the way it's happening on the left. For, for one, the people were being canceled for things like having conservative in their bio, or for refusing to participate in the emotional manipulation of a struggle session. Or, you know, for, in general, espousing beliefs that in our country have been normal for its entire history, but all of a sudden, for some reason, are not OK.

And where, what's happening now with the left, like, we're not going after people who are refusing to adhere to political conservatism. These, these websites are going after people who are engaging in public contempt. And what was the phrase that I saw or heard for it yesterday? I think it was Ryan's friend Brant who said it.

like speech that is glorifying or like potentially even inciting violence, violent behavior. And those are very different causes for, you know, for, for, quote unquote, canceling a person. But I don't know what to, I don't know what to do with all of that personally. I don't, I don't know. I'm still working out my own beliefs about it. I think, I think I'm kind of leaning towards, it's probably OK in a, in a measured,

amount of it or at a, at a point at which it doesn't, just doesn't continue forever, but a point at which it does kind of allow people to experience some consequences that get them off of this crazy feedback loop that they're on that is pushing them further and further to the left and further and further from being able to see me as like a normal person. What do you think?

Speaker 1 (47:18.53)
I've also been putting together my thoughts on it. Here's what I've expressed so far.

As you've pointed out, there's a distinction between the things that people have been canceled for, especially for instance, in my world, people being canceled for saying that women deserve our own spaces. The day that we're recording this, I released an episode with Jenny Lindsay on her book Hound It, that's about how women who have been branded TERFs have been attacked and...

lost their jobs and livelihoods and been doxed and been threatened and things like this for believing in biological reality. Other manifestations of cancel culture, we're talking about jokes. We're talking about people holding beliefs that others project onto and then think it's their right to define what words mean, thinking that they get to define that speech equals violence, which all seems like

leading towards saying that violence is not violence.

Apart from the intent of the sender of the joke or the sender of the message, we discount the intent of the sender and we ignore whatever the sender of that message says about it because the only thing that matters is the content of their speech and how it impacted me.

Speaker 1 (48:37.772)
and what I decide that means, right? As the person who's claiming victimhood status here. So, and I actually have a whole arc that was kind of brewing as you were asking me this question that comes back to your pursuer distance or ideas. There are so many people publicly gleefully condoning murder. I'm gonna say that again. Publicly gleefully condoning murder and

The public and the gleeful part of that just shows how far things have gone with the, I hate to use this term, but it's a term I hear people use that I think describes what we're talking about here, the elites, so to speak, right? Those who have elected themselves on the right side of history, who are glib, who lack humility, who don't doubt or question themselves.

who again are high on their own supply of righteousness and feelings of superiority and never question if they could be wrong. And again, there's that pattern of doubling and tripling down in the face of evidence to the contrary because they don't want to face the shame and remorse that would come from realizing that they've mistreated people. Things have obviously gotten to such a point in the culture where people who feel that it's unquestionable that they're on the right side.

So they feel perfectly valid and they don't question their safety like we have had to question our safety. Like I've had to question my safety for believing in reality, believing in protecting women and children, believing in protecting vulnerable mentally ill patients. They don't question their safety or security or livelihoods. And that's how far they're willing to go with it now. And I think it's time for a massive reset. And so what I said on X is this is not.

woke right cancel culture, this is resetting to factory defaults what is considered socially acceptable to express. And if something is not considered socially acceptable, then there are going to be social consequences. Do I believe in freedom of speech? Yes, but that doesn't mean that you are going to be protected from consequence because people don't feel safe around you. And I just hear from so many people all the time. I heard it at the Charlie Kirk vigil last night.

Speaker 1 (51:03.66)
and I hear this from people all the time, that so many of us are having this experience where those on the left who are so glib in their beliefs, they project onto us in a variety of settings that if they like us at first glance, if they clock us as good people, that we must share their views. It's happened to me in a cab ride, right? It's happened to me in a cab ride. Like I'm nice and pleasant and the cab driver likes me and then he starts ranting.

against Republicans because he projects that I share his views. And there are so many people, I talked to some of the vigil last night who've had that same experience, right? There is a silent majority and I'm not even affiliating myself with the political right here. I'm saying anyone right of far left. That's what I'm talking about. At this point, I'm probably like center right. I've been inching rightward, but it's really anyone right of the far left that we're talking about here. And we know.

The studies have found there is far more diversity of thought on the right than the left at this point. So I'm talking about the silent majority of reasonable people who don't appreciate that there's this narrow group of people, narrow-minded group of people that are so glib, that are so unquestioning of themselves and their sense of righteousness and superiority, that they're so sure that they know better, that they should never have to question themselves.

I think it's that same mentality that, know, people with that mentality, they could hear about anything historical, any human rights violation, and they just assume that they would have been on the right side of history then too. And for me, so much shifted when I actually looked within my own heart and mind at

you know, the error of my own ways, my own capacity to be mistaken, my own, and this is where the concept of sin becomes so valuable, right? Because it's looking within your heart, like, am I prideful? Am I slothful? Do I lust? You know, these things that are part of human nature, and does that obscure my vision? Does that cause me to act incorrectly? And there are people who just never look within their hearts and minds in question if that could be them. And so for me, everything changed when I began to question, well, how do I know?

Speaker 1 (53:25.75)
that I would have been on the right side of history because I think that reflects a shallow understanding of human nature, a shallow understanding of your own nature, of the fallibility of your own mind, of the temptations of your own heart and pride. mean, and this is what I see in the people who drive me crazy, including the one I was talking to you about behind the scenes who shall not be named on this podcast, but I am strongly considering having this person. It's that sort of sin of pride, if you will, of

I just know that I'm so correct and I just don't even have to do my research. I don't have to question where I get my beliefs or how I know these things. I don't have to question how I know that I'm better than those other people. I just know that I'm one of the good people and that I can just sneer down my nose at the people who are bad, wrong and stupid. And I think that their attitude is so distasteful. And so to bring it back to the question of

Is this woke right cancel culture or is this justice being served that people are losing their jobs over, again, publicly gleefully condoning murder? No, it's saying, OK, you know what, enough is enough. And here's where I'm going to tie it into your pursuer-distancer observations. You described the left as being the pursuer and the right. And I'm just going to affiliate myself with the right here because I'm not far left.

I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (54:45.794)
That's all. I'm with everyone else. Everyone else who's thinking reasonably, again, there's a huge diversity of opinions there, but that we've been the distances. We've been saying, okay, we're just going to keep our distance from you. We're going to keep our mouth shut. We're going to avoid talking about certain subjects. We're going to ... They've been pursuing, pursuing, pursuing.

You're welcome on the right for sure.

Speaker 1 (55:14.058)
in a way that mimics what you were talking earlier about the parent-child relationship in adolescence, which also ties into my work and my course, right? Because, you know, this is how we bring it all together because just like a parent might unproductively, ineffectively pursue an adolescent, trying to get close to them while projecting onto them a vision of themselves that the adolescent doesn't like by treating them as someone

who is bad, wrong, stupid, anything like that. And the adolescent's like, no thanks, you think I'm that stupid little kid? Well no, I'm my own person, so I'm gonna distance myself from you. There's something similar that's been happening with the left and right on this issue where they're like, we're gonna call you names and we're gonna tell you how bad you are and we're gonna take over. And a lot of us have just been like, no thanks, we're just gonna avoid talking to you because we don't trust you to not call us these insane names and escalate to 100.

know, gleefully condone murder. We don't trust you to be mature on this, so we're just gonna not say anything. I'm just gonna keep trying to like go along and maintain civil society because people need to work and they need to feed their families. And we all need to, you know, get along when we meet at the kids dance recital. That dynamic has been going on for a while now. And I feel like what just happened with the assassination of Charlie Kirk and so many people feeling

this emotional wave that I feel caught up in too. I think what's happening is we're like, okay, you wanna hash this out? It's the distancer turning around and saying, okay, pursuer, I see you're trying to get my attention. I'm not so sure that you actually wanna hear what I have to say or see how many people are on my side here, but you know, fine, we're gonna hash this out.

and you might not appreciate what you just brought upon yourself here. And that's what I saw in Erica Kirk's speech, by the way.

Speaker 2 (57:17.966)
Yes, yeah, absolutely. So what you just described is the somewhat more rare occurring pursuer-pursuer pattern. And pursuer-pursuer pattern doesn't hang around very long usually, because one of two things happens. Either the whole thing reverses direction and the former distancer becomes the pursuer and the former pursuer becomes the distancer, or the conflict gets really, really, really intense and the relationship doesn't work anymore.

And that is, you know, kind of the Tenderbox idea. And that's something that I worry about and fear with, with the public discourse situation, the culture-wide situation that we have. Because I, that's nobody, people, a few people may think they want that, like some of those cackling videos of people on the internet, you know, about how, how great that would be if we could just get rid of our enemies and put them down. I've seen

And these are leftists, by the way. These are not, I've not seen this coming from the right. It's not impossible. But people don't want that. I think nobody, nobody really wants what that would mean for conflict to increase in that intensity. So my hope is that it, maybe the pattern is reversing, and that, in fully reversing, we would not hang, we would not have to hang on to these, like,

reporting tip lines for very long, could relinquish those at some point and not continue or change how we're doing that at some point and not continue to apply that force beyond what it needs to be.

that raises the question, what is that point? And I think if I were asked to define that point, it would be the point at which people are rightfully scared to express murderous thoughts in public. You should be scared to express murderous thoughts in public. If you are having murderous thoughts, there is something wrong with you. If you are having murderous thoughts, there is something wrong with you. I'm gonna say it three times, because that's a magic number. If you are having murderous thoughts, there is something wrong with you.

Speaker 2 (59:17.614)
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (59:28.844)
This is not a controversial statement that you're making right now.

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You touched on something a little bit earlier that, you know, that has led me to lean toward the idea that some version of this tip line thing might be okay, which is this anybody who's going to turn around on like gender affirming care at this point is going to have to climb their own enormous Mount shame probably. And nobody wants to climb Mount shame.

I know you've seen this in clinical work. I've seen this in clinical work where a parent realizes they've made some mistakes parenting, and then they start feeling like, like, my gosh, my kid is in this situation because I messed up. And that's incredibly difficult. And I can't imagine having to, there's just some, some compassion for me and, folks who have been in that ideology who are waking up to it. Because I can't imagine having to walk through, medicalized a child that

Speaker 2 (01:01:25.602)
belongs to me, and, and having to reverse course on all the decisions that I made, because I will have guilt probably for the rest of my life until, until I am dead, if I'm in that person's shoes. And that's just, that's incalculably huge. But I think that's part of the reason the left has been able to escalate to the point where glorying in a murder

in public is OK is because there has not been a corrective feedback loop in the system to send them back the other direction. So one thing I'd say for certain in this is that some sort of imposed or natural consequence is going to be necessary to function as a corrective feedback loop to get that kind of runaway behavior back in check, that kind of runaway belief system back in check.

to wake people up to go, No, it's, it's not OK. I'm not a healthy person. It's not normal for me to call for, for murder publicly or celebrate it. Something's got to be there.

What is that moral framework? Because on the right in America, it tends to be Christianity, or at least things that descend from Christianity. And on the left, not saying, like, obviously, guys, this is black and white, this is overly distilled, like, obviously, there are people on the right who aren't Christian, and there are people on the left who are, please don't, please don't accuse me of, of

holding ridiculously simplified beliefs, but sometimes we have to simplify things for the sake of discussion, right? Like what is the value system that is the common denominator on the left? I mean, this intersectional stuff, the social justice narratives, it's so much about tearing down. It's so much about calling out and...

Speaker 1 (01:03:28.386)
There is a, I think a belief embedded in there that's not necessarily expressly articulated that those of us who hold these beliefs can count on ourselves to build a better world. If we tear down everything that we deem wrong about the world that we oppose that of course, again, it's that hubris, right? Of course we know better. Of course we would build a better world.

Okay, but what's the moral framework? How would you do that? And how are you so sure? What is your understanding of human nature that allows you to account for some of the humbling challenges that might come up in that process? And I think the framework they have is really bare bones. It's consent-based morality, okay, but consent is not the end-all be-all of morality. It's like one factor. It's the lowest common denominator, you know, but like,

It can't be the only thing.

No, no, I can't. Absolutely. Something that I have thought to myself, I don't know if, surely somebody has said this out loud, but when I am engaging with some of those people who are on the left in those comment threads out there, I find myself, and some of these are therapists too, by the way, I find myself thinking, I'm not arguing with this person right now. I'm arguing with what ABC News told this person their perception of me should be.

So there's this element of, of externalized moral decision-making where I'm not, it's, it's, I'm, I'm downloading my moral decision-making from the cloud. And I'm not even, I'm not even interacting with this individual person right now. And I think that's one of the reasons this dialogue is so hard. Because it is like an ego defense thing of, okay, I'm going to bring the part of me that has all that stuff that I heard on the news around in front of me and between me and this person who's talking to me. And, and it's, you don't, you don't get through to somebody at all.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27.182)
who is looking at you that way, and you can present counter evidence, they, what you said doesn't exist, practically. So it is an enormous challenge. I don't know what the answer is for our whole culture. Let's go with a couple of ideas. So.

my, I said this on, this is coming to my mind because I said it on the panel with Ryan and friends yesterday. For my grad school program as a master's in marriage and family therapy, we are, the program was housed in a theology college, in a ministry college, and our, our capstone course was called Integration of Psychology and Theology. So we had to write a paper, a capstone paper, and I did some, I actually went to school to be a minister.

first. And what I tell people all the time is God, God used ministry to trick me into becoming a therapist because therapy was too serious. I didn't think I could do it. Never thought that would be something I could handle. But then I got in a therapy room and it was like, OK, this is my fish bowl. I'm a fish. And so, so, you know, fast forward now to today, here I am. for this paper, one of the things that I wrote about

was this, this kind of picture of, you know, back in Genesis, God is hovering over the, you know, the void. And the meaning of that in Hebrew is like chaos, like unbridled total chaos. And God speaks, and instantly there's order. But I kind of, in the paper, put myself in the mind, not in the mind of God, but maybe a little bit in, as much in the perspective of God in that moment as a human can think about. And

you know, I think about, if I believe that God is able to foreknow everything, God's there and He's, He's about to open His mouth and speak, and He's able to know all the heinous things that people are going to do, that the Hitlers of the world, the true Hitlers of the world are going to do going forward. And He has the ability to either create or not create in that moment. He still did.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48.566)
In spite of knowing how, how awful some people would be, how unlike his nature, some people would choose to be, he created anyway. And, and so, so Charlie Kirk's shooter, he knew he would exist, still allowed him to exist. Not only that, but, you know, fast forward to, to the cross. He knowingly

sacrificed his son. So he created the world knowing he would have to sacrifice his son for the sake of this person who did something really awful. And so there's like a twofold or a hundredfold increase in my mind for the worth of people in general, if I can kind of hold that theological construct in my mind for just a minute. Like I don't get to assign a label to a person that they're not worthy.

or that they don't deserve to exist or that they don't deserve to live. Because I am, I am not God, and God created them and God sacrificed His Son for them. And, and I'm not able to and would not want to counter the value that He's already conferred upon them in doing these things. That ties forward to, I think, to the Constitution. If we want to kind of bring it back to Charlie Kirk and some of the foundational things.

that are a part of the constitution, which is that all men are created equal.

Well, I think that flowed out of that same kind of theological picture that I just painted there. I think the reason Christianity is so powerful and theological beliefs like that are so powerful was first because I believe them to be true, but second because there's not anything else that exists or has existed that ascribes so much universality to other people, regardless of the differences that they exhibit.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52.31)
in their lives. So that was a long way to answer your question, I think, which is that we've got to have something like the Constitution or something like theology that assigns some kind of universal, unquestionable worth to people who we share Earth with in order to not end up falling along into the traps that some of our friends on the left ultimately have. And I think that's what they're missing.

falling into the trap of devaluation. That was beautifully put, that was really touching and it reminded me of, yesterday I've just obviously been like everyone else consuming so many clips of Charlie and last night I wanted to watch a full length video and I watched his interview with Bill Maher and there was some foreshadowing. mean, foreshadowing is a literary term from fiction, but this is real life, this is not fiction, but.

in the first 10, 15 minutes, they were talking about how there are people that want Charlie dead, how he has private security. And I remember Bill Maher being like, there are people who want me dead too. Ha ha. Like, no brother. Yeah. But there was also something he said. I think it was maybe midway through that interview. That something about

And I'm going to butcher this, but basically that, you know, sometimes atrocious things happen, but we can't know from our limited human perspective what God's plan is for that or what good can happen only because that atrocity happened. And I think that what's happening in the wake of Charlie's assassination is a testament to that.

But I liked what you said there about how the Christian belief and the constitutional belief that all men are created equal and by men that includes women, it's just old language, right? That in this belief that God loves us all equally, that we all have equal value in God's eyes, I think that is an important perspective because you're pointing out the ways that without

Speaker 1 (01:12:19.212)
without honoring that, we can dehumanize each other. We can devalue each other. Earlier you were talking about this kind of oversimplification of what someone else is in our mind. And it reminded me of Christian Conti's phrase for that, cartoon world. Yeah. Which I reflected back to him as like a two dimensional caricature, right? That you can make someone else because we

our theory of mind is not always so well developed, especially if we're not psychologically mature, right? That we can not necessarily see others for everything that they are, certainly not through God's eyes, the way God would see them from that place of love and knowing the value of their soul. We, you know, it's part of our mortal nature to fall short because of our own egos and because of our lack of wisdom. So I appreciate.

the need to kind of remind ourselves of that and ground it into our value system.

Mm-hmm. Okay, so I have to do one thing which is I have to do the Christian Conti drinking game for Jake was Scourchin gonna take a drink

Okay, what is this game? You just take a drink every time Christian Conti's name is mentioned?

Speaker 2 (01:13:36.066)
Anytime somebody says Christian Conte, you take a drink. Yeah.

Okay, Christian Conti. Yeah. Here we go.

Cheers. Cheers, Christian Conti. I love that. I love that, that, that theoretical construct of his. So I didn't, I didn't know about him until I met Jake. But thankfully that, that book was on Audible and I got to take in the whole thing on a road trip. And that cartoon world idea is, is an amazingly utilitarian way to just step into a conversation about theory of mind and, and, and reframing perception and, and also kind of automatically

would I say that? Automatically connecting me to a sense that I don't have a perfect understanding of the world around me and that I'm susceptible to cartoon world at any moment in time. I'm not immune to it at all. Something else I wanted to add to the, kind of to the theological point where therapy and theology kind of overlap is, I think God is the most emotionally differentiated being in existence. So

people talk about, you know, they might be tempted to bring, and rightfully, be tempted to bring up the problem of evil, you know, at this point in our discussion right here. So, but the way that I deal with that problem of evil is in order to allow us to grow into the beings that God has created us to be, we have got to endure some natural and maybe even unnatural stresses sometimes.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10.202)
And in doing so, learn to rely on and connect with Him in life and trust that, regardless of what happens to me, let me give you a better quote. This is a quote from my professor who taught Revelation class. Despite all appearances to the contrary, God is in control, and He's working out His plan to restore all of creation to full relationship with Himself. He said that's the central message of the book of Revelation. I just love that quote. It, it stays with me.

But if I believe that that, that is God, that God is the being that is doing that, then I believe that my physical safety doesn't matter as much as my connection to God, the quality of my faith, the, you know, this, the act of salvation that I've chosen to participate in. Because my physical safety can be redeemed by somebody who can raise the dead. And so I don't

I think, I think God certainly knows He's able to do those things. And, and we do experience pain, we do experience suffering, some of it unnaturally large sometimes. But because God has differentiated, He is allowing us to walk through those experiences, I think, hoping that we would all be transformed and move toward His likeness, the likeness of His Son.

I expect to talk so much about faith and theology today, but here we go. You're waking up some circuits for me that I don't use every day.

I want to understand what you mean about differentiation in this context.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48.696)
So what I mean by that is that, is that God could, God could come in front of us and do all of these, all of these miraculous signs all the time. Or, you know, God could raise people from the dead all the time. Or God, you know, fill in the blank, God could do many, many things. He's, He has the ability, undoubtedly. We don't understand ability when it comes to that.

What I mean is, he is allowing us, Room, to have some freedom of choice and to come to our own beliefs and to work out our own beliefs about life and about the world around us and about how I should treat other people. Because he wants the best growth, the best development, the best opportunity for, for me to become

more like him because I have chosen to do so, rather than him over pursuing me in a way that I'm not striving. I'm not developing faith. I'm not learning to struggle through difficulty in a way that leads to trusting him more. I think that's where theology and faith really, really line up, or theology and therapy really, line up for me.

think I'm understanding your point more if I can draw a parallel. I can't remember who said this. I feel like it was a podcast guest I've interviewed in the last month, so please forgive me for not remembering. But someone I think I had on this show was saying, you know, isn't it what every parent wants for your children when they're grown to come to you of their own free will? Don't you just hope to raise them in such a way that when they're grown up,

they're healthy, they're thriving, they're independent, and they want to spend time with you. And amen to that. There's so much of what I teach in my course is really about autonomy and understanding youth's behavior in light of their quest for autonomy, in light of their struggle for emotional differentiation, and in light of the fact that even if you can control them today through force or

Speaker 1 (01:19:10.69)
Financial coercion or through you know, let's say being a parent of a minor in a conservative state You know the the clock is ticking they're gonna be an adult one day and It's never too early to start treating your children with respect for their autonomy and I heard a great Quote and I discussed this also with a podcast guess that I can't remember guys. I'm so sorry. It's been it's been a lot lately but

Or was it a guest? I don't remember, but it was someone who clarified that the... no, maybe it was a client. Someone who clarified that the person that I saw in this clip was actually an actor. I don't know my actors. I really don't know them. But it was a father talking about how he doesn't have conflict with his children. And he was talking about how he handled his 10 year old's poor behavior and really framed everything in light of choice. Like, wow, that's an interesting choice you're making.

let me tell you where that will lead. Or you could choose this other path. you know, here's an example of someone talking to a 10 year old, not even, cause a lot of what I'm dealing with is 15 and up, but you know, even at that age, children are making choices and yes, you can rule through authority, but that can create resentment. And in my course, I explain how resentment leads to entitlement.

and entitlement leads to some really egregious things. So looking at kind of the parenting analogy, and I've also heard it said that being a parent will make you believe in God because here's someone you love so much, created in your own image, and they just keep using their free will in ways you would not advise, and there's so little that you can really do about it.

Do really want to run into that brick wall again?

Speaker 1 (01:21:06.68)
But I think I'm understanding your point about differentiation better yet, because that's it's the process that that every parent child relationship is in. And isn't that the goal, right, that they come to you of their own free will that you did a good enough job during the time that you had the power to assert your authority that you you handled that authority so well that they still want to come to you.

And just to just to put a theological bow on that, if you go look at Philippians 2, what it says is that Jesus, who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, made himself nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant. It's a relinquishment of power and control. And as a parent, back to your example there, you've got to relinquish power and control in the sense that you can

force an outcome for your child. You, you, have to help your child build some, some scaffolding and some structure themselves. They have got to construct some of that. They've got to do their own internal modeling themselves, if they're going to have an outcome that is, you know, in any way congruent to what I hope for them to see. And that requires a lot of faith and a lot of trust, you know, both in them and, know, and for, for people who are, you know, Christians who are believers.

probably some faith in God and some prayers at night, that their kid will do that scaffolding and internal modeling in a way that, you know, that will make their life fruitful and not one that's, that's full of suffering or full of difficulty. And so, you know, I think all these, I think all these things connect. I think, I think therapists maybe rediscovered things.

that have always been true, you know, when we first started crafting our therapy models and whatnot. And, and we probably put a little bit too much weight into, into them, you know, as a, as a standalone thought process sometimes, because great, wise people have, have, have definitely spoken on this, you know, a long time before Freud came along. So I don't know where we go from here, to be honest.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23.0)
where we go from here in the podcast. Well, I feel like this is a good place to wrap up. But I don't know if you meant that in some greater existential sense.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31.566)
That's fair. All behavior is communication, and all communication is imperfect. There you go. There's a pair of axioms for that. I guess it was all right. Can I mention a couple of things about the Substack just before we wrap? I'm not going to jump into full discussion there. what I just said came from some general systems theory.

learnings that I picked up. So the second article I dropped in my substack is about axioms of systems theory that have served me really well in therapy and in, in life in general, not just, not just work. And so that, that is a pair of axioms from that. All behavior is communication. All communication is imperfect. So the idea being that,

if I'm just sitting here staring at the screen looking at you, that communicates something to you, but it doesn't let you know what the underlying meaning of that is. I've got to verbally add something to that for you to be able to pick up on and perceive what the meaning of my silence is. I want to help preserve good teaching about general systems theory because of how powerful it is, I think, and because of how it's changed my own life. And so that's part of my mission on the Substack.

I'm about to release an article this week talking about how I believe we should approach the problem of getting activism out of schools and also lessening the encroachment of too much mental health intervention into school settings, because I think too much mental health intervention or too much mental health, mental diagnosis focus is bad.

It doesn't have a good end, even though it seems like we think it would destigmatize a whole lot of things, but it actually just ends up hijacking people's negative memory bias. And we end up with systems that are sick, because we're, and you see this on TikTok. I'm not saying anything that you don't know about this. But I think there's some smart ways to do that. And I would love if people would go and take a look at just that article. If you only looked at one thing, take a look at that article.

Speaker 2 (01:25:43.366)
and at the case that I'm trying to make for a way to still provide meaningful mental health support in schools, not just toss it and get rid of it, but also build some healthy structure around it to where it is a healthy subsystem of the school. And it isn't, it isn't a gateway for activism, and it isn't overwrought in all these heavy mental health topics. So I appreciate you letting me talk about that for just a minute.

Yeah, and if I can pick up on your previous point, all behavior is communication and all communication is imperfect. Well, therefore all behavior is imperfect. And I agree. Although, I mean, there is some pretty impactful communication out there. We all like recognize greatness when we see it. But I wanna tie that with just something I've been thinking about, which is the case that that makes

for the Christian model of morality as opposed to most other religious models out there. That this idea of original sin, think, I grew up with a very distorted concept of that because I was raised by an ex-Catholic who had a lot of guilt and shame and...

You know, the idea of sin was like, sin, you know, is just so terrible. And I got to get away from this, you know, this way of viewing the world is just so harmful. And then the way that I've actually encountered that same belief in the Christians I've met is it doesn't carry that emotional weight. actually gives a sense of freedom to recognize that these things are in our heart and that we, that there is a,

a way of achieving freedom and it's not through aspiring to perfection. And that's where I think, hang on for second, because I have a case to make here, because I think a lot of other religious and spiritual paths can create a sort of obsessive compulsive disorder. I think I experienced it myself when I was a young person dabbling in Hinduism and I saw friends dabbling in Buddhism. And, you know, any path that

Speaker 1 (01:28:06.37)
doesn't have this idea of the savior who died for your sins, well, if there's not a way that you can just kind of relinquish control and say, you know what, I am flawed and that's okay, if there's no path there, then you're going to feel like you have to aspire to perfection in your every single action. And I have been reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel.

I think the day that we're recording this is the day that they took it off of Audible for free. was free on Audible. So was like, I'm going to hear her story while I can, but I might just end up purchasing the book. but I was listening to her story and it's an incredible story. I highly recommend to anyone. And, there was a part of it where she was describing being trained in how to be a good Muslim girl. And she was, mean, first of all, she was a victim of female genital mutilation. She had a horribly abusive childhood, but.

during part of the schooling in Islam, she was being taught how to walk, how to sleep, literally what position to sleep in. And I've seen that sort of obsessive compulsive fixation on doing everything correctly in especially young people who are drawn towards some sort of spiritual or religious path. And I do think

There's something developmental and I don't have a good framework for this and I welcome anyone to come on the podcast who has a good framework for understanding this. But I think there's something that happens with the development of the brain and personality in early adulthood where a lot of young people, especially females, but males too can go through like a highly religious phase. And I think, you know, what we're seeing with the trans stuff is the absence of a meaningful religion. And so this

pseudo-religious cult comes in and it denies that it is a religion or a cult, but it has many of the same traits. And, you know, as with so many quasi-religious things out there and phases that people go through, you know, what might start as like, start with love bombing or start with feeling very accepting, inclusive, hopeful.

Speaker 1 (01:30:27.37)
As someone progresses further down that path, there's more and more demanded of them. The treatment is more and more abusive and the expectations are more and more exacting. So I've seen some of where that can lead, that pattern of feeling like I'm on a path towards trying to better myself or achieve some kind of transcendence or oneness with God or perfection or whatever it is on some kind of path. And then it just...

becomes so self-destructive because there's no end to which a person can become obsessively fixated on trying to align their every action with what they either think is good or perfect, what they think God would want for them. And you can't do that without going crazy because you're in a world where you have free will, you're not in heaven, there is both good and evil in this world.

there's a lot chaos in this world and unexpected circumstances, you need some kind of system to live by. So you will go crazy down that path, whether it's people like me who dabbled in Hinduism when they were 20 years old and got into the obsessive rituals that make no sense, but because some scripture says that you should wear this color on this day, whether it's that or whether it's

It's the Muslim girl being told that in order to please Allah, not only does she have to pray five times a day, but she also has to sleep on a certain side. Or whether it's the cult of genderism that, you know, initially reels people in with the promise of some sort of self-transcendence and then demands that they cut off one body part and then the dysphoria moves around and now they need to cut off another body part and nothing is ever good enough to please the gender gods. So I think I just made a case for Christianity.

and, I'm actually just exploring these things really, but it's like, you know what? you will never be perfect. you do, you should, won't, this isn't a world where perfection exists, but, but there, there is a different way to think about it. And, and so this idea that, you know, Christ died for our sins, it's very, it's, it's attractive and relieving in that context, I have to say. And I'm just saying this is someone who's exploring these ideas really.

Speaker 2 (01:32:50.124)
Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you. And it's, it's, you know, I'd say it's, you know, once, once somebody decides to kind of take on that belief for themselves, it, you know, all the problems aren't solved at that point, either. There's doubt, you know, I, I doubt, I'm not gonna, it's not all the time, but I go through, I should say I go through cycles of doubt all the time about like, is this, is this belief system that I grew up in and that I've decided to

hitch myself to on my own, the right way to live or the best way to live. But I always come back to almost exactly what you just said, that, that I can't self-flagellate into myself into redemption. But that doesn't work. And in systems where my actions as God unto myself have to produce my own salvation, those really don't work either. There's something

bigger and greater at work. And there really is, here's another thing I come back to, there's so much redundancy and stability in nature and order that it, I'm on that, of that camp that it can't be, that cannot be accidental. It's, it's too wildly self-sustaining and self-stabilizing. I just can't imagine any other way to see it.

I think the thing that I like about Christianity in this context is it's very practical, it's flexible, it's, you know, do your best and here's a moral framework for what to be, what's the word I'm looking for, not scrupulous, how to be circumspect towards yourself, towards your own flawed nature, towards, you could think of it as the way that

Devil will try to trick you or the way your mind plays tricks on yourself. But here's some things to watch out for. These things are within your heart because they're within the heart of every human being. This is just an observation about human nature. But also, you'll never be perfect. So just do your best. also, it allows for flexibility. It allows you to move through the world without so much rigidity. And I think there are a lot of people who want

Speaker 1 (01:35:10.178)
goodness, they want truth, they want order, and they want to be able to live meaningfully and flexibly. And, you know, I can't speak to the people who don't want those things. I think there's something very dark at play here. And when you look at where those things lead people,

Especially the more we're discovering about these like satanic murder cults things like this, like 764. I mean, I need to do a podcast with an expert on these things. There's this woman on X, you probably follow her, BX.

Yeah, think I think I think I added her and was like you should go on Stephanie wins podcast

you did. thank you. I messaged her. I appreciate that. I messaged her and she hasn't written back yet. I'll try to if I say that I'll put it in the show notes, then hopefully when I go to search the transcript for show notes, I'll see my little reminder to put her handle. I think it's like BX underscore on underscore X or something like that. But she's exposing and she's not the only one. mean, there are, you know, there are satanic murder cults that are.

tied up in pedophilia, bestiality, the furry stuff, the trans stuff. And it's like this stuff will make you believe in evil if you didn't, right? Because I think there's a lot of progressive, fair, modern people who want to believe in a morality and human goodness that's not dependent on religion. And I'm friends with a lot of those people and I get it and I share a lot of views in common with them. But at some point,

Speaker 1 (01:36:49.23)
enough evil reveals itself to you that you start to question, can I get through without a framework for understanding good and evil? Because what compels people to want to get innocent, vulnerable, confused children and young people to literally butcher their body parts? mean, there's really nothing more evil than that.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I think I'll kind of be watching for you interacting with BX out there and I'll keep adding her and or just kind of chiming in there. Because I think the work that she's doing is really, really important to break down this idea that, yeah, all of humanity is basically good and everybody just kind of thinks like I do and people just generally treat people, you know.

kind of nice unless they don't believe like me in some cases, right. But I think, I think like your audience, I think Ryan's audience could really stand to hear more and be informed about that. Because how many, how many of my teenage clients played Roblox or Minecraft or were in these online communities that some of these really nefarious people seem to be exploiting to gain access to kids like our, our,

demographic of people, therapists who are concerned about these things, have a nice, wide net to cast that, that she might not ever reach, that BX might not ever be able to reach. You know, the people in our offices, the people who trust us, to help them keep, keep safety for their kids, you know, or for me in the education agency, helping school counselors have information about, like, the attack vectors that some of these nefarious people are using out there. So

I think the more word we can spread, you know, about ways to enhance safety and ways that really truly enhance mental health for kids, whether it be at home or in school, I think we should, we should spread those far and wide as we can.

Speaker 1 (01:38:52.354)
Well, Jonathan, thank you so much. I think I needed this conversation today.

I think you and I both worked out some things that we were thinking, you know, in the conversation together.

Alright, so where can people find you?

You can find me on X at at systemic texism and you can find me on Substack at the same handle at systemic texism

Alright Jonathan, thank you, it's been a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:39:20.974)
Thanks Stephanie.

Thank you for listening to You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly take a moment to rate, review, share, or comment on it using your platform of choice. And of course, please remember, podcasts are not therapy and I'm not your therapist. Special thanks to Joey Pecorero for this awesome theme song, Half Awake, and to Pods by Nick for production.

For help navigating the impact of the gender craze on your family, be sure to check out my program for parents, ROGD Repair. Any resource you heard mentioned on this show, plus how to get in touch with me, can all be found in the notes and links below. Rain or shine, I hope you will step outside to breathe the air today. In the words of Max Aermann, with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,

It is still a beautiful world.