How about you, Tyler?

I'm really grateful Brandon's here too.

And he has a gift that he would have put under a bushel if he didn't heed the call.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So for me, it was a little different.

We were raised by a mom who was a counselor and a dad who was highly involved in a lot of service and things.

Talk to

I can.

Because I'm like, you're like, look at the list.

It was up there.

It's gone now.

I forgot.

It's because Anthony passed the buck.

It's because he passed the buck to you.

It just blurted a lot of topics out.

Yeah, it's funny you'd bring that up because we patterned our whole program after the hero's journey.

So you tapped into that exactly.

And what we're saying is it's a call to action.

It's a call up to those men who have been sitting on the sidelines or sitting in their cubicles or wondering if they're actually living the life that they were really designed for.

Maybe they've been kicked around by life and failed a few times at something and they're too afraid to get back into it.

And that's really what we're saying is... you got to get back in the arena.

guys have recommendations for disclosure? Is it like, okay, anytime you act out, you should be the proactive one to go tell them? Is it that you guys have an agreement for a weekly check-in and if they want to know, they can ask? Do you guys have recommendations on what works best or is it on an individual basis per couple?

Yeah.

So this is maybe a broader answer.

It's not a specific tool, but a lot of the, a lot of the clients that we work with, they are operating from, let's call it an operating system of their beliefs that tells them everything that they're not.

I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not thin enough, I'm not nice enough, whatever.

And they've learned these things through their life experiences, call it small pieces of trauma or large pieces of trauma that have taught them emotionally that they don't measure up and that they're not enough.

And so part of the work that we try to help people do is realize that that is like a, that is an outward facing avatar that is not actually them.

Even though it's felt like it's th- been them, they feel like that's true.

Yeah

Please

...

some of the points that you're, you're bringing up here.

So this is something that...

I've been doing this work for about 20 years, and I feel like you hit on something that, that a lot of people don't hit on.

And for me, my own personal story was that when it all broke loose, it was that classical thing where I was now the addict.

I was the person who was never gonna be one who could be trusted again.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Right? Like, what do you really want in your relationship? And, you know, the answers that I get are that I want deep connection, I want support, I want to be seen, I want to be loved, I want to have a shared journey together, I want to go on an adventure together, I want to grow.

And so if I look at the relationship that I had while the secrets and the addiction, and you could, might even call it codependency or something, was going on, was I ever going to produce deep vulnerability, deep connection, deep authenticity if I couldn't even hold my shape with who I was by being an individual, authentic person who was offering myself to the relationship? And on the flip side, if I want those things with my wife, I actually need her authenticity and I need her choice into the relationship in order to have all of the things that I really want.

So I can play the game of clinging just to like the mess of pottage of not being single and not being rejected, but never having the depths of vulnerability, the depths of empathy, the depths of her sharing herself with me.

Or I can invite that growth and go do that growth myself, and then both of us can look at each other and say, "I want in with you, and I want in with you, and we are gonna grow together, and we see each other's ugly and we know how to dance with that.

We see each other's beauty, and we're grateful for that." And we can go to some deep places now that we never could before because we were so afraid of the other partner not wanting to be with us.

Mm-hmm.

And you were, you were asking, like, maybe it's a whole other episode, and I'll just give a really short answer to it, to what you asked, like, how do I go about that then if I relate to that, and I'm saying, "Oh man," like, "I want to be able to say yes to that and actually mean it when she w- goes and wants to spread her wings, but I'm not there right now." For most of the men that I work with, the place that we, we have to start with is shame resiliency, and part of the shame resiliency work is their, is some of their trauma work, where they've got core beliefs about themselves that will continually get in their own way until they s- go and start learning to see and treat themselves differently.

When you see people move through that, how do you feel it? How do you see it work in them and transform them moving forward after they take that step and practice it and actually receive that safety and that feeling of being seen by someone else?

I just had this happen in one of my women's groups last week, and then she came back this week and reported on it.

But one of the assignments that we do is we have them fill out something called their timeline.

And it's a line of significant events in their lives, both positive and negative.

And then they come and they share that with their group.

And every time, every time this woman, she came in and she said she was like shaking.

She was like physically shaking.

I know in, you know, 12-step programs and things like that, often one of the primary steps is that you start telling other people that somebody knows your story and that you're beginning to take ownership of that part as well.

Where do you start? Like, how do you work this through?

I, I love...

You just said some words that most of our clients don't associate for the first appointment when they come in, and the first word that you used was grief.

And actually using the lens of grief is really powerful for couples, because they don't think of it as grieving.

But what they're doing is they're actually going through a grieving process where they're going to experience all of those different stages of grief.

There's going to be bargaining and anger and depression and denial and, and all of those things.

And they think they're crazy when they're going through it, when in reality they can't avoid having to pass through these different elements of grief over and over again as part of the healing process.

Yeah.

It's just like, my sense of self is kind of collapsed in this shame.

100%.

I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we run into.

And that's why, you know, let's say we have a couple come into our office and there's shame really going on both sides now pretty strongly.

And it's like maybe the currency that they're operating from.

But they're coming in and saying, we need help with communication skills or we need to overcome this addiction to something.

They don't realize that it all funnels down to that.

Right.

I mean, it's so messy, but I really appreciate the, when people can find the courage um if if you can find a safe space first and then it's a little easier to be courageous

yeah i'd say it's courage is like taking steps up a ladder right you're not going to go and get over the pulpit at church this week and say hey everybody here's my story right like you know like but i remember this like it came out slowly with me where my wife found out first and then some family members i told and then i reached out to a few friends and by the time i was like two years in my wife came to me one day and she's like hey tyler do you ever tell your clients like your story and i was like no no no i will i'll ruin my career if i do that and she said i think you should tell your clients your story is really powerful it's really good and so i sat on it for a week and i went to my women's group it was a wit a group of women who had been betrayed by their spouses And I said, hey, group's going to be different today.

I'm going to just tell you my story.

And I told my story and talk about like that nervous system thing you're talking about.

I got in the car afterwards and I called my wife and I was shaking and I was crying.

And I said, hey, I think I just ruined my career.

And my wife kind of sat there and listened.

Give me the breakdown.

I didn't really get that from New Krypton.

I...

Okay.

What I could see or what I could... you know work here my brain is you could have opened the story with him just kind of floating in space seeing where new Krypton was and then kind of coming down and doing something heroic, but then kind of getting feedback from the people about you abandoned us like this.

We believed in you.

And it's more of him realizing, I mean, it's touched on this, but he has to win back people to see that he is for them.

So he decides to kind of, lower himself to their level to touch back with them and just see the people, you know, just that, that distance he created by being on new Krypton.

And then maybe my biggest question of all is, where is Clark Kent?

Yeah

...

I think that's one place where so many people take a longer path to healing than they could as they go into, say, just a therapist office and they sit and just have conversations about the thing that happened, but they have a nervous system that needs attention, and they have a heart and a soul that needs attention.

And the way that you heal trauma, this is the same way that the trauma was experienced, in the sense that it was a whole being experience.

And so healing needs a corrective, an emotionally corrective experience to go along with changing the story around the trauma.

And so I love what you said about that, that getting in tune with your body, learning to regulate that system, and then check the facts.

And Brannon and I always talk about, you know, there's the head part, which is where you're spinning, spinning, spinning.

What's a confession or takeaway you wanna leave our listeners with today?

do you think,

Tyler? In our practice, we often use the analogy of something we call the trauma tree.

And we start from the top and work down.

And the top part is the fruit.

It's the thing that we see.

It's the thing that people pay attention to.

It's the thing that people think brings them into our office.

What do I say to her? How do I get up and move forward?

It's not really what we want to do.

It's often like an attempt at safety is what it is.

And, you know, I've had clients, they refer to these differences in some different ways that I think kind of give some good imagery.

One of them told me one time that she was saying she feels like in her relationship, she feels like a tulip in the spring.

And if you watch the tulips in the springtime when it's in the morning, it's like, really tight and closed off but then it starts to warm up and they start to open and then it gets cold again and they close and she said i can't she said i can't trust that my partner is going to provide the right sunlight for me to want to open and if there was some kind of steadiness there i'd want to open and open and my beauty would continue to like flow yeah right another analogy that another client used was she she likened it to Her experience being that the masculine and the feminine sort of dance together like a mountain where there's the strong, you know, rugged peaks with the big pine forest, but then interspersed into those pine forests are these really beautiful and subtle meadows that have all sorts of teeming life and color and wildflowers and those meadows need the structure and protection of the rocks in order for the safety to grow and bloom and they bloom sometimes at night in the moon sometimes in the sun they all have all of their different array of colors and beauty and and the masculine rock needs that beauty because that's what gives it this vibrance in life.

And when one of those things isn't working well, especially when the masculine is not there, the feminine relies on that safety and security and structure of the masculine in order to feel like they can open up.

And so if you look at that in a relational way, now you get frustrated man because his wife is so closed off to him.

So are there any exercises or practices that you would give in couples therapy specifically around reclaiming masculine and feminine energy and kind of finding the balance there?

Yeah,

so my X Factor team...

I always think that x-factor I like being a branch off the x-men and having Alex summers as the leader I also kind of wanted to spread out a little bit of the original x-men So I thought you know Bobby Drake kind of branching out and going off to his own team Polaris I was like, yeah, I'll keep those two together because I think they're really great couple together and really make x-factor and Sunfire I thought was just neat to kind of do something a little bit different.

Plus you got the

to just...

was kind of going random in a way but i like the idea of angel once again like spreading out the original team uh i like the idea of having banshee two flyers colossus as your muscle shadow cats like your secret force and then uh dazzler you know as your power so i thought it'd be a unique blend of characteristics and um i didn't want to put nightcrawler on there because i remember the first time i ever saw x caliber comic he was on the cover yeah so i was like nope don't want to put him in there but you got shadow cat and she was on the team so that's you got that good legacy there yeah so that was kind of my thought process for this one nice

But in general, aiming to get more quality sleep if we can, right, is helpful for recovery as well.

Yeah.

So, so you're basically saying that Truett, I'm picturing like the idea of driving a vehicle and doing proper maintenance on it.

You're, you're tuning up the vessel with which we live our lives, our bodies on a regular basis with, and those three things, if you look at all the research and all sorts of recovery, those three things always rise to the surface, proper nutrition.

Nutrition is probably behind the other two with like exercise and sleep, but sleep has been really prominent where I was listening to Dr. Anna Lemke.

Oh, so good.

She's awesome.

We just have no clue how much this is impacting our happiness levels and our susceptibility to escape and seeking out comfort through pornography and other means.

That is a traumatic experience.

We, yeah, it's absolutely traumatic.

And it's traumatic right at the core of who we are as human beings, right? So Maybe it's a bad breakup.

Maybe there's an actual betrayal or there's some dishonesty or something that happened there.

Either way, when I'm leaning into a relationship that I expect to be the stable ground that I'm landing on and all of a sudden it's no longer stable.

those partners actually experience real trauma.

They have problems sleeping, sometimes eating problems, bad dreams, they get hypervigilant, they have anxiety.

What do you think was the biggest factor in both the two of you being able to work through it, but also in her being able to work through it and stay and choose to stay?

[laughs]

No, yeah, I, I think you're, you're perfectly fine.

Um, it's a fun episode.

I like that it's Clark kind of trying to step up.

Like he doesn't...

At the end, you know, at the kind of I guess you could say climax of the episode, he could swoop in and stop everything.

But he really encourages Booster and he tries to have him step up to be a real hero, and I think that's part of like it shows a different side of Superman in the sense of what we've read in the comics about him inspiring other heroes and using like his voice instead of just his might.

Um, so yeah, I think, uh, this time of year it makes sense to have.

Right.

And...

It just makes you go, like, what do you really get? Because...

You know, when I first read The Killing Joke, first of all, I'm a person who's a sucker for backstories, like the origin of things.

So when I first read The Killing Joke, the whole idea about this is Joker's history, this is who he is, and then the ambiguousness of, well, it could have happened that way.

Sometimes I remember that way.

So with the Joker being this unreliable narrator that's revealed to us in the killing joke, it really makes the story that we just read.

And so now that's a perspective that we can trust, which takes that away because the whole thing, thing about the the killing joke that that more did so masterfully i mean and i've got issues with the killing joke as well but one of the things i thought he did really well in that was how he gives us this whole sympathetic backstory in the joker and then at the end he tosses it all into question and we're left to wonder wait all this stuff that we read about the joker's backstory was that real or not

Yes.

And we put on different kinds of masks.

You know, my-- one of my favorite masks growing up was the overperformer.

I'm the older brother.

I have to be good at everything.

I have to be a good example.

I have to make my dad proud.

So at what point do men ultimately tell the truth?

And so I just, like anything else, before we just jump right into those things, I think that you probably agree that a person's experience generally has a greater impact in others' lives than that person's credentials, right? And so I'm just wondering if you'd be able to give us a little, the elevator speech on your own story into this field and just,

yeah.

I'd love to share that.

Yeah, there's always the two stories that you're asked to tell.

And one of them is the professional journey and the other one is the personal journey.

And for me, personal journey is part of the professional journey.

I knew that I wanted to work with families around age 21.

And then there's this unequal relationship structure, right? And what are your thoughts around that?

Yeah.

I think it has strengths in the episode, but because of where, like, this whole thing goes, like you and I have had the conversation before, Zach, where I was like, I had wished that if they were gonna do the Lex and Lana wedding, having already introduced Lois, they would've just stuck with it and really kind of used Lana against Clark for a while, and like Lex and Lana had been like this power couple, and they really just kind of sealed that.

But the way that they kind of just couldn't commit to that and pulled it back and all, like, I feel like it kinda takes some of the power out of this episode when we're looking at other episodes that are strong.

Is, is Stray- Yes ... is Stray your ultimate episode?

And, you know, I, I agree with everything Anthony said, and I think back 'cause thinking about Descent, it's good, yes, and it's, it's high ranked, but if I'm gonna play devil's advocate here, I kinda feel like this episode should've come sooner.

I feel like what the, what happens in that episode I think with Lex should've happened sooner because in a, in a s- if you think about it, in season seven we basically take out our Luthors and we just leave a vacuum in the show.

Lana Luther as well.

[laughs] She leaves too.

... and just where you come from and...

All right.

Yeah.

So there's, uh, we don't wanna probably take too long on this, but there's the professional story and the personal story, and in my case, they fold together.

Um, I, I decided to become a marriage and family therapist when I was actually finishing an LDS church mission, and I was kind of contemplating, "What am I gonna do with my life?" And I was-- happened to be just reading some scriptures one day, andA particular set of scriptures hit me really hard that I was supposed to work with, uh, families, and especially at that time with, with men and boys.

And the reason why that happened was because I was serving in a place in the inner city of Baltimore, Maryland, where I-- we were teaching about 10 little boys how to read, and as we got to know these little boys, not a single one of them knew who their father was.

And it just really rocked my world that out of 10 out of 10, none of these kids actually knew their father, because they were living with single mothers.

Mm.