Discovering the Benefits of AHA as a Therapist with Guest Josh Korac

Welcome to the Autonomic Healing Podcast. I'm Tom Pelles. And I'm Ruth Laurence and we'll be unpacking what it looks like to activate your brain to holistically manage stress and trauma that bring healing to the mind, body and experience. Being free to live authentically as humans. Thank you for joining us. Let's get this conversation started. Joining us today is a friend and therapist, Josh Korak. Josh, thank you so much for being with us and joining us in these conversations on the benefits of Autonomic Healing. Hey Tom, it's my pleasure. Sorry, I lost my voice. I hope this isn't too much of a rough listen for your listeners. No, it's got that gravely kind of. Oh, rough, masculine edge. That's right. I'm sorry listeners. We don't have to be sorry Josh as well. We love having you here and you're a practicing mental health counsellor in Brunefield, Colorado. You've also got your own podcast called Care with Korak and you actually interview therapists from all over. In fact, you just recorded a session with Tom that will be at one certain meeting. Hopefully sometime in May I'm recording season two right now so we're figuring that out. That's so cool. So guys, if you're listening, check it out, check that podcast out. But one of the things that we love about you Josh is that you're clearly a passionate advocate for therapy, for healing. And before we get started with some of your experiences with H.A., I'd love to hear when all this started for you, you know, when did you start developing this passion for the therapy space and why did you choose to become a mental health counsellor? Could you kind of rewind a little bit and just fill us in? Yeah, of course. Yeah, so I mean my mental health journey started when I was a kid. When I was about 16 years old, I started going to counselling for the first time. It wasn't by choice. It was definitely a mandated thing by my parents as a family therapy kind of deal. It was super-assisted and super defensive to it at first and I loved it. I mean, Clinton, Non-Ali, I'll shout his name forever. That's my counsellor still is. And it has just been a huge support, huge mentor, shaped me both professionally, personally, and has just completely changed my life. And so that kind of just started the whole journey towards becoming a counsellor. I mean, from high school, I just made natural sense to go into psychology for my undergrad. Nothing else seemed to fit, you know, businesses and never-my-thing. I don't even know what else is there really in major in college. Which is what I did. I just feel like everybody in college majoring, all my roommates were business majors. So psychology just seemed the natural fit for me. I was always a people person. I always was that friend who people came to and that just seems to be a stereotypical thing for most counsellors is just being that person. And so I went into psychology for my undergrad, finished up a little bit early and then I went to the University of Northern Colorado right after and got my master's degree. And so, you know, through that I've had just some pretty wonderful experiences, some pretty, I mean, just experiences. I'm eternally grateful for even though they were challenging and shaping. But I had the chance to work in in-patients, psychiatric hospital settings. I got to work in a jail as a counsellor. I got to work with those who struggle with developmental and intellectual disabilities. I mean, I've just had so many different varying experiences that just introduced me into the world of mental health care. And it's just been such a wonderful journey. And so now I'm in a private practice space and boom field with Sojourn counselling under trace stubs and it's just been great sense. So let's a little bit about your podcast, Care with Krak. How do you understand me? Yeah, so, you know, as a grad student, almost through this program I thought, you know, why not add just a little bit more to my play because that makes sense with your whole time job and the full time class load and I'm like, yeah, you know, why not? And so I started, excuse me, I started Care with Krak, which is a podcast that is focused on mental health care. But I find this pretty unique about it. It's not just mental health professionals. I interview. I've had the chance to definitely interview mental health professionals. I mean, this season really excited to have Dr. Lloyd Sederer, who is the Chief Psychiatrist in York, who led the 9/11 disaster response in Hurricane Sandy. And today, actually later today, hopefully with my voice, but hopefully I'll be interviewing Dr. Catherine Ramsland, who was the psychologist to profile the BTK killer, a serial killer based out of Kansas. And so I've, you know, I definitely get more of the psychology side of things. I, but I've also had a chance to just interview more personal stories. In my first season, I had a outdoor rock climbing guide named Cody Bradford, who, who shared on his experiences, his experiences with suicide, his mental health journey. And it's, it's just been a very wonderful space to just meet new people and have them share their story kind of like today. And also believe in the power of narrative and just sharing your story and it's just so powerful. And so, yeah. And so it's the first season's out. There's 13 episodes and I'm working on the second season now. And just a wide variety of guests, wide variety of topics. You know, this season, I think I'm going to be talking about eating disorders, somatic therapy of Tom, yoga, what else? So many other things. So I love for you to check it out. If Tom's podcast is one that you like, then it's, it's pretty similar. Yeah. It sounds so cool. Just hearing that journey. But here we are. We're on the Autonomic Healing Podcast. And you're here because you've had this intersection and connection with Tom. And you're actually currently looking at being trained and certified to be an AHA practitioner, which was super excited about. But I'm just curious. Can you feel us in? How did, how do you guys meet? Yeah, definitely. So it's kind of a funny roundabout story where one of my personal clients, when I was working back up in Greeley, I was doing school and working Greeley for the past three years. And so I had a client up there through the Department of Human Services, which they had a contract with another counselor that Tom had trained. And so my client had been referred both to me and to Chris, for Chris to do the AHA and for me to just treat trauma and just to treat in general some other things. And so with this client, I had been screening her for trauma pretty regularly. So in the counseling world, there's a screening instrument called the PCL-5. And that's a screening inventory that assesses for symptomatology for post-traumatic stress disorder. And so if they meet a certain threshold on it, then it's an easy way of diagnosing PTSD. And so, and keeping track of what's happening with that exact, it's going up and getting worse as far as the symptoms or it's hopefully progressing in a downward trajectory. Exactly. It's an easily both diagnosis and treatment planning in terms of is what we're doing together working or is it not? And so with her, this client, she was consistently sworn pretty high, right? Which is just natural regardless of trauma therapy. Like it's natural for them to start out pretty high for first month. Treating a post-traumatic stress disorder is generally speaking of very long-term process. Generally. We'll get to that. And so I had seen her for, I can't even remember a couple months maybe. And so she can be informed. She's like, "Oh, yeah, so I have my AHA session coming up." And I met with her in the beginning of the week. She had this session towards the end of the week and says, "Okay, well, hey, you know, excited to go." I wonder what that is. Super skeptical, super skeptical, right? Never heard of it. I didn't do any research. Like, I'll say, "All right, whatever." If I may, that reminds me of another therapist who I had a connection with. And she had, she was doing date treatment and stuff. And she had a mother who came in and she was doing the in-home intensive family therapy long-term kind of a thing. And she told me later that when the mother of the child she was treating came in and said, "I have, I've talked to some other moms and such." And they've done this AHA treatment with this guy. And I'm wondering, is that okay? Can I do that? And she's a nurse. And so this therapist, she told me, she remembers thinking, "Sure, that's not going to really make any difference, but good luck with that." Sure, why don't you go ahead and do that? And then she went to the home to do a week and a half or two weeks later to do an in-home family session. And instead of a really disheveled case. The son was sitting on the couch with mom kind of had resting his head on her shoulder. The daughter was playing on the carpet and everything. She said, "What happened?" What did you? Oh, you know that AHA thing that I meant? I did that. And the kids have done that. Well, that's a pretty big story because that's exactly what happened to my client. My client went in at the end of one week. I saw it at the beginning of next week. So only the span of three or four days maybe. And so did the PCL right away? Boom. Zero. And so when it comes to scoring the PCL, you can have a score between zero and 80. And there's certain criteria that you have to me in terms of meeting the threshold for being able to diagnose and meet the criteria for PTSD. But 80 is like as high as you can get, right? The screen PCL is scoring 60 plus like very high symptomatology, you know, high symptoms of avoidance, high symptoms of intrusiveness, things like flashbacks and nightmares, high emotional distress. So she was, there was a lot going on. And so came in on that beginning of the week and was at a zero. Completely zero. And I was just like, "What the hell?" I was like, "What is going on here? Like how does it go from such severe symptomatology to nothing over the weekend?" I'm like, "All right, well, hold up. Let's see about this. Continue to meet with her. Continue to screen with her in a fluctuation slightly. But within that zero to 10 range. Nothing makes us immune to stress. Nothing makes us immune. And you know, she had a lot going on still, right? And so was a mom, I mean, in that alone just comes of stress, right? She was a young child. But within zero to 10, which is minimal, not meeting criteria. And I was just like, "This is amazing." And just I could sense it. I could sense the change in her affect. She was always coming in with just this super anxious affect. And came in and it was just, it wasn't there. And I was like, "What is this? What is AHA?" So that caught your attention. Yeah, you could say that. And so I just, I process that first session. We just process this. Like, what was this like for you? And like, and just told me how, even within the first few days, like how much less reactive she had been with her daughter, which had been an ongoing issue, how much more she was able to tolerate, stress, how much less, again, some of those intrusive symptoms were happening. I mean, they were happening. No more nightmares, no more flashbacks, no more avoidance symptoms. And I hear trying to avoid the previous trauma. So that you, you got a hold of cringes? Yeah, so that right away, I was like, I need to figure out what this is and just get a little bit more of an idea. Like, what is AHA? And so I reached out to Chris. Chris immediately was like, "Love it. Here's Tom." Right? Tom is the creator. Tom is the one who does the training. So I reached out to Tom and I was like, "Hey, I'm just interested in learning more about this. Possibly getting trained like, you know, if this is something that is working, like obviously, I want to be doing it." And so I reached out to Tom and here we are now. And part of training is that you have to experience it yourself. Because I can't train people therapists to do this. Because it is so experiential, it is a somatic treatment. And without having experienced it yourself, it's conceptual, but it's not experiential. And so to be able to work with someone who is having these involuntary neurobiological activity going on, that's homostatic, that's normalizing all that trauma, to not have experienced it yourself. One, is an injustice to our own personal individual mental health. Why would we not want to do this for ourselves? And two, then to be able to interpret and have a sense of what the person you're, the client is experiencing. It makes all the difference in the world. And I was all for that, you know, a big part of my training in my undergrad was experiential learning. I did my minor in outer leadership. So whenever I think of experiential learning, I like to compare it to rock climbing. It's one thing to, you know, sin a classroom, learn about rock climbing skills, learn about how to belay somebody, how to lead client, how to place equipment when you're, you know, track climbing and it's nothing to actually do it. Right. Oh yeah. And so the exact same thing. Therapy is the exact same thing. Like a counselor could be very books more and very poor when it comes to the application of skills. Right. And so I was all for, I'm like, I need to, I just need to try this, right? Because just like anybody else, you know, I struggle with my own anxiety, I struggle with my own experience. There are a certain questions. Yeah. Can you believe it? Of course. That's why we could treat people because we know. Exactly. I mean, and if your counselor says anything otherwise, then you may need to look at your new counselor. Because that is part of the experience, right? Your counselor has the wrong stuff that they're going through and they need to be doing the work themselves process that. And the same work that they're quote unquote, prescribing you, right? And so, yeah, I'm all for experiential learning. I was like, I need to try this. I need to see what this is like. Yeah. So you did your AHA session. And maybe share just a little bit about what that was like for you. Can I just interject here to him as well? Because I just as someone, you know, who's not a therapist, I'm loving what I'm hearing right now for you guys. I feel really grateful that there are therapists out there who are actually going, I'm going to, like, if it works, I'm going to figure this out. I want to try it. Because actually you witness something that's dramatically had an impact on one of your clients. And so you kind of go and you search and you try it out yourself. But like Tom was saying, we'd love to hear about your first initial AHA session. Yeah. Like, how do it? Well, I just want to add to that too, because that's not always the case. Yeah. I'm not going to name names, but there are counselors who are just very strictly the needs to be Evan Space. And that's great. Like Evan Space Research is great. Absolutely. And that's very important. And guess what? AHA is Evan Space. It is. I just have a public conversation. And there's a difference there. Right. So, you know, you should be getting treatment that is Evan Space. But at the same time, treatments have to come from somewhere. Right. And so, I just want to add that, that not every counselor is that. Yeah. You know, majority of counselors are doing their own work. Majority of counselors are doing the good work out there. There are a few that aren't. And you just have to be careful when you're looking for your counselor. Make sure that you trust yourself, that you're trusting your gut. As Tom has mentioned in his last episode. Trust your brains there and there it looks thinking. Yeah. Trust yourself with who you're meeting with. That's the news. I just want to add that. But let me take a quick turn. Yeah. So, just to lead into this a little bit. You came in for your session. And with the activation. You did that. You had that interoceptive focus. You closed your eyes. You had the activation. And then you started getting the involuntary activity. Yeah. And as Thomas said, as Ruth has said, as probably any of his coins have said, it's just weird. I do hear that a lot. There's just no other way to describe it. I mean, well, there is. But that's just the first reaction. Like, this is just weird. Like the first hour to I'm just kind of sitting there like, okay, I'm feeling these involuntary sensations. And maybe read a couple of these. Yeah. So some of the initials I had was just a lot of twitches. I was twitching. My jaw was shaking. My breathing was changing a little bit. Just very little things. And part of me was like, am I doing this? Like, is this my body? That's actually doing this. What is going on? And so, you know, you have a lot of twitches, a lot of itches. Just little things. And then every once in a while, I would have something just like, bizarre. Because it's very unusual. Like, the one you just highlight. So something, I'm going to read this. This was, I don't know, halfway through maybe. Is something just happened in my head. It kind of like blocked out my hearing for a second. Felt in my forehead. Felt some tension. So every once in a while, be weird things like that. You know, I'd have like little muscle twitches. But then every once in a while, my head would just jerk. Or my body would just jerk. What was that? Yeah. What was that? There's a line in here. Because what I'm doing is I'm just keeping track of the somatic at tibbing. And so at one point you said, my head just kind of bump back. And your head was tilting further to the right and then turning the left. And there was that involuntary movement. And then you started talking about weird. And then the stomach is doing the weird flexing thing again. Yes. And if I remember and then here. What was that one? So weird sensation going on. Like the top half of my body is lopsided. Like my torso is angled. Right. Then left. Then right again. And a zigzag pattern. Oh, that was so weird. I remember now. It was like, my body was like zigzag this way. Like. I didn't like the lower half of my body, it was one direction, another was the other, and then it was like this weird, I felt like something about the cartoon or something. Yes, I've heard that a number of times. And then interesting, because stress and congestion and histamines and all the rest, I kind of stuff are very much linked. And then at one point, you shared this. I noticed seeing them a lot less congestion than I was before. Now, because my voice is gone, but in general, I have some pretty bad congestion. But at this period, my congestion started to be relieved, which was pretty crazy. Another one was, I don't know what just happened, felt like something had me in my left sternum like being pushed. And it's all these very unusual things. And the reason it becomes so unfamiliar and unusual is simply because the brain has not had a chance to go that deeply into normalizing the stress and trauma. Well, sure. And go ahead. Well, because like you've explained in your previous episodes, this is all about activating the parasympathetic and the interic nervous system. And so this is where I do my clients just in different ways and not in such an intensive focused way. And I think this is more effective. Maybe I'm jumping ahead here, but I think this is more effective because like you said, it gives the body time. Like we need the time to normalize the stress. And so this is great. Yeah. And at the end, then after the normalization had occurred, I asked you to share about how you felt now and bearing in mind that at the beginning, you have very high levels of stress and anxiety. And by the end, your comment was, I feel really calm, peaceful, it's hard to put words to it. It just makes sense around and then that was around just the what was happening. And you felt content. Oh, yeah, the content. Yeah. Yep. So that was pretty impact of you just to experience it yourself. I agree with you. I think when I have my AHA session, I don't think I have air for a month, that amount. I mean, you know, you kind of go through it and you think, this, am I going to be bored? And then the time goes like that. You know, it feels like you haven't been there for hours. But you have. And suddenly you're kind of giving your body the chance and your brain, really the chance to heal itself. And so what happened in the next, you know, the four of them? Okay. I love the way you have a great way with words, which obviously you've got a podcast. So that's a wonderful. Absolutely. But I love the way that you expressed the sense of contentment with that phraseology. Yeah. I said, I don't feel the competition of emotions or my mind feels slowed down in that piece. Yeah. And that is such a wonderful description of homeostasis. When we're in that state. Not just the process of the normalizing, but we are in that state of homeostasis. We don't have that competition of emotions. And the mind feels slowed down in that piece. I was just wonderfully articulate. Well, it was just such a genuine feeling for the past several years, even throughout my grad program, even throughout all the self-care I was supposed to be doing. It was a really challenging, there was probably the most challenging period of my life going through a pretty severe breakup going through. There was a situation with a friend going to court over some pretty serious charges that I was almost being called into. I had several moves, several jobs. It was such a big life change in the past several years. And my anxiety suffered as a result of it. And so I had gotten myself back into counseling with Clinton. I was on medication. My mind just felt like it was racing constantly. Just not able to really manage my anxiety, except when I was with Clinton. And so this was the first time in a while that I felt like a pretty strong sense of peace. And in a prior episode, the first one actually, we talked about that tsunami of stress, that escalating pattern of flee and fight and flee and fight. That's that sympathetic nervous system interacting with the prefrontal cortex and problem solving and decision making, but it's compromise. And because all it's trying to do is figure out how do I flee, how do I fight. And it's not that normalization. Yeah. I think I'd love to ask you to ask Josh as well about, like Tom said, we told, I love the phrase, the tsunami of stress. It's just such a sticky phrase that allows me personally to kind of understand some of those cycles. But as a therapist now, I'm just really curious what you're seeing right now in a compliance in this space, especially in regards to this tsunami of stress. What would you say the mental health landscape is especially for the millennials, you know, especially given the fact that we've had the most unusual to years that, you know, it seems to, I think we'll probably have papers written on the last few years and like the impact. This is going to be the gift that keeps on giving for an entire generation. It's a watershed experience. Like World War II was generationally Vietnam for my generation. COVID. COVID for this generation. Yeah. Would you like share what your thoughts are around that? Like what are the some of the challenges? What are you seeing? What are the changes? Yeah. Let me, let me start by preface saying that we are generation, my generation, these upcoming generations are the safest generations in history. But we're also the most afraid. It's just true. Like we have some of the most safe spaces. There's never been safer times in terms of war. I mean, maybe this is bad timing with the word going on. But just just research has shown this is something that came up in my trauma training previously is that we are the safest generation, but we're also the most afraid. It brings up this big question of why, right? There's just so much of unprecedented trailblazing going on with COVID with the digital age. You know, I think this is this is jumping ahead a little bit too, but like one of the biggest challenges I'm seeing as a therapist is TikTok. Like how many I do a lot of work without a license, a lot of work with kids and how many kids coming in who are self-dagnosing themselves because of what they see on the internet. To be able to Google all sorts of stuff, for me, it was, that wasn't even a thing. I mean, this is only what the most. You mean the story was the most. When I was twenty years, fifteen years. Yeah. When I broke into this twenty-some years ago, counseling itself is a professional in that old. It's pretty young. It was. You couldn't find out information. You had to go to your doctor and they would talk with you. You couldn't self-dagnose the access to all sorts of information. It's blown up. And it is blown up. I think it's escalated dramatically in these last few years because of what COVID forced to. So it's like, I think it's sped up. What would have happened naturally? We're way further along the line in terms of digital community. Which is great in a lot of ways. You know, it's especially through COVID. It gave a lot of younger kids who should be around people. This is so instrumental to the development as they need to be around other kids. And so when they're literally forced to be separate, like that's one positive I can see from the digital space is them being able to continue community, continue that aspect of that same. And related to that, I was hearing it was a mom talking about their child. And this was exemplary of a very common dynamic. And that her comment was her child's friendships in an online space were the same in that child's experience as the ones that were in school or in some other social contact environment. And they saw them and experienced them, whether it was an online or in physical presence. It was the same thing. No, I'm definitely getting that off my client. So even so my older clients, like young adults, I have one client who literally all their community is online. They know physical community. So it's a thing. So we've got this dynamic then of like you said, I think that's so interesting. The safest generation. And yet, does fear that and I say, what's the root? And I think that it is the amount of stimulus that is being encountered. Yeah, that's what I just said. There's no downtime. It's just a constant stream of stimulation, which I think plays into that sense of threat and fear because the brain is having to process all this stimulus. - Yeah. - And it's literally TMI. It is too much in for May, and it overwhelms that. You throw into that, and we're gonna have upcoming episodes on rational intimacy, and the cognitive processing, the prefrontal cortex, and how that problem solves, but the solutions that are, that keep coming up, because we're not actually rational, we just think we're being rational, because it's understandable to us, and it seems rational to us, but that doesn't make it actually rational. And then the solutions we keep coming up with, in many ways, are just creating more and more problems. And then there's this endless access to more and more information. - I think, I really love how you said that this increase in stimuli, I think it's also in combination with early exposure. - Oh, very much. - You know, thinking about things like movies and television, right, how easy is it to just hop on the Netflix and watch something that's rated for mature audiences, as a kid, if the parents aren't paying attention, if they don't set those prefrontal controls. So easy, the average age of pornography viewing for children, is for children, seven or eight years old. - Mm-hmm. - That's first grade, second grade. - And because of development, they don't have a relational context to put that kind of information in. And so it just becomes objectification. Human beings are objects, not to be related to, but to be utilized and manipulated. - And so we're getting so much, so much, so much information taking in, and at such a young age, when our brains are so malleable, so easily changed, it creates so much stress. It really does, it changes our physiology. - Yep. And I think that really has influence as they grow up. - Yep, so which leads me to bringing up the second aspect of homeostasis, and that's not just the somatic homeostasis, which is AHA. But there's also that component, which we're gonna be getting into in upcoming episodes of the cognitive homeostasis, where we can activate, and I figured out a way to activate, the involuntary autobiographical cognitions or memories for the prefrontal cortex, in combination with that somatic homeostasis, to do the problem solving, and then to inform, with these involuntary autobiographical memories, which have been so much a part of post-traumatic stress, the intrusive thoughts, and a lot of the research that was done about, involuntary autobiographical cognitions and memories, was from the perspective of post-traumatic stress. These intrusive memories and experiences and flashbacks, and that sort of thing, but that's not the only way it manifests. And so I was intrigued, in a couple of years after I figured out, how did you do this somatic homeostasis, I was intrigued by the possibility of the prefrontal cortex, problem solving, with these involuntary autobiographical cognitions or memories, problem solving proactively, and then just informing the conscious awareness, of a solution to a problem. And you followed up your somatic, with the problem solving. And maybe you could share, not necessarily all the content, but your experience of activating, cognitive homeostasis. - Can I start by sharing just why it makes sense to me? - Please. So a common misconception of trauma, of PTSD, we call it post-traumatic stress disorder. It's not a disorder, it's not something that's wrong. - Which is why the latest stuff, they've dropped the term. - Oh, it's just post-traumatic stress. - It is not post-traumatic. - It's an injury order, it's post-traumatic stress. - Yeah, it's a brain injury, it's your body being injured. So for me, it just makes sense where we start with the somatic, more and more research is coming out, that stress and anxiety is first and foremost, body oriented, right? - Yeah, which is why you always start with the somatic. Never just jumps in the cognitive. - I actually had many clients who say, can't I just do that? - No. - No, I won't do that with you. - Well, for some, I'd be curious to know, if you could respond to this. For my experience, when I do the somatic work with my clients, for about 40 to 50% of the somatic's enough, where we don't have to go deep into the trauma, we don't have to do any sort of cognitive processing therapy. So when you sort of narrative work, for some, the somatic is enough for them to manage into the results of their symptoms. - Which is, yeah. And the reason for that is because when we experience chronic stress or traumatic stress, and it's at those, particularly at the ages of cognitive formation, perceptions are being formed of our self and others in situations, the stress and trauma distort that. And it depends on when in life that's been experienced. And so that traumatized perceptions of self others in situations is what necessitates for many, not just a somatic normalization, but also the value and benefit of a cognitive homeostasis because to be able to see the pattern of perceptions and how they have been subtly or profoundly distorted, it's like, I'll give you an example. Back in the day, a few years ago, there was a case with offenders who, to have contact with their child had to pass a particular polygraphs related to that. And if there was any abnormality or deception indicated or just reactivity that the standard was, we don't allow contact with the child. And so that case was actually taken constitutionally to the federal court in Denver. And I was the expert witness for that. And I remember testifying, it was an interesting experience. Because as I was testifying, I was going into the neuroscience and all the rest of this. And I remember the attorney said, Mr. Powell's, I appreciate your testimony. Could you put that in layman's terms and then I try putting that in more layman's terms? And then the presiding magistrate said, Mr. Powell's, I really hate to interrupt your testimony, but could you put that in real layman's terms? And this is the example I use. And this is an example of the distortion that can happen to the perceptions of ourselves others in situations. And I said, so your honor, let's say that there's a little boy and he is just brilliant. He is incredibly intelligent. He always gets A's on all of his tests and class work and all the rest of that. But he's not terribly athletically gifted. And he encounters Jim class and climb in that rope and ring in that bell and all that. It just really beyond him. But he tries his hardest and he does his best. And he gets a B and he comes home with a B on his report card for the first time in his life. And unfortunately his father not being terribly affirming and very perfectionistic and very demanding says, instead of saying son, I bet you tried your hardest and that's really wonderful. His response is, what, you stupid? What, you just not trying, right? What is wrong with you kid? And this child's perception of himself, of performance and all that is distorted in what I call the superhero perception. He's got to be, everything should be done properly. It should be exact, it should be just right. And it's an unrealistic, unattainable perfectionism that can result. That's a traumatized perception. And then when the prefrontal cortex tries to problem solve, the solution's just going to make it worse. And just creates more stress. And with the problem solving, what that does is it allows the brain itself to inform the mind consciously of an actually rational solution. And that's why for many, the somaticomy of say, this is just fine. They haven't had those kind of life experiences where it was either modeled for them or imposed on them to see things in distinctly distorted way, which under unmanaged or unmanageable stress is distorted. - Yeah. Which is interesting that you brought that up because that kind of also creates an answer for the last question, you know, what is mental health looking like for millennials these days and for the next generation? You know, I think one of the biggest problems they have is just poor modeling, poor parenting, which is not a knock on parents out there. I know parents try their best and we always have to try our best. - But they've also brought their own trauma. - Exactly. - And this is where that generational trauma conversation comes into play and how parents are managing and self-regulating their own stress or not. - It takes you literally not managing. - Particularly not. - Like the day. - He's influencing and creating the stress for the children. [BLANK_AUDIO] That's just one more thing now to parents' stress of, oh gosh, I'm screwing up my child. But it's more of a how-coming grow, right? How-coming grow is parents. And one of the easiest ways, especially for young parents out there of young children, one of the easiest ways to help your child self-regulate is for you to self-regulate, because your model and your kid is always watching you. And so if you can self-regulate, your kids are gonna follow Sue. Like they're getting the attention to that. We're back to what the airline personnel, if the oxygen mask drops, the adult, the parent, put it on yourself first, and then you're in a position to care for your child. And so many parents, they don't put their oxygen mask on first. They're all about putting it on their child first, can't tell you the number of times I've had sessions where a parent has contacted me, and can you do this treatment with my child? And I can't believe you encourage, I would encourage you to do that yourself first. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Then you can support your child and do it. - Which shows just how much they care about their child when they're in. - Absolutely. - They wanna help, they wanna help, they just don't know how. And part of that is this, and this is a single thing with therapists. We wanna help their clients, we wanna help them, but it starts with us first. - Yeah. - We have to do our own work. - So your experience of the problem's all we. - Yeah, I mean, it was kind of how you described it. I mean, it was, again, it was weird. (laughing) - Are you usually beneficial? - Yes, yes, I mean, but it was. I mean, we worked on a problem that I had just been rolling around in my head, and one of the ways I like to describe it is, and I think I described it with you, is when you just can't think, for me I'm a big movie, I love movies, I love TV, television, film. And every once in a while, I'll see a guy in the show, and I'm like, I know that guy. - Right, where's he from? - And it kills me, 'cause I'll be thinking about thinking about, and I just can't get it, right? - And nobody else experiences that. - No, yeah, no, it's just me, guys. So if you're listening, you're wrong. (laughing) But, right now, it's struggling with it the way I. - And this is a pretty comical, there's ways that we can apply this to real life, right? But for me, I'll be thinking, thinking, thinking, and I'm like, all right, well, I can't figure this out, right? And so, I'll go to bed, I'll start to go to bed, and then like, right before I fall asleep, I'm like, "It was that guy, right?" - Yes, and I'm like, - So for that is an involuntary autobiographical cognition, remember, your brain is doing the thinking, and just informing you. - Yeah. - And that's what the problem's all about. - That's exactly what it's like, except it's for problems that are probably more of an actual problem than I can't figure out who this actor is. - Yeah, like what do I do with this major life decision? - And it's usually quicker. - Or do I issue like a band in my life? - Exactly, exactly. - Or relational stress. - And it seems to take less time than, like for me, it'll be hours sometimes before I can think of an actor's name, for example. But for the problem solving, when we were working on this specific problem that was having, it took me 40 minutes, something like that. - And your brain is all the very significant problem that you had struggled with for a while. - If you just give your mind the space and time, my other supervisor, Trey, he puts it really beautifully where it's like a puppy, right? If we don't give our mind attention, right? It's gonna go make a mess. (laughing) It's gonna go pee on the car, but it's gonna go dig up the dirt in the backyard. And for us, our mind is very similar, right? It's gonna go create higher forms of stress, higher forms of anxiety, depression, if we give the puppy attention, right? If we give it the space to just be, it's gonna have space to be, yeah. - That's so good. And you also did the spiritual formation one. So he would've done the whole thing. - Body, mind and spirit. - What, do you say about that one? - I mean, nothing that I haven't already said, I mean, it's very similar to the cognitive one. But it's directed towards the spirit, directed towards the soul. And I do, I am a pretty spiritual person, I identify as a Christian. And for me, it was just a very special time with God to speak with me. And again, just really allowing myself to slow down. Which again, when I had done that session, I was working 70 hours a week. I was going, going, going. And just, yeah, right. And I just had such a hard time just giving myself the space to think, to be, to be with God. And so for the spiritual formation, it was really just a lot of myself to slow down. But it was different in the sense where, it was allowing, you know, just that homeostasis to take place and to just be in your best position to hear from God, I guess. - So maybe I have described it. - Yeah, it's a very direct, - Yeah. - moment with a very loving meaning. - It felt very meditative. - Yeah. - Which is what prayer is, prayer is meditation. And it felt like a very effective way of facilitating that. - And I've done it with people of very different face and very different spiritual belief systems. And it just brings homeostasis into that space. - It's fascinating to me. - Yeah. - And we will be, we haven't even talked about. - We will. - All of that happening. We will, we're gonna have some episodes in the future where we're really gonna go into some deep dives there in the cognitive and the spiritual formation. But Josh, I've just loved having you in this space and listening to you. And I feel really honored to know you in this community. But before we go, I wanted to just ask you, what are your, some of your hopes and dreams of the future? - Just personally, professionally, and those. - Well, you know, big questions. - You as Josh. - Me as Josh. I mean, you know, I just, you know, one of my biggest joys is just serving my community. And really, you know, I, especially now, especially if the work I'm doing now, I just really view my work as service. Like, you know, it's just, it's something that just brings me so much joy. And so my hope is just that continues. And my hope is, you know, I continue to be able to be the best, to be able to provide the best service I can for others. And to use these platforms that you guys are using us for your podcast and for me and my podcast. And, you know, that's another really big benefit with the digital spaces. We can, as professionals, provide accurate information. And so, you know, one, if I could share a story, I just recently read the book, "The Miracle of Mindfulness," by Tick Not Hon, "Budus Monk." And he had this story in there that was really beautiful, that I really resonated with. It was the story of how we should wash our dishes. Right. He says that the majority of us, we wash our dishes so that we can go and drink a cup of tea afterwards and in typical Buddhist monk style, right? 'Cause I know everybody just drinks tea. - I do. (laughing) - That's not a real reason. - But that's a cultural difference. - Yes. - But he says that typically we're Russian, we're doing our dishes so that we can go drink a cup of tea. Right. In other words, for maybe us Americans, right? And so we can go wash our Netflix or so we can go read our book or do the next thing, whatever is really important, right? But what he says is that when we live this way, right? We're not really living. We're actually incapable of living a single moment of our life. Unless we wash the dishes to wash the dishes. - Yeah, and that's very impressive. - And I think AHA, I think, you know, the mentorship and the counseling that comes with therapy creates a really beautiful space for us. It's not the only way, no creates a really beautiful space for that. Right. To learn how to self-regulate, to learn how to cope with the stress and anxiety and depression. That is just natural with life. Everybody struggles with it. And I know that's, like, we drill that again and again and again, but people just don't get it. Anybody says any difference is lying. And so my hope is that we can all wash the dishes to wash the dishes. We can all live our life presently, mindfully, and with peace. - Yeah. And if there is, if you reflect on your experience of the somatic, on your stasis, and then the cognitive of the spiritual, because it's focused on interoception, that awareness of how do I feel? What is my body experiencing? It is the most fundamentally present moment with ourselves. Because that is the nature of our existence. That is the nature of our being. - Yeah. - Yeah. - You need to learn how to be by yourself and how to live with yourself. You say this again and again, who's the person you spend the most time with yourself? 24/7. You don't get a break, right? You gotta learn how to live with that. Josh, thank you. I'm so appreciate it. - Thank you. - I really appreciate your interest and becoming a provider for Annamakali. - Yeah. - I'm excited. - Where it sounds is. Just listen to this. - Sure to check out Josh's podcast, Care with Corak, and I'm sure Josh this week the last time we have you on this podcast in this space, as we continue to explore the benefits of autonomic healing. - You've been listening to the Arnornamic Healing Podcast. - Join us next time as we continue in our conversations with Tom. If you're interested in pursuing your own autonomic healing journey and want to find a practitioner, visit our website innerworkings.org. See you at the next episode.