So, is this a second episode? You know, it's like when you see a show and they say, "Have you ever seen the pilot?" And you're like, "I didn't know there was a pilot." So yeah, like I sent you that text, right? It was yesterday afternoon, I was just like, you know, there were so many things that kept coming up. And, you know, we've talked about owning your own business. And where it started was earlier in the week, I had a blog post about why men don't go to therapy. And there's an attached, I have an Instagram post about it. And in the past, I've made it an advertisement, right? Like promoted or boosted it or whatever they call it. And it's been productive. Like I've done it and I've had people respond to it, right? Like, I mean, I spent just maybe a couple hundred dollars over a course of a few days. And, you know, I get a few phone calls from it and things like that. And it's great, right? That's the whole purpose of it is people be aware. It's not like just I want to get more people on my calendar. On Instagram or anywhere else? Facebook too. Facebook, okay. But not like on TikTok. I don't do any of those. I don't know if I just don't want to or what. But the -- and so I, you know, it was like I'd spent like $200 and we go. So the other day I thought, well, I'm going to boost that again. One of the things that happens a lot is almost every holiday, the following day -- excuse me. Was that you or me? I guess it's tacos. Yeah. Those are hitting the day, which we didn't have last time. So we'll figure out -- We'll see how it goes. We'll have to listen back and see. Stomach is making noise. So the thing that I've noticed a lot, and it makes sense because I've been there too, is that there's a lot of intensity with like holidays. And it never fails the day after or the week after I get a fair amount of calls from men looking for therapy. Right? There's something that occurred that made them either realize or their family said, hey, you need to get some help, whichever. And they contact me. Right? And so I was thinking about that the other day. I thought, well, we've got Fourth of July coming up next week. So I'm going to boost an ad and have it run until a few days after the Fourth of July, knowing that it's not going to get a lot of action up to Fourth of July because everybody is busy. But, you know, Fourth of July is a big, you know, event, at least here in the U.S. Right? We thought about that way, like for all of our listeners that might be overseas. And so the intent was that I would have it and then that would, you know, stir some stuff to it. Long story short, same thing. I'll spend about $200 and let this run for about five or six days. Went out there, went on the app to boost it, did all that stuff. And I get this notice. And the notice says that Apple is going to charge me a service fee for using -- for doing the ad. And it doesn't really tell you the amount. And I thought, okay, what was -- you know, and this is bad business on my part, was not stopping and going, let me look into this. It's a 30% service fee. So a $200 ad turned into a $280 ad, which I still don't understand how that's 30%. But is that 30%? That's not 30%. Yeah. It's like almost double that. Anyways, math is hard. And so I was like, what? And I thought, okay, well, I don't want to do that then. But that doesn't work that way. Because once you stop, all you've done is -- and Apple charges you. So Apple charged me $280. And then what they did was they then act as like a bank for Instagram to take from it to run the ad. So even if I say, no, I don't want to run this ad anymore, they still got their $85. Right? And it was like -- and I think that was -- and this was like yesterday. I was sitting there. I was looking into it. And when it first happened, I was like, okay, I don't have time to look at this right now. This is, you know, BS. I want to look at this further. And when I was looking at it, it was like this whole like -- people are getting tired of that. Right? And especially if you've got like a small business, it's like we've just assumed that if you own a business and you're making tons of money, and that's so fake, just like this podcast, we could make it sound like we have tons of listeners and you fake it till you make it and all that stuff. And that just doesn't feel good after a while. Right? I feel like it's always been that way. It's just getting worse. Absolutely. I saw just to go back to your markup, which, you know, wouldn't be good for advertisers for us, but -- goodbye, Apple. But I saw a TikTok of all places, a guy that was showing his Instagram ads on an Android and an iPhone, and he said he showed how Apple was upcharging on the advertising. Yeah. And Android is not yet. You know, we see that, and this is where it sneaks up, and this is kind of one of the things that I think is draining on people. Right? And it's not just, you know, it's how I feel. It's what I hear in my office from my clients, too, this feeling that corporations and businesses are trying to find a way to make money, and it always feels like nefarious. Right? Like they're doing something that they're trying to trick you, and they're not being authentic and forthright about it because it's almost like at a point now where if anything that a company does to make more money, then why they need more money becomes the scrutinized factor. And I can understand that. Right? Like I'm all about making money. I don't have any problem. I think free market is a great thing. I think capitalism can work really well in certain circumstances, but I think that there's a point where it's becoming -- we're losing trust in everything. So immediately here I am, small business. Right?$200 is not easy. That's money I have to make on top of rent, on top of insurance, on top of all the other things that I have to pay for, and the whole concept you've got to spend money to make money, okay, that's great, too, but it's within reason. Right? And when you have a company like Apple who because I'm just using their app is going to charge me a service fee like you do when you buy a concert ticket, then you have to wonder who are you doing this -- what's the purpose of even having an avenue to do these things? Right? And so what's really ironic is that not an hour after I did that ad, I got an e-mail from Instagram telling me what I need to do to circumvent having to pay that fee for Apple in the future. And it's like they even know. Right? It's like it's sort of a weird feeling when you look and go, oh, Meta's got my back. And so that's why I texted you. I was like I need to do something with Alex because it always makes me feel better, which brings up this study I wanted to share with you. There's only like 16 percent of clinicians in the U.S. are male. I don't know if we talked about this last time, the whole thing about suicide, that we continue to do the research on suicide, but we're still seeing increases in men dying by suicide. And even now we're seeing an increase in, you know, like races of men that typically don't have high levels of suicide are having higher levels of suicide now, which is alarming. And when you look at the numbers, it's oh, well, after the pandemic, we've actually decreased. Right. But. It's not. I don't I don't feel like it's enough. Right. And so. So that's a lot of stuff. It's not part of my dissertation or any of that kind of stuff. My research is on technology and family functioning. But the part that that I do for myself, for my business is I do a lot of research on men's mental health and not so much about what men are doing as much as what we can do to support men. Right. And so I always come across different journals. And this one I got was from 2015 by Judy Proudfoot and a number of other people. It's called Positive Strategies Men Regularly Use to Prevent and Manage Depression. It's a national survey of Australian men. Now, what's interesting is in Australia, they do a lot of research on suicide prevention, suicide interventions and focus on different demographics pretty heavily. Right. Which is great. We got a lot of really good research coming out of Australia. You know, if I could go anywhere in the world and teach and do research on that topic, it'd be Australia. Right. And so. So this journal is this survey. And without getting in too many crazy details about it, you know, they basically asked men, they gave them like a scenario. Right. To help reduce depression and asked them if they do it regularly. So like I do this regularly. I do this occasionally. I don't do this, but it's a good idea. I don't do this and I wouldn't ever. Right. So and then they also looked at have you ever or have you ever not. Right. And some of the things would like keep myself busy. Right. So like when you start to feel sort of depressed. Right. OK, I got to get busy. I got to do some things. Right. Which I think that's something that I do. Right. I mean, I'll just start feeling sort of down. I'm like, all right, I need to change something. Let me clean something. Let me, you know. And when we look at it, that's healthy. That's a healthy coping mechanism. Right. That's that's rather than just sitting in a chair and looking at Tick-Tock. I'm going to get up and be productive in some way, which is why when we when I'm doing therapy and somebody might have severe depression, you know, if they're not even taking a shower, all I want you to do is take a shower just every day, take a shower. And it's not because they, you know, are not their hygiene. It's because it's a it's a win. I self-care. I've taken care of myself, but I've also accomplished something. Right. And it kind of goes back to that level of hope. And so when you feel like you've done one thing, then we start to progress. So the whole idea of I keep myself busy is a great is a great thing. I can relate to that. I'll go and I when I start to feel down, I start filling up my to do list and it could be the most mundane things. It could be wash the dishes. It could be, you know, I don't have a dog now, but walk the dog or just anything. I'll go and do that kind of stuff. And it'll just make me feel it's it's some kind of endorsement of like getting a little tasks done. Shower's not on it, but I should add that might want to. Yeah. But the so I have a name for that, that I tell my my clients when I have that I said, we're going to make, you know, let's make a list of what you're going to do. And, you know, their initial thought is, OK, I'm going to make this huge list because that feels overwhelming. And so I have what's called a ridiculous list. And so I tell it, we walk through it. So, OK, well, you wake up. What happens when you wake up? Right. You open your eyes. Clearly. Right. And then what's the first thing you do? Right. Is it you look at your phone or is it you get out of bed or is it you sit there in bed for a while and stare at the ceiling? What is it? What is it you do? And then we make a list of everything they do, like to the absolute ridiculous, infinite details to it. Right. And then we look at how can we make that list a little bit different? And so we're only looking at maybe the first five minutes of your day. Right. And so our to do list is I'm going to get out of bed. I'm going to put my feet on the floor. I'm going to, you know, have some gratitude that I can put my feet on the floor for the day. And then I'm going to go into the bathroom, do my business. And I take a shower and you're done for the rest of the day. If all you can do the rest of the day is lay in bed, then, you know, we got those first three things done. Right. And the intent of that is having that, you know, you're accomplishing things. Right. So when I see this, that, you know, keep myself busy is one of the things. So when we think about this study, that's how this works. And what's really interesting is. When we look at it. And they call these they say these are there's preventative strategies and then there's many management strategies to pick myself up in the times I'm feeling flatter down. Right. So there's a difference. Right. My preventative is I take a shower in the morning. I go, you know, I wake up and I go work out and then I take a shower and then I have breakfast. And that's to maintain. This is more of a how do I manage getting myself feeling better. Right. And the one thing that's probably to me the most interesting in this list is that. When we look at the different things, you know, the one that's one of the ones that's the least used as far as like, I don't I don't do this and I would never write these are the ones that I because I just think about like if I was asking my dad, like, have you ever thought about doing that? No. And that's not like, no, I haven't thought about it. It was like, no. And we're done talking about it. Right. Right. So the. Oh, Dan. So the one that's like the least likely to do and would never do ever. 58 percent of these of this population that did the survey, it was follow faith, religion or spirituality. Right. Which is just, you know, it's not surprising to me, but it's it's interesting that we you know, we think about fellowship and we think about community and all those things. And that's right. And so, you know, we have to take that into consideration. Right. Where else can we get the connection that we need? And so the one that was the least as far as the ones that were helpful were like, I'm going to change my sleeping patterns. Right. I'm going to exercise these things that we, you know, kind of need to do. I'm going to reward myself with something. I'm going to keep myself busy. Was one of the top ones. But. Like some of these are sort of funny, like, you know, 20 percent of the respondents said they would never focus on their life purpose. Right. And when I think about these and I look at some of these like hang out with people who are proactive, 8 percent said they would do that. Right. I'm sorry. Eight percent said they would never do it. So that means what? 92 percent said they would. Right. Which is great. Right. I'm going to I'm going to go do something with you just like this. Right. You and I might have had something completely different planned for the day, but because we did this, we're doing something productive. I'm here for the tacos. Do well. That's. Yeah. I mean, I think that's proactive. And that coffee was pretty good, too. Yeah. Should've got it to go. Yeah. But the things that like, you know, spending time with your pet, you know, 14 percent said they would never do that. Right. The one that kind of cracks me up a little bit is using self positive talk. And only. Where to go. 20 percent said they wouldn't do that ever. Which is kind of funny when you think about that. Yeah. Right. Like you're asking a question that's already sort of a negative. Right. And it's like I could just imagine them like like the guy like filling out this like survey and it comes like I would do so possible. But but what makes me think about that is it makes me think about what do we know in our culture is self positive talk. Right. And it's like the concept, like I think about these questions, right. Like as a researcher, we think about these questions and it's like you can think about positive talk from like a coach. Right. Or positive talk from somebody who's teaching you something like another guy. Right. And then we think about positive self talk, how it's portrayed on like social media. Right. So when I see that question, what I think of are these sort of muted color. Reposts of flowery quotes about how beautiful you are. Right. Would I ever do that? Tell myself how beautiful I am? No. No. Unless I was like trying to put myself down or something. So on these studies, are they is it broken down into age? Because I wonder if it's a generational thing and what we're exposed to. And that's a good. Yeah, it does. It does. And when they look at like strategies, right, like regularly use of prevention strategies and what I'm more interested in the regular regular use of the management strategy. Like how do you manage your depression? Right. They you know, it looked at people from the ages of 18 to over 55. Right. When it came to. And they broke it out by like self-care, pleasure, doing something for yourself is fun. Achievement, cognitive, like what am I to do to learn something and then social. Right. So across the board for all those ages, about 60 to 70 percent of men did something social. Right. Where it's lower is where you look at, like, pleasure doing something for themselves, like going shopping. Right. Or I don't know what I'm watching to. I don't know what the I'd have to look at this closer to see what the pleasure is. But one of the highest ones. So the highest one for 18 to 24 year olds. Is cognitive. Right. That's like thinking about, you know, positive talk to yourself or, you know, I'm going to learn something or I'm going to, you know, talk to somebody about something. Right. For 55 and older or less to 45 to 54. Right. 45 to 54. The self-care was the highest one. That's like exercise. Keep myself busy. Get better sleep. You know, eat better. Things like that. This physical sort of part of it. Right. And which I think is in which is indicative of, you know, where we look at, you know, men tend to do things more physical, taking care of ourselves. Right. Or enjoying ourselves or doing things is in that way. Opposed to, you know, whether it's something that's more, you know, emotional or cause, you know, doing things for yourself physically is not emotionally vulnerable. Right. If I was if if if I got up the morning, I wasn't feeling good. I'm not going to turn to my wife and say, I'm not really feeling very good today. You think maybe we can talk about it. Go get some coffee and have a, you know, you know, go get, you know, do whatever. Right. I'm going to get up and I'm going to go exercise. Right. And it's easier to say, I just I felt like I needed to exercise. I wanted to get some more exercise or I'm doing something for, you know, it's it's not connected to the emotional side of it. So it makes you wonder when you have somebody, you know, and suddenly they start exercising or suddenly start to diet or suddenly start to focus on those physical thing. And it's a guy. Can we say that it's there's a likelihood they might be experiencing some depression? Right. And so when we look at things like motivation for things, depression can be a pretty strong motivator. Right. For some people, for a lot of people, actually. Right. It's sort of that alarm bell that says something needs to change. But then there's some of the alarm bells not loud enough. It's almost like talking to someone else or being open about it, saying, hey, I'm depressed. But an older, older person says, I'm just going to go exercise. It's kind of suppressing it to where I'm not going to talk to somebody about it. And like you said, there's the excuse of, oh, I just wanted to exercise. I just felt like exercising today. Right. So there's nothing wrong with that. No, there's not. But what I'm saying is I wonder if I obviously have no expertise in this. But I think it's a mental thing where they're trained to say that on a questionnaire as well, because it's like, well, I don't want anybody to know that. I don't want to say that I do self-care or that I care or I go. And repost or read quotes on Facebook that make me feel better about myself and, you know, with any study, that's always a threat to the validity of whatever it is. Right. That's a it's a self-report. So you're getting you know, there's certain biases to that. Right. Which we understand. And I think that the hard part and this is where I think we're lacking with helping men is that it's not what this literally says. Right. So for men, 45 to 54, the two highest ones are self-care and social, social for you and me can look different for social from other people. Right. Social for some guys could be I'm going to go play golf. Right. That was what I needed. Right. And some guys social might be, hey, I'm feeling sort of down. Can we go get some good couple beers or have some coffee or whatever? A big place for social is a huge aspect to men's health is like a right. Right. Go into a meeting, you know, and I know, you know, there's been plenty of times where, you know, even for me, I've been in a situation where I thought I should probably go to a meeting and I don't want to. And I go and I'm ever so grateful that I did. Right. Even to the point where I've had people tell me before, if you ever feel like if you ever feel like you need to go to a meeting and you don't want to, you should go. Just to see what happens. And it's because it's two things. It's taking care of yourself and it's social. And I think the difference is, is that. So let's take my text to you yesterday as an example. Right. I could have sent that text two different ways. I could have said, hey, you want to go get tacos tomorrow. Right. And. For on your end, it's just like, hey, let's go get some tacos. Right. And that may or may not have been sort of. You know, you might have found a reason why I can't really do it tomorrow. I got other things because there might have been something you were going through or whichever was. Or I send it the way I sent it and sort of threw out like lobbed over this, like, you know, the world is on fucking fire and I'm tired of it. You want to go get tacos. Right. So it's almost a way of saying I was going through some shit. And I could use some. I could use some time with Alex. Right. And there's a whole nother link to that. Right. It's the I get to do something creative. I get to be around people that I highly admire because of the creative piece of it and the function of creating and just being authentic. Right. That that that's different than if I was to like send, say, you know, my brothers. Hey, you want to go hit golf balls or want to play golf tomorrow? Right. It's a different sort of a thing. Right. And so that's the two different ways it goes. And I think that I don't think that I'm unique in that. I mean, I think it's, you know, through all the training I have as a clinician and, you know, I try to practice what I what I preach. Right. That, you know, that's how you have good close relationships where you can do that. But it never would have been, hey, I'm you want to get going, you want to go get tacos. I'm really going through some shit. I'm not feeling real good. I'm kind of depressed. I hate working. I'm tired of owning the business that I did. You know, because then that just sounds like a wuss. I didn't want to write you back and say, yeah, that debate last night really put me down. And there's so much other things going on in the world. But when you wrote that, I was like, yeah, you pretty much summed up how I feel right now. And you said, want to grab some tacos? And I was just like, I'm just going to say yes. And that's it. The other part is I feel like everything we talk about could be a great podcast. Even when we sat down at breakfast, I was like, damn it, we don't have a microphone. So, yeah, it's it's kind of I can totally see that and I can see the. The difference that it made in me to to say yes right away, I think I think I would have thought about it. I probably would have left you hanging. I would have been thinking about my week and thinking about all pretty much what you just said. But you saying that and just ending it with you want to grab tacos? Yeah. But if you said you want to grab tacos and then said all of that. Right. It you wouldn't have looked like a wuss, but you might have turned me off from wanting to grab tacos. So I like the way you separated it. You you're you're formatting of it. Yeah, that's that's a good life lesson for anyone. Get out and. Yeah. Do something and hang out with their friends and do some creative. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I and it's it's not. It's vulnerable avoidant. I think that's completely fine. I think a lot of men get turned off by going to therapy because. They feel like they have to do something that makes them uncomfortable. And I totally appreciate that. Right. Even like when I have when I have men come to my therapy sessions and the first time I always tell them there's you know, what's going to happen is there's a few different things that could happen. Right. One is that you do this a couple of times you disappear. It's not for me. Right. The other is you do it for a few times and then once we start hitting on something that is difficult, you'll disappear. And the third one is you'll come and then you'll go for a few weeks and then life will get busy and you'll tell me you're going to call me back. You got to you got to hold off for a little bit. You'll come back and you'll never come again. So one of those three scenarios are going to happen. Right. And when we look at like outcomes, we think, OK, was that helpful at all? Right. And I think if any clinician sits down and thinks that everybody who's going to come to you is going to have a positive outcome is an idiot. Just straight up. Right. Because it's not for us to determine what works and what doesn't. It's up for the client to understand. And so, you know, for men that are coming in that I can tell they are reluctant to it. Right. That, you know, get what you get, whatever comes in, whatever happens in the room, just take it. Whatever works, whatever doesn't. And if it's something that comes up that is like that makes me uncomfortable, I don't really want to talk about that. Just say it. Right. And in a way, it's sort of like. And this is a terrible it's sort of like, don't be a pussy. Just tell me. Right. And it's. I'm the last one I want you to think you have to worry about hurting my feelings. So when you tell them those those three scenarios that are going to happen. Is there a sense of relief or are you affecting the outcome? Like, am I affecting it? So I've thought about that. And it's not that those are the only three. Right. I mean, I talk about like, you know, one of the things that we kind of focus on and there's and I probably should preface this with that. When people come to me, I ask them, what is your goal? You know, and they'll generally have sort of this very general sort of idea. Right. Or sometimes they're like, I'm going through a lot of stress. I'm in the middle of a divorce. I've got to go. You know, I'm trying to get healthy. I've got all these different things and I need to figure out how to manage the stress. OK, that's our goal. We're going to help you figure out how to manage your stress. If they come to me and they don't know what it is they want to focus on. I'll ask them a couple of different questions. And one of the questions I ask them is, how will you know therapy is working? And then how will you know when therapy is done? Right. And I don't ask them to answer those. But then I then talk about. Reasons why people stop going to therapy, especially men, and these are the reasons why. Right. So having so and the reason why I have that conversation is probably more important to understand that, too, is in the process is that we shouldn't be doing therapy if we don't have a goal in mind. Right. Because otherwise you're just going to somebody to talk. Right. And I don't know if that's really that's a support group. Right. That's like what you and I are doing. Right. I don't know if you want to spend the money to go, you know, just chit chat for a while. And and grant that might be my you know, that's the way I do therapy. Right. And I don't take insurance, so I'm not I don't want to waste your money. Right. I would love for you to come see me for two years straight, twice a week, you know, and make it easy on me. Right. But that's not ethical to do it that way. And so if if so, when we talk about coming to therapy, when I explain to them is that the first session is generally I'm going to get to know who you are a little bit because I know nothing about you and everything that I'm going to be able to help you with is based on what you tell me. Right. And the other is we're going to spend some time trying to figure out what it is you want to focus on. Right. And that's where if we can't figure that out, these are some of the scenarios that could pay out. Right. And it's not for me to sit down and go. I think you need to go to therapy because you've got X, Y and Z. Right. That's pathology. I don't really want to do that unless it's necessary. Right. Somebody comes in and they have suicidal ideation. We got to we got to deal with that. That's an immediate sort of thing we got to look at. But if it's I'm, you know, starting my career and I need some guidance on things and I'm trying to you know, I need to put some guardrails up around relationships, things like that. We can work on that. Right. That's a goal. And so, you know, it's sort of ironic because we are so into planning. Right. Like we always see these memes and all these things about, you know, the the vacation packaging Tetris. Right. The itinerary planning. Right. All the things that we do is sort of the the the patriarch in a family. It's like this planning structure kind of thing. Mom's do too. Right. I mean, that's not different, but we just get a lot of heat about it. Right. Being dads about, you know, all the things which I think is great. Right. And so I apply the same kind of process to therapy with men. Let's make a plan. Right. Because that's how a lot of them think. And that's what we want to do. And I think that the biggest fear, at least that I find, is that, you know, guys will come to therapy and they kind of don't know what to do. And so there you know, and it's it's accountability, too. And a lot of times those are the ones that are coming because maybe their girlfriend or their spouse or their partner said, you might want to go to therapy. Right. And so that's the goal. They come to therapy. They don't really say what it is that they're coming for. Right. Because of that fear of vulnerability or whichever. And then they go to therapy and then therapy doesn't work. Right. And as a therapist, you have to just be OK with that. Right. And where they will stop is generally when as a therapist, I can recognize after a few sessions, I recognize what it is that somebody else has maybe recommended you go into therapy for. And if I bring that up, they're gone. Right. And it goes back to that sort of like that accountability kind of thing. And that's not everybody. Right. But that whole dynamic is just not taught. It's something I've had to figure out. It's something I've had to reflect on myself when I'm working with men. And it's one of those things where, you know, there have been guys that come into therapy and after a few sessions, I just straight up say, have you thought about killing yourself? And hands down, next thing you know, we've got them in the right place with the right people to get the help they need, because that's the path they came through. And nobody's at one point in that entire process said, hey, you're going through some shit. You're probably thinking about some negative alternatives. Right. And I think that. That's the goal, right. When I sit down with somebody like that, that's what I want to happen. I don't want them to just come to me to figure it out. I want them to come to me and be able to say, here's where I need help. And I have to have the ethics to say I'm not the one that can do it, but we can get you the people who can. Right. And that's that's just being transparent. Right. But when I look at studies like this and I see where self-care and social are the ones that are more likely used for prevention. Right. That's how I inform my practice. Right. One of the first things that I talk about is how often do you exercise? How what kind of do you drink a lot of water? Right. You know, you're taking all your vitamins, all that kind of stuff. Right. And, you know, those are the things where I mean, you'd be surprised how many times I ask somebody how much water you drink a day. And like, well, I have a cup of coffee in the morning and I might, you know, I might drink about a glass of water throughout the day and that's it. And then they're drinking beer at night. Right. And to me, that's not healthy. Right. What is our brains like? Whatever. That's exactly what I do, though. Yeah. So do I. Well, I don't drink beer, but I drink a lot of coffee. I drink a ton of coffee. So where does sorry to jump jump back to the to the three scenarios that you present. I don't know if you watch The Sopranos, but where does Tony Soprano fall in that? Because there was a few seasons where he just didn't go to the doctor anymore. I don't know if they didn't want to pay her as an actress or he was cured and he was good or he one of those three scenarios. I know that's not therapy for per se. I guess it was therapy. But didn't he have sex with her? Oh, that's right. Yeah. This is sort of a they kind of tell you not to do that. That's sort of a is that is that the fourth scenario? I think that's called the 13th step in a. All right. So that's sort of probably more of the reason why he stopped going to therapy. Right. Which is a big no, no. We sort of frown on that. Yeah. Yeah. Totally different scenario. It all comes down to what they're comfortable with. Right. It is funny because you have to learn after a while. It's sort of like, you know, like in the creative industry, when somebody, you know, ghosts you or doesn't come back as another and you try to get them to come back, you start to wonder, is it something I did? Right. As a therapist, it's 100 percent something you did. Right. Whether it was that you didn't do enough or you didn't find the right way to do it. That's your job. Right now, I'm not saying that you are responsible for how they responded or what they did, but if everything on their end is. You know, straightforward and you're you're doing something that's causing them to not want to go back. Right. That's what's that's why we go to supervision is we figure that stuff out. But the problem is, is that we're not researching this stuff. We're not researching how our clinicians working with men. And what makes a clinician work better with men than others? Right. And it's you know, we're too focused on women just don't go to therapy. OK, why? Right. Why is it because we spend a lot of time, you know, saying how bad men are. Right. And we you know, if if if when I'm going to a therapist, it do I feel like I'm going to have like I'm going to get in trouble. Right. There's all these different things that can occur. That becomes reservations. I mean, I've been in situations where I've sat in therapy and I've thought there's probably something I need to talk about. I just don't want to talk about it. And it's not because I don't it's not important. It's because I probably know the answer of what I need to do. And I just don't want to hear somebody tell me exactly what I need to hear. Right. And that's just human nature. I think that's just the way it is. But I think in order to support and help men in mental health, we have to be better at understanding what it is that they need. And if therapy isn't it, then therapy isn't it. Right. But at least we can have therapists that know how to do therapy with men when those men decide they do want to go to therapy. Almost 95 percent of the people that call me that are men that want to go to therapy. One of the things they always say is, I've never done this before. I don't know how it works. Right. And so. That right there is, you know, that's where it's no longer about, I'm just going to get you on my schedule. Let's figure out if therapy is right for you. Right. And I think that's a misconception, too, is that people say go to therapy. They call a therapist and they think that there's no way out of that. No. When you call a therapist, you're trying to determine two things. Do I need therapy? And is this the right therapist? Have you ever been to therapy? Yeah. When you started, what did you think before you started it? What was your perception of what it would be like? I really wasn't sure what I was getting into. I thought maybe it was just going to be fluff, like just. They're going to hear me out and they're going to tell me it's OK. Right. And then they're going to tell me what I should do. I was afraid of being vulnerable and talking about things that I just didn't feel like talking about. And like you said, hearing the answers like go to the doctor and say, I don't feel good. And she says exercise. And you're like, oh, man, I guess I got to go do that. You know, right. I just picked somebody that was close. Right. I didn't really look into anything else besides that. But as I'm hearing more from you, I mean. A male, a male therapist, which at the time, like you said, there's not many. There's not many choices out there. And the ones that I did find were heavy on religion. And that's the last thing I want to do is jump into something where somebody is going to tell me. Yeah. Just like in the study. Yeah. You got to have faith and you know, you got to pray to God every day. And it's like just not my thing. Right. I don't want to hear that. Yeah. That's the reason why I don't go to church. You know, it's like I don't I don't want to be told what to do or what to think. And I kind of relate it to church in a way. And that's you know, and that's the big part, knowing that. You know, therapy is going to work as well as you're as more as you're willing to work at it. Right. And. Part of that work is finding the right therapist. Right. And so when I when I talk to men, when they call that, you know, I make it really clear that I may not be the person you need. Right. And there's been plenty of times I've been talking to them and go through a few things and tell them, I don't think you need therapy. Right. It is, you know, even if it's like I still can't figure out what it is I want to do or what it is I need to focus on. Well, maybe therapy is not where you do it. Right. And. The other thing is just another misconception is that people don't think that I'm going to go to therapy for a certain amount of time and I'm going to stop. They think once I turn on the therapy thing, it's like my primary care physician, I'm going to see this guy until I'm in the ground. That's exactly the way I saw it. And that's not the way it is. It never should be. If I see a client for more than a year to a year and a half and we haven't progressed or at least change what our focus is, then we're not doing the work. That's my fault. Right. And so, you know, it's you know, it's like getting under the hood and trying to figure out what's wrong. You know, I'm not going to keep wrenching on the same problem. I'm going to figure out what else might be there. Right. And if I don't know what it is that or how to do it, I'm going to go to somebody who does. Right. And it's not really any different. And, you know, there's a lot of bad therapists. There's a lot of great therapists. But it's part of that education of how we do it. Right. We just don't teach. And my experience is my is the teaching through social work as a clinical social worker. And how much we rely on our clinical supervision to get what we need, because you don't get it in the education piece of it. You get a little dabble of it here and there. And even today, they're starting to lean more on looking at candidates that have life experience. So like if if like you grew up and you had no problems and your family is all perfect and everything's wonderful and you just decided, I want to be helpful, I want to help people and go be a social worker. They're not looking for that candidate. They want the candidate that, you know, I was abused as a kid and I had a heroin addiction. And now I want to help people that have gone through the same thing. That's what they want. Right. Because that develops empathy and things like that. And that's understandable because they can't teach how to how to have empathy. And they can't teach how you do certain things in therapy if you've never experienced it. Right. I don't like, you know, there are certain things that I don't particularly work with because I just don't have experience with it. Right. And I think you would be better off finding a therapist who has and that does specialize in that because that's what you need. Right. You might really like me and I appreciate that, but it's not going to help you with what you need to get done. Right. And so, you know, those are all those are all social aspects to, you know, work. I mean, in a way, when you go to therapy, you're creating a new relationship with somebody. Right. And, you know, even though you're paying for it. Right. That there is still a point that it has to be, you know, there's that there's that goal of healing in mind. Right. And if have, you know, having you sit in my office and I say, well, you know, why don't you do a daily journal to talk about your gratitudes and feelings? And maybe, you know, put a little notes down about what you plan for the next day. Right. If somebody told me to do that, I'm not doing it. Right. But if somebody said, hey, what would really be helpful is if at the end of the day you made a plan for what you're going to do the next day that either. Expands on what you did well or modifies what maybe didn't work out as well. And make that plan for the day and then review that at the end of the day. You know, that's. That's a different way of thinking about it. Right. It's not journaling. Right. It's action planning. Right. Or it's project planning. Right. I always say, you know, you know, people come in and they really know their business, but they don't know the business of themselves. And so, you know, if it helps you to run your your therapy as a business of yourself, then let's do it that way. Right. But we don't we don't teach how to do that. We don't study those different ways of considering it. Right. Like even if you had a survey, let's say you had a survey. So we're going to cut this out because this might be something I do. I don't want anybody else to do it. But let's say you had just a simple survey for men. Which would you prefer? And you have like a paragraph about how to journal or a paragraph of how to an action plan. Right. Which one would you prefer? I guarantee you. More men would go with an action plan than they would with journaling. Right. Because when I think of journaling, I'm thinking of like a soft, cushy notepad. Right. When I'm thinking of action plan, I'm thinking Excel. Right. Yeah, I feel I feel like thinking back to therapy, I don't I didn't really have I didn't know exactly why I wanted a therapist. I knew that I was, you know, depressed about the past and worried about the future anxiety. But I couldn't pinpoint any of it. I didn't know where where it was. I just needed somebody to talk to. And, you know, I was recommended to go see a therapist. Well, the disconnect for me was what exactly why do I need to see a therapist? And it felt like journaling, like what you're saying right now, it felt like. I don't know, it just I didn't really understand exactly what I was going into and why I was doing it. I think I got more frustrated with the process of getting to the entire process from accepting that, OK, I need to talk to somebody. And all the way up to talking to somebody, there was so much anxiety about that, just navigating that, not realizing, oh, you can pay out of your own pocket or, you know, I don't have to pick just from this insurance, my insurance provider or that that whole just trying to narrow down. Yeah. Who I would want to go to. Right. Like everything up to getting to the actual first session. I think that's the part that there's a big, big unknown right there. And then the reason to be there just just to do it. And then, like you said. It's like a PCP, you think, OK, cool, I found this person and this is who I'm you know, I'm paying this person to be my best friend or, you know, for an hour. Not not understanding the truth, the full reasoning for it, the outcome, thinking ahead is a lot like it's just it's just one of those. I feel just as normal layman. I don't I didn't understand it. I really didn't know. I just knew that I should. Yeah. And that was it. I didn't have a guide. I didn't have a podcast like this to listen to, to understand why or the reasoning or what I would get out of it. Right. Or even knowing that men were, you know, in the percentage, you know, of not not seeing anybody and then also that there were less men doing it available. Yeah. Yeah. So all of that, like all of it put together. I mean, I just feel like there's so much unknown. Yeah. Before you even get into that chair. Absolutely. And, you know, when we talk about knowing why you're coming to therapy or deciding on what how you know it's going to work, those are generally questions that we really sort of hammer out the first few sessions. Right. And, you know, I think the harder question is, how do you know it works? Right. Which is the same thing as finding a goal, because it's really sort of like what is it's going to be different in your life. Right. In one of the one of the modalities that we use, I don't typically do it, but it solutions focused therapy, a short term solutions focused therapy. Well, it's short term anyways, but anyways, they have this sort of magic wand question that, you know, if let's say you wake up and everything has been corrected. Right. All the things that are bothering you are no longer bothering you. How would you know the moment you woke up? Right. And if it was like, let's say, for example, you're in severe pain while I wake up, I'm in pain. Did pain causes depression? That's crazy. You know, I mean, I wake up and it sounds like somebody's, you know, snapping the little, you know, the bubble things in the. One of the common questions I get in my house is, was that your shoulder? Right. And, you know, there's one of those things. Right. Pain management, pain management is a huge thing with therapy. Right. But there's other aspects, too. Right. I mean, it could be I wake up and I have food for my kids. Right. Or I wake up and I don't have the stress that I don't want to go to job my job tomorrow or, you know, there's different things to it. And I think that's where we look at in the beginning of therapy. That's what we're trying to figure out. How do you know it's going to work? Right. Not saying that we got to be Pelliana about it. And, you know, everything's going to be wonderful and you're not going to have bad days. That's not the case. But something has brought somebody to come to the point where they need to get therapy, whether it was somebody pushed them to do it. Sometimes it's because it's required by law. Right. And sometimes it's just because we have this gut feeling that I need to talk to somebody. That doesn't mean that you're going to have to talk to them every week for the next three years. Like, you know, you're a soprano and I'm not going to have sex with you. So now your brother. Yeah. But, yeah, we we we're not doing enough and it's not a oh, we're not doing enough. It's it's we need to we really need to think about that differently. Right. And it's. It's I think we're going to see it more, you know, we see it more prevalent today that, you know, just in general, the world is is feels like it's on fire. Right. And the uncertainty and you all we get, you know, how we feel is so incongruent from what we see on social media. The world is doing great and I'm not right. The world is making money and I'm not right. And we see all these things and it's we're fooling ourselves there. And one of those has to give. Right. And unfortunately, the side that gives is the side that's watching, not the side that's creating. Right. And so, you know, even there, even if we were to have like a tick tock page and we talked about this stuff, it's not what people would necessarily want to see. Well, the algorithm is not going to. Right. Not going to put that. Right. Because it's helpful. Yeah. Right. And that's the sad part to it. But I think that, you know, even like doing like this, you know, it's I mean, I've sat there and listened to all these different podcasts, you know, specifically on men's issues and those things. And some of them were just like, dude, you seem slimy. Like you probably I just I can I don't want to say what I imagine this person looks like, because I think that's terrible to think that way. But also, just in case one of our three listeners, you know, looks like that. But, you know, I would much rather I would much rather see people, specifically men, try therapy, know that it doesn't work for them. And then by all means, let the therapist know. Right. Because if that's the problem, we say men don't go to therapy and when they go to therapy, they leave. We don't know why they left therapy. Right. So we fill in the gaps and filling in the gaps just keeps killing men. Right. And that's what we need to figure out. And so, you know, if people come to me and they stop coming, you know, I always tell them, you know, if anything, so that I can help another guy, just let me know what didn't work or what it wasn't. You know, I don't I'm not going to take it personally, but it might help the next dude that calls me and wants to come into therapy. Right. And that's important. Right. And so having that outlet, you know, even if it's I'm going to go, I mean, you know, if somebody comes to therapy and they go two or three times and they realize, oh, maybe now is not the time. At least they have like a baseline to go off of. Right. Opposed to I was made to go to couples counseling. I had to go to this other therapist and it was all of this sort of, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it just was a lot of work. It was expensive and it was it was uncomfortable. All those things. When you need therapy yourself, you're probably not going to go to therapy. Yeah. Right. And so. That's the way we have to think about it. Yeah. But I'm glad we got to talk today. Yeah, me too. The tacos were pretty good. Well, not the tacos, the machacado, the machacado, the mexicana, the mexicana. Yeah. With lots of bell pepper. So many bell peppers in that. Yeah. At first I was like, oh, those serranos. And I was like, oh, it's going to be spicy as hell. And it wasn't. It was all bell peppers. Yeah. I'm not a huge bell pepper fan, but. I like refried beans. I like those those potatoes were. Yeah. Pretty good. Yeah. Those are pretty good. I'm going to have to get the chorizo compas next time. Yeah. Or the enfrijoladas. Enfrijoladas. Yeah. Enfrijoladas. I couldn't figure out what the bean sauce was. It's probably just refried beans. Just pour it on top. Well, you know, that dip they had was almost like bean sauce, like the like the water from beans. Oh, almost. And I was wondering if that was it. I don't usually try the red sauce. I'm more of a green sauce. What was the name of that place? Dichos. Dichos. Yeah. What street is it on? We got to plug them. Yeah. No. Wayside. Wayside and near Polk Street. Or it's on. Yeah, it's Polk and Wayside. OK. Yeah. And Houston. In Houston, Texas. Texas. East End. East End. East End. Go East End. Yeah. And there's also a meat market and a wig store. A wig store. Human hair wig store. Human hair. Yeah. Factory. And there's also a dialysis center. Behind it. Yeah. Next to the thrift store. Next to the thrift store. Yeah. Plenty of parking. Everything's there. Yeah. Plenty of parking. Everything's there. But this was good. Yeah. I enjoyed our conversation. We'll have to figure out what we're going to talk about next time. I'm sure we can figure that out. Maybe we could just send an email to the two or three people that are listening to it and ask them what they want to hear us chat about. Yeah. I like it. We can just submit the transcript in the chat GPT and ask it to recommend what we talk about next. And it'll come back and say nothing. Nothing. You two are absolute idiots. Please stop. Yeah. Please don't put this into the world. Thanks for listening Dingus.