The Hidden Pattern Behind Life's Biggest Challenges Revealed with Dr Alan Weisser

What if the pain you feel is more than just physical? Join us as we explore this profound question with Dr. Alan Weiser, who shares his transformative journey from injury to empowerment. Dr. Weiser's compelling narrative guides us through the terrain of chronic pain, loneliness, and the challenges of modern masculinity. His personal experiences and insights promise to educate and inspire listeners to embark on their own path of resilience and self-discovery.

Our conversation delves into the complexities of chronic pain management, moving beyond traditional methods to reveal a holistic approach that encompasses existential, emotional, and psychological dimensions. We expose the often-overlooked collateral damages of chronic pain—how it disrupts life continuity, alters perceptions, and impacts mental well-being. By redefining depression and anxiety as coping mechanisms, we highlight the potential for personal growth even amidst adversity, encouraging listeners to utilize these emotions constructively.

In the final segments, we highlight innovative healing approaches and each individual's empowering potential. Through New Options, Inc.'s resources and the concept of mastering awareness, we underscore the importance of embracing emotions like anxiety and anger as forces for personal transformation. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to participate actively in forging their destinies, inviting them to join the Awakened Man brotherhood and take steps towards a fulfilling life.

Key moments:
06:12 The Psychological Impact of Chronic Pain
18:31 The Existential Immune System
24:26 Understanding the Existential Immune System
25:20 The Functional Purpose of Anxiety and Anger
27:12 Harnessing Emotions for Recovery
31:14 Depression as a Coping Mechanism
34:00 Expanding the Model: Tools for Empowerment

How to reach Dr Weisser:
🕸: http://newoptionsinc.com/
📖: New Possibilities: Unravelling the Mystery and Mastering Chronic Pain

Chapters

• 0:00 Overcoming Adversity and Chronic Pain
• 3:57 Resilience Through Meaning Making
• 12:32 Chronic Pain Management and Collateral Damage
• 17:05 Transformative Cognitive Therapy for Chronic Pain
• 30:48 Mastery Through Awareness and Empowerment
• 38:11 Expanding Approach to Chronic Healing
• 46:30 Forging a New Destiny

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Today, we're going to dive deep into the human experience of overcoming adversity, understanding chronic pain and unlocking infinite potential. So just imagine breaking your neck at the age of 12 and being told you'd be crippled for life. That physical pain, the emotional turmoil and the existential crisis that follows such an ordeal is truly unmanageable. Yet through resilience and the relentless pursuit of self-discovery, one can transcend these negative realities and emerge even stronger. And so today, we're going to explore how mastering chronic pain involves not just addressing the physical symptoms, but also delving into the emotional and psychological impacts. And so this episode is going to challenge you to think about your own potential and the power of the existential immune system.

Speaker 1: 0:46

I can't wait to unpack that part and how we move from merely surviving to truly thriving. And before we get into that, we know that today, being a man has never been more challenging. And so the pain we feel for many of us is real, and it's a pain of loneliness and it's a pain of unworthiness, and it's masked by our anger and our resentment. It's all because we're uncertain and afraid to take that next step. So if you're tired and fed up with where your life's at, I'm going to encourage you to start your hero's quest. It's where you can become more, accomplish more and live more than ever before. Just go to memberstheawakenedmannet and start your quest today and with that let's get on with today's episode.

Speaker 2: 1:31

The average man today is sleepwalking through life, many never reaching their true potential, let alone ever crossing the finish line to living a purposeful life. Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his cluttered mind, misguided beliefs and values that no longer serve him. It's time to align yourself for greatness.

Speaker 1: 2:00

It's time to become a revolutionary man. Stay strong, my brother. Welcome everyone to the Revolutionary man Podcast. I'm the founder of the Awakened man Movement and your host, alan DeMonso. Allow me to ask you a couple of questions. How do you currently cope with life's challenges? And, as you think about that, what steps could you take to transform your struggles into opportunities for growth and self-discovery? And the next question I have for you is I want you to reflect on a time when you faced significant adversity. What did you learn about yourself, and how can those lessons help you unlock your infinite potential?

Speaker 1: 2:34

Inevitably, all of us will face adversity in our lives, and so our recovery determines the rules and the meanings we make about life. And now, for a while, these rules may be and meanings may serve us, until they no longer do, and especially if our adversity is something that we deal with daily, like chronic pain. And so today, my guest shares with us his journey of chronic pain and how he has guided others from pain to purpose. So allow me to introduce my guest. Dr Alan Weiser is a PhD and his group at New Options Inc is a pain management practice, and they have an extensive background in working with the psychological problems people will face when living with complex and chronic pain problems, and his online courses have served everyone from physicians to labor forces and industries, washington State and the National Association of Spine Specialists, just to name a few.

Speaker 3: 3:31

Welcome to the show, Alan. How are things today, my friend?

Speaker 1: 3:37

I was really excited about reading your story and hearing about your journey, and so, as we started with all my guests, my opening question is for you to be able to share a little bit about your hero's quest. So tell us about that time in your life when you knew things weren't great, what did you do about it and how did that experience?

Speaker 3: 3:52

shape you into the man you are today? Great question. This particular journey started when I was 12 1⁄2, and I broke my neck. And just a quick rundown on how that happened. I was, like a lot of people, a headstrong kid. I like to figure things out for myself, so I go. I want to learn how to do trick diving, so I'll just figure it out. Did you know when you do a backflip on a diving board, you're supposed to dive out from the board, not straight up? I found out the hard way, so I came down on the board, broke my neck in two places. So this is a long time ago.

Speaker 3: 4:29

And picture the situation. I'm taken to the hospital. I know my neck is broken. I'm in a cast right. The doctor finally comes into the hospital room, looks at me and he goes. Literally if you don't die and you're not paralyzed, you will be crippled for the rest of your life. Right? I'm 12 and a half. I'm a person accustomed to pushing the limits on things and I'm being told that I'm going to be crippled for the rest of my life.

Speaker 1: 5:01

You can imagine right. And it caused tremendous damage. What would have been the challenge?

Speaker 3: 5:07

The, the actual recovery was even worse.

Speaker 3: 5:08

Yeah, what would have been the first one, the first challenge was actually the physical recovery, because they wanted to keep me in the hospital for months and I hated being there. It was scary and disturbing and I was there for a month and I threw food around, made a big mess, made a lot of noise, right. So they had to send me home. They sent me home and then I spent literally a year on my back in a bed, not allowed to sit up, get up or move around. A year, right, I spent that year making sure that nobody knew how frightened I was. I didn't even admit it to myself, so if you talked to me I would have been cracking jokes, but I was severely damaged by it in a lot of ways. And then, when I was finally able to take the brace off and start to try and walk, it took me months to be able to walk because I wasn't paralyzed, but I was so atrophied that actually the pain of trying to use my legs again was worse than the broken neck.

Speaker 3: 6:10

And then, of course, there was can I do this or that, or am I going to my head, going to fall off? Right, because they told me I was fragile. Picture hearing you're fragile at 12 and a half, right? So because of that I almost failed high school. I've got PhDs, I'm both an attorney and a psychologist, but I almost flunked out and I would have told you I was stupid. And then no sports, nothing particularly physical. My confidence was shattered. I didn't even know how badly. If you'd asked me in high school why I was failing, I would have said I was stupid. What I hadn't remembered for years, until later, was that when I heard from the doctor, I thought to myself stupid, look what you did.

Speaker 3: 6:54

So when people don't understand that injuries have more meaning than a purely physical impact, this is a classic example of why that's so important. Because nobody asked me what it meant to me to get hurt. They didn't ask me how I was experiencing it, how I interpret that, how I reacted to it. Nobody, none of my providers, none of my family, none of my friends, nobody asked. That was part of the problem. So by the time I got to college, being who I am, I go, you know what? Screw this. If I'm going to go down, it's going. Am I go you know what? Screw this. If I'm going to go down, it's going to be on my terms. That's just my character. So what do you think I did to challenge what the doctors told me, I signed up for judo and trampoline.

Speaker 1: 7:39

I still remember that.

Speaker 3: 7:40

Yeah, you can appreciate this, alan. I still remember that first throw, as I'm flying through the air, knowing I'm going to crash into the ground and thinking I'm either dead or maybe not. And I didn't regret the choice. And then, of course, hit the ground. I was fine. I've been in the martial arts over 50 years. I don't have a problem with my neck Never did. But here's the irony later, many years later, I see a chiropractor. He does some x-rays in my neck for the first time in years and tells me he's looking at something he's never seen before. He said you appear to have had a perfect natural fusion and that's why you never had a problem. Now, is that spending a year in bed? Was that my attitude towards recovery, which was consistent? I'm recovering, I don't know. But that certainly sensitized me to the kind of damage done by having this happen.

Speaker 1: 8:30

That's more than the purely physical yeah, you know what, when I was reading your story and and preparing for this, that, what really hit me and that and that's why I talked a little bit about in the intro it's really about the meaning we can put around this and this stuff, and it's obvious to me in hearing what you're saying is that you needed to change that meaning. And the other part that I thought was really powerful and how often and let's talk a little bit, unpack a little bit about this in your work as well is how much we hide the true feeling of what's happening. You talked about being so afraid, yet you're sitting there cracking jokes. So talk a little bit about that and how that really how you're seeing that transform other people, especially in the focus of a lot of your work.

Speaker 3: 9:21

It's partially a male thing, right, it's only a scratch. You don't show your feelings, you don't show the vulnerability. I was from a family dynamic that supported that way of operating, so I focused on being stoic and just getting through it. But the damage, as I said, resonated throughout my entire life and eventually informed this work. So I certainly had the personal experience and I've had other experiences in life that put me in touch with this that you got to understand that humans are meaning making creatures. Most people don't seem to get that. It's not about what happens, it's about what it means to you. You could tell me you lost your job and I'd have some general notion of what that might mean. But maybe you're a guy who doesn't care about working or maybe you're a person that defines themselves by what they do Totally different meaning, right, different impact. So that's always been sort of at the centerpiece and that carried through to my work as an attorney and then as a psychologist, especially when I was doing my internship.

Speaker 3: 10:24

I worked in a state mental hospital in New York for 10 years and, working with the chronically mentally ill, I very quickly came to understand that you don't treat the disease, you treat the person's life, because there's nothing about the life of a chronic mental patient that hasn't been damaged by their mental illness. So the sort of the structure for that, the foundation for that, actually started in that work. I wasn't working with people with chronic pain at that point in time, but I began to see if I focused on helping to restore life, then these people would do so much better, as opposed to focusing on curing them of their psychoses, which wasn't likely to begin with. And this is a really important point, because my approach to this, our approach to this, is not just about chronic pain. It's about any suffering.

Speaker 3: 11:14

I had to use that word for the book but, frankly, when we talk a bit more about the existential immune system, it's about any kind of suffering and any kind of existential threat and, as you and I both know, being alive is dangerous. There's any kind of suffering and any kind of existential threat and, as you and I both know, being alive is dangerous. There's any number of things that can happen to people that they are not prepared for. So that's the structure and the background for what led me eventually to working with people with chronic pain and then how that evolved into what I currently do into what I currently do.

Speaker 1: 11:50

Well, I just love that, especially with your background and then the two PhDs and really seeing life from two different perspectives but yet underlying of them. I would suspect things were very similar to what you were finding with people and how we're dealing stuff, especially the idea of the meaning making machines is really what we are with our life. And so tell me a little bit about what some of the collateral damage that people are facing with chronic pain. You already touched on a little bit about the psychological aspect, but let's build on that.

Speaker 3: 12:19

And yeah, let me put it up front, I'm incredibly grateful to my patients. They've been great teachers. And I started almost by accident. I took a job as a psychologist in a pain management clinic because I was done with community mental health for a lot of reasons. I realized that, even though I could do something that other people weren't doing and I know what that sounds like but even in that venue I developed an innovative approach to helping people who are chronically mentally ill, but the system was so broken I spent 10 years in that hospital trying to get it done and it was a running battle but I couldn't hope to win the war. So I go. I'm done with that. I wasn't sure really what I wanted to do. I like working in larger environments with teams. Somebody suggested I take this job at a pain management clinic. I like working in larger environments with teams. Somebody suggested I take this job at a pain management clinic. Knew nothing about pain management, but I did know about chronic conditions and these were chronically pain patients, right. So I sit down with these patients and the clinical director shows me the model for treating these patients cognitive behavioral therapy and I quickly realized this is a two dimensional top-down approach that's not looking at what's happening to a person. There's up to 200 potential collateral damages.

Speaker 3: 13:34

When you have chronic pain, it affects you on a physical level, for example, sleep disruption, loss of physical conditioning, physical deactivation, excessive downtime, guarding and protecting. If you look at my book, there's a whole section on all the different physical impacts and what people don't know and doctors are not telling them. Did you know that sleep disruption all by itself can increase your pain by 50%? And not only that, but it undermines your immune system, because that's when you usually reboot and if your sleep is disrupted, your immune system is not rebooting. Who's telling anybody that? Who even understands it? Physical deconditioning, physical deactivation add another 20 or 30 percent. A patient will tell me I sat with a doctor. They asked me to do that. Zero to 10 pain rating. I tell them it's an eight. They say, looking at your studies, it should be a four. What the doctors don't say and don't get me wrong, I'm not being critical, but it is their model they don't say if you're sleep disruption, you're physical deconditioning, this and that it could be an eight. What they say is shouldn't be an eight. And then the patient's going. They don't know what's wrong with me and the doctor's thinking patient's exaggerating Right, it's criminal, alan. Criminal, this lack of understanding. And so, if you think about it, the physical problems may be limited in how much you can be cured.

Speaker 3: 14:58

The damage done to you existentially, emotionally and psychologically is wide open in terms of the potential for not just cure but personal evolution, and we all know this. Look, we know that people overcome the impossible. We're inspired by. What people don't seem to get is every single one of us is a mean, lean evolutionary machine. We are designed to adapt, to survive and to thrive, and if people don't get that, there's no limit to that potential. They're missing out on what nature gave them, because life is dangerous. We're the product of millions of years of evolution and we haven't figured out. If you and I were designing an app, there was some technology and we had millions of years to do it just how good would that be? And yet we walk around thinking we're powerless, we're helpless. There's no such thing. What there is a profound lack of awareness of what we really are, so collateral damage is.

Speaker 1: 15:55

That makes complete sense to me.

Speaker 3: 15:57

Just to put it in the intake packet. I do start it at five pages.

Speaker 3: 16:00

Now it's 65 pages Because it upfront assesses the collateral damage and this collateral damage physically there's many impacts on you personally and then treatment itself creates all kinds of damage for lots of reasons. And if you look at the book there's extensive sections that break that all down for you. But there's things in the personal impact that aren't intuitive to most people. For example, how important do you think is that sense of continuity we have about our lives, that sense of predictability that we have in our lives? That's existential and people don't get it. If you have chronic pain, life becomes discontinuous and unpredictable and if you don't adjust to that, it becomes, becomes damaging, and most of my patients get up every day thinking they can do everything they used to do and not recognizing I can't right. So these collateral damages, if they're not surfaced, if they're not treated, they become a part of the problem and the medical community, out of those 200 treats maybe 10% or even puts it forward.

Speaker 3: 17:05

And the irony is the doctors I work with they love what I do, they endorse the model. If you look at my book you'll see some pretty big names attached to approving the book. And here's the thing you'll find interesting. So I've asked them like okay, you endorse my model, you brought me to major presentations. Why aren't you incorporating a lot of this into your practice? You know what the answer was you're the specialist. No, they say you're, they don't have time.

Speaker 1: 17:36

So but that's the point, that the collateral damages is where you find the greatest power to make changes that makes so much sense to me and what I really appreciate with what you're saying and how you started this collateral damage assessment with really only five pages and then it's been expanding but you're incorporating other aspects of life. So it's very similar to some of the work that we do here is. I ask guys, when they come in to do work with us, is to take this integrity challenge and really it pokes at them to look at all different aspects. So it's physical, emotional, mental, financial, spiritual and professional, and when they start to look at that, they recognize that they're really out of alignment in how they're living their life. And that's what I really appreciate about your work is you're looking at it.

Speaker 1: 18:27

It's not just the physical pain aspect of it and the piece about continuity. I had not considered that before and when you said that, a light went off in my mind and said, absolutely, because then you talked about how your customers, your patients, want or thinking they can do everything they did before and they can't. And so it's about getting them, just much like yourself, getting them from where they are today to what the new reality will be and it may never be what it was before, but it's a new reality and to get them into that continuity of life, for them to help move through that. So I really appreciate that framework, that you're using.

Speaker 3: 19:04

I bet you'd like to get to the existential immune system.

Speaker 3: 19:10

Yeah we should get into that right away. Yeah, toss, a little bit of that. There's a second book in the works that takes that on directly. If you looked at the book, there is information in there about it, but not in depth At the risk of sounding arrogant or hubris, whatever.

Speaker 3: 19:26

This approach, which has been tested across 2,500 patients for 20 years so that I know that it works it's all anecdotal, but it works is revolutionary. It's profound and I love all of the various people involved in self-help. I study them all, I watch them, I listen and they've all got approaches that work. I would argue this approach is one of the most efficient, effective approaches and I am classically trained. I know all the different models in therapy and this form of therapy is new. I would call it cognitive existential, but that doesn't really capture the feeling of it. But it does involve cognitive techniques, but it's addressing the existential issues.

Speaker 3: 20:09

So what I came to discover? Because in the beginning I'm going like how in the world do I think I can help people with that kind of physical suffering. I was basically going what do I think I can do? But I remember the lessons I learned and here's the interesting part I didn't know about what emotions are really about or what our toolkit was until I started working with these patients and going. What am I going to do with this? Because I didn't believe that traditional therapy could get too deep or help people that much, and traditionally it doesn't. I work with a lot of people who work with other therapists and it only took them so far. What they need is something transformative. Right, we're not a one-trick pony, right and I?

Speaker 3: 20:50

People need to understand that when you can't be who you were in the moment, so what? Who can you be? I get up every morning and I don't go. Who was I yesterday? I go. What have I got going today? And what can I do to make that into what I like? I don't get hung up on it, but patients with chronic pain do they go. I can't get over the idea that I'm no longer what I was and I go. You didn't change who you are spiritually. You didn't change who you are existentially. You have attributes that are affected by this, but there's backup systems. There's other ways of dealing with this, but the basic bottom line is how you cope with that. Right, and people don't get it.

Speaker 3: 21:33

Covid is a good lesson in people's inability to cope. People think they know what it's like to have that happen cancer, heart attacks, all kinds of tragedy. Right, they're not ready for it and they may have done fine with their coping system, but when they run into chronic pain, it is a life-altering event. It's never the same, any more than I was the same after I was introduced to mortality at 12 and a half. Right, but my attitude is what you've been saying. It is all right. What can I do with this? Here's an opportunity here If I can take the suffering and turn it into something transformative. Look what happens. Right, and I've seen this happen across the board. What's stunning to me is how powerful it can be, no matter how serious the problems are.

Speaker 3: 22:15

I could say lots of stories about people. Quick story, that's one of, I think, the more informative. I had a patient who's a doctor who had a nerve damage in her lower back based on a botched surgery, who came to see me and said in the first session I'm going to kill myself in six months, as soon as my kids graduate, and very in her head and locked in and I go. She's going to do it. So I didn't get hung up on that. What do you think I said to her in the first session. I said to her I get, I respect how you feel. I'm not sure I understand the choice you're making. She knew, as a doctor, that she was going to have unending extreme pain, worst of it, major nerve damage. I go, let's just talk about maybe making it more comfortable for you until you get to that moment. She goes okay. Three months after doing the work, she came in one day and she said I don't have any less pain than I used to. Months after doing the work, she came in one day and she said I don't have any less pain than I used to, but I don't feel the same way about it and maybe I won't kill myself. So here's the great irony she didn't.

Speaker 3: 23:18

And about a year and a half into working we got back into what happened medically, which I do with patients. We explore what happened, the diagnosis, the treatment outcomes, what happens. We found out that the reason she had that problem wasn't because she had permanent damage. They had left some materials in her body that nobody knew about that were causing the damage. She had surgery remove it. She was cured. If I hadn't put a stop to what she was doing, she would be dead and not all my patients are going to kill themselves. But, frankly, a lot of my patients bind to being permanently disabled and it's not needed. It's not true, but most approaches don't give them the opportunity to get the time and the opportunity to figure out how to make that work.

Speaker 1: 24:08

That's true, and I think what you're really touching on is really about meeting them where they're at, and I think that's powerful, because when we get a chance to do that, then it's maybe the first time that they've had somebody yeah, who's in who's new interlight? That doesn't have any, there's no strings attached, right, there's no ulterior motive, and then they get up to adhere to collateral damages and functioning coping system.

Speaker 3: 24:35

That changes everything. And what I say to patients is I don't think about your problems as being mental illness, I don't like the concept, I don't think it's useful. I tell them it's an operating system problem. Right, you have an operating system designed to cope and keep you safe and get your needs met, which has now been challenged and maybe even dysfunctional in this new life that you're in. Let's take a look at that operating system. And that led to the existential immune system. Because what do you think? The basic tools of the existential immune system are the ones that have evolved over millions of years.

Speaker 1: 25:09

It's got to be our emotions and how we manage that.

Speaker 3: 25:13

Right, because all human experience is translated into thoughts and feelings. Right, we basically like a car mechanic, we do a systems check and we look to see whether their thinking is based on the truth and objectivity or it's being biased by judgmental thinking, assumptions, rationalizations, magical thinking, you name it right. If that mechanism is damaged because you're caught up in that, and a lot of people are, we have to work on repairing that and recreating the way you operate in the thinking process. But more important to that is understanding that emotions are not just an experience, they are actually tools. So did you know that anxiety and anger, which are completely prevalent in any of these conditions, are actually the most powerful tools in your entire toolkit? Most people don't know that. They don't know that anxiety and anger have a functional purpose. Do you know what the function of anxiety is? Anxiety?

Speaker 2: 26:15

is a fire alarm.

Speaker 3: 26:17

You'll never experience any level of anxiety unless your needs are being threatened. It's part of the design. Can you think of any machine that doesn't have a fail safe? That warns you when there's a violation? That's what anxiety is. You want to move away from it, you want to avoid it. You're going in the wrong direction.

Speaker 3: 26:35

I get why people avoid dealing with things that they're afraid of. But that's the power. You go. Okay, it's a threat to my ability to provide my threat to my self-esteem, a threat to my relationships. There can be a lot of threats, right, and then so the anxiety puts you on notice. You got a problem right. So when you're feeling anxious, don't say why am I anxious. Ask yourself what needs are being threatened. That is a game changer for people. And then anger. And why do people think anxiety is weakness and shameful? Do you know why? They think that? I'm not trying to put you on the spot, alan. I'm just trying to get that question for the audience, because when that fire alarm goes off, I'm going oh my God, fire, right. I am momentarily weakened by a reaction to the emotion, not the emotion. That's how that bias develops that people didn't recognize.

Speaker 3: 27:26

The anxiety is just a tool, and it's a tool that requires you pay attention. I went into a lion in the jungle. My anxiety goes. You could die. Okay, so then. But I need power to take action. I need something even more powerful than anxiety to help me address the threat and hopefully reduce or eliminate it. Anger Right. Emotions are a form of energy. They're analogous to the forces in nature. You can see them on an MRI. If you learn how to channel lightning, what do you get? You get electricity right. You learn how to channel anxiety and anger you get recovery.

Speaker 1: 28:04

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 28:04

And people don't know that. But as soon as they get that idea that these emotions have powerful functional purpose and look at that to see whether that's working, a lot of my patients are typical in this society. They stuff those emotions, they repress them, they suppress them. So the existential immune system demands that you clean your act up, that you look at the non-user friendly features in that system and you evolve. You're not broken, you don't need to be fixed. From my point of view, it's more about efficiency and there's something called the survival triad which is mentioned in the book Right. That actually takes those emotions and shows you how to actually use them and work it. And I can tell you people will come through the door with something they're anxious about, something important that they spend days or weeks obsessing about, worrying about trying to deal with. In 15 minutes and five or six questions they're done. That's how powerful this is.

Speaker 3: 28:59

As far as thinking is concerned, that's not uncommon. People in all kinds of therapies know about self-judgmental thinking. There's techniques for breaking that system. So I encourage people to evolve. Once they get grounded in proper use of their feelings and thinking, everything changes because then they're open to opportunity. And not only that people go. I don't know who I am and I don't know how to figure it out. By definition, ellen, you are your needs, so use these techniques and they'll take you right to what matters to you.

Speaker 3: 29:30

So you learn from this. These techniques will get you into the situation and take you as deep as psychoanalysis would take you in one third of the time. So that's why, if I seem to be enthusiastic, I'm blown away by how effective this is.

Speaker 1: 29:46

Truly as effective. And you're talking about anxiety and anger and all that, and I was thinking about when our work we that kind of leads into really about shadow work, that stuff we don't like to look at, the stuff that makes us uncomfortable, the things that we continue to repress and ultimately, when it does show up, it doesn't show up in the best way that it could. So it's really learning how to harness that. And it sounds like the type the system and I want to get into your work here with new optics and the systems you've been developing there to help people has really changing and not having folks think that they got to be in therapy for their entire life and they're not there's nothing wrong with doing it. But if you're not moving forward the days in between, those sessions can be extremely long, let's talk a little bit about optics and what you're doing there.

Speaker 3: 30:35

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 30:36

The difference is that in every single session, you will make major progress, and that is a bold claim. But trust me, I know this because these ideas are really compelling, right, Because here's a concept to consider. If all experience is translated into thoughts and feelings, we'd agree. Right, because here's a concept to consider. If all experience is translated into thoughts and feelings, we'd agree. Right, all human experience, we translate it into thoughts and feelings, and I just identified the importance of those, right? Yeah, but the interesting question is what determines thoughts and feelings? Not a fair question, but of course, none of my questions are really fair. Perception determines thoughts and feelings. It's how you perceive what's happening, right? But then the really interesting question is what determines perception? What determines perception is awareness, right. Think about the times in your life when you've expanded your awareness and the way you perceive things changes, right? So when I introduce people to these concepts, what happens? You perceive things changes, right. So when I introduce people to these concepts, what happens is their awareness changes, their perception changes. And then patients say I don't feel the same way about it that I used to. That's why, because they have not been introduced to a higher level of awareness of their own power.

Speaker 3: 31:47

Depression is really interesting. I know you've had people talking about that. How would you define depression? And I'll give you a hint it's not the symptoms and it's not a biological problem, even though there's a biological substrate. That's not what it is.

Speaker 3: 32:03

Depression is a coping mechanism. And do you know why it's a coping mechanism? People go like how the heck could that be a coping mechanism? Yeah, and do you know why it's a coping mechanism? People go like how the heck could that be a coping mechanism? So misery making right?

Speaker 3: 32:15

The basic, fundamental problem in depression, as you probably know, is, at some point, your feelings completely shut down. It's called anhedonia. You just have no feelings, right? If you've ever been around somebody who's really depressed, they have no feelings here. Here's the irony, ellen. What do you think they're trying to shut down? No, they're trying to shut down anxiety and anger, the very things nature gave them to get them out of trouble. They are shutting down, which is why they'll tell you that they feel more helpless, because they've literally made themselves helpless and they've trapped themselves in a world of symptoms that's going to make everything worse.

Speaker 3: 32:54

I will tell you this, another bold claim for the day when people get in touch with how to use anxiety and anger properly. They are no longer depressed Because they don't have to suppress it. Trusting Right Everything people do to cope is the problem with these coping mechanisms like depression, substance abuse. I don't judge those, but I go. They come with way too many side effects. Right, the side effects more than outweigh the benefits. So I'm going like if you can learn how to use those feelings, if you can learn how to embrace what's happening in your life, you're going to be empowered. If you don't do that, you're going down an endless downward slide absolutely makes complete sense.

Speaker 1: 33:42

What a great, what a great lesson we're getting here today with with your work. Just love this ideas and how you're, how you've been unpacking it for us, because I think there's so many misgivings about under really understanding all of this stuff and we we started this conversation about chronic pain and really we're spending our time with anxiety and fear or anxiety and anger, I should say and it makes so much sense that these are the things that are. It's the underlying stuff that's going on and what you're finding in your work. And so how, in your work and maybe even in for your own life, how has these things affected your relationships?

Speaker 3: 34:22

I'm smiling because what's cool about this is I get to practice with my patients too. So everything I'm trying to teach them, I'm learning as well, and it keeps evolving, which is why it's translating into another book, because when I started thinking about everything about being human, I started realizing that everything is a tool. For example, I have a children's book series that I'm working on which is about a bunch of monks that live in a monastery and their purpose in life is studying why people smile Right, and so the book has a lot of pictures of monks finding out different reasons for smiling. But I thought about it, I go smiling is an existential tool. If you just right now, you just smile right, didn't that change the way you felt? If you, just right now, you just smiled right, didn't that change the way you felt? Didn't you feel the surge of energy the minute you smiled? And I'm going, everything about being human is a potential tool for actually empowerment. Whether it's smiling or it's thinking or it's anything that you and I could talk about, that's a human aspect or part.

Speaker 3: 35:21

This second book is going to get into just how deep this runs, that you have so much available to you but you don't know what it's for or how to use it. That's why this model keeps evolving and it keeps gaining in power and impact. But what I like about it is I'm very practical. I like the idea that it's operationalized, that you can go great idea, what do you do with it? And a lot of approaches to self-help I don't think are nearly that specific. Sadhguru are you familiar with him? Do you know that?

Speaker 1: 35:54

Yeah, I love the guy.

Speaker 3: 35:55

I've watched a lot of his stuff and he's got inner engineering. That technology is mainly yoga, right? I look at people like Tony Robbins or Deepak Chopra you name them, right, they all have an approach. They're all great. What I'm looking at is show me the best technology, show me the technology that I can apply immediately. That's intuitive, that's practical, that's pretty simple and straightforward. I will make another bold statement. This approach is a lot easier to grasp and use than these other approaches are. It's immediately. You're hearing the ideas today, don't you? Already? Just hearing these ideas, you can feel a difference, right? Wow, depression is a coping mechanism.

Speaker 2: 36:33

What an idea.

Speaker 3: 36:34

Emotions have a functional purpose. What an idea. These are radical ideas for a lot of people. I like a model that does that goes. Wow, that's. Tony robbins is great at knowing that you can change a person in big ways with a very small something. For example, do you know about the experiment he did years ago where he wanted to do one thing that could totally change a person and, for an example, he took a person who was agoraphobic and had him skydive, and the skydiving experience was transformative, like a lot of these reality shows. You see, the same thing happens to people when they're put in situations they can't handle. This model is like that. It puts you up against ways of thinking about yourself and what you have going for you that challenge your sense of limit.

Speaker 1: 37:19

That's right. You've mentioned the book and I must apologize I didn't get a chance to put it in our notes here, but do you mind giving us the title and the premise of the book?

Speaker 3: 37:29

Yeah, the title is New Possibilities Unraveling the Mystery. And the mystery is people don't know about collateral damage, so it gives you a lot of information about what's really happening to you, and then it's Unraveling the Mystery and Mastering. I'm not interested in pain management. It's about mastery. It's unraveling the mystery and mastering. I'm not interested in pain management, it's about mastery. It's about you run the show. The pain does not run the show anymore and, as I said, even though the book uses the word pain in the title, it could just say suffering, because I work with the same model with non-chronic pain patients and it works just as well Because these techniques are universal.

Speaker 3: 38:11

Any kind of suffering is going to react to these approaches. So there's that. And what's really special and upcoming is we developed a series of self-study. So in September we're going to be launching videos that go through the entire model, that we've done, a workbook that we built to go with the book and also other study materials, and then we're going to be doing live webinars.

Speaker 3: 38:27

Think of martial arts. You can self-study up to Greenbelt maybe, because a lot of this you can learn as an educational model. But if you want to really get into it deeply, you come to the live webinars where that's more like the Brown and Black Belt level, where you get into all the subtleties, because these techniques are easy enough to understand but there's subtleties to making them work powerfully. So I'm very excited because that is something that needs to happen. We get it done the way I do it now, but with that as the backup. The book's great, but the book is a book. A workbook makes it easier, right, self-study makes it easier. Videos help. So this approach is now expanding into a larger revenue. What's available to patients? That'll all be shown on the website, which is newoptionsinccom.

Speaker 1: 39:13

Nice.

Speaker 3: 39:14

So I would tell people that find this interesting to keep looking and watching and get ahold of us and talk more about it. There's a lot of information on the website about this. There's also podcasts of information on the website about this. There's also podcasts that I've done to try and help people. So that's what's going. There's the book, there's the other things that are coming forward and, to be honest with you, I think this work is important enough that it needs much wider exposure.

Speaker 3: 39:38

We didn't do any of the proper things with social media when I launched the book. I just wanted to get it published, so I haven't been seen by that many people. I think this is important enough that it needs to get out there to a much larger audience. So I'm aiming towards the TED Talks and I'm aiming towards other venues where this word can get around, because suffering is rampant and the medical community right now is complete. Disarray is even worse. If people learn that they have the ability within themselves to add incredible value to their own healing, that they have much more power to help themselves heal than they know and don't have to be as dependent on the medical system, I think that's going to help.

Speaker 1: 40:22

Yes, I completely agree, and it's for for a shift for sure. Obviously you've done lots of work and going through and two, two degrees all the work you're doing here with new options. But what would you think was the best piece of advice you've been given in your life and how is it still serving?

Speaker 3: 40:41

today. Just a footnote because I realized I didn't quite answer your question about how I've been affected by all of this. One of the things I work on with people is something called conflict embracement not conflict resolution, it's not something that needs resolution. It's something to be embraced, because conflict's a way of helping work out your differences with people. I've been practicing that for a long time. There's a technique associated with it, what I hadn't realized until yesterday literally, I don't react the same way in conflict. Literally, instead of going towards possibly getting escalated, what happens now is I go the other way. I go cool conflict, great, let's go, let's get into it. Everything I'm practicing with patients is actually changing the way I react, the way I react to my emotions. They're constantly being processed.

Speaker 3: 41:29

Anxiety and anger are not pathological. They're as normal as breathing. They become a problem when you don't know how to use them. Anxiety disorders are a mismanagement of those emotions. Anger problems mismanagement. They're not a problem with the emotion, you just don't know how to use it. Like handing a loaded gun to a baby. What's going to happen? And you can see, in our society and with all the challenges we have right now, what are people doing with anger and anxiety. It's not helpful. They're buying into it and the problem is, if you buy into being anxious and angry, you're moving towards mindlessness, you're moving towards facing the bear in the woods. You lose the ability to think. You lose the ability to connect to your wisdom and your knowledge. These techniques get you back in touch with what you know that can help you. If you get swept away, you're done right?

Speaker 1: 42:15

yeah, absolutely, and I'm sorry I want to get back to your last doctor of everything yeah absolutely yeah it was about the best piece of advice that you've been given, piece of advice that I ever got today from my father when I was in my early 20s and going through a very bad breakup that had me feeling really desperate.

Speaker 3: 42:37

I was in serious trouble emotionally. My father was a very practical sort of common sense guy, a school teacher. So I was crying and I was telling him how God awful I felt and I was considering is my life worthwhile? And he listened, I knew he was paying attention and he just said one thing. He said I get it, but consider that life is worth living because you never know how you might feel tomorrow. I go okay, I got it. And that's exactly what happens. People start feeling differently.

Speaker 1: 43:17

Yes, that is so powerful. I just love that Doctor. Of everything we spoke about today, and maybe there was something we didn't get a chance to touch on what would you want our one takeaway to be for?

Speaker 3: 43:30

us. I want people to understand that they've been provided with an incredible gift, that whatever's responsible for the fact that we exist as humans whether it's science or religion, it doesn't really matter to me we are incredible how many individuals have completely transformed society and history. Every individual is potentially a prime mover. Understand that you have that and if you can discover what it is and how to use it, it doesn't matter what life throws at you. You've got so much better chance and, by the way, this gets back to something else you talked about.

Speaker 2: 44:07

Self-love right?

Speaker 3: 44:10

Did you know that self-love is part of the equipment that your system gave you and that it is inviolate? It is absolute that it has nothing to do with who you are, absolutely nothing. If you and I were designing a human being, we would not attach it to something as transitory as who you may be in the moment. You don't like who you are in the moment. You can change.

Speaker 3: 44:31

Now what happens is people get cut off from access. There is no such thing as low self-esteem. They have limited access and as soon as I help people connect to that, they are now 100% optimized. It's that lack of self-love that's common in my patients, that they don't truly love themselves and they didn't know it. But when they connect to that and they evolve to the point where they embrace that, everything changes.

Speaker 1: 45:00

Absolutely Just a ton of great information here today that you've been able to share with us, and I just want to say thank you for spending time with me today and our listeners and helping us really understand that it's not just the chronic pain but chronic suffering that we encounter ourselves with in life, and that there is a way for us to transform our lives and really living truly strong and healthy. Living truly strong and healthy.

Speaker 3: 45:27

And so if men and we focus a lot with our men's work here, if men in particular are interested in getting a hold of you and participating in your, you can use my email, awiser at newoptionsinccom, or they can call me directly at 360-908-0864. And here's some good news for your listeners because you're in Canada, if I see patients I don't necessarily have to see you as a therapy patient, and I've done this with a number of people. We can work on this from the educational angle. I can be an educational consultant to you on an approach to coping, and so then it doesn't matter whether I'm licensed in Canada or in another state, and a lot of this model is educational and can work really well on that level. So they should be aware that don't worry about where you are, love that we can approach this in a way that actually still be helpful, even if we're not formally in a therapeutic relationship.

Speaker 1: 46:21

Perfect Love that I'm going to make sure that information, information as well as a link to your website, the new options inc website, so the folks get an opportunity to get a hold of you. Once again, thank you so much for being on the show.

Speaker 3: 46:31

I really appreciate the opportunity. I hope I didn't talk too much, but I get excited it was outstanding, well Outstanding.

Speaker 2: 46:47

Well, thank you for listening to the Revolutionary man podcast. Are you ready to own your destiny, to become more the man you are destined to be? Join the brotherhood that is the Awakened man at theawakendmannet and start forging a new destiny today.