Lost in Comfort: How Modern Life is Breaking Us—and How Nature Can Restore Us

In this compelling episode of Crackin' Backs, we sit down with Christopher Dooley, a Licensed Professional Counselor Candidate (LPCC) with extensive research and clinical experience in trauma and resilience. Together, we explore the multifaceted nature of trauma, acknowledging that it manifests uniquely in each individual. 

Key Discussion Points:

• Human Evolution and Learning: Despite our advancements, our primal instincts remain influential. We discuss how our evolutionary roots impact our responses to trauma and our ongoing journey of growth.​
• Military Dynamics: The military is known for forging strong leaders but can also leave lasting scars. We examine how its structure fosters resilience in some while leading to challenges in others.​
• Nature's Healing Power: Amidst our technology-driven lives, we consider how reconnecting with the natural world can restore mental clarity and balance.​
• The Role of Suffering: Is suffering an essential component of personal growth? We delve into how processed trauma can become a catalyst for strength rather than destruction.​
• Authentic Leadership: True leadership extends beyond authority; it's about inspiring and nurturing without oppression. We discuss the core principles that distinguish effective leaders from tyrants.​
• Counterintuitive Insights: Christopher shares unconventional lessons from his practice that challenge traditional beliefs and offer fresh perspectives on healing and growth.​

Recommended Readings:

Christopher references two influential books by Pema Chödrön that offer profound insights into facing fear and adversity:

• "The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times"
  This book provides tools to awaken our basic goodness and connect deeply with others, teaching us to accept ourselves and our imperfections. FIND HERE
•  
• "When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times"
  Chödrön offers life-changing tools for transforming suffering and negative patterns into habitual ease and boundless joy. FIND HERE

• Connect with Christopher Dooley:

For those interested in learning more or seeking guidance, Christopher Dooley

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Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast

Transcript

Dr. Spencer Baron: 0:00

What if everything we thought we knew about trauma, leadership and resilience was all wrong or maybe misleading? Some break, some rise. Why today we sit down with Christopher Dewey, or just Dewey, a mind forged in real world experience to unravel mysteries of human strength and suffering, from the battlefield to the wild, from chaos to stillness, how do we rebuild what's been shattered, and is there a path here where hardship becomes the greatest teacher? Buckle up, because this conversation challenges everything. Welcome to the cracking backs podcast. You Dewey, it is good to have you on why, because you were referred by the king of people, Monty Heath. And I know that Dr Terry is going to make some comments about that, because he and Monty are, yeah, oh yeah. All right. Well, I said it for you. Do we I gotta tell you. Well, welcome to the show, man. Welcome to the show.

Chris Dooley: 1:06

Hey. Thanks so much, guys. I really appreciate the invitation being here. You bet

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:10

I was most intrigued by the fact that you've, you've done some serious history with walking through fire, literally and figuratively. He started in the military, battled wire fire wildfires and led to wounded warriors, and now you're diving deep into the clinical mental health counseling. And man that's near and dear to us, that's, that's not just a resume, man that that's, that's a true Odyssey. So tell me what you know. Tell us you know what when you reflect on that journey, was there a single moment that cracked you open? You know, where you realized, Hey, this is what I'm meant to do. Man,

Chris Dooley: 1:47

that's a, that's a really good question. I don't think there was one. I think there was a progressive series of realizations with each subsequent new I just, I look at them as adventures, right? The jobs that I took on, I did because I wanted to do, is it was interested in the experience. I didn't have a long term vision until I was in my, I'd say, early 30s, where I'm like, Oh, this is what I'm going to do. But I did notice progressively, in retrospect, each each new position, job experience that I had kind of built on one another, right? Like, when you're you know, you're building a path. You're creating a new road out in the out on the land. At first you just working on it, but after you go for a while, you start to see, like, oh, there's a, there's sort of a direction that I'm going and after I did the, after I finished firefighting, I moved up to the Adirondacks. And, you know, you speak about breaking open, I got into a relationship which was the, which is a, you know, a romantic, intimate relationship, which ended very quickly and but, but what was significant about that, it was the first time I opened my heart, right? I've been really closed off for most of my life. My father died when I was pretty young. We're an Irish, American family, so there's just, you know, there's a history of alcoholism and trauma and violence and a lot of anger and culture and laughter, but you know, the damaging parts last and so it was significant that first time I opened my heart to somebody, and then, you know, as relationships do, boom, fell apart. But I ended up staying with that. For some reason, I stopped drinking and smoking weed, and because as uncomfortable as it was, it was the first time I really felt right. I think I'd been an emotional ice castle, like I existed from here up for about 2728 years of my life. And that's when I learned, through what's called a crash course, that you don't stick emotions away and they're gone like they they're just waiting, right? So I experienced about a year of just like a dam breaks, like a backlog of all this unexpressed emotion. And it was, and it was, you know, and that's when I started meditating. That's when I started practicing mindfulness and doing these other formal practices, because that was the only way that I had to sort of lash myself to a mast of stability on this ship just being tossed around in a sea of turbulent emotions. And it was, it was transformative and liberating and all these things. And I don't, I don't recommend personal growth to anybody. Man, it's, it can be really hard work and uncomfortable. I like to tell my clients that it's like, hey, you know, you're you're in it, and it can get a whole lot worse where it gets any better. But that was sort of the breaking open and I saw, you know, as messed up as I was, I. You know, I think I have a higher degree of some things than people, and being messed up and just like locked in my own mind was one of them. But I saw that, if I could come through that, like, I absolutely believe anybody can, and so that sort of, that was a shift, because I'd done, you know, I was in the infantry for four years. I was a firefighter for four years, and I developed this softness. And I happened to be trapped in a small town. I lived on a motor. I lived on the back of a motorcycle for eight years of my life. And this is a tiny mountain town in northern, Northern New York, and it's cold, and I had a ball and retire. So I was I didn't have the escapes that I always had, like, you know, I didn't have the alcohol in the weed. I'd always done the geographic fix. Just like things are rough, I'm out of here. Just take off. So I was trapped. But as pembroon, the Buddhist nun, says, like there's a wisdom in no escape. And so staying with that, processing all that, I ended up by the GI Bill, college fund, and so there was a small community college in New York State, part of the New York State system, North Country Community College, and then a massage therapy program. That was the only thing I was interested in. I'd always had a penchant for anatomy, physiology, the body. I understood it really well. My dad put my sister night of bed with, not with stories of like dragons, but like Jimmy germ and Johnny white blood cell. And, you know, I knew how bones worked, and so, so I had, I had a penchant for it. And the New York State program was, it was a two year program that was the first time I started working with healing instead of destruction, right? So I think that was, that was a key, that was a key that was a very key part of it,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 6:50

very, very cool. And I love hearing the history of how someone goes from what they refer to as rock bottom and makes that transition, and there's always a there's always that moment that sparks the change. But, you know, I want to ask you, there's, there's this very interesting paradox in the military. It builds the strongest leaders, but also leaves so many of its own broken. You led you led fire. Teams carried the weight of command, and saw firsthand what happens when men are pushed to their limits. What is it about that military structure that forges resilience in some and completely dismantles others?

Chris Dooley: 7:33

Well, you know, I ended up, I've spent a bunch of years focusing on trauma, both in research, worked in neuroscience and neuropsychology research, and then doing research on my own, and then getting into the clinical stuff. And what we know is that people PTSD does come from military experiences, combat, just being in there, but a lot of times, it's already happened in childhood, right? And so people are drawn to the military because of the structure, because of the meaning hero, we get to be the hero of our own stories. And that's, that's not nothing, that's not Disney, that's like a deep mythological force in all of us. There's, there's a bond, there's brotherhood, there's structure for our chaotic minds. And so that's, that's a huge part of what draws people to the military. But they're carrying these wounds either apparent. I mean, military is a halfway house for it. It holds, it holds. If we didn't have that, there'd be a lot of crazy people on the streets. And so people thrive off that structure, right? Because of the internal chaos, and so they're coming in. And sometimes the trauma is obvious, but a lot of times it's latent and just needs that one last little trigger to push him over the edge. So I think that's, that's sort of the history of trauma in the military, and then they go through experiences. I think the other part of the military that's so profound and effective, and it is just sort of built into it, is all of the ritual, right? There's so much ritual and ceremony, and we don't have that in our in our American society, like tribal societies, have it, certain other societies have it. We're such a young new society. And military is a very old part of any society. It's been around since forever, organization of fighting and defense and stuff. And so I think the military actually does a really good job of that, right? That's what basic training is. It takes your previous identity, ego, just crumples it up like a piece of paper and chucks it away. And that's your identity, and it can hurt your ego, but it's also your ego is also all your limitations and your perceived definition, you know, like, there's no way I can keep running. Like, yeah, yeah, when there's a bunch of scary dudes yelling at you, and also you don't want to look. Bad you're driven by your own shame, and they leverage shame a lot. You find out you can go a lot farther than you thought you could, right? And so here's the rebuilding they you know, researching breaks you down, and then they build you back up. Unfortunately, what they don't have is, is the equivalent on the out processing, right? When you're done, you're out, maybe, maybe your buddies will throw your party. But there's not an equivalent structure and ceremony. And all warrior societies across cultures, across time, have some version, right? We have, we have a lot of Native American tradition where, when warriors come back from combat, they are separated from the tribe they go through. They sit in a knee, be like Lakota, like a sweat lodge. There's an out processing, like you're different, you're coming back different than you were before. And there's an honoring of that through ritual and ceremony, which our brains love. Our brains love and thrive off ritual and ceremony, because it's a consistent structure in this world of gas, right? So that's what we're lacking in the military. And I think we could really benefit by doing that. And I think I listened to one of your podcasts with Monty. You guys were talking about that. I absolutely believe that it should be done with the unit with the unit that you deploy with, right? You know, our military changed a lot after World War One and then going into Vietnam, it became much more mechanistic. You know, whereas historically Revolutionary War or 1812 Civil War, World War One, World War Two, your unit was composed of everybody from this area of Massachusetts or this area of Georgia or this area of Kansas, so you knew all the people you were with, and you fought harder. And there's this bond, which, incidentally, also proves to be a really powerful resilience, promoting factor, protecting against PTSD. It's partly why the Special Forces, special operations guys have lower rates of PTSD and trauma because of the emphasis on bond. Unfortunately, that's negated by the number of times that they're going in, which far exceeds regular blindness. They're just getting exposed to blasts again and again and again, and they're going deeper in. And there's, you know, so So there's all these factors that that lead in, some are protective and some are increased the threat. And so I think our entire society and veterans in particular, benefit tremendously, if that was built into the out processing you, there's some ceremony, there's some ritual processing, what you build to a communalization of brief. Jonathan Shea is a psychiatrist from Boston who wrote about his two tremendous books. I don't know if you guys have come across them, Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America. Have you read those he talks about so one is about, he bases the Achilles, and Vietnam Achilles, the character in The Iliad, right? And that was a story of deployment, and they're over, fighting the war for 10 years. And then Odysseus America. Odysseus, Odysseus was an anti hero, and they didn't have that back then. They only had heroes like using the ideal of our society. Odysseus was the guy who designed the Trojan horse, right? So Odysseus, and so he he was, like, cunning and tricky. And that wasn't the standard Greek warrior ideal. It was like, you know, you show up front and you face your enemy head on, and that's where honor comes in. And so he wasn't necessarily honorable, because he used these sort of conniving methods. But Odysseus, the story of The Odyssey is the Odysseus in the 10 years it took him to come back home, and he had to go through all these challenges, and then he gets home, and there's all these suitors there, and he's got to win back his wife, and he goes up the cover. And so what Jonathan Shea realized when he was working with Vietnam vets, like, really, really disordered, character disordered. The PTSD there rearranged their entire beings. When he was like, I recognized these themes from somewhere as he's working with the vets and their stories. And what he came to realize is it was all the themes from the Iliad, and all the themes from the Odyssey these guys face the same thing, but betrayal of trust, betrayal by those above are supposed to protect you, right? There's these tacit agreements. You go fight like all right? My the big guys above are going to give me weapons, and they're going to give me enough the right gear. I'll fight, I'll put my life on the line and go through some scary stuff, but you're going to provide the food and the beans and the bullets. And that trust was violated again, again, particularly in Vietnam, and that's a that promotes the that's what shows up in PTSD, right? Yeah, I can go on. Howerton about this? No,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 15:02

it's great. You know, what's interesting is the metaphor between what you're sharing in the military, when guys come back, guys and gals come back, and they experience citizenship and, you know, back to normal, or whatever they think is normal, is very similar to Dr, Terry and I, we work with a lot of professional athletes and teams and so on. They're so used some of these guys are so used to structure that they didn't have growing up, that when they leave professional sports, they fail, they, you know, and they also not so much PTSD, but head traumas from, you know, from whether it be soccer, or, you know, football, or what have you. But it's an interesting example. And, and, you know, I recall something that's worth bringing up is that you know what you had mentioned that, you know, the military back in World War. You know, one and two and what they would spend. You know, when, when the war was over, were there, when they would come back? It would, they would be on their, you know, ships coming back for, for months. You know, coming back, whereas now it's just, you know, the next day, you're back home, and there's no orientation, there's no chance to decompress, or, you know, be with your comrades. You know, it's, it's, it's interesting to change, speaking on that change, you know, we look at the world today, it's very technology driven, you know, and you know, you have have taken that perspective and moved it into time spent and years in the wild wilderness therapy, guiding you young adults and veterans through these, you know, brutal landscapes, you know. And yet, something about the isolation, the hardship, the survival instincts seem to pull people back to themselves, you know, what is it about the wild that seems to restore order to that chaotic mind?

Chris Dooley: 17:20

Yeah, another good question. I think the first and foremost thing is, the land is where we're from, right? We evolved humans and our and our pre homo sapien savings. We evolved out there. We evolved on the land like that's, that's where our brains are best adapted. And so I think that's part of it. I think the lack of constant over stimulation from that technology provides the lack of not just over stimulations on a sensory level, but we're just flooded with meaning and symbols and awareness of so many people. And we didn't evolve for that. Somebody said, we have, we have Stone Age brains in space age skulls, right? Like we're we're not that evolved, and we forget that, and things are changing now too fast, and I'm not, and I'm not a like a technophobe in any in any way, but I do. I'm heavily informed by evolutionary psychology. That's our brain is just like a stomach. It's just like the appendix and the intestines. It's got to function. You know, our bones do that evolve very particularly for our environments over, you know, as I said, where, you know, humans are, what, a few 100,000 years old, but we've been a lot of forms before that, and that all those shaped power brain processes information, how we select the light wavelengths that we do, the sounds that we attune to, like, why sugar tastes sweet. You know, we didn't decide that. That's not just a fact. That's an evolutionary adaptation. And so we're just overloaded with so much information, so much meaning, and we're we're considering the perspectives of more human beings than we've ever done before, right? Like, for the most part, we travel around in tribes, I think of like the majority of our time in Africa as bipeds. We lived in tribes with like 15 to 40 people. Think of how many people you're aware of today, like our brains, it's no wonder there's so much anxiety and then and then depression to kind of damp down. It's not a surprise. It totally makes sense. And so I think we're it's just too much, and it's changing too fast for us to catch up to. If everything stays exactly the same for, I don't know how long it takes, a few 100, a few 1000 years, like maybe you will kind of stabilize, but I don't see that happening. And so I think what you see in the mental health world is overwhelm, you know? And so what do we do about that? I think structure, not excessive structure. I hate younger me would. Like, what are you talking about? I hate structure with the right balance of it. You know, is incredibly important. You need if you want to have wonderful wine, you got to have solid lattice work so that the grapevines can do their growing and thread up, spread out and thrive. So you have to have a balance of structure, but also, and that's what you know when you talk about the guys getting coming off of sports teams, they crash, and on the military they crash? Yeah, I think the other part is shared meaning. We don't have shared meaning in our society. It's every man for himself. It's a it's a bummer to come back to the civilian world and be like, there's no teamwork here. So you know sports organizations, there's some organizations that do

Dr. Terry Weyman: 20:44

that, but nothing, Hey, Julie does the it's a type of wilderness. I mean, if people are listening to this and they go, man, maybe I just need to go camping and just get out there and all that is the type of wilderness matter. Because I know that if Spencer's type of wilderness would be a jungle, and where the humidity was 98% where my physiology would melt and be eaten by bugs, and my and and my physiology, my my wilderness would be up in the mountains, 11,000 feet, thriving, and he would be a little frozen rock in the corner. So, you know, so does this wilderness speak to everybody different, and how do you navigate the wilderness when people come to you?

Chris Dooley: 21:27

Well, those are two very different questions, right? I don't think it matters. I do think we do have individual pensions and preferences for certain environments, and I think it's, I think it's important to honor those but I mean, ultimately, therapeutically, I don't think it matters. I you know, I worked in the the southwest, this area, working some desert regions in Utah, and wilderness therapy in Colorado, Colorado, in the mountains, Utah and the sort of desert Canyonlands. And I thought I would hate the desert. I'm a water guy. I love the ocean. I love water sports. Way water kayaking. Give me rivers and movement. Canoes, swimming, surfing, whatever it is, I love water. And I was like, boy, I don't know how to deal with moving to the desert for three years. And it and it turned out to be an incredibly magical, special place. Even though there may not be a lot of water there, it was all formed by water, right? That area was under the ocean. That's what compressed it made all the sandstone. And then, as the remember, there was the inland sea. Remember, as if you guys are millions of years old, but there was an inland sea that covered over, like where the Rockies and the Midwest are. And as the Colorado Plateau that the sort of western half of the US lifted, that drained all the water out down through the southwest, right? So that's the Grand Canyon. There's all these canyons. Where do they come from? They came from water. So you see evidence of water everywhere, even though it's an incredibly arid climate. So I, I ended up loving it like it's incredibly special place. So I think, yeah, if you're going to do it voluntarily, pick, pick what resonates with you. But ultimately, I don't think it matters. I think it's, I think the significance of the wilderness is that you have to, you have to carry food and water with you. You have to make shelter to protect you from the elements. You have to make a fire, right? And so these are very functional meaning based things. Everything you do has a meaning. If you're out by yourself unsupported, you got to carry all your food with you. And so I think that sense of function and meaning that's generally lacking in life we you know, I'm not, and I'm not trashing it, but like, it's we have grocery stores and so we don't have to think about food. We have fast food and restaurants and Uber Eats. But when what you do matters, if you don't build your shelter, well, like you're that snow is going to blow it and bust you up, you're going to be really uncomfortable. And so I think that's that's what was so therapeutic, I think in general, for everybody, but especially for the students who came through our program.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 24:10

I think that's why those shows like alone and negative, frayed and all that are so popular, because it does put us back into our primal, you know, thought processes and survival and shelter and stuff like that. And I think we watch those and we're like, God, I wish I could do that. No, I can't, you know, yeah. So I think, I think those shows are really popular, yeah.

Chris Dooley: 24:30

I think that touches something, yeah, very much primal in us, yeah, you know. And then the other part is the social, the social component, right? You could do it by yourself, but people, we are wired to be social animals. We are really wired that way. And you, you know, I think we are oriented towards tribal units, towards small people. Everybody's got to function. Everybody's action matters. There's you got to have integrity. You can't take more than your fair share of the food. Everybody takes turns to ensure. Is,

Dr. Terry Weyman: 25:00

you know, it's funny, you mentioned that, because the number one reason people leave those shows is the social part. It's not the survival part, it's not the food part, it's not the shelter part, it's the social part that that makes people make that call. Hey, I want to switch gears for you a second. You know, the idea that modern psychology actually modern medicine, I would think Dr Spencer, and I would agree, is turning suffering into a pathology. You know, every hardship is labeled as now a disorder, which I can't, personally can't stand. It's ever rite of passage. And sometimes you believe, do you believe that sometimes suffering is necessary for growth? Can trauma, if processed correctly, be a thing that builds rather than destroys, and how do we help people find their path? I

Chris Dooley: 25:46

personally hate suffering, and I think nobody should ever do it, ever. And I think we should all live in down feather beds with climate controlled environments. And I think we really evolved that way.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 26:01

You just described Spencer's house, yeah,

Chris Dooley: 26:09

there is, there is a balance, you know, I think, in addressing that, looking at our at like, you know, the path of the pathologies. And I think thing to remember, in the same way, humans are still evolving, like, we're not done yet. We ain't done cooking. We're very young as a as a species. We're very young as a country. I think people forget that about our society, like, Oh, we're good, we're bad, like we're just like a, like a pre teen, like a 14 year old boy is my is my sort of metaphor. And I think all the sciences are relatively new. People are like, science is right or it's wrong. Nobody in science says science is right or wrong. It's just like we're still learning right. And I think that that is generally misunderstood by the masses, and so like psychopathologies and the DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, like it's still a work in progress. And, yeah, it bothers me that I have to, when I get a new client, I have to diagnose them after 90 minutes, I have to be like, This is what's going on with somebody Sometimes I work with. I work with, you know, my youngest client is nine, and my oldest is, like, 77 I have a kid who's, like, acting up in school, and the parents bring him in and like, you know what's wrong with him? I'm like, because he doesn't like the teacher, you know, like, it's not a I don't I hear his stories. I don't like that teacher, either. But Ursula Le Guin is a fantastic author. Back to 70s 80s, did a lot of mythological writings, and once she wrote this book, you sent a book called the earth, sea trilogies. And it actually, it sort of this is, this is before Harry Potter. But it was story of like this kid becoming a wizard. And, you know, he had mentors, and one of the main lessons he had to learn is, in order to be able to do magic, in order to be able to influence the objects of the things around him, he had to learn the true name of that thing, right? And that is kind of how our brains work. That's how our systems work. You need to have a name for something, because it's a lot harder to work with an amorphous mass, right, a chaotic bunch of, like, I don't know, this dude's unhappy, and so that's the need, I think that's the, you know, that's the structured component. But like, like, you know, Zen talks about the finger pointing at the moon, like, we're pointing at the moon, like, look at that amazing thing up there. Then we get, like, entranced with our own finger, and we miss the moon. You know? We do this with words too. We get caught up with the names for things, and we forget the actuality, right? Because that's how brains work. And so it's a necessary thing. We're still growing and but that's kind of, that's kind of where we are in our in our immaturity, right? We're getting better, constantly improving. That's just you kind of do have to work from the ground up. And then to address the second part of that question, absolutely, suffering is critical. It's such an important part. And I the kid, yeah, you know, we do so much to protect everybody in our litigious society. And you know, we make playgrounds safe and stuff, of course, because nobody wants to see their individual kid, her, you know, have a broken bone, have a head injury, but it is protecting us from these very necessary bumps and scrapes and bruises, where that balance is, I don't think anyone knows trauma, however, is not just suffering, right? Trauma is an overwhelm of that organisms, capacity. Need to handle what happened. Trauma is never the event. Trauma is the organism's response to that overwhelm, because it's being overwhelmed, right? And so is trauma beneficial? I would say absolutely not. It's devastating and destructive. It's not the end of the story, though, right? Trauma is not a lifetime curse. It's not a sentence. It is remediable. We can do something about it. But, man, it's really hard. It's really challenging. And I think what makes it especially challenging in the in the psychological world, in the medical world, in the treatment world, you know, we have on the nonprofit world, just like traumatic brain injury, it's so individual and unique to each person, right? The exact same thing could happen to all three of us, and maybe one or two of us would walk away with lasting trauma. And maybe it only lasts, you know, I think like it's acute stress disorder up to a month, trauma has to be in place, the symptoms have to be in place for like, six months, and maybe it can resolve, and maybe you need support, but, but I think part of why it's it's so challenging is because there's no one set treatment for every person situation, and I strongly, and so that's why, like, What? What do we do about it? It's a journey, like it's a big burden. You got handed a bunch of shit and but it's kind of, it's not your fault, but it's your responsibility, right? And you have to try a bunch of different things. I'm a big fan of that experiment with a lot of things. You know, I spent time as a massage therapist. I was a very science based, but I tried a lot of woo, woo stuff. I've experimented with it. And some things I found like, oh, this has a meaning. It's got there's some rationale to it. And others just bunk. But you you got to find out what works for you. And so I absolutely encourage exploration. Try acupuncture, try, you know, people think meditation is pretty Woo, woo, and I can understand that not it's one of the hardest things you could do, but you got to try a bunch of different things, and you'll, when you do that, you'll find things that work, that are really profound.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 32:19

Thank you for that so much. You know, you in order to go through all this stuff you had to learn about, and with the military and the fire department, very structured things like you've talked about, you've been around great leaders. And Leadership isn't just sparking orders like some people think of the military. You know, its ability to inspire, to to shape, to correct without crushing that soul. So what do you most people get wrong about leadership? Is there a fundamental principle that you've learned through all your different experiences, and what have you found this separates great leaders from tyrants?

Chris Dooley: 33:00

I think it is this also a very individual thing. You know, it depends what that person's done. I would say authenticity is key. Authenticity, honesty, leading by example. So some of the, some of the most impactful leaders in my experience, they could always do they would they would never ask me to do what they couldn't do. Right? They always had done it, and so they knew what that took, I think, also having, having some, a fair degree of emotional intelligence, emotional intelligence, knowing myself. Social intelligence is understanding others. And these are, you know, their own, their their own IQs, but having that so, so being able to recognize the people you're trying to develop, their strengths and their vulnerabilities. So the capacity to see that and then, and then, yeah, being willing to, being willing to stay in discomfort, your own and the others. I

Dr. Spencer Baron: 34:09

think it's really fascinating that, and probably a highlight in one of your recent comments, you could take the same stimulus, and each one of us will perceive it differently. And, you know, I look at, I look at great businessmen or that have multiple businesses, or, you know, and one can, you know, a conglomerate can go really wrong, and yet they just keep pressing on. They know how to manage, you know, you know whether you like them or not. But I think of Elon Musk, you know. I mean, people are bombing his, his Teslas, but man, he just stays the course. He finds ways to fix things. And you know. And then, you know, leadership is like that, great leadership we you know, Doug. Secretary, and I have seen some of the most effective coaches and coaching, and you're right, it's, you know, being able to be authentic and and not asking them to do things that they wouldn't do. So I appreciate, and I wanted to highlight that again, because, you know, we've all had friends that crumble under pressure. You look at them and go, what that's, what's the big deal? You know, just move, move on. You know, if we could adopt those strategies on how to overcome challenges, that's, that's the name of the game. That's what makes us successful. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah,

Chris Dooley: 35:39

can I? Can I follow up on that real quick. Of course, I think the other thing, like Abraham Lincoln comes to mind, good leaders also assemble good teams. Right with all the individual traits, there's no individual leader who's just good by himself. They they surround themselves with people who also have these characteristics. In the example of a blanket like he specifically picked people who had opposing views to his. He filled his cabinet with people who so there was, there was this eclecticity, this diversity of perspectives and values. And so he wouldn't get yes men. You know, I think it's not hard to be. I won't point any fingers, but it's not hard to be a good leader when you have tons of money and resources to compensate for your mistakes, right, assembling a good team of competent people, though, like who, who give you feedback, who tell you when you ain't doing it right, or when you're you're able to when you're missing something right? And so maybe then the other characteristic a good leader is like you can listen. You have to be able to listen people. But I think that team part is very

Dr. Spencer Baron: 36:50

important. Yeah, very good. Julie, you know, I'm impressed by your conversation. It's your conversation, it's very thought out. You have, you obviously got a great education, and you've got the degrees and the certifications and things like that that are necessary to to manage people. More importantly, you have, you know, street smart, the field experience, the scars that come with real world wisdom, which is really a gift, but what's something that you've learned, that that no, no textbook ever taught you you know, something something counterintuitive, maybe something that goes against the grain? I would love to hear, you know. I'd love to hear things that you know, even experts in the field might not believe it until they see with their own eyes. You got any of those, yeah,

Chris Dooley: 37:46

go into the places that scare you. Yeah, that's it. That is, that's where the growth edge is. You know, I was very fortunate to the wilderness therapy organization I worked for. I was very fortunate. Just was one of my peak experience jobs. It had all the adjectives, all the good ones, all the bad ones. It was every everything. And we used, we used a lot of mythology as sort of the growth lattice work for transition people who were on this pretty intense downward spiral, to stabilize that downward movement and maybe start moving them back up. And so we use the Native American medicine wheel and the significance of the four directions, right? And, you know, it's sort of the general thing as you start with the east, that's where the sun rises. That's the beginning and the end of the circle. That's that's the newborn that's entering something new. It's also old age and wisdom, right? That's all in the east. You move around to the south. That's kind of youth, that's a youthful face. You discover passions, you discover good things, you're open, you're experiencing. And then you do that for a while, and you come around to the west, and the West is where the sun sets, and the West is where the darkness is, right? And so we'd have people describe which direction they were in at this moment, especially when they're having a hard time. And when you're in the West, you're in your darkness, right? That's the hardest part. You're going into the cave. And that's, that's, you see this in mythology again and again. It's, you know, Star Wars was incredibly based on mythological symbols, right? If you remember in the first one where he finally meets Yoda, Luke Skywalker finally meets Yoda, and he's on this weird planet, right, this foreign, unfair bunch of swamps and weird creatures. And Yoda, the mentor, hasn't gone to this cave, and what he sees in there is always Darth Vader. And Darth Vader is going to, you know, hit him and beat him up with the lightsaber. And he takes the mask off, Darth Vader, and who's under the mask is his own face, right? And so that's that's pretty common in the in the in the West, in this darkness is you're seeing you. You're seeing all the parts you locked off that we live in, our personalities and our social faces and how we want to see ourselves, but we all have a shadow, right? This is what Jungian union framework looks at. It's like that's the disowned parts of ourselves that we feel really uncomfortable around, but that's also where the treasure is.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 40:21

Is fascinating, because, you know, I think back Dr, Terry, you remember when we had the tech guy from virtual reality, the VR and he talk about qualifying and quantifying. What you just said is they would have, they would help people overcome phobias. So let's say you had a fear of of spiders, and they would, they would take the VR glasses and put a spider on in your visual field that was maybe, you know, microscopic, and then they would tend to expand it to the point where this damn thing was in your face, and it actually would help people overcome desensitize, you know, kind of like Luca, your your dog. Yeah, right, yeah, what you were telling us earlier about how your dog was afraid of even the popping sounds from the from the, you know, the fire, the fire that you had built, that is really, really interesting. And it's, you know, I appreciate you sharing that too, because that's, that's quite the truth. I want to ask you about a couple things that you do to train soldiers and you know, somatic movement, mindfulness, neuro kinesiological rehabilitation. I mean, that's a it's quite an interesting contrast teaching men built for war to slow down, breathe and become aware. You know what happens when you take somebody conditioned for action and introduce them into stillness. Do they resist? Do they find something?

Chris Dooley: 42:06

Oh, absolutely, your own mind. It's everybody's mind. It's not just that, that demographic, you know, yeah, it's one of the hardest things you can do. Absolutely, sit, sit with yourself for 20 minutes, you know, sit with your own mind. I doubled up doing it. It's a challenge. The thing is also like, I think we have this concept like military guys, and there's a separate group of people. They're only separate within our society, but they're still humans, right? And humans are actually wired. We're just we have whole, you know, millions of years of history of combat and conflict, but we also have millions of years. I've gotten to the place that we are with collaboration and peace and stillness, right? We've gotten a lot farther, believe it or not, through collaboration, than we have with competition. We we don't have really, like, we have pretty weak nails, we don't have fangs. We're not very strong for our muscular compared to like, an ant or a lion or even a house cat, right? We're pretty weak. We just, we have this information processing thing, and we have communication so we can work with others, so everybody holds that same potential. You know, we have the capacity for stillness. I think we've just come so far away from it with with civilization, when we invented electricity, and now we control the hours that we're awake. You know, I don't I don't know all the research, I haven't read the data behind it. I've just read enough articles about it seems true, which I'm always skeptical of. But you know, it's thought that, you know, a lot of us, a lot of people, wake up 234, in the morning, right? It's thought that we used to sleep in two sets of two shifts, right? For most of our history as humans that changed once we had electric lighting and like, this is light time, this is dark time. And so going back to the stillness like we have, we've just lost touch with that. But I think that is part of our evolutionary programming, and so it's a challenge to get back to but it's not. It's not only not impossible, but it's kind of necessary to counterbalance what we take for granted with this overstimulation and this artificial light and concrete and paved streets. You know that's, that is, it's, it's, it's wired in but because of neuroplasticity and anybody can get there, you just got to practice it. Gotta rehearse it, and you can and so you start small, and you sit for like a minute, and you work up to two minutes, and then three minutes, and then four minutes. But what happens is. That you develop your inherent capacity to allow everything to just be as it is, right. You can notice the anxious thoughts. You can notice an angry thought. But instead of, instead of getting carried away by each one as if it's a wave, you know, if you're if, if you want, you can just ride the wave of intensity and let it pass by you, and then you sink back where you are, because we know waves don't move water. They're forced moving through water. So practicing mindfulness develops your inherent, natural human capacity to just stay it's kind of the one of the real things that makes us humans is that, you know, we're all so wired, almost all behaviors are fight or flight, right, which has been expanded into fight, flight, freeze, appease, but mostly fight or flight. And what humans can do is we can stay with what it is, acknowledge it, experience it, but we don't have to act out. We can refrain. That's that's the essence of sort of practicing peace and stillness, even though that's fantastic.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 46:05

You know, we may not like it, but the world is moving super, super fast right now. AI is taking over. Our thinking. Stress levels are skyrocketing. Leadership is becoming more and more about emotional intelligence. Given everything you studied, where do you see this mental health and leadership development with this new thing called AI and all that? What's your role in the future? And how do you see people navigate this new landscape?

Chris Dooley: 46:35

I think you know every new technology, even books. Man was resisted and rejected when it first came on the scene. It All. They all television books were considered like, Oh, you're not doing any work on the farm, you know, like, that's idle, and you're getting these strange ideas from elsewhere. They'll poison you and take over. And so humans are, we're just barely not monkeys. Man, that's, that's my trademark, copyright thing. We're just, we're we have a thin neocortex that's like, what, a few millimeters, not even a whole centimeter deep on our brain, three pounds of jelly meat floating in pitch blackness and reverse spinal fluid, but I just call it booger juice. So we're just barely not monkeys, right? We're afraid a lot. That's our natural inherent thing. That's sort of an automatic response to anything strange or different that's wired into us. We don't have to obey that compulsion. But if you look through history and see that we have this tendency, maybe the new technology, the new thing, is not so horrific. It's just that we're not used to it. My, my sense, if that holds true, is that we'll just, eventually, it'll just become like televisions, you know, like where we can use it to our benefit, and there's going to be some costs to it. So that's so, you know, I think it's new, it's disruptive. We'll adapt to it. Well, we can use it. I had a client recently who uses chat GPT a lot. He like, he's very studious. It is kind of a star, star client, because he really does his homework. You know what we do in the one hour session? That's not that. That's not going to cure you or fix you. I'm just going to provide some feedback, and, you know, some things to consider, but you gotta, you gotta integrate that. You have to work on that on your own. That's, that's where the real progress is. And so he would take notes on all our sessions and really process it and really be active. And so then he took a couple couple few months of sessions and entered the chat TV team. Was like, What's wrong with me, you know? And what do I do about it? Which is great, you know, that's what it can be for. And of course, it was lacking on some details and it was inaccurate on some things. But we've been processing, we've been going through these like, I was like, how does this one strike you? And then we have to develop a discussion. And so, like a lot of these things, it can be a great conversation starter. It can it can it can, assess, summarize information in a way. But like, you know, like, people don't like dating apps, like, you still have to meet the person, and you still have to get along with them, and you still have to let your pheromones exchange, and you still have to see if you're compatible. Like, it's, it's sort of a shortcut for getting there, but you still got to do all the regular work. And the same thing with this. The information he got for jet chat GPT has been great. And so we, we take the stuff that's helpful and we chuck the stuff that's like, does that land? And he's like, nah. So we just check it.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 49:44

Fantastic. That's a great answer. I love it because you hear so much about AI and the fears and all that, yeah, but you made a good metaphor with the TV or books and the TV

Dr. Terry Weyman: 49:55

or music. Remember when the Beatles came out and Elvis came out? Oh, they're the devil? Yeah? Yeah, radio,

Chris Dooley: 50:00

radio was horrific, and then music, absolutely, yeah,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 50:05

that's true, which is great,

Chris Dooley: 50:07

if you guys can remember that, just take, take that framework, but don't steal my thunder. I gotta, I'm gonna make billions off of a T shirt or a hundreds. I'll make hundreds of dollars. But if you can remember that like, it explains all of our sociopolitical conflict, right? We're just barely not monkeys. We just think we're really evolved. Our nation is new. Technology is new. We're still working on cars. Have been around for 100 some odd years. You know, we get mad that our cell phones drop service, like we've only had them like 3030, years or something, right? We're still working out the bugs on cars. You know, Ford brakes are notoriously bad. Like, I'm just like, give it a chance. We're still, we're still getting there. So I think the same thing. Yeah, music, AI

Dr. Spencer Baron: 50:54

excellent, man. All right, do we? We're going into our favorite part of our program here nearing the end, but it's never the end, because this is just the beginning of our fun here. It's our rapid fire questions. We got five of them for you. Oh, lordy. I'm sure you're pretty good about thinking on your feet here. So if you're ready for number one, give me the thumbs up.

Chris Dooley: 51:19

All right. Do

Dr. Spencer Baron: 51:21

you live the life most people wouldn't believe if it were written in a novel, but now you're using all of that hard won experience to help others, and I appreciate that if you had to leave the audience with one hard truth, one lesson that might be painful but ultimately liberating, what would that be?

Chris Dooley: 51:44

I was going to be a bummer, man. You, you probably already have all the answers you need. You probably have all the resources you you already have them. They may have been locked off through childhood trauma. You may have, you may not recognize them. They may be right in front of your face. But, yeah, that's a central approach of all the therapeutic work that I do. It's like, I absolutely believe people have the resources, the strength, the power and the answers they're already there, which is, we're constantly looking elsewhere. Yeah, but did you look behind your eyes?

Dr. Spencer Baron: 52:24

It's great, because sometimes people just need someone else to believe in them and support them. So we need each other. So true, yeah, yeah. Need that cheerleader. Question number two, Dooley, in your line of work, practical jokes are part of the game. What is the best prank that has ever been played on you and that you have played on somebody else?

Chris Dooley: 52:48

You know? I don't, I don't know. I have a hard time with recall, like, immediate recall, like, I'll remember at like, two or three tomorrow morning. We're like, oh, I should have thought that. Yeah, yeah, I don't, I don't know. I don't know about Frank's practical jokes I can tell you. I don't know where this would fit in. This may be inappropriate, but so when I was stationed in Germany, we were just outside of Nuremberg. So that was the biggest that was, it was about an hour train ride away, and it coincidentally, is where my great grandmother is from. So we stationed over there, and we were just, you know, we were 17, 1819, years old, and we would just hardcore infantry, and drinking was the name of the game. And we had amazing adventures, most of which I can't remember, but we had this one thing that we do regularly, called the castle run. And so, you know, most, most cities in Europe and in Germany, particularly like at the at the alt shot, the Old Town, is the castle that's been there for 100 years, not 100 sorry, 700 1000 years. And so there's an outer ring, and then there's the the inner Castle, right? So when people would attack, they'd withdrawn to the the big behind the walls. And you know, this thing has like, what, 80 foot, 80 foot walls. And so it was right across we cast the train down, drinking all the way rock, a bunch of destructive, degenerate young men with way too much testosterone. And come out of the Hauptbahnhof, the main train station right across the street, boom. So the castle run is you start. You get a beer at every bar. And so the first one in there is Finnegans, Finnegans heart, if I remember. And then you go up to the castle. It's about a mile on the main you know, there's no cars in there. It's all, it's all cobblestone. Could be misremembering that, but you go up to the castle and you have, if you look down the street z bar, you have to get a beard there. These are German beers. So they're, it's a, you know, almost a leader, high high octane. And so we just get obliterated. Man. It was, you know, like you didn't always make it. You did not always make it to the top. Sometimes we got in fights with each other. I think I got enough fight with a mime one time. You. Um, you, you get distracted on side quests, the group disintegrates. But, like, that's the goal, to try to make it up to the castle. One time we did that, and it was the daytime, it was, it was Saturday, and it we made up to the castle, Castle, right? The castle keep. And we never been in there before. And I was like, let's go in the castle. This is, this is the essence of it. And I came upon a door. It was a big, like one of those big, like thick wooden doors, eight feet tall, a few feet thick. And my platoon, like the units that I was in, we tended to be the we. Our mission was to breach the obstacle. You know, we're we're mechanized in between. So if you come upon like, line of concertina wire and mines and stuff like, you gotta throw the grappling hook, pull it and start bangalowers blow it apart. So breaching obstacles was what we were trained for, and this was an obstacle. And I was like, let's go. And so I started yanking on the store, and the other guys came in. It was a beautiful team effort. We broke open these doors and we flooded in. I wish there was a camera that could have seen us, because it was like kids discovering a candy store that they had to break into. There was a giant room. It's probably 60 by 40 feet, and there was a, I don't know, a two by two piece of wood at about four or five feet high, all the way around, and every three feet there was an ancient weapon. There was a hall Burke, there were swords, there were spears, and we were just like there was this moment of stillness and silence. And then everybody scattered and started yanking This is a museum that we broke into a museum with 500 year old weapons. And we're, we're, they're just held in by these fragile wires. We're yanking them off the walls, and just like smacking each other and stabbing each other, it was chaos. And, you know, just laughing and bleeding now. And, you know, and then this, and then, like the the old German woman who, like, looked after the place, came out of, like another hidden door, and she just started shouting us. We just, we just dropped everything I can, I can still hear the clattering, and we just took off and ran back down to the nearest bar. So that's not necessarily a prank, but that was a that was about that for a while. It was a pretty epic

Dr. Terry Weyman: 57:21

Hey, Spence, I just gotta interject really quick. I don't think people realize how many bars are in Germany. We when I was I did an event, and we had a 24 hour layover in Germany, and me and a colleague got dropped off maybe a half a click from our hotel, and we're and we had to walk back, and we looked at each other go, we're having a beer at every bar we see. And there was probably 20 bars in less than at like, three blocks, and we didn't make it. We, in fact, we over slept, almost missed our plane. So I don't really out people realize how many bars, so your story, I'm sorry. Just remind me, at seven light, there are law bars, and those beers are powerful, so yeah, all

Dr. Spencer Baron: 58:10

right, it's not rapid fire anymore, but

Unknown: 58:15

we got three more questions For you do. Let's see one more, one question.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 58:21

This is a little more of a wholesome question. What's one book you recommend anyone now you mentioned a few earlier, but what's one that you would mention for some of this from a home, that there has been struggle?

Chris Dooley: 58:39

What book would I recommend for someone who comes from a home where there's been struggle? Sure is that, was that the question? Am I hearing that? Right? Yes,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 58:48

okay, yes.

Chris Dooley: 58:56

I'd recommend Pema SHA drone, who is this American but Tibetan Buddhist nun, and she, pretty much anything by her is going to be pretty solid. A lot of these her, these are short books, and they're excerpts from or their transcriptions of her talks. One would be when things fall apart, and the other parallel would be the places that scare you. Fantastic. It's a no. They're no nonsense, no, no bullshit. Insight from the heart. It's a compassionate approach, but there's no bullshit about it. It's very direct and and raw and real. And I know you said one, but I don't, I don't follow the rules. Man,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 59:44

no, but actually I want to. I think we should put those books as reference in our description when we put the podcast out, because those sound interesting. And some people really want to. Would really want to get a grip on those books. Thank. Thanks. Thanks for that question. Number four, if you could, you could walk with anyone in history, past or present, and have their attention for just one hour. Who would you choose and what would you ask them?

Chris Dooley: 1:00:17

Oh, first person that comes to mind, comes to mind is Martin Luther King. I think nice. And the question I would ask him a lot of questions, but just like, how, how can you stay so calm? How do you stay so calm? How do you how do you maintain the hope and the belief in people, you know, like that. There's one story I took a summer and I just, I just read every book in my school library about him, you know, we all know, like Martin Luther King Day, and who is this person? And I want to know who he was, so I read his autobiography. I read biographies, and then a bunch of, like, letters from a burning jail. And there was, there was one, I don't, I think this is from a biography, but there was one time when he was leading a march. It was through a neighborhood, and there was, you know, a lot of folks were lined up on the streets watching, and they weren't all friendly. A lot of them were pretty hostile. And one in particular was this guy was a corrections officer. I'm pretty sure this is, this is around Birmingham, Alabama corrections officer, and he just had such hate and anger and violence. So he stepped down off the curb, and this is him telling the story. Step down off the curb, and he punched Martin Luther King in the face as hard as he could, just like crack from the side, and Martin Luther King did this, and he came back up, and he just kept walking. And that, that correction officer said that changed his life, right? And so that capacity for for someone to take the abuse, the violence, the hat, hatred and rejection, man, I look up to but I don't know that I'll ever get there, and so I would just need, I need to hear from how you get there.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:02:11

Well, hey, Dooley, I gotta tell you, man, you've said a couple things that absolutely inspire me, and I appreciate that. I got one more, one more rapid fire question for you. What do you want to be remembered for?

Chris Dooley: 1:02:30

You know what I've been asked that I don't I don't think like that. I don't think about I kind of gave that up a long time ago as part of my own growth about what other people think about me. I care about being affected. I care about showing people their own heart. You know, I joke. I like to joke when I kind of mean it like, I like to make people cry in therapy. And it's not, obviously, not by shame and humiliation, but by showing them their own heart, like how much capacity they have, how much they're holding already, and so, yeah, for there's, there's no meaning in how I'd like to remember, I care about, I care about the effect. I care about the impact. That's, that's it

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:03:17

do. You're a true healer. Man, I appreciate that. You know our program is oriented towards physical, nutritional and mental health, and you really cornered the market on mental health today. So thank you so much for being part of the show.

Chris Dooley: 1:03:35

Thank you. Thank you all. I really appreciate you.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:03:42

Thank you for listening to today's episode of The cracking backs podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at cracking backs podcast. Catch new episodes every Monday. See you next time you.