Scott Jones joins from Outback Treatment to talk about getting started as a volunteer in the recovery industry. He is focused on trauma and attachment issues with his clients and in his own life. He talks about current buzzwords like regulation and dysregulation, and his experience with brain spotting and experiential based therapies. He spends a lot of time with adolescents and talks about the changes in treatment over his career. Enjoy.
The Illuminate Recovery Podcast is about Mental Health, Mental Illness, and Addiction Recovery. Shining light on ways to cope, manage, and inspire. Beyond the self care we discuss, you may need the help of a licensed professional. Curt Neider and Shelley Mangum are a part of Illuminate Billing Advocates (illuminatebilling.com). They are committed to helping better the industry and adding value to the lives of listeners by sharing tools, insights, and success stories of those who are working on their mental health.
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scott jones joins us from outback treatment to talk about getting started as a volunteer in the recovery industry he is focused on trauma and attachment issues with his clients and in his own life he talks about current buzzwords like regulation and dysregulation and his experience with bane spotting and experiential based therapies he spends a lot of time with adolescents and talks about the changes in their treatment over his career enjoy welcome to the illuminate recovery podcast we shed light on mental health issues mental illness and addiction recovery ways to cope manage and inspire beyond the self-care we will discuss you may need the help of a licensed professional my name is kurt neider i'm a husband father entrepreneur a handyman and a student of life i avoid conflict i deflect with humor and i'm fascinated by the human experience and i'm shelley mangum i am a clinical mental health counselor and my favorite role of all times is grandma i am a seeker of truth and i feel like life should be approached with tremendous curiosity i ask the dumb questions i fill in the gaps the illuminate recovery podcast is brought to you by illuminate billing advocates make billing and collection simple with leader in substance abuse and mental health billing services verification and analysis of benefits pre-authorizations utilization management accurate claim submission and management denial and appeal management and industry leading reporting improve your practices cash flow and your ability to help your clients with eliminate billing advocates today uh kurt and i have the um joy and privilege of talking with scott jones scott is a licensed clinical mental health counselor he's a relationship expert therapist innovative problem solver and public speaker scott has worked with adolescents for much of his career he is a six foot six inch tall role model that most kids respect and appreciate his presence he is currently working with an outback therapeutic program which is a wilderness experiential program approach he's used brain spotting in his work and is fascinated by the powerful the powerful brains that we all have scott thanks so much for being with us today pleasure thanks for having me um it's kind of fun you've got you do some things that um that i that i think about and i i i'm not trained as a brain spotter but i know i've done the emdr um training and and uh and it seems like brain spotting kind of came off of that and there's a spin-off of that and there's several others so it'd be interesting to talk about that a little bit as we get going but um maybe to start give us give give our listeners a little bit of an idea of how you ended up in the counseling world yeah yeah you know i i used to think that i just kind of accidentally ended up here but i think the older i get the more i see the you know the path and that it was probably always meant for me i i started i started as a volunteer really i got my degree i bounced around as a college student trying to figure out what i was wanting to do but i i was always drawn i thought i would be a teacher actually but maybe a teacher or something to do with helping people was always something i wanted to do i was drawn to i ended up getting my undergrad in psychology and i volunteered i had a good friend that was working in an adolescent residential program as their director and yeah he just one day says you should come and and check it out and so i did i was fascinated by it i was fascinated by you know the the students that were there and what was going on and so i volunteered i ended up getting hired on as a kind of a front line staff working kind of in the trenches with them and eventually worked my way kind of through the whole organization and i was with that organization for a couple decades almost actually took a little break uh and and went and worked for a program that was starting some adolescent treatment programs in georgia um but then ended up back that program is called stillwater academy here in salt lake but um ended up continuing on getting you know getting my degree becoming a licensed therapist and i was a therapist there director there for many years so just i don't know i kind of i kind of stumbled upon the industry but once i was there i felt like home that makes sense yeah absolutely do you have any um any history you know background trauma you know substance abuse anything in your background that that would have lent to you coming this direction because so many therapists have their own stories and and that's kind of what gets them in that direction you sound like you started working in the industry and said hey this is what i want to do yeah i i think my answer would have been different 10 10 years ago i think 10 years ago i would have said no i don't think i really have any story like that i was just interested but you know the more i learned about trauma i think we can probably all answer yes to that question in some degree but but my story um i i think did have an effect on it i so my i'm the oldest my my mother and father i was their first child and my mother was diagnosed with cancer right as i was born and i i actually still don't know a lot about how sick she was and what that was like so i'm only i only make some assumptions right but what i assume is that was a very stressful time for her and my family and everybody and what we know about those little t traumas now is that's going to have an effect on a little guy right but she passed away when i was about 18 months old and my my father being a young father he was in in the army reserve work in school all that there's a lot to handle so i actually ended up living with my grandparents and i i imagine my grandparents probably took a major role even from day one because my mother was sick um and i i think that that's had an effect right i i my grandparents uh were just gems it's very interesting i'm at the stage of life now where i have my own grandchildren and i think i'm about the age maybe a little bit younger than they were when they took me on but i can't even imagine at my age taking on a newborn again you know just just gems my grandparents and i feel like so much of who i am and you know anything that's good i attribute a tribute to them but i lived with them until i was about five when my father remarried and then i went and lived with him and and my stepmom what who i call mom um but i think that that was at five that was a pretty big upheaval too right i am with these people who are in all intense purposes my parents and now i'm with another set of parents and um and all of them were fabulous great people um uh my my mother my stepmother who i call my mother who she is my mother she's a gem and and took on you know this child of five who i don't know what that was like i'm sure it wasn't easy but i think that there's been a piece of me that really relates to those attachment issues that so many of the kids we work with have because i think i had some disruptive attachment you know my father and i were never very close and even as i became an adult we weren't super close uh i i always respected him and he he was he was a great father but i think that that that bond was never really established early on you know and i think i've worked through my own issues with that my father actually passed away from cancer too several years ago and when he uh passed away that's when i started i think doing my work isn't how that always happens now that they're gone you can't really repair the relationship now you better get busy working on yourself so i think this has something to do with it i'm very much drawn to trauma work and and trying to understand and uh create a space for people to work through their own kind of disrupted attachment issues or trauma issues do you think do you think that that that time of death is that like does it awaken all of those feelings or is there a certain element where like in some ways now it's safer to take on that's a great question kurt i it's probably both right i definitely awakened some of those feelings for sure um but i think it was also safer you know i never wanted to disappoint him i never wanted to hurt his feelings um and then doing some of that work with him may have you know and so i think that's a great question my i continued to be my grandparents are gone now too but um gosh you know they always were very important in my life too right we my wife and i joke i had to i had to get their approval of my wife when we were dating long before i got my parents my parents were just gonna have to live with it but my grandparents i wanted them to give their stamp of approval which i think says a lot about the relationship you know when it's interesting your story is as you talk about it you said you know you had to you had to dive in and do your work which which maybe you'll agree with me on this that to really be a good therapist you got to do your own work as well as you know you got to do your own work and be you know be able to identify your triggers and your you know your transferences and all of those dynamics that go into doing counseling and really being a good counselor would you agree with that oh absolutely yeah absolutely and i i think that um that's just an ongoing process too right we're never done with that right right it's a human it's the human process right as i i think like you said we all have some sorts of traumas whether they're big teas or little t's whether aware of them or not aware of them but that's just part of living is having those traumas we all have different stories and sometimes it's a lot more obvious to people around you that you have those and carry those with you than it might be otherwise but we all have them so i agree i'm curious as you talked about your mother dying as you're 18 months old i mean those kinds of traumas do not sit in our you know conscious brain and you're not aware and it's all pre-verbal stuff and i imagine as you work with teenagers and probably brain spotting plays into this is there's a lot of that pre-verbal you know there's no words for it because you didn't have any words at the time these things happened how do you see those pieces when you're working with with your adolescents well i you know i think one thing that i love about working with adolescents especially is helping you know trying to figure out all those puzzle pieces help them figure it out i mean therapy is really about going you know helping a client get from dysregulation to regulation that's really what it's about and and then long-term therapy is only successful to the degree that the client is able to do that on their own you know eventually right and so i i wonder if maybe part of the reason i've been so drawn to adolescent therapy is we focus so much on behavior with adolescence you know they're coming to therapy because their behavior is out of control in one way or another and you know you mentioned how much the industry has changed we've certainly changed the way we look at that and treat that in the last 20 years and i've been doing it for about 20 years so i've seen a lot of change but we're not trying to help kids be obedient or you know compliant that's not the point point is helping them uncover what's getting in the way of their success and and being able to to regulate so yeah brain spotting mind body based therapies are always been very fascinating to me because i feel like we're carrying these things around that we don't even know like you say we're non-verbal and so how do we how do we get to those and traditional talk therapy while i do a lot of it all the time it sure takes a long time to get to those levels of the brain that are going to make any difference right so whatever we can do so that's also why i've always been very uh interested in experiential based models of therapy you know early on i was fascinated by things like taking the kids to the ropes course and putting putting people through safe experiences that take them way out of their comfort zone and i didn't realize that i don't think 20 years ago i didn't know why it was working but you know why it works is because it gives us a safe place to explore those unconscious places you know that's what i believe that's fascinating talk a little bit about the experiential you know type of work that you do and and how you see that affecting adolescents well and maybe i'll even take a step back and ask the question adolescence you know adolescents are a very interesting population to work with they're different on some levels than adults or people who are sometimes ready to do their work right come into therapy because they're ready to do their work and these these teens are being told that they have to go to treatment and they don't always want to be there what how do you see that those relationships building in that dynamic and and what's your approach kind of talk about that a little bit sure yeah yeah i was i was thinking about this i was talking about this with a colleague the other day and the fact that yeah you know most of the adolescents i work with are not choosing they're resistant to that but but i've also never met a client that was really not resistant i think we're all resistant right in one way or another but it is a different level with most of the adolescents we work with so i think you know my my approach um gosh it has a lot of legs right the the first i think i really operate from a place of they would if they could we all would if we could you know kind of the ross green approach of um we would choose to be happy right why would we choose anything different and so if there's behaviors if there's things that are getting in the way of that then part of therapy has to be figuring out why that is what what's going on right um but operating especially with adolescents from a place of if they could do it different they'd do it differently they're not just choosing to be jerks right i didn't wake up in the morning and say how can i terrorize my parents today um how can i get kicked out of english class today so those are all adaptive behaviors and so i really look at the behaviors that my clients come into treatment with is they're adaptive that they're they're not they're not mal i mean they end up being maladaptive in other environments but in the environment that they're created they're very adaptive so i i i think we really have to come from a strength based approach so you know we're instead of focusing on what's going wrong let's focus on what's right let's start there let's help them be seen and heard and feel like they matter um it's a catchphrase that's been used way too much in our industry but you know we take a relationship a relationship approach well of course we do but what does that really mean right and how do you how do you chart that what does that look like and i think that really it's about not having a non-judgmental i can't come in with any of my own biases which is really hard that's a chat that's why as therapists we have to keep doing our work because i'm always trying to challenge you know my own set of biases and lenses i look through because the kids will pick up on that so fast um and then i think you know the thing i like the most about therapy is just trying to figure out you know the system right it's it's interesting to me that most kids do really well in treatment when they come to treatment programs they do really well and then they get out of treatment and they don't do very well a lot you know not all the time but a lot of times right and they go back into oh behaviors why is that and i i think you know they get they get to a place in treatment where in a program where they're feeling safe they're feeling heard they're starting to examine you know their own hurts and traumas and things that are there they're being educated about all these things they're they're basically they're learning self-regulation skills in an environment that contributes to that and then we kind of throw them back into the environments that caused all the adaptive behaviors in the first place right so we have to take it all as a system look at all the moving pieces and i love that part about therapy and i think all of that leads to um you know you you create a relationship of trust you have a place where they can feel seen and heard and they you know their strengths are being highlighted rather than everything that's wrong with them you come from a place of instead of you know what's wrong with you to what happened to you and then you can do things like maybe brain spotting or emdr where you can get to those underneath limbic very base level things and help and and their brains their bodies know how to make things better you just help them access that yeah so i see myself as you know it's yeah you're kind of the cruise director of all those moving parts just trying to get them you know to figure it out themselves i'm i'm not the healer i'm definitely not the guy with all the answers but if i but i do care you know and i want to create a space that that they can figure it out well and these kids are smart right they're smart kids and they come with a whole bunch of really um you know great ideas and thoughts and you know capacity to do some of their own work when they get when they're given the right information you know because this is new stuff to them and and they've been in sometimes situations that where they're not heard and seen and understood and that's frustrating um so i love that approach and i you know i love i think kids are incredible and when they you know when they can engage in therapy and the kind of the kind of tools that you provide them in treatment and self-regulation that it really gives them a head start to their adult life yeah yeah absolutely i i see so many uh kids i've worked with you know they they get out of treatment and then um they start leading their own groups you know they start helping others and the adults around them are blown away because in many ways they're further down the trail than most adults they're around in some ways well that's a challenge that i think that we have in our industry in our in our communities now is how do we allow you know adolescents teenagers young adults to take those leadership roles that they really are capable of taking and help them move into that and and support them in that i think that's something that maybe we're taking some of that away from them or have been in the past yeah yeah you know i think another thing that really influences my work and is just the ideas of you know resiliency and grit those are two very common catchphrases as well but you know the work that um that carol dweck did and the lee duckworth i look at both of those concepts between um kind of a growth mindset and what does grit look like and you know i the kids that i work with today are so different than the kids i worked with 20 years ago you know i i mean i think 20 years ago it was kind of sex drugs in rock and roll and parents are concerned and let's get them on the right path and it was pretty simple in lots of ways and now and it's so complex you know the the the adolescents we work with now are so complex and there's so many things going on and i i think helping them fee you know get some of these things figured out before they're adults is just critical to their long-term success you know it's not just about oh my my son's using pot i mean it's a lot deeper than that right and and so helping helping not only the kids i work with but the families i work with understand that is really really important what's the real shift there because like the internal kind of dialogue the internal issues probably couldn't have changed that much is that is it the means and access to information you know for for teens in those relationships is that our parents more understanding they just understand you know there's an emotional intelligence that's a little bit greater now than there was 20 years ago what's the real difference between i think if i man i think if we had the answer that it would be a really good book we should write it together because i think we'd make a lot of money i think it's really complex right i think technology and the access information is definitely part of that absolutely i i think just in general at least you know here in the you know western world that we're a part of the general affluence that we have gives us access to a lot of things and i think there's just a lot of stuff but i think you know parents parents especially i you know i think it's generational right i think it's generational when i think about my parents um it was about putting food on the table you know it was about getting by um and you know teaching basic principles right and then gosh the kids my kids i have three kids and it was all about are they in the right classes are they in the right sports teams um i mean my daughter when she was eight years old said i'm gonna play volleyball for stanford you know who that's crazy right and and and that got you know my wife and i's gears okay well great we gotta get her in the right volleyball clubs and you know from the age of eight i mean that's a lot of stress it's a lot of stress when you look at just the academics you know it used to be let's learn our abcs in kindergarten now you know it's way beyond that so i i think it's a lot of things i think it's generational i think as parents we want our kids to be happy um so that that sometimes translates into this help them avoid being unhappy at all costs and so our kids don't learn how to deal with that we want our kids to be successful so that translates into you know it's no longer helicopter parents it's let's bulldoze the path and line it with flowers and roses and make it you know because we just it's coming from a good desire but i think a lot of times we end up passing on to our kids these kind of patterns and traits that then end up you know it's kids the kids i'm working with uh for the most part are are anxious their their limbic systems i think are on high alert constantly um and and then oh by the way throw a little pandemic in the mix that's gonna help right so i just think it's really complex i think the answer in the end is getting back to basics how do we regulate how do we regulate our emotional states so that we can deal with all of the things life throws at us and that's got to start with going back to when we become dysregulated i think for many of us that started you know pre-verbal that started a long long time ago so creating a place where we can access that and start working on that is super importantwhen it's interesting as you work with these kids and and go back to the basics right you're teaching them those very basics of emotional regulation and understanding how our bodies and brains work and obviously taking away the shame and the the stigmatism of something's wrong with you and if you'll just fix my child you know our family will be all better and and try to work through some of those pieces it's not it's not necessarily that you're saying you can't go achieve all these things that you really want to achieve but you've got to be able to do the basics first and then let's figure out what's really important to you and not just what's being put on you right exactly yeah yeah shame right i mean that's that's at the heart of so much of this and um we have it as parents i i tell a lot of stories i'm a storyteller i think stories connect us and help us and we can learn in different ways but um so i'll kind of share a story yeah i was just gonna say you gotta you better share a story with us of what you know what you share with them stories that come to mind so i have three kids one of my one of my sons um when he was i think it was middle age um gosh he and i would battle over academics over homework over we would just battle and battle in battle and um i you know i felt so i felt bad about it um i was starting to wonder well maybe there's things going on you know maybe there's things i don't know that are going on he's got some learning differences or something and so i was worried about him going into high school and just really struggling we took him to to get tested um had a full neuro psychological done by a very prominent psychologist here in salt lake valley and who i had a relationship with and stuff and as i look back now i'm like you know gosh my poor son spent a whole saturday getting tested he was he was just so easy going about anyway my wife and i go in a week later to get the results and this good friend of mine he he looks at us and said well you know the good news is you're super involved you want to help you're looking at different options really glad about that you're in the industry you understand probably the bad news is for you nothing wrong with your son this is all you there's no learning disabilities there there's no adhd there's nothing that's really getting in the way academically so let's look at you know what your systems are doing to your kid because we were creating a lot of anxiety right and we were creating a lot of and the conflict wasn't good so that was a you know that was a good gut check for me but um the interesting thing looking back is you know i we changed i changed one thing and that was i just made a commitment that i was not going to bring up homework we were not going to have a school related conversation unless we connected in some other way right unless we'd had some other sort of connection and if that meant i went several days and then just wasn't an opportunity to make a good connection that means i couldn't bring up school even if i knew he was behind on his homework right and it changed it changed the it changed everything it changed the relationship he did just fine he's going to be an accountant he's got his last quarter of school you know anyway and and obviously everybody's story is different they don't always turn out that good but but the the the point for me was was my concern about him and his homework habits and school habits was that about him or was it about me it was really about me you know it's about my own shame what if i have a son that doesn't do well in school what does that say about me as a father all this nonsense about how somehow that had something to do with me it didn't have anything to do with me you know what he did his strengths his greatness that's all him and so being able to work on that let go of that myself and just focus again on the relationship it makes all the difference and in one way or another that i think that's the answer in every case you know how do we let go of our own shame and get rid of you know those things that hold us back i got one more story i can share one more story oh yeah but i think before you move on from that i think yeah you know he's in a good position now and so you kind of joke that oh it all worked out yeah like kind of like oh you shouldn't have been worried in the first place right but the reality is is that like if you hadn't gone and gotten that scan right if you hadn't put and put your family in a position for for that friend to be able to say you're broken not him you might have just started pushing harder right and it could be true it's not that that asking for help was the difference right that was the right parenting decision yeah regardless of the fact that it wasn't the answer you expected right right and also if the ev and if the answer would have been yeah look there's some executive functioning stuff going on there's some adhd there's no even if that it was if that the end was the answer the answer it doesn't change my part of it too right still the answer for me would have been let go of my own shame and just you know just be his dad no it's either way that would have been the answer but yeah you're right getting help i don't want to minimize that for sure well and it also makes me think of i was reading stephen r covey's i don't know maybe it was seven habits one of his books and and he was telling a story about him and his wife and his children and he had all of these really high achiever children that were thriving and doing well and he had one child that just was really struggling and they were doing all these things to help this child strug you know get over their struggles and to be able to do the same as everybody else and and as he as he talked about this and got you know got counsel around how he was doing this what he realized and what he was shown is that he was actually sending a message to his child that his child wasn't capable and they were going to help him and that the child wasn't capable and in all of our best efforts as parents that's not the message we intend to send but often is and when you just shift that i love how simple scott that you said your job was simply to learn to connect with him on anything else and in a different way before you even talked about something that might create you know anxiety or whatever with schoolwork such a simple thing but then you're listening and you're connecting and and then we can start to shift some of that and the message that they learned to send was that you're capable and we trust you and we're here to help let us know how we can help but you know go you know go and do your stuff and we're your cheerleaders and here we go and it was an interesting shift because i mean i could see myself how i had done that with my own children and went oh i don't think any of us recognize when we're doing that and what that was just a huge learning experience for me that i appreciated that perspective yeah yeah so interesting [Music] and when i think about the parents you know the families i work with too by the time you know by the time a student comes to wilderness therapy there's a lot of conflict you know there's a lot of craziness going on parent parents don't take a decision like that lightly that that's maybe the hardest decision they've ever made you know um but helping is so taking the the focus from if my if my child kind of has a storm going on whatever that storm looks like you know so that could be drugs that could be suicidal behavior that could be self-harming that could be falling out of school and it could be a million different things right but there's this storm going on as a parent it's so easy to react to that storm as if that storm is directed at me right um and if i look at it in that way that's definitely going to influence the way i respond you know if it's if it's about me then maybe i have to help them understand something i got to teach them a lesson i gotta i gotta hold the line i have something it's gonna have those type of responses or also if it's about me maybe maybe that brings up my own storm all the stuff inside of me and so i got to shut it down i got to control this right but if we can if we can recognize that the storm's happening you know inside of them that they're having a storm it's not about me that really opens up a bunch of different options right how can i now be supportive how can i help how can i be aware of my own storms and make sure they don't combine and become a hurricane that we're all in together you know um so i think that's just critical and in the family systems work we do to help help parents see the difference between helping because i'm trying to protect myself or helping because i just that's what i want to do i'm helping them become their best elves you know yeah definitely okay i'm anxious to hear your second story okay maybe it's related maybe it's not it's something i think about a lot but i had an opportunity several years ago to take a bunch of boys um on a hiking trip into the wind rivers of wyoming i don't know if you've ever been there but it is it is beautiful it's a it's a multi-day backpacking type experience right so we were taking these young boy scouts we're taking them up in there um we prepared all summer by going on little hikes we did lots of work about how to how to pack you know we're using all freeze-dried food right you're packing several days so it's all about being efficient being fit all those things so finally the big day arrives and our first day of hiking and i'd never been up there myself either we had somebody else who's very experienced in the area but i've never been there so i had anxiety about it i was excited we started on this path and the path is literally paved for like the first mile and i was thinking to myself what is the big deal this is easy right but then you eventually occur you turn off the pavement and then that starts to go up gets a lot harder um and then you take another turn and then it starts to get really steep and pretty challenging and that first day it started to rain so we stopped and everybody that had remembered their rain gear put their anger on then it started to sleet and hail then the sun would come out then it would start to rain and the sun and just you know it was crazy right and it was it was an experience that first day but there was one young man that have you know maybe a mile or so into it he asked us to stop and take a break and then another half a mile we took a break and then another quarter mile we took a break and and i was starting to think he's not gonna make it i don't think he's gonna make it what are we gonna do we're gonna have to carry him back so we had lots of stops but anyway eventually we made it to the first camp area where we needed to be and it had been quite a trying day you know we were the sun would come out and these boys would just yip and holler and they were so excited to dry out and then we'd get sleeted on again and it was it was really it was a cool experience but we get to the camp and all the boys are setting up their individual little camp areas and i was checking on everybody and i came up to this boy who had had to stop several times and he was small he's not a huge guy and he's taking stuff out of his pack and he's taking as he's taking stuff out i notice he takes out a lord of the rings paperback book you know and then he takes out like a costco size bag of licorice and a costco-sized bag of um jerky and all this stuff of course we you know not supposed to bring and and i just thought about this all the time since that experience several years ago about well no wonder he had such a hard time right no wonder he was he's carrying 20 more pounds than the rest of us um and anyway so long story short is he made it the whole hike was great and and he stayed that first day he wanted to leave but he stayed he persevered and uh it was a great experience but as i've thought about that and it's it's meant different things to me at different times but i think you know you think about the anxiety we were putting him in a very uncomfortable experience and so he brought the things with him that he felt he just had to have the things that were going to help him regulate back to you know it's all about this regulation he brought those things that he felt were so critical and in the end they ended up causing tons of pain and you can't we couldn't control the the trail we couldn't control the weather there's lots of things we couldn't control the one thing we could really control his you know what were we carrying what kind of stuff did we bring and you know in his instance he made his life a lot harder with those things he just felt like he could not do without right as i've thought about that i mean isn't that life isn't that what we do you know that maybe maybe i learned in those first 18 months after my mother passed away before i even had language there were some things that i probably carried with me there's things that i use that i feel like i just can't do without but in the end you know they really cause me problems they cause me problems in my relationships in my you know my work in all areas of my life and i feel like part of part of what we do in therapy is just help people discover you know what's in your backpack what what can you let go of what do you really need what do you have to hold on to i think that's a beautiful metaphor that i try to keep in mind that's fantastic how do when i'm assuming you share that with these with these kids that you work with and how do they typically respond to something like that is it you know bells like go off and they're like oh my heck we can look at this or or some of them just really don't get what you're talking about i think both right i probably do share that story more with my kids i i i'm sure some of them heard it more than once but we have great discussions about what's in your backpack it's one of my favorite groups and i will do that in a group setting and and really unpack one of those things that i'm holding on to so i think a lot of kids really get it parents get it you know eventually we start learning oh yeah i'm doing this because of this experience that happened 40 years ago maybe i can let go of that yeah well and it's not that's not unique to kids or to adolescents that's that's that's for all of us right we're all carrying extra stuff in our backpack and some of us realize it and just aren't willing to put it down and others don't even have a clue we're carrying it yeah yeah i love that story it's so so applicable to real life um i'm curious as as we kind of come to the end of our our podcast in our conversation which i've absolutely loved i'm curious scott do you take you just works exclusively for the program or do you take individual clients um i i have a small outpatient that i do yeah i i'm pretty busy with the program but i do do some outpatient clients yeah and i you know i i love i think working with people in recovery especially with substances and other addictive behaviors is kind of my jam too i i really like that and kind of the area i specialize in yeah that's pretty cool and i love i love what you've shared with us today super meaningful and i am i imagine that as people listen you know our listeners are listening they're going to want to connect with you what's the best way for them to get a hold of you um then steve let me give you probably the best email maybe to get a hold of me is scott at hingepoint counseling.com excellent um scott this has been super valuable i've enjoyed our conversation and i love stories stories are really what makes makes my whole life worthwhile so i love the stories i appreciate you sharing those um and and i i think we probably ought to connect later and and uh you know get get some more therapy on on our podcast down the road that'd be awesome that'd be great thanks so much for having me this has been fun thanks you