📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify

“We can't take people places we haven't gone ourselves,” says trauma therapist Chris Burris, who joins Mental Health in a Modern World to reveal why most of what we call ‘mental illness’ is actually the psyche’s adaptive strategy for survival—and why only true self-healing can allow us to guide others. Over his 35 years of clinical experience, Chris has witnessed the rise of “multiplicity of mind” as a liberating paradigm: understanding that our psyche is made of parts working both for and against us, many born from trauma and shaped by the need to protect.

In this episode, Chris demystifies the Internal Family Systems (IFS) approach, explains how our internal critics often adopt the voices of past authorities and perpetrators, and explores why befriending—rather than battling—these wounded parts is the key to freedom. He shares stories of transformation, the importance of community healing, and how elders and true initiation are missing medicines in our fractured world. Chris also opens up about his journey with plant medicine, shamanic studies, and the necessity for both humility and holistic teamwork in therapy.

Tune in to learn why healing is not a solo mission, how therapists must examine their own wounds, and what it really means to reclaim mental health in a world that desperately needs reconnection—to self, to others, and to something greater than ourselves.

5 Key Takeaways

Unlock deeper healing in your life with these actionable insights from the episode:

1. Befriend all your parts, even the critical or self-sabotaging ones, by approaching them with curiosity and compassion rather than resistance or judgment.
2. Prioritize holistic health—address both mind and body imbalances and collaborate with a supportive, multidisciplinary team when seeking mental health support.
3. Regularly engage in self-reflection and personal healing work, especially if you are a healer or helper, as you cannot guide others beyond where you’ve gone yourself.
4. Actively seek out or create intentional healing communities or circles to experience support, belonging, and collective transformation.
5. Clarify your gifts and purpose, and find ways to serve your community, transitioning from “me” focus to “we” focus through acts of service and connection.

Take one bold step today: Choose a takeaway above and bring it into your own life or healing journey.

Memorable Quotes

"We can't take people places we haven't gone ourselves. If we haven’t rescued or unburdened our own parents that we're disconnected with, it's really hard to know how to help others do that themselves."

"Being healthy in a messed up world isn't the most ideal circumstance. There's a quote I love: it's no sign of health to be adapted to a sick world."

"A true elder is asking: How am I serving my community? What are my deliverables to that? If you don't have people who mirror that and actually live it, then there's no example of what we’re supposed to mature into."

Connect with Chris

Website - http://burriscounseling.com

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/burris.counseling/

Resources Mentioned

Creating Healing Circles: Using the Internal Family Systems Model in Facilitating Groups - https://amzn.to/4vOVYwA

IFS (Internal Family Systems) - https://ifs-institute.com/

MAPS: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies - https://maps.org/

Connect with Greg

Website - https://www.healing4d.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/4d_healing/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@gregschmaus

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-schmaus-22929589/

🎙️🎙️🎙️

Podcast Production & Marketing by FullCast: https://fullcast.co

Discover the best podcast services in the world at The Podosphere: https://www.thepodosphere.com/

Mentioned in this episode:

Embark on The HTM Journey

MHMW - HTM

Embark on The HTM Journey

MHMW - HTM

We can't take people places we haven't gone ourselves. So if

we rescued or unburdened our

own parents that we're disconnected with, it's

really hard to know how to kind of help other folks do that

themselves because I think there is a tendency to, like, want to

rush and, like, hurry and rescue these

exiles of people's systems before we've really assessed,

is the system really ready to incorporate that? In a world moving

faster than our minds were designed to handle, Mental health is becoming one of the

defining challenges of our time. Welcome to Mental Health in a Modern

World with holistic health practitioner Greg Schmauss. After

overcoming severe anxiety and OCD in his own life,

Greg dedicated the past decade to helping others heal through a fully

integrated approach to mental health, combining lifestyle coaching,

psycho emotional healing, mindfulness, and archetypal work.

Over the years, he's facilitated thousands of sessions guiding people back to

peace, clarity, and a deeper connection with themselves.

Each week, Greg shares powerful solo insights, conversations with leading

voices in holistic healing, and immersive live coaching sessions that take

you inside the healing process itself. New episodes every Friday

follow the show and start reclaiming sovereignty over your mind in a modern

world. Here's Greg. Chris, welcome to the podcast, man.

Yeah, great. Thanks for having me. Garag, good to see you again. Yeah, you as

well. So I'd love for you to share just with our listeners

a little bit of your backgrounds, just so everyone can get a sense

of who Chris is, where he comes from, and just some of the work that

you do, you know, kind of where to start. I've been a

trauma therapist for 35 years. Started off

not really knowing that that was what I was going to be doing. But pretty

soon into my work, I worked at a

family service agency and Marilyn

Vanderburg came out about her story about sexual abuse.

And I, they asked for volunteers to

man the the afterward, the aftermath of that. And so

began really listening to people's story about

their trauma history. And, and when I first came out,

you know, trauma was not a main topic and we

weren't really looking at mental health being so connected to trauma. And

pretty soon after that event, I began asking people more to

share, like, you know, as something, you know,

uncomfortable or that there any abuse happened to you. And I began getting

stories of sexual abuse and trauma and began

specializing in how do we work with that, like, what's happened to people?

How have their essential qualities in their self gotten

toward it as a result of the traumatic events? And I began

studying with a guy named David Kaloff and he was expert

in multiplicity and trauma back in the day. And so I

studied with David for about 10 years, then ran across the torts and

ifs and continue to learn about

internal systems and multiplicity. Back when I

started, Wait. We thought of the mind as being sort of plural,

singular entity. And that multiplicity was a result of

traumatic events and coping. And we didn't sort of think of

multiplicity as a natural way the brain

operates. It's really wonderful to be part of a field that's evolved

to really consider multiplicity of mind as being the way that

we're really naturally organized. And it's so much more

freer than having it being sort of a pathological

phenomena. Yeah. Can you give us

a little, just for the listeners, a little

extra background in terms of multiplicity? Like when you talk about the

multiplicity of the mind, what are you speaking to? From IFAs

and lots of other modalities. Even

Freud and Jung in some ways thought of our

basic nature of our psyche as being

multidimensional and that we have various parts of ourselves

that operate in various ways. And there may

be degrees of which we have co consciousness and awareness

and some degrees in which we're not conscious of certain aspects of

ourself. And thus we have sort of the unconscious. But it's very

natural to have more of a fractal like system that

operate and respond based on stressors. And then

certain aspects of ourselves take on extra roles and extra

functions and. And then certain parts of ourself get

trapped or locked or frozen in time. And from

traumatic events or overwhelming events we have this

phenomena where we get. We get lost in the past and sort of

caught in a loop of replaying those traumatic events.

That's sort of the natural makeup of the psyche. Not that we have sort of

a general holistic, you know, self. We have sort of

multiple aspects of our system and, and within

ifs, one of the things that you teach is this idea of protectors.

And so I'd love for you to share how

during these traumatic events, how and why

the psyche starts to recruit a protective system

around the trauma and how a lot of what we

pathologize as mental illness is actually

expressions of that protective system.

Yes. One of the ways I think about trauma is that we often have really

difficult, overwhelming events happen in our life. And

if we do have people that can help us process those events and

talk through them or help us with how our body

responses. Every bad event doesn't turn into

trauma, often traumatic trauma. When we the way

it forms math actively in our system is because we're often all

alone or that we have the perception that we're alone. So we have to

cope with an overwhelming difficult situation. One of the ways

that we cope with that is we have natural

responses to that. We have a fight, flight, freeze or spawn.

So we have natural ways of reacting. Sometimes

those responses get blocked and not completed.

So those blocked responses get locked in our system. We

also tend to develop negative beliefs about ourselves

as a response to that. And those negative beliefs also get locked

in our body. The way if we can't respond

adaptively, then we have to form other ways

of responding or we have to lock that event away

and somehow try to pretend seem like it didn't happen or it wasn't

impactful or minimize it and develop other ways of coping sort

of moving forward. Often these protectors are sort of a

never again response to these dramatic events. And then that never again

response may have sort of various forms may have a

reactive, you know, I'm going to be reactive that way no one ever

can harm me this way again. Or I'm going to be preemptive, you know, never

going to be, you know, put myself in a situation or I'm never going

to allow my myself to trust someone like this again. So we have reactive or

preemptive strategies to try to prevent those bad things

from happening to us again. And so with

that framework, which I absolutely love, would you say that

most mental illness that we pathologize

are really adaptive strategies of the psyche?

Yeah, I think a lot of it is adaptive strategies of the

psyche. We all have certain sort of vulnerabilities and

temperament and biological functions.

There's different sort of combinations of things that makes us

susceptible to our environment or different things that we may

have to contend with. So I wouldn't say it's like everything. Like

sometimes I have depression because my hemoglobin is high, you

know, and my vitamin D is low. And I have to sort of go

and get my hemoglobin, you know, lowered and make sure my

vitamin D is in order. And I can be pretty depressed and lethargic. You

may sort of, I mean, come out of being out by the mild depression, but

I've got something biologically happening to me. So I would say

it's always that quite frequently what

we deem as pathological or adaptive responses

to a really thing we're seeing even now

it's even more prevalent about how difficult our

environmental system is with oppression of systemic

abuse and years of Colonization that some people have had

to go through that, you know, so we're seeing really kind of how difficult of

a world system we're having to live in. Being healthy in a

messed up world isn't the most ideal,

you know, circumstances that we're having to. Yeah,

I remember, I don't know who said it, but there was this quote, it's no

sign of health to be adapted to a sick world.

Something like that. Yeah, I love that quote. I think it's very

accurate. Yeah, I love that. You also mentioned

kind of like the bottom up approach that a lot of symptoms in the psyche

can be actually imbalances in the body. And so I'm

curious, over, you know, the three plus decades that you've been in

this field, have you seen shifts in terms of,

you could say more integration of body mind,

more, more of like a holistic approach rather than kind of

compartmentalizing? I'd like to say I

have. I, I think knowing you and knowing that, you know, you work as a

team with medical providers and you know, and so that

I think it takes a lot for therapists to have a team of folks that

they can really can rely on and, and that can consult

with. So I don't know, I think over time, I

guess having, you know, really good psychiatrist, having a medical doctor,

having women's health, you know, specialists, you know, having

functional wellness people, even chiropractors, you know, having that team

of folks, body workers so we can really address things

homeopathically and expansively is really valuable.

I think a lot of therapists are still and operating out of

their office with, you know, trying to do like a

therapy to treat everything. So I, I really, you know, if you can, to

really get a very holistic, incomplete, you know,

diagnosis that includes, you know, blood work and you know, all of

those things. Yeah, I think they're really important. I don't, I don't

prescribe anything and like everything's apart. You know, like sometimes

you hear that in ifs like you're depressed as a part or if you're,

you know, if you have anxiety as a part. Here's. It's really

important to really address the sort of the whole dimension.

So I'm, you know, I'm not an expert on the medical and I'm not an

extra on pharmacological, you know, solutions, but I have people that

are really good at it that I can consult with or get consults with.

Yeah, I find it's so important to be

open minded because there's also a Saying when all you have is a hammer, everything

looks like a nail. Yeah. And there's a lot about human beings I

still don't know. So yeah, draw these years. And humility

is, you know, one of the most important ingredients too. Yeah,

absolutely. One of the things I'd love to touch on.

You know, in ifs you talk a lot about

the importance of befriending parts and that there are

no bad parts, that they all have benevolent intentions.

And you know, I remember going back, this is now like 15

plus years ago where I had severe obsessive

compulsive disorder. And I noticed that initially I was

always trying to get rid of it. I was always trying to fix it. I

was always trying to kind of get the symptoms to go away and it

would always make things worse. You know, what you resist persists. And then all of

a sudden, as I started practicing meditation and

mindfulness, I started noticing that the more I welcomed it in

and the more I treated it, almost like this, you know,

little child that was screaming out for my attention or this protector

that was, you know, looking out for me, it was almost like I naturally

started doing parts work without knowing what parts work was.

And so when I came across ifs and you guys are talking about

befriending parts and not making them the enemy, even

parts that are, you know, self critical, judgmental, self

harm, and the importance of really seeing the

benevolence behind all parts and how essential

that is I see in especially like the coaching and self help

world, especially with like critical parts and things like that. It's always

like, get the critics out, replace it with positive thinking. And I

just find that never works. So this approach that you

have started to really offer along with a lot of the other

instructors has been so refreshing and aligned for

me. I'd love for you to expand on this idea of really

befriending some of these parts, even ones that present

themselves in more like negative or self destructive ways.

Yeah, I think it's naturally challenging if you have a

voice inside your senate and saying mean things to you. It's really hard

to get curious and befriend that part. Like it's hard to make friends with the

bully, you know, so it's a, it's a challenge to, to do that. I

think when we go deeper and sort of pull back the layers of those parts,

we do find that they're just trying to survive. And for

some reason survival really became scary and

threatening. And I'm sure great, your parts would

may outcv there, there was a survival mechanism to that. There's a

dynamic. There's a fear that something bad was going to happen and this

was a means of trying to survive. So we come into

relationship and really with the parts and getting to understand them

and listen to them. That's often kind of what we hear is things like, never

again do I want this to happen. I want this feeling to stop

or I'm terrified I'm going to get annihilated in some way.

So often we have to kind of get quiet, but we have to have

someone support us to kind of listen to those parts and kind of hear like

what's the fear underneath that? And then hearing a fear underneath that, then we

can begin to help them. And you know, a lot of young parts and

protectors tend to be fairly young aspects of ourself

and trying to cope with kind of an alarming world. That

relationship with the parts really opens up their relationship so they

can begin to entertain the idea that they could do something different. If

you're in a threat, threatening situation, it's hard to even look around

and determine like is there any other options here? So that

gives them space. Began to like peek around the corner and see

like, well, is there any other options? I thought like the same is really make.

If I say this really bad thing to you. You do work hard, but you

do practice. You do things that I'm afraid you won't do if I

don't. So there's not space to even consider other

options. Yeah, it's like the critic kind of cracking the

whip and. And it's afraid that if it doesn't do that, you

won't keep running or. Yeah. And fear is a good

motivator. We do a lot of stuff we don't want to do because we're afraid

what will happen if we don't. So it does work. You know, it then

kind of has its shelf life. It kind of runs out of energy, it

runs out of fuel. We stop wanting to respond to that

anymore. So there's gotta be another way it's more effective.

Yeah. One thing I'm really curious about. Cause I have found this in

myself. I have found this with clients that I work with where a

lot of our protectors almost like take

on the energy of our perpetrators. Why do you

sense the psyche does that? You know, a critic would be an example

of that. But why do some protectors take on similar

energetic patterns or relational patterns

as the perpetrators that we experienced?

Yeah, I think it's a great question. I think several things Happen one is

oftentimes when we're young, we're susceptible. So we

absorb energy and we absorb, we absorb that energy

into our body and then we kind of hold it. There's also kind of

phenomena of wanting redemption. If you make

me feel like I'm really horrible, then it

almost feels like we get locked together in a way

and then I need redemption from you to find my

worth again. So it gets this sort of redemptive

dynamic. This is often where you find folks really

lock into an abusive relationship that the person made them

feel horrible about themselves. And then also that person holds the key

to unlock the redemptive quality. So we kind of get locked in those

patterns a bit in these trauma patterns. The other piece is that

because we're susceptible, oftentimes the person

that has harmed us is really important. One of my

internal critics is very similar to my football coach.

And back in high school it felt really important to me to like

be a starter and like to be seen as a.

An athlete. So that football coach held a lot of power

over my sense of self as a man and

he could be supportive because 75% harsh, you know. So

my part imported that way of driving my system

to do that because he was a person of authority and power and was

back in that time seemed important to me. So they,

you know, people kind of hold power like that. These parts stay drawn, will take

on those qualities and the fear of failure,

fear of worthlessness or whatever becomes really large.

Huge. Yeah. You know what was coming to mind when you

were sharing is the last two years I've been studying family

constellation work with this woman, Sarah Payton, and

family constellation work. You talk a lot about unconscious

contracts and loyalties. And so I'm curious if some of

these parts carry some of these contracts and loyalties with our

perpetrators. Yeah, it kind of

gets multi layered and we, because they're unconscious, we kind of don't know what we

signed up for. We don't know what we agreed to or what we gave away.

So I think it's really great to see how those bonds or how

those over coupling, how it gets formed and held in the system.

I think those are really good kind of ways to explore and what

got created in there with those times. If you don't kind of understand the part,

looking at the context in which it formed kind of helps us

really understand part fully. So we're looking at the

context in which that. That part formed. That

way of trying to protect it.

Yeah. And in, in constellation work,

which I'm very curious which we can get to after this. About the sculpting

in a lot of your trainings and if, there's parallels to

constellation work. But in constellation work, with these unconscious

contracts, a lot of times we end up replicating

them, just changing the names and faces of the people involved.

But they're the same contracts repeating over and over.

So I'm curious, from an IFS lens, how would

you explain the repetition of those contracts from a

parts perspective? Well, come to. IFS is a systemic

model. A good part of systems is tracking patterns.

And so there's a patterning that happens

that as we look at these patterns, this. My background's in family therapy, so

I trained as a family therapist and trained folks as a family therapy. So

a lot of times, some of the premises behind family therapy is that

symptoms are held in the family. They're held within family

patterns. So the pattern of the scapegoat, so the

hero of the family gets a special reward. The middle child

gets rewarded for their. For their

spontaneity or their authenticity. And then there's a kid that just doesn't get

anything. And so that kid holds the. The

anxiety or the. The difficulty or badness of the

family. And so there's a patterning of interactions that

reinforces that expression from that child.

So in that ways, those patterns get replicated

in the family. And so the same sort of thing happens internally for us.

Certain parts don't have any other expression. So their

expression is to, like, make us anxious.

Well, their expression is to, like, say, like,

terrible things, like, you're an evil person, you know? So that's

the only expression that gets locked with the system. So when we

track patterns, we can see systemically how is that pattern

expressed within the system, and how does that pattern get set up to be expressed?

Beautiful. I remember I was in a ceremony with some

plant medicine, and this was when I had just started doing family

constellation work. And I asked just

the medicine spirits, why do we do constellation work?

And the response I got was, we

recreate our constellations consciously so we don't

have to recreate them unconsciously. Yeah.

And a lot of our parts, like you were saying, end up

recreating a lot of these patterns. Yeah.

We bring something to consciousness, we have a far greater chance of

changing it or doing something different. That's great. Wonderful response,

too. Yeah. When we were in Ireland and you were teaching,

we did a sculpt, and I'd love for you to share

what that is. And I'm really curious if there are

parallels between the Ifs sculpt that you did

and the constellation work that people do. I have to say, Greg, I

don't know a lot about family constellations. I'm learning more about it.

So I have some ideas about kind of what happens to

family constellations, but I'm definitely not an expert on it. Haven't

really been a receiver of it. So sculpting

makes to say what? Sculpting? Yeah. So sculpting is basically taking

the system and externalizing it. And when we

externalize it, we invite in a group, and this is one really

powerful. In a group, you have different people in the group that can stand

in or role play your parts for you. And so

ifs sometimes can be challenging because we're looking at this invisible system,

and we're also responding to body sensations,

feelings, emotions. Sometimes we have a visual,

sometimes we don't have a visual. Sometimes we just have a body

sensation. So we can take those systemic things

and kind of make them more external and invite people to role

play holdings as a placeholder for those

aspects of themselves. I've been teaching. So part of creating healing

circles is teaching people the skill of sculpting was

what I found was even teaching level one, level two. We

went online, we did. We. It's very hard to show

sculpting online. We can do it with one or two parts, so it's very hard

to do that. When we. In the old day, when level ones, we would do

quite a lot of sculpting. And my sculpt was actually with Sir

Dick Schwartz was supervising my first sculpted. And so people

sort of have that skill. But as a group work, sculpting is very powerful,

and it's a great support to kind of not have to hold every slight thing

inside my system, to kind of have someone raw fly or tease out.

And then it becomes really clear. Like, now I can see the dynamics between

the parts. I can see how close it is in proximity to me, far

away it is. I can also see what else is held in the system. Like,

for me, like, I carried my coach styles. It

was my football coach's energy in my system

vicariously. Like you say, he owned a parking lot in my head for years,

so I didn't really know I was carrying him energetically in my system. So. So

in a sculpt, we can find out what else is being held in your proximity

to you. So a couple of the rules around sculpting for me is like

to really keep it reflective of the person's internal system.

So not having extra information come in

that isn't really kind of arising out of the person's system.

My understanding a little bit of family constellations is that

oftentimes information sort of channeled in from the

outside that may come from an expert person

who's an expert in family constellations. That information can come,

can be pretty accurate, can be very helpful. Sometimes

with folks in a group setting, we get projections,

we get analytical parts, we get helper parts. We get

a lot of other information may be coming from the

system, but may not be coming from the system. But, but I think the history

of game of constellations is kingdom, Africa, function of

tribal system that had been doing it for thousands of years.

So I think a lot of really, really ways of. That's practice.

It's really beneficial and helpful. The way I practice is kind of

keeping it simple, just having it really come out of the person's system as

accurate as possible and then checking on accuracy. Yeah,

beautiful. And I've works quite similar in a

constellation. Like my teacher, she. When

you have people repping, she really has you stick to your body

sensations and not go into like left brain analysis.

And that's simple enough information that the person can incorporate

it. And not like for me, when I do the work, like I

want to know what's mine and what someone else's. That's me walking around in the

world anyway. It's like what's mine and what's everybody else's. And along those

lines, one of the things that you do a lot of is training

therapists and facilitators. And so I'd love

for you to touch on the importance of

therapists and facilitators. You know, any type of practitioners

when they're working with clients or whether it's individually or in

groups, the importance of operating from self and

how a lot of practitioners and therapists are often

facilitating from their own parts and how that can

kind of create almost like disruptions in the field.

Yeah, I can't say enough about that. You know, when we sign up to be

helpers, we. We sort of sign up for this lifelong journey

to kind of know ourselves and to try to get as clear

what's ours and what's not ours and clear about what it means to

be in an outing role. And when our own

traumatic material crosses over, when it gets touched on, across over

when, you know, our parts that may be in

some of these trauma patterns are playing out with our clients,

it's really essential that we do our own work and that we try to be

as clear as possible. Not that we. And we're all fallible. You know, we

all have different aspects of ourselves, but. And I think

too, like, why are we doing the work? Why are we signed up to be

a healer? And are we really here being a service, or is there

some other dynamic or process we're trying to work out? Getting

clear about that is really important. Yeah. One of my teachers,

Caroline Mist, who does a lot of archetypal work,

she always says all healers must

first go through their own initiation. And if

they haven't gone through their own initiation, there's a good

chance that they're rescuers.

And I'm curious because I've had to explore this in

myself too, over the years. How much do

you find therapists, practitioners,

sometimes working through their unconscious material,

through their clients? Like, you'll have someone whose

clients are coming with a lot of the same challenges that they have.

So how much do sometimes practitioners work through

their own unconscious material, through the people that they're working

with? I don't want to sort of pathologize that, because

sometimes. Yeah, not saying it's a bad thing. Yeah, not saying it's a bad thing.

I just, you know, sort of being clear in the conversation we're having because

people can really kind of take that pathologically

and. And sometimes it's happening inadvertently and

like. And we shouldn't feel guilty about it. I actually

often feel my system can also feel lighter and more at

ease after people have unburdened. And we certainly work through this

material together, so we should be able to heal together in

some ways. How much of that is getting really placed

onto the other person and is something we have to

really be mindful of. And also, we can't take people

places we haven't gone ourselves. So if we

rescued or. And burdened our own

parents that were disconnected with. It's really hard to know how

to kind of help other folks do that themselves.

I like Carolyn's statement because

I think there is a tendency to, like, want to rush and like,

hurry and. And burden these

exiles or rescue these exiles in people's systems before

we've really assessed, is the system really ready to incorporate that?

If they're. They're not ready to incorporate that, then we can

cause harm because we're actually throwing people too

deeply into their trauma too fast. And our urgency is to

be good or our urgency to be seen as a healer

or to replicate kind of what we see other

trainers doing doesn't really stay attuned

to the Client system. So it's really knowing what's

motivating us. Where's the motivation coming from? Is it coming

from our own need to feel

worthwhile or valuable or important or the

offset or critical parts? Or is it really staying in attuned

to the client's system and what their system is needing? Yeah,

there's something I want to follow up about that in a moment, but before I

go there, I'd love your perspective on this. So I was working

with a client the other day, and I

noticed my mind apart, was really

preoccupied with something, something that had nothing to do with the

session. So there was some distraction, like, in

my system. And I noticed the client that I was working

with, when they were inside working with their own parts

there, they kept saying, oh, like, I'm.

They kept getting distracted internally. And I got

really, really curious. When we're working with a

client, how much is there a shared psychic

field where what's happening in my psyche and my

parts, how much of that is having an influence

on their internal process with their parts? I'm

really curious of your thoughts on that. It is

very. These synchronicities are very interesting, and

I think it varies with different clients. Some clients, we just kind of

hold the door and bear witness and.

And help them when they get stuck. So there. Some

clients need very little actually input from us to be

able to work. And then some clients need very, very

accurate attunement. Like, I remember a client

that had a really severe trauma history, and. And

she's like, okay, how are you feeling today? And I'm like, I feel good. And

she's like, are you stressed? And I'm like, I don't feel like I'm too stressed.

And she's like, well, why are. Why is your eye twitching? And I

did have a little bit more stress than I was aware of, you know.

And she said, well, how about if we reschedule? Yes, sir. And.

Okay, you're right. Like, I think I do need to come in here at

a much lower level. Stress level for it to be safe for you to work,

and began to really meditate and watch my stress

level and take care of myself more when she came in,

because she needed a lot more accuracy and a lot more clarity

to do that, to do the deep work that she was in. A trust

factor in the space that she needed to be held was

more than some other people that we can just kind of hold the door over

and open for and bear witness. And they seem to

really be able to do a lot of the work. And we have one

when they get stuck. So I think varies a little bit. The

attunement with the clients is what. What is the clients need

from us to be able to heal? And do we have an

open door where they can tell us about that without fear of

consequences? And then do we know our system well enough

that. That we can clarify that. What was that twitching in

my eye? Okay. There was more stress going on in

that in combination with coffee tends to cause my eyes to it.

So if I meditate and lay off the caffeine,

my system is a lot more relaxed and more spacious. Yeah. So how well

do I know myself or. And what is that so symptom. And

what is the needs of the client when you were sharing that?

The image I was having is like a field with holes in

it. And I'm wondering if people that

carry more of a trauma history almost have more of

like a porous field with holes in it where if someone

has less of a burden system, like, there's almost

more integrity in their fields. So the

therapist energy, it penetrates less. Would you. I'm

curious about that. Yeah, I'd be curious about that too,

and be sort of that. I had a conversation with Bob

Falconer, and Bob writes a lot about energies

and other energies in the field. And. And my takeaway from

that is I like, my question like Bob, how do I become less porous?

And Bob's. Her response to me was, I think the question is more how

do I cleanse? How do I clear my system easier and quicker?

Some of that has to do with being an intuitive person. Some of it has

to do with I tend to be a somatic person. I feel

somatic energy around me. I can sit in a. I

can sit in a restaurant, and if the couple next to me is

fighting or having an argument like that, the energy of that

from that table is almost like it's in my field of

energy. Somatically I can feel that. And it's disruptive

to me. You know, almost like, have to, like, put on blinders. So

I don't know if that's like me being porous or me being kind of a

sensitive person. That's more somatic. So

the porousness is kind of a little bit of a vague kind

of metaphor in some ways for me. I've kind of worked it out

yet. I know that my trauma history, like, I do

tend to be sensitive to words and do be. Seem

sensitive to certain people's energetic expression

and other people. Energetic expression. I'm not so

sensitive to. So based on my trauma history,

there are certain people that I my system kind of brings to as

dangerous and I'm more susceptible to them where

other people are not dangerous. Think that we have to kind of

work with a little bit more like what's happening now somatically in my body

and tracking that and then what is needed we go back to

befriending. If I befriend whatever's happening in my system,

then I can provide support to myself and then

I can stay more regulated and stay open.

So how do I relate to if I. If my client says a

word that was jolting or harsh to my system,

how do I come into relationship to my natural response to that

and ease my system or to not get locked into

it or have a part to go. Yeah, I love

that. So I'd love to shift gears for a

moment and go into your

experience. I'm really curious about how your experience

working with plant medicine and various

psychedelic and ceremony and more of a ritualistic

shamanic fashion, how has that shifted

your perspective on your work on healing, on

therapy. I'd love to just hear a little bit about your

perspective and experience with that. That's something

I've talked a lot about. I don't provide psychedelic therapies. I'm

not a medicine carrier and I don't serve

medicine. IFS is over. So

Michael Methofer was in one of the first trainings that we

did and I've known Michael. Michael's if people don't know is the

MAPS training is developed by Michael and his wife. And. And

so I've been sort of around it for quite a long time. IFS is seen

as a nice adjunct for people doing plant medicine. It's

seen as good. In preparation for plant medicine

is also can be really important as people integrate. So preparation,

integration is a really important component to plant

medicine. So with IFS becoming sort of an adjunct

therapy to it and Dick Torch just released a new book on

ifs and psychedelics. So he's talking about it, writing about it

more. So because of all that, I feel like I needed to know something about

it. And I tend to be if I'm going to know something about it, I'm

going to go experience it myself and find out from the inside out. So

I've had my own journeys with it. What was your question?

Just how it has shaped or impacted your

perspective on healing work on therapy, on trauma

work and anywhere you want to go with it.

Some of the benefits for being, being able to be in A space of non

duality is tremendously helpful.

And I was a meditator and I did vision quest. And so I

was able to work with duality and work with duality as sort of part of

my meditation practice and recognize that when I was locked in

polarizations and locked in duality and sort of the path through

that. But the medicine work really opened up an

experience of non duality and somatically experienced

where I could really deeply experience it. So that that

sort of lives in my body, the non duality lives in my body. So I

feel like my system is more regulated, more

buoyant, able to not get locked in

polarizations as much. So it's kind of really helped with that.

The other thing I've experienced sort of states of unconditional love.

And I think one of the things, Greg, that people don't talk a lot about

is the amount of purification I had to go through to be able to

access that state. There was a lot of really,

really difficult things that I had to

experience. And there was a lot of things I had to sort of purge and

release from my system and having some of our

mutual friends hold that space for me while I

work that out and release that. And I think that

there's not enough talking about. There is a purification process

that is a natural part of the plant medicine that people

have to be scared of. But as I'm planting, I think

and yeah, and so being able to kind of have

loving presence to kind of normalize that and to kind of help me release

what I'm holding in my system, that may be vicarious trauma, maybe

energy that I picked up from the outside world that has gotten

water in my system. Then it's helped me through that I've been able

to experience sort of the higher states of consciousness. And

unconditional love is one of those states of consciousness that has kind of really

shifted my system. So I think probably until I

did certain places, I would say most love is

conditional. And other than being a parent. And I don't think I really

experienced unconditional love from. I think my dad tried to do that

the best he can. I don't think my mom knew what it was. So that

was really beneficial to kind of really have that experience from

the universe. My. My wife said something. She said, I think you

need to trust the universe about this. And I was like. My response is like,

what do you mean your universe doesn't give a about me? You know, like, I'm

just on this rock spinning in space, and like, if I Like

spin off and die. The universe isn't going to stop and say anything about

it, you know. And so I didn't really feel like the universe

really cared that much about me. But then once I put my sniper

completely changed, I felt like there was some divine loving presence that,

you know, is present multiple ways. So that was nice.

Yeah. Beautiful. And you also have a history of

shamanic studies and working with indigenous

people and natives outside of psychedelic work. I'd love for you to share

a little bit about that. I think the cause, the

animus cosmology that allows a lot of, I think, is

naturally found in indigenous cultures

made a lot more sense to me than the patriarchal

systems that I grew up in. Being able to sort of be in

community with people that hold an animus view,

that the trees have a spirit, animals definitely have a spirit, even

the soil and the biomes that, you know that. That

there's a natural spirit and everything. Being able to be with people

that hold that worldview and practice

relationally to the world in that way was very important

and kind of anecdotal to my own sort of

historical background. So I tried to sort of find

opportunities to be invited. To be invited in to

those communities and to experience that with them. So I

did things get included into communities where I

can be with people that are practicing that type of way of

being, you know, with the world. Yeah. Beautiful.

And it seems like one of the big aspects of having access to

that world is healing through community

and healing through tribe. And obviously with

technology, there's this sense of we're all

plugged in, but we're not really connected. We're not really. We don't really

have that deep sense of belonging. And

you have started to run healing circles,

and I'd love for you to share a little bit about not just

those healing circles. I'd love to hear about that. But also, like, why healing

in community is so essential

and how it really differs as a form of medicine versus,

like, one on one therapy. Yeah.

Francis Weller talks about sort of, I think, the nine gates of

grief. And one of the. One of the gates that he

really talks about that really hit home for me is that we kind of

come into the world with this anticipation or expectation

that we're going to belong in community. And then there's a grief and loss around

that. And I think I spent most of my life trying to

form community, in trying to find a way of being in community.

And in the early days, I was with Robert Bly and James

Hillman. And the men's movement. I was a big part of the different

men's council back in the day. And. And we had this really beautiful

community of men trying to figure out what it meant to be

a man of integrity and authenticity.

And so a lot of my healing happened in various communities.

And feeling loved by elders in the community that really

can see my worth and value and mirror that back to me. So that was

really important to my early development. What I noticed is that

most people don't have that. There's a real loss and breakdown.

And then when we look at Western culture, it's highly

individualistic. Even with my own connections and

being part of ifs community, most of my life was still

pre isolated, you know, that I didn't have a community

of people that I connected with on a daily basis or I

was growing professional, spiritually with, you know, so I was always

building it. And I think that speaks to

how severe decay of

community belonging is in our culture. That I figured, like, if I'm

constantly building this and everybody else must be constantly building it too,

because, you know, some of my negative self beliefs, why must not be very good

at it. It turns out I'm actually pretty good at it. There's just

a lot of tides that are against that and

there's a lot of deterioration that's against it. So

I think we have this kind of romantic notion that somehow indigenous

people kind of have that community or have that. But

a lot of those communities have been horribly abused

and deteriorated from systemic oppression. And

so that trauma is creating a lot of difficulties in those

communities too. So it's been systemically attacked, you know, throughout the

world for, I think this idea that we've had

5,5000 years of dominated culture, you know, so dominator culture

deteriorates humanity. It's out for individualism and separatism.

So that was the idea of creating healing circles is I

think people have to have experience of intentional community before they

can go out and try to replicate it. And a lot of my

individual clients came to me wanting more community. And I would

say, well, you know, see if there's a church group that you can belong to,

maybe people are playing pickleball and you can sort of join that or a

bad betting, but they weren't intentional enough that people really felt

seen and belonged in. So if we don't have an experience of that, it's hard

to go out and replicate that. And so that's what healing circles came from,

is we need to experience it. So then we can begin to try to find

a way of trying to replicate that more. More solidly

in our life. Yeah, it's beautiful. I was recently

out in Mount Shasta about a month or two ago, and

I was teaching with a buddy of mine who does a lot of men's work.

We went to spend the day on this older gentleman, his

name's Tim Corgren, on his land, and he does a lot

of rite of passage work. And he's been leading sweat lodges for

50 years, and he does a lot of vision quests. And so we went

to his land and we. We spent a lot of time with him and he

talked and like a real wise elder. And then he took us through a

sweat. And it just really hit

me of just like how the two things were really

missing, especially as men. Is number one

wise elders like true elders,

and number two is organized initiation.

I'm curious your perspective on

the impact of not having

elders. And it's almost like we've shunned the elders away into

nursing homes, like they're not, like, valuable anymore.

And then the impact of not really having true

initiation to bring someone from boyhood into

manhood, it's women seems like they kind of have that built into

their biology a little bit more. But I'm curious your perspective

on the impact of that for men.

Yeah, I think so. The way I understand initiation, there's

two important questions. One important question is, who's your people?

There's maybe three and choose your people. The other question is, what are your

gifts? And then the third question is, how do you

bring those gifts to your community? So a rice of

passage is a passage from

adolescence, which is a me focus to.

To moving into the them focus to

the community. So we have. So it's kind

of. Kind of interesting that we have a huge me culture

and people don't even really know that the focus

needed to move from that, from adolescence into adulthood? So.

And then the elders even more the community. Like, how do

I serve the community? What are the community needs and how do I serve it?

So we're moving towards this not sort of in a codependent way,

but actually that there's something greater than ourselves

that needs our service, needs our gifts. So that question

around, who's my people? What are my gifts? How do I bring

that to my community? That there's a. That whole

process has gotten missed in our culture. And so

we. So when we look at white supremacy culture and individual

culture and dominated culture, it's a very me oriented,

individualistic approach. There's not that question how do I serve

without elders? We. We can have people that are in their 80s that

are still locked into the me perspective. You know, just because you're an elder

doesn't mean this. Cause you're old doesn't mean you're an elder. A true elder is

their idea of how. How am I serving my community and

what's my impacts, what's of my. What's my deliverables to that.

So if you don't sort of have people that mirror that and actually live

it, then there's no examples of what we're supposed to mature

into. Beautiful. When you were sharing,

it came to mind, like the me turning into the we

and how like a rite of passage turns the ego upside

down so it kind of flips the M into a W.

Yeah. I mean, not to say that to me, having a

lovable identity is developmentally essential.

Always questioning our lovable identity than walking around with an empty

backpack. We're always trying to get that thing filled up with something

of worth. So it's really important for young people to have a lovable

identity and have that internalized so they can make that

transition to the we. So it's not though there's healing

around our unlovability that has to essential to occur.

We don't just sort of make that transition by

not having a self. We have to have a solid self, not

have a sour ego. You know, we need to be able to. To

make a living, to. To provide for ourselves. And then we

begin to move into like, how do I release my grasp, my

attachment to that so I can move into like, what's my gifts and how do

I serve them? Yeah, that's why I love that second question, which are

what are my gifts? Because that's your innate sense of value, right?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'd love to close with

this. The title of this show is Mental Health in a Modern World.

And we're living in a very interesting world right now with

social media, with AI, with all the stuff.

And so with your lifelong experience

in this work and with mental health, what would your

message be for people to really

maintain or recover or optimize

their mental health with just the state of things right now?

Yeah. There's a quote by Henry Moore, and Henry Moore,

he does these really huge art pieces that are

huge murals. And he said the secret to life must be

something that you can give your whole life to, every day of it. And it

can needs to be something you can never accomplish.

So those two things going together really

resonates with me, because we're trying to have a better world or

a better system or my guy, let's

stop collecting perpetrators and

pedophiles. We might cut this out of our podcast, but

we're not. No, we're good. We're good. But

that's sort of a lifelong process of work, and it may be something

we can never accomplish in this lifetime, but it doesn't mean that

I can't keep trying to, like, work towards making

the world a better place and doing that with humility in

relationship and relationship to other people,

trying to do it the best way possible. But. But the work for when

I think about it, is the work is for the next generation. A

lot of indigenous cultures. I have an idea what we do impacts

what, seven generations before, several generations after,

you know, so the impact we have on my children, my

grandchildren, you know, that makes it. And a sort of part of the elderhood

is what I'm doing now hopefully will impact my

grandchildren, my children's after that. And there's plenty of love for

my children to kind of want to do that for them and do what I

can to have a better world for them.

Hoping that Yuma Commandes went on. Evolve in our awareness.

The verdict's out. Do what we get.

You know, we'll see what happens. Beautiful. Chris,

thank you so much for coming on the show today. If people want to

learn more about your work or your offerings, where would you like to direct them?

Yeah, if they go to Bariscounseling.com and sign

up on a mailing list, we'll get in a list of offerings. So I teach

things, like, a lot of times I'm teaching very traditional ifs,

you know, the healing circle stream, facilitating dreams, very traditional ifs.

I don't teach plant medicine. I know a lot about shamanic work,

but that's not sort of the offerings that I

have professionally. But find out you can get

information about what we're offering and see if there's something to be beneficial to

you. Sounds great. And thank you to all the listeners for

joining us on this beautiful journey today. And, Chris, thank you again

for coming on the show. Great, thanks, Greg.