Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 20, 2026


Ep 1335 ｜He Busted Traffickers. His Insight Into Epstein is Chilling ｜ Trey Tucker


Episode Stats


Length

54 minutes

Words per minute

194.27875

Word count

10,563

Sentence count

637

Harmful content

Misogyny

21

sentences flagged

Toxicity

10

sentences flagged

Hate speech

10

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.760 After helping rescue girls out of sex trafficking in Asia, today's guest says that nothing is surprising about the Epstein scandal.
00:00:09.400 He is a therapist that is helping me psychoanalyze why these politicians pursue power and pleasure and continue to get away with it.
00:00:18.420 We will also get into therapy culture, the problems with it, why it typically doesn't work for Christian men, and what we can do about it.
00:00:26.320 This episode is so encouraging.
00:00:27.920 I know you're going to love it.
00:00:28.840 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
00:00:32.220 Go to GoodRanchers.com.
00:00:33.520 Use code Allie at checkout for a discount.
00:00:35.360 That's GoodRanchers.com, code Allie.
00:00:46.920 Trey, thanks so much for taking the time to join me.
00:00:49.560 If you could tell everyone who you are and what you do.
00:00:51.520 Yeah, I'm Trey Tucker.
00:00:52.840 I'm a mental health therapist.
00:00:54.740 That's my job title, but we could go all into the in-depths of who somebody is and all that good
00:00:59.500 stuff. But I just, I love helping people. I love seeing people step into the best versions of
00:01:04.980 themselves that they can become. And I love helping them clear over the roadblocks that
00:01:09.140 are trying to get in the way of that process. Yeah. Well, I can't wait to talk to you about
00:01:12.540 therapy culture because how you approach it is different than the typical psychiatry and therapy
00:01:18.440 of today. But first I want to hone in on that one thing you said about yourself is that you love to
00:01:23.300 help people, because you love to help people so much that you have traveled the world rescuing
00:01:28.740 little girls out of sex trafficking. And we talk a lot about that kind of evil on this show.
00:01:34.960 Obviously, people say they care about it, but not everyone has had a front row seat like you have.
00:01:39.340 So can you just tell us first how you got into that kind of work?
00:01:42.600 Yeah, even just thinking about it, as you talk about it, I can feel my heart rate getting up
00:01:47.280 there just because there's still an anger. And I never even knew that human trafficking was
00:01:51.780 a thing until I watched the movie Taken. And when I saw that movie, I thought,
00:01:56.840 but first I thought that's got to be fiction. That can't be a real life thing. And I realized
00:02:00.680 it is. And it got me so angry and it stuck with me because I think that's a big sign of like,
00:02:05.760 what are you wired for? What are the things that stick with you beyond just a couple of weeks of
00:02:09.440 feeling angry about it? And it just wouldn't leave me. And I wanted to do more than just
00:02:14.500 donate money to it. I wanted to get in there and actually do something about it physically. So
00:02:18.740 I started just reaching out to these organizations that do the rescue missions and
00:02:23.160 a lot of them ignored me. A lot of them said, Hey, we already have full-time people. We don't
00:02:27.860 really need you. But a few of them actually, they were receptive to the idea of this part-time guy
00:02:33.440 that has no law enforcement experience, no military experience, but was just wanting to
00:02:38.520 basically potentially give up his life to come in there and help. And I had to vet them because
00:02:42.920 I didn't want to get double-crossed and they had to vet me just to make sure I wasn't some sort of
00:02:47.260 double agent, but it worked out and we got 20 girls out all in all. And we can talk about as
00:02:52.160 much as you want into that. Yeah. Well, yeah. Tell me what it was like to first get involved.
00:02:57.060 What did those initial steps look like? It looked like me emailing so many organizations and calling
00:03:01.860 them and just being annoying to them. Quite honestly, just I knew I wanted to do this and
00:03:07.120 I wasn't going to get stopped. I knew somebody had to use me. So I just kept on trying and finally
00:03:12.080 one seemed like a good fit. And they described the process of what that trip would entail.
00:03:17.960 They said there will be roughly five of us on a team. Only one of the members of the team had
00:03:23.280 any sort of military experience. And they said, we're going to train you up in physical fighting
00:03:27.700 for a few days, just in case you need to use that. And we're going to train you for a couple of days
00:03:31.620 and how to talk to the girls in those bar settings where you're going to be. But after that, we're 1.00
00:03:36.980 just throwing you right in there. So I thought, yeah, I'm in for that. I don't need a bunch of
00:03:41.620 runway of training. I just want to dive in. So this organization, it exists and there are other
00:03:46.800 organizations that are like this that go into places like Thailand and other, especially Asian
00:03:52.560 countries. This happens all over the world in every country, but it's very prevalent in these
00:03:56.620 Asian countries. And they find out the places where these young girls are getting prostituted 1.00
00:04:02.320 and they find a way to infiltrate those spaces with their trained team and basically just rescue
00:04:09.320 those girls and take them away. So how did they first find out where these trafficking rings are?
00:04:17.160 Well, sadly, it's out in the open. And a lot of the law enforcement is so corrupt because they've
00:04:22.260 been bought by the mafia that's running these rings that it's not hard to find. It's easy.
00:04:27.520 And this particular organization focuses on underage girls, but there are plenty of women 0.53
00:04:32.700 of all ages who have been trafficked and are stuck in there. It's just that one particular
00:04:36.840 organization isn't big enough and doesn't have the resources enough to get them all out by
00:04:40.520 themselves. So it takes a bunch of niche organizations. But what happens is the people
00:04:44.840 who work there full-time, they're constantly going into all these bars. Imagine like walking into
00:04:50.660 Hooters and the girls are scantily dressed. You're there to buy drinks and food. And a lot of the 1.00
00:04:58.260 tourists, they come from the US, Australia, England, and China. So as long as you look like 0.99
00:05:04.500 the typical tourists that are there basically for sex, then you're not going to draw any attention 0.99
00:05:09.120 to yourself. But we came in already having the intel that the full-time guys had gathered.
00:05:14.160 So when they scan for all these bars, they're looking for girls that appear to be under age.
00:05:19.120 They've done some sort of investigation work to say, yeah, these are the areas we want to target.
00:05:25.540 And then our job is to go in there and do raids and basically what they call burn ourselves,
00:05:30.260 where I was the face of the raid that we eventually did.
00:05:33.840 So I couldn't, they told me you can't go back
00:05:35.960 for a couple of years because my face ended up
00:05:38.020 on all the security cameras
00:05:39.160 as the guy that basically triggered the raid.
00:05:42.400 And so we just did the,
00:05:44.600 basically drove the final hammer swing into the nail
00:05:47.620 that the guys who lived there had set up for us to do.
00:05:50.680 Well, tell us about the first raid.
00:05:53.340 Yeah, so, and I'll say this,
00:05:55.280 there's two ways we got them out.
00:05:57.500 One was the raid and then the other way
00:05:59.080 is you just convince them.
00:06:00.260 You don't have to play a role.
00:06:01.560 You just sit there and you get to know them and you earn their trust.
00:06:04.340 So that's what we spent the bulk of our time doing.
00:06:07.460 And then we started prepping for the raid because we knew at the beginning of the trip
00:06:10.920 that the raid was going to be at the end.
00:06:12.520 So everything in between was either training or trying to just convince them to come with
00:06:16.240 us.
00:06:17.020 And one of the toughest things was sitting down face to face with one of the girls and 1.00
00:06:23.900 you have to act like the jerks that are in there. 0.99
00:06:27.740 You have to play that same role so that you fit in just the, and I have to choose my language 0.99
00:06:33.740 carefully, but you really, you have to take on a persona that's not comfortable. 0.51
00:06:37.820 And one of the toughest things was each of us had to get practice in asking a girl how
00:06:43.100 much for sex.
00:06:44.240 And like, I couldn't even get it out of my mouth the first time because it was, it was
00:06:48.240 just so wrong, but then you do it enough, just like anything.
00:06:52.160 And it just, it became normal.
00:06:53.980 And that's a whole concept that can be applied to a lot of things.
00:06:58.440 But that was the biggest hurdle is that I was comfortable in the spaces.
00:07:02.520 I was comfortable talking to whoever.
00:07:04.200 But when it came down to really asking those awful questions, because in the back of my
00:07:08.700 mind, I knew they hear that question all the time.
00:07:11.160 And I know what they end up having to go back in the rooms and do with these awful dudes.
00:07:15.600 And you're asking the question to verify if that person is being prostituted.
00:07:20.120 and then also to get access to where you need to go to then try to convince them to leave or rescue
00:07:26.720 them. Exactly. Exactly. Because again, once you blend in, then you're good. You have to spend
00:07:31.300 money just like the guys, but you got to talk the talk so that they'll first earn your trust as like
00:07:36.580 this guy's at least safe. But then once I could establish, once we could establish that they were
00:07:42.500 actually being prostituted, then we were just trying to show them like, hey, we're actually
00:07:46.620 good dudes, like over the course of a couple of nights, we would just hang out with them and make
00:07:50.660 small talk. And at the end of those couple of nights, if we sensed that they might be willing
00:07:56.180 to leave and just come with us, then we would do that as well. And we can go into as much of that
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00:08:57.740 Once you've gained access, you said there's two modes. You either convince them or if you can't
00:09:02.880 convince them, you take them. What does that look like? So the taking part, that's always
00:09:08.140 scheduled in advance you can't just do that with short notice so the organization found a level of
00:09:14.180 law enforcement that wasn't corrupted and the raid itself was where we we had a bar already
00:09:20.460 identified with girls that were underage and like we knew on a certain date at the end of the trip
00:09:24.760 that was happening we were we're taking down that bar everything else everybody that we met in
00:09:29.700 between was unscheduled so the first one we rescued that's it was just friendly conversation
00:09:36.480 And at the end of the second night, I said, Hey, me and a teammate were sitting there
00:09:42.260 saying, Hey, we're not typical guys here.
00:09:44.660 Here's, here's who we're actually representing.
00:09:47.300 And we had to be really quiet about it because walking around where the pimps and the pimps 1.00
00:09:52.080 are actually women. 1.00
00:09:52.840 They're called mama sons. 1.00
00:09:54.420 And they're pretty scary just because I've seen how evil they treat the women. 1.00
00:09:58.060 But as long as the customers are spending money, they'll treat you like gold.
00:10:01.340 But I knew I had to speak quietly enough to where only me and the girl could hear it.
00:10:05.940 and then not draw attention. But usually they don't even agree to meet you to leave. But if
00:10:13.080 you can get them to meet you, then you set a rendezvous spot the next day away from the bar.
00:10:17.780 And they're scared to even leave the bar because they're threatened with their life that if you 1.00
00:10:20.760 leave and don't come back, we'll hunt you down, we'll kill you, we'll kill your family. So just 1.00
00:10:25.300 getting them to agree to meet you somewhere is a big hurdle. She agreed. And then even if they
00:10:32.140 say yes, about 20% of them don't ever show up at the actual meeting spot. So the next day we're
00:10:38.280 sitting there and my teammate and I are waiting at the spot, just thinking she's probably not
00:10:41.460 going to show up. She's probably going to chicken out. And lo and behold, she shows up and we were
00:10:47.180 overjoyed. So we went through the list like, Hey, this is what your life's going to look like next.
00:10:51.600 There's going to be an orphanage. There's going to be job training centers for you to actually
00:10:54.860 gain a skill. In the same country? So in Thailand? There are multiple centers, some in Thailand,
00:11:00.520 and some in other countries, and it just depends on the situation of where they need to be the
00:11:04.420 safest. But they have, they need the job skills. Otherwise, if you free them and they don't have
00:11:11.240 any skills, then they'll go back. Yeah, they go back on their own. So thankfully, this girl said
00:11:16.160 yes. And she ended up in the job training center in the orphanage where not only she get job 1.00
00:11:21.200 training, but also she got the trauma care she needed. Yeah. And do all of them stay in the same
00:11:26.640 nation in the same country, or are they able to leave? They can leave for sure. Yeah. Once they're 1.00
00:11:32.620 with the organization, they're free to leave at any point. And if there's a location that they
00:11:37.140 don't feel as comfortable in, then they'll transfer them to a different spot as well.
00:11:41.240 What was the youngest girl that you encountered? 14. Wow. But we were told that there were even
00:11:47.360 younger children that were harder to access, but the 14 and up roughly is right out in the open.
00:11:54.100 And how did these girls end up in prostitution at such a young age? 1.00
00:11:58.660 Some of them were kidnapped.
00:12:00.040 And all of them, it happens at such a young age that they don't really remember their families.
00:12:04.820 So they're either kidnapped or their families are taken advantage of where these guys come
00:12:09.960 into these villages that, sadly, they're uneducated, they're low resources.
00:12:14.540 And these guys make all these promises saying, hey, just give us your kids and we're going
00:12:18.520 to put them to work in these factories and we're going to send the money back to you.
00:12:21.940 and that sounds really good to these families. And so unfortunately they give their kids to
00:12:26.940 these guys and they never, the kids never come back. So those are the stories that infuriate
00:12:33.700 me because you ask these girls, Hey, how did you end up here? I don't know. This is, this is the
00:12:38.380 life I know. Yeah. How many raids have you gone on? We did one and, and the, they do multiple in
00:12:44.520 a year with the teams, but the raids are really hard to coordinate because again, finding the
00:12:49.480 law enforcement that's not corrupt is the biggest hurdle and takes the most time right what do you
00:12:55.020 wish people knew here who care about trafficking but have never seen it up close like that
00:12:59.920 knew about how we can help or the reality of trafficking yeah i talked to men about this a lot
00:13:07.720 and it really is a direct correlation between the pornography industry and the trafficking
00:13:13.900 industry because they're basically cousins and you wouldn't think it, but if you trace it back
00:13:20.300 to the organized crime rings, they're ultimately owned by the same folks. So if you're watching
00:13:27.080 that stuff, you're feeding into that culture. And then just psychologically, the more you watch
00:13:32.700 stuff on a screen, the more you're going to want to do it in real life. And a lot of these cities
00:13:37.460 in that country, they're known as just sex tourism cities. And even if you don't ever go there,
00:13:43.200 you're still feeding the view count and the revenue that goes into that machine.
00:13:48.500 So we got to work, especially as guys, at being the highest character guys, because even if
00:13:52.980 you're not doing it yourself as a guy, you got to stop other guys from letting their lust lead
00:13:58.060 them in all these different directions. So if we can just build up ourselves as high character,
00:14:02.980 high integrity, just cover your own territory, that can stop this stuff.
00:14:07.960 What's the best thing that we can do as moms over here to both protect our families against 0.99
00:14:14.640 that culture of pornography, the predation of trafficking, but also to help those victims,
00:14:19.060 both here and abroad?
00:14:20.640 Yeah.
00:14:21.720 Always resources are in low supply in those organizations.
00:14:25.740 And then awareness that leads to action.
00:14:29.660 I'm not a big fan of just being aware of an issue because I'm aware of a lot of issues,
00:14:33.140 but find an issue, whether it's traffic or anything, but find something that actually
00:14:37.880 urges you to action. And so it could be donating. It could be a lot. There are a lot of organizations
00:14:42.920 domestically that work with girls who have been trafficked and stayed in the U.S. or maybe have
00:14:48.900 been brought over to the U.S. after being trafficked in other countries. And there are a lot of trauma
00:14:53.020 healing centers here. There's a lot of outreach to prostitutes on the street. There's organizations
00:14:58.080 that the women will walk up to these women on the streets with a bouquet of flowers 0.99
00:15:03.500 and the card saying, hey, you're loved, you're seen. Here's a number to call if you want out
00:15:08.500 of this. So there's all kinds of ways. And almost any even midsize city has outreach
00:15:13.460 ministries like that. A lot of people don't realize that this is happening at strip clubs and
00:15:19.240 all kinds of places, even like Hooters or places that might seem like, oh, that's just a restaurant
00:15:27.940 where guys go, where actually those women are being forced, or they were at one point forced
00:15:32.960 into that, and they actually do need help and freedom and to know that there's a better way.
00:15:37.800 And so it might not necessarily mean going to Thailand. It might be for some people listening,
00:15:43.860 but it also might just be something in your backyard. I'm sure you've been paying attention
00:15:48.360 to everything that's been going on with the Epstein files. I think at one point,
00:15:53.120 it just seemed too crazy to be real. Like, how is it possible that all of some of the most powerful
00:15:59.960 people in the United States, some people that we've looked to as moral exemplars, some of the
00:16:04.780 most powerful people in the world are apparently part of a pedophile trafficking ring? You have a
00:16:11.420 different perspective on this though, than just someone who's been reading the news. Has there
00:16:15.200 been anything in the reporting of the story that has surprised you? No, no. The stuff that I was
00:16:20.360 hearing long ago that everybody dismissed or most people dismissed as conspiracy theories.
00:16:24.960 I said, no, that's, that's probably real. Like I didn't have firsthand access to whatever was
00:16:28.880 going on in that Island, but I've seen the depravity enough to know, yeah, that, that can
00:16:33.560 happen to any of us if you really let that go that far. So nothing surprised me in terms of
00:16:38.980 what happened. And, and it's, it's still infuriating because the, the elite of the world,
00:16:47.440 it's it's almost this blackmail that you have to willingly put yourself into to make them trust
00:16:53.780 you and then be part of the power club like yeah okay now that you stamped your ticket into this
00:16:58.120 little island and this way of life now we can trust you because they all have blackmail on each
00:17:03.320 other yeah it's it's not even a bipartisan it's not even political thing it's just if you want
00:17:08.060 power this is the avenue to it yeah i think most of us just don't even understand what it's like
00:17:13.980 to be in that echelon of power.
00:17:16.100 And I've watched all these documentaries
00:17:17.640 on Jeffrey Epstein,
00:17:19.240 listened to all kinds of interviews
00:17:20.720 about people who have been reporting on him
00:17:22.360 for a very long time.
00:17:24.060 And it's hard for me to understand
00:17:26.720 the hold that he had on so many people.
00:17:29.800 And reading the emails back and forth,
00:17:32.040 I mean, you know, typo-ridden emails,
00:17:34.780 inviting people to his island,
00:17:36.560 it's hard for me to understand
00:17:37.640 why he was so appealing to so many people,
00:17:41.160 especially to men.
00:17:42.100 And so obviously neither of us,
00:17:43.720 speaking from a personal perspective, but from your therapist's perspective, when you're looking
00:17:48.340 at those power dynamics and just his personality, like what do you see? I see human nature is
00:17:55.040 I'm wanting to be satisfied at all times. And so if I can get rich enough, then I think that'll
00:18:01.460 satisfy me. And then if you look at pretty much every rich person in the world, that didn't do
00:18:06.300 it for him. Solomon. Exactly. Solomon. Yeah. And even at the end of his life, it was ultimately
00:18:11.940 sex that undid him because he couldn't find the satisfaction. But yeah, once the money doesn't
00:18:16.900 satisfy and he realized that, then you think, well, maybe power is going to satisfy. So I'm
00:18:21.360 going to chase that. And all these guys at that island, they had plenty of power and that didn't
00:18:25.520 do it. And so then it becomes, well, how can I essentially live forever, eternal life? And so
00:18:31.740 I think that's where some of that twisted eating of the baby stuff probably came into. And Epstein
00:18:36.780 himself, he was just the puppet or the pawn. Like he just had that magnetic charisma about him. And
00:18:42.740 he was the guy at the door, like the bouncer that could let you into this, this world that you
00:18:47.460 thought was going to satisfy. So I don't think it was so much him and his magical ways. I think
00:18:52.600 he was just the guy for the job at that particular point.
00:19:00.860 Next sponsor is Voice of the Martyrs. This is an organization that lends support and garners
00:19:06.340 prayers and resources for those who are being persecuted for their Christian faith all around
00:19:12.140 the world. Sabina Wurmbrand and her husband shared the gospel in Nazi-occupied Europe in the 20th
00:19:20.360 century, and they were incredible evangelists. And they started this organization, Voice of the
00:19:25.180 Martyrs, to help those who are being persecuted. And we have the opportunity to do that today.
00:19:30.760 So many of our brothers and sisters in Christ, especially in the East, are suffering right now.
00:19:35.740 they are being tortured, they're being killed for their faith, and we can help them. If you
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00:19:51.420 are stories of women who have overcome persecution and persisted in sharing the gospel and living
00:19:56.800 for Christ, go to vom.org slash Allie. Let's talk a little bit more about the psychology of these
00:20:07.500 public figures or their persona that is so attractive to people. I'm curious, what makes
00:20:14.020 someone publicly appealing, even if we know that they're not good people? I mean, there are people
00:20:20.440 we know were involved with Epstein who a lot of people still find charming. They would vote for
00:20:25.060 them if they ran for office again. And even outside of the whole Epstein circle of influence,
00:20:31.120 there are politicians that we know have done terrible jobs and terrible things. And yet
00:20:35.440 there's something about them that people still find persuasive. So what is it that makes public
00:20:41.760 people appealing to us? They study this stuff, the psychology of it, their people around them
00:20:47.940 study this stuff. And it comes down to really two major categories, identity and psychological
00:20:52.920 safety. And there's a bunch of subcategories that fall under each of those, but they've studied the
00:20:57.960 fact that if you can take someone's beliefs, political or otherwise, and make it not just
00:21:03.780 thoughts and potential solutions to issues, but if you can transform them into, this is who you are.
00:21:09.560 And if you believe this stuff, somebody who opposes what you believe, they're attacking who
00:21:14.180 you are and they're attacking your tribe. Then you're moving beyond somebody's logical brain
00:21:19.780 and you're moving into their subconscious. When the subconscious takes over, it shuts down the
00:21:25.500 prefrontal cortex, the logic brain. When that happens to somebody, they will fight and argue
00:21:31.600 no matter what the actual facts are because they're afraid. Their identity has been threatened.
00:21:37.920 Their tribe, their belonging has been threatened. These politicians know how to take what should be
00:21:42.700 just a nuanced issue where the front of your brain is just thinking evaluatively, and they know how
00:21:47.800 to go right to that subconscious. It puts you into fight or flight mode instead. And we can go
00:21:52.840 into the psychological safety part in a minute, but we can pause on identity if you want to.
00:21:57.060 No, you can keep going. I'm interested in the psychological safety part of it.
00:22:00.340 Yeah. So, and this is, we all need safety. Like if you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs,
00:22:06.320 safety is one of those basic needs. Like you can't actually move up his triangle without
00:22:11.080 some safety. So safety is great. What happens is we, our need for safety ends up jumping
00:22:18.860 some of the logical aspects. And so these folks know like any politician that really is charismatic,
00:22:27.020 they know that people are anxious, they're uncertain. And if they can bring a level of
00:22:32.520 strength and certainty, then people will look past their record. So if let's say I'm, if I'm a
00:22:39.320 politician and my actual record is pretty bad, then I'm going to focus on saying things with
00:22:45.220 enough certainty that people just forget about the record because they want to feel safe. So
00:22:49.820 like research in a leadership shows that if you say something with certainty, people perceive
00:22:56.140 your competence as a whole lot higher than it actually is. And if they think that you're
00:23:00.980 competent, it doesn't matter what you've done in the past because they think, well, that guy's
00:23:05.240 competent. He can get the job done in the future. Again, just that safety aspect. So whether it's
00:23:11.180 me portraying strength and certainty or me portraying such a smile and a warmth and a
00:23:16.460 friendliness that you just feel like, oh yeah, that guy's trustworthy. I won't worry about the
00:23:21.680 past stuff. I like him. Yeah. You know, that's interesting. If you assume that everyone needs
00:23:27.300 a basic level of safety, then you could wonder, okay, but why does this group love this politician
00:23:32.160 so much in this group, love another politician. And I think about two totally different people,
00:23:37.300 Barack Obama and Donald Trump. I could see how someone would listen to Barack Obama and feel
00:23:43.040 safe because he's warm. You don't think that he is going to be aggressive in any way. He seems
00:23:48.800 trustworthy. I could also see why someone would listen to Donald Trump and feel safe because I
00:23:54.860 watched a 2016 primary debate the other day. And while all the other politicians are talking about
00:23:59.520 how America is great and they're just going to keep on making it better. He comes in and lists
00:24:03.860 all of the things that are making someone feel unsafe. Our borders are wide open. We still have
00:24:09.480 ISIS that we're worried about. And then he gives him a solution and we're going to solve that. 0.98
00:24:14.900 We're going to win. America's not only going to be great, but we're going to be secure. We're
00:24:18.440 going to be safe. And so two different personalities, but now that you're talking,
00:24:21.980 I'm like, they're actually giving different kinds of people the same thing. And that is
00:24:26.320 safety and security. So interesting. Yeah. And it really doesn't matter the party. Like
00:24:31.940 all these politicians, I believe they're just actors within the same play. They're just
00:24:38.080 essentially the puppets that are arguing it out when, and that's what they want the general
00:24:42.740 population to do is argue it out with each other and think that we're the enemies of the other side
00:24:46.820 of the enemies. And these politicians are just a distraction for something bigger going on. So yes,
00:24:51.660 whether it's the the trump angle or the obama angle or whichever politician you're looking at
00:24:56.620 they're playing the same game and they're using that same psychological safety because they know
00:25:00.720 they can get us to bypass the logic if we'll just cling to that need for certainty and for safety so
00:25:06.360 but just to play devil's advocate there are real things that make us unsafe yes like and it's not
00:25:13.740 always wrong or an intentional psychological play for a politician to say this real thing here is a
00:25:19.920 problem. It's killing people and we're going to solve that. It can be a manipulation tactic,
00:25:25.840 but it can also be a legitimate pointing out of a real problem, right?
00:25:30.460 Oh yeah, absolutely. It's all a matter of the heart and what your ultimate motive is. So
00:25:34.560 if somebody is in it for their own power and assent to fame and fortune, then they'll use
00:25:39.440 it manipulatively. But if they're using to serve and actually serve a purpose greater than
00:25:44.060 themselves, then yeah, point out the problems, point out the threats and look for salvation.
00:25:48.920 And that's ultimately the story of life itself is the good versus evil.
00:25:53.000 And we know we need a savior.
00:25:54.680 And from a biblical standpoint, and even Hollywood picks up on it, we know we need solutions.
00:26:00.140 Yeah, definitely.
00:26:01.260 Tell me how you got interested in psychology.
00:26:04.480 I think just from a wiring standpoint, I look back at my whole life and I realized people
00:26:10.320 opened up to me when I wasn't really trying to get them to open up.
00:26:13.680 And then I always have liked listening to people's stories much more than talking.
00:26:17.580 and for whatever reason, middle school on, I was able to tell people like, hey, here's probably
00:26:23.980 why you're doing this and maybe why this pattern is happening for you. And it was just kind of a
00:26:28.700 natural thing, but I took the long road to actually get there. I went into the corporate
00:26:32.340 world first and then into education, but it kept coming back to like, I see that the why people do
00:26:40.360 what they do and what makes them tick and why they climb the ladder. And then obviously often
00:26:46.040 why they self-sabotage their way down. It just fascinated me. So eventually I thought, well,
00:26:51.060 I need to get it through this thick skull that I got to get a master's in psychology.
00:26:54.720 Okay. And then you became a therapist. How many years has it been?
00:26:57.620 It's been about 10, maybe 11.
00:26:59.860 But your platform, you talk a lot about being like a different kind of therapist. When I think
00:27:04.980 of typical therapy today, I think of, at least for women, someone sitting down and telling them, 0.80
00:27:10.060 you are so perfect. You are so awesome. All the people that make you feel bad in your life, 1.00
00:27:14.980 they're wrong. And I don't know if that's how it is for men in therapy, but you're offering a
00:27:21.060 different approach. Yeah. So one of the lines I love saying is like, when you come talk to me,
00:27:27.660 it's therapy without the fluff, because I'm not going to tell you how great you are. Like that'll
00:27:32.000 be maybe a piece of it at some point, but that's not the destination. The destination is I'm getting
00:27:37.220 you ready to live out your individual mission. So yes, I want you healed. I want you whole.
00:27:43.140 I want you feeling good, but I want you all of that so that you can live out your mission and
00:27:48.880 your purpose. And I think a lot of therapy, unfortunately, it's got people self-focused
00:27:54.000 where it's all about my peace and my happiness and just having everything, get back to that
00:27:59.100 certainty and safety thing. It's an empty promise because the people, let's take achievement for a
00:28:05.700 second. A lot of people think if I can just achieve my way into happiness, that'll satisfy.
00:28:10.180 but even when you achieve the biggest goal in your life research shows that it only lasts the
00:28:16.180 satisfaction only lasts for about three months and after that three months you're about to feel in
00:28:21.000 the way you were feeling before you achieved it and unfortunately therapy just it makes us the
00:28:25.680 center of the story so often not not all therapy but this whole therapy culture thing has got us
00:28:31.400 too self-focused and it gets me fired up so I take the the coaching approach the sports coaching
00:28:37.780 approach that I came from. But so I'm talking to people like you're my, you're the baseball player
00:28:42.980 I used to coach. And this is, this is the way that we're going to talk as a coach and an athlete,
00:28:46.360 because it's, it's, yes, it's about your skills, but then it's about putting you in the game so
00:28:50.940 that you can help the team win. And a lot of therapists, it's just, it's empathy for the
00:28:55.600 sake of empathy and compassion, just for the sake of compassion. And you can't, you can't grow
00:29:02.400 without suffering. One of the things I tell my clients is I want you to suffer.
00:29:08.720 And they'll look at me like, what? Like, yeah, I want you to suffer. I want you to struggle.
00:29:12.960 I am not here to give you relief. I'm here to help you get stronger so that when you suffer,
00:29:18.620 you can look back and realize, hey, look what I did. And for the believers, look what God
00:29:24.240 helped me get through. Like I look at King David and you look at the Psalms, he's saying things
00:29:29.880 like, God, thank you for the afflictions of my youth. And he's looking back at, God, you trained
00:29:34.820 my hands and my fingers for war. When he was a boy in the fields protecting the flock, he was
00:29:39.860 fighting off animals and going through all kinds of stuff. He had no idea what was going to come
00:29:44.380 to him later in life. And he realized all that training in the field helped me win battles.
00:29:50.200 And then when he won those battles, he came back from the battles bloodied,
00:29:53.320 beaten up sweating it was awful and he won but he always said god gave me the victory
00:30:00.240 and it was also his physical exertion and the training that led up to those moments so
00:30:05.820 i want people to go through enough to realize yeah like i've got the strength i've got what
00:30:10.940 it takes and therefore i'm going to use it for something bigger than me
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00:31:18.400 Shopify.com slash Allie. So much of the approach of therapy today is if someone walks in and says,
00:31:30.060 hey, I'm depressed, so often it's just a prescription that's written. Okay, let's adjust
00:31:35.280 your medication. You need more medication. You need a different medication. Or sometimes it's
00:31:39.520 just, here's a list of medication. Talk to your family about whether you should be on
00:31:43.240 Wellbutrin or Lexapro. And people are left with this impossible burden of trying to choose those
00:31:48.260 things for themselves. So if someone walked into your office and they just said, look,
00:31:52.480 I'm depressed. I don't know what to do with my life. What are some of the first questions you
00:31:57.120 would ask them. Yeah. So I love what you're saying about the meds, first of all, because
00:32:01.520 there's so many people that just want that immediate relief of medication. And I'm all for
00:32:05.980 meds, but we got to keep them in the right place in the batting order. So yeah, if somebody's coming
00:32:10.440 in and they're depressed or they're anxious, anxiety is really the main thing that people
00:32:14.220 come in to see. That's like far and away the issue that people come in with. I'm asking them things
00:32:19.300 like, who's your support network? What's your source of happiness? Because everybody uses that
00:32:25.400 word happiness and I'll use that with them for a minute, but then I'll flip it to, okay, now let's
00:32:29.200 talk about joy. Because typically somebody who's depressed, they think if I could just like stack
00:32:35.320 up enough happy moments, then I'll be constantly happy. And that's just not the way it works. So
00:32:40.800 I help them figure out like, what is joy versus happiness? And once they see that it's really joy
00:32:46.160 they're looking for, then we start talking about like, all right, what's the source of that joy
00:32:50.420 and that peace you're actually looking for? Because typically they're looking for the right
00:32:54.820 things. They just need different language and they need some different approaches. And I just
00:33:00.000 help them see like, what you're trying to get is good. It's just the road you're trying to take is
00:33:05.240 going to keep leading you astray. Because if you chase happiness, you guarantee you'll never get
00:33:09.260 there. Yeah. If you could define anxiety, how would you define it? Fear of the future, fear of the
00:33:15.720 unknown. It's like in people who have seen Inside Out 2, they bring in anxiety as a character.
00:33:24.820 And it's, it is the perfect portrayal of what's happening. It's a, it's a part inside of us that
00:33:29.820 wants the future to work out for us. Like it has good intentions for us. It's, it's trying to keep
00:33:34.820 us safe and keep everything good. But what it's doing is it's, it's putting us on alarm. Like it,
00:33:41.180 so in the, in the book I just wrote, I talk about anxiety as a caveman and the caveman's one job is
00:33:47.520 to keep you alive. Like he doesn't care anything else. He doesn't care if you're happy. He doesn't
00:33:51.600 care about anything except for keeping you alive. And if he sees a threat, what he thinks might
00:33:56.200 kill you, then he's going to give you those uncomfortable sensations that we call anxiety.
00:34:01.200 And what he's doing there is he's trying to get our attention to look at what does he think is 0.99
00:34:05.860 a threat. So in today's society, we don't live in a very physically unsafe way. Like there's no wild
00:34:12.100 animals trying to chase us and things like that, that there used to be when we all lived outside,
00:34:16.300 But the caveman still got his job. So he's looking at things like public speaking or uncomfortable conversations or a test at school. And he sees that those those might be potential threats. So maybe those are going to kill us. So let's get really anxious to get your attention so that you can either decide, like, we got to fight this threat or run away from it.
00:34:36.020 And so the caveman is trying to help, but he's just, he's kind of misinformed about what's really a threat. So we have to not fight the anxiety. That was one thing I messed up early as a therapist is I tried fighting it for myself and for others.
00:34:50.520 And then I realized, no, what you resist persists. So let's lean into the anxiety and see what it's actually thinking is the threat, because we could probably help the anxiety part realize like, oh, yeah, this isn't actually going to kill us. So we can just make a couple of adjustments internally and then handle the circumstance better.
00:35:10.420 Can you walk us through that? Like if someone is anxious, say, I'm just anxious about my child, anxious about them going to school, because what if something happens to them? What if something, you know, someone bullies them? It's one thing to be anxious about yourself. And when you have children, like all of your deepest fears are transferred onto them. And it's even more painful being anxious for them because you actually even have less control over their lives.
00:35:33.860 And so if someone were to walk in and say, I'm just so anxious about this, how would
00:35:37.420 you walk me through, I have no experience with anxiety for my children, so walk me through
00:35:44.780 how you would talk someone through something like that.
00:35:47.880 Yeah.
00:35:48.200 First thing I would do is I'd tell them, hey, you're normal.
00:35:50.960 Like, especially in that parenting example, like something happens to people when they
00:35:55.640 become parents.
00:35:56.940 It's like a switch gets flipped in the brain that you didn't even know was in there.
00:36:01.340 And all of a sudden, like you'll do anything for this, for this living being and the fear
00:36:06.460 and the expectations and the hopes are just so magnified.
00:36:10.080 So at first I affirm it, like, I'm like, you're normal.
00:36:13.000 You're going to be all right.
00:36:14.220 There's nothing wrong.
00:36:15.080 Like, we're going to, we're going to adjust this.
00:36:16.800 This is just part of the nervous system.
00:36:19.080 I love, I'm like, this is how you're wired on purpose.
00:36:21.860 So starting there, then I say locate it.
00:36:24.640 So find it in your body.
00:36:26.400 because you can't really talk your way out of some sort of what we would call a mental struggle.
00:36:33.080 It's just it's a whole nother soapbox, but talk therapy mostly doesn't work for men.
00:36:38.840 Talk therapy was actually designed with a lot of research with women and it works great with a lot
00:36:44.100 of women, but for a lot of men, it just doesn't work. So I always try like, let's start with our
00:36:48.060 body first because that's really where the emotions live and the brain just makes sense
00:36:53.120 of those emotions. So with anxiety, a lot of times somebody will say, well, I feel it in my
00:36:57.100 chest. I feel like it's a butterfly in my chest. Not always that, but I say, all right, let's find
00:37:02.020 it. And now let's, let's put a name to it. Like, is it anxiety? Would you call it something else?
00:37:06.460 Because research shows when you put a name on it, it actually makes that feeling decrease a little
00:37:11.740 bit because it makes it less of a threat. If it's this unknown monster that's swirling around in my
00:37:17.240 head and my body, then it's scary. But if I can point at it and I can name it, it's like, oh,
00:37:22.140 Okay, well, now I know what I'm aiming at.
00:37:24.120 And then I ask them, all right, what truth would you like to replace it with?
00:37:28.520 Because typically with anxiety, it's some sort of a lie that we think like some outcome
00:37:34.860 that would happen like, well, that'd be the end of the world.
00:37:37.020 I just, I could never go on.
00:37:38.660 Like, okay, we'll take that.
00:37:41.880 But then if there was a truth that you would rather hang on to, what truth would that be?
00:37:46.580 So once they've located it and named it and truthed it, I kind of make truth a verb.
00:37:50.760 we walk them through those steps because there's a lot of steps in between those three, but
00:37:54.600 getting them to that point of like, all right, this is the truth I want to believe.
00:37:58.540 Then that's where the actual therapeutic exercises come in of helping that truth feel so
00:38:03.700 deeply enough in their soul and their heart that the anxiety gets pushed out because of what's true.
00:38:10.240 Yeah. You know, I, sometimes I just find myself, I'm like going through my day and I'm like,
00:38:15.080 gosh, I've got this underlying sense of sadness or worry or dread. And I don't even remember why
00:38:21.640 I have it. And sometimes I just have to sit with it for a second and try to think back. Okay. What
00:38:27.380 first made me feel this way? Was it a video I saw on X? Was it something that really happened? Was
00:38:33.280 it something that someone said to me? Is something about to happen tomorrow that I forgot about that
00:38:37.300 I'm worried about? And if I've never thought about really locating it in my body, but if I
00:38:41.480 can locate it in my mind and then kind of talk through, okay, why is that making me worried?
00:38:47.880 And what if that thing really did happen? And thinking about what, sometimes it's like, okay,
00:38:54.560 actually that would really be terrible if something happened to my child. And I just say, okay, am I
00:38:58.860 taking all of the steps that I can to be prudent in that regard? And then you just have to give it
00:39:03.520 to the Lord eventually. Because some things are possible and you don't actually have power over
00:39:09.240 they could happen and you just have to kind of surrender it. And the surrender part is hard.
00:39:14.580 It's hard because you feel like you're losing control over the outcome.
00:39:17.640 I'm so glad you brought this up. Okay. So I just discovered this because I geek out on like the
00:39:23.260 meaning, the Hebrew meanings of words and the Greeks, and I don't speak either of those
00:39:27.540 languages. But so the verse be still and know that I am God, that used to make me so angry.
00:39:34.560 And I'm like, God, what do you mean be still? Like I got a real problem here. I'm in a storm.
00:39:38.740 Why do you want me to just be still? And what I realized is that the word, and I believe it's
00:39:44.340 rafa in the Hebrew, it doesn't mean just don't move. It means release your grip. And that idea
00:39:52.200 of surrender is like, first of all, you can't receive with closed fists. And it just means
00:39:57.920 like trust that the idea that I thought that I had control, that was a lie anyway. I can't control
00:40:03.880 anything about my heartbeat or almost anything in my own body. How am I going to control anything
00:40:07.900 that happens out there. And I just, if I can start to realize like, yes, the circumstances
00:40:13.900 might happen that are negative, or I might be in the middle of a battle right now. But
00:40:18.240 if I can loosen my grip and stop white knuckling it, then I can realize that like, oh, God is God,
00:40:25.200 not me. And that he's going to take care of me no matter what happens. That becomes the
00:40:31.100 game changer. And that really is the solution to anxiety. It's not changing your circumstances
00:40:35.880 or slapping meds on it.
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00:41:36.180 You start to see so much of God's relationship with you and how he sees you also when you're
00:41:46.300 a parent, because what you were just saying, your analogy about letting your grip go, I don't know
00:41:52.700 what made me think of this, but just the other day with one of my kids, she was just very upset
00:41:58.320 about something her sister was doing. It was a really small deal, but she was making it a big
00:42:01.760 deal because she wanted something a certain way. And I was like, look, right now your hands are
00:42:07.340 like this and you just need to open them and let them go. And she literally goes, no. But how much
00:42:14.620 is that like us? Like the Lord is like, you just need to open up your hands and let this go because
00:42:20.880 there's nothing you can do about it. And maybe it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of eternity,
00:42:25.460 but there's something in us that almost is addicted to the, even if it does make us anxious,
00:42:32.940 like just the control of it. It's like, sometimes I think we don't want to stop being anxious.
00:42:38.760 There's something in the anxiety that makes us feel like we've got it in line. And that's,
00:42:45.080 that's definitely a false sense of security, but maybe all of us don't realize that we're
00:42:50.180 a little bit obsessed with our own feelings of control and anxiety.
00:42:54.500 Absolutely.
00:42:55.200 Yeah.
00:42:55.480 When you really realize how little control you have, it can either be freeing if you
00:43:00.640 let it be, or it can be so terrifying that you just start grabbing every little bit of
00:43:04.900 control that you possibly can.
00:43:06.960 And the idea is like, okay, I can't control it.
00:43:11.140 And so therefore, what am I going to do about what my body is telling me?
00:43:15.260 So like your daughter in that situation, I would say her caveman got activated somehow.
00:43:20.960 Yeah.
00:43:21.160 and so in her mind whatever wasn't going right it was a it was a threat to the caveman right and
00:43:25.880 she might not have had words to actually put to it but if you can help her in that moment to like 0.95
00:43:30.720 okay if your fists could talk what would those fists say and if she could like somehow get into 1.00
00:43:37.720 a little kind of playful conversation with her fists like what do your fists want to do 0.99
00:43:40.840 what are they trying to you know all the little questions and then help her realize like okay 0.95
00:43:45.060 things are probably tight in your chest and your stomach so let's see if we can breathe some air 0.95
00:43:49.020 into that area. I ask people to take the air they're breathing and put an imaginary color to
00:43:55.160 it. And if they can send that imaginary color down to that spot that feels tense, it starts to
00:44:01.160 loosen up inside. And then their literal and physical, excuse me, literal and metaphorical
00:44:06.660 grip starts to release because God made our bodies in such a way that breathing, especially
00:44:12.180 breathing into the stomach, helps us actually calm down and recenter. And then once we actually
00:44:18.700 see like, oh, the world's not ending, then my logic brain comes back online and I can
00:44:25.100 say that, oh, okay, God is in control.
00:44:27.920 Yeah.
00:44:28.160 But when my caveman's activated, my logic brain's been shut down, he's taken over from
00:44:32.540 the subconscious and I'm just in fight or flight mode.
00:44:35.480 I know you specialize in seeing men and this is a problem for both men and women, but especially
00:44:41.820 in the patients that you see, do you see dopamine addiction, like just wanting the next bit
00:44:46.100 of excitement to be a big problem?
00:44:47.920 Oh yeah.
00:44:48.340 Oh, yeah. Dopamine, especially on social media, it lasts for a second and a half.
00:44:53.140 Yeah.
00:44:53.640 So that means the reason I'm scrolling so often to the next video is because this video brought
00:44:58.700 me about a second and a half of pleasure, and then it wore off. So subconsciously, I'm like,
00:45:03.600 all right, let's get the next one to get the next hit. And then the big underlying problem is we
00:45:07.960 think dopamine is for pleasure, but it's really for pursuit.
00:45:12.140 Yeah. Tell me more about that.
00:45:13.480 So the dopamine gives us this euphoric feeling because we know God wired us to achieve things
00:45:20.580 and to take action and to push the darkness back.
00:45:23.600 And so we need something to push us into action.
00:45:26.740 Dopamine is one of those things.
00:45:27.980 And so as we're pursuing a goal, then we need more fuel toward that goal.
00:45:33.280 Now, it needs to feel good in order to keep going.
00:45:36.580 But a lot of times because of that whole, what's called the hedonic treadmill, we just
00:45:40.960 get focused on the pleasure of it.
00:45:42.340 Like, oh, that felt good.
00:45:43.260 I want more of that. And we need to realize like, okay, it felt good for a reason. So now
00:45:48.440 let me take that good feeling and channel it into something that's pursuit worthy and not about me.
00:45:54.380 Again, it goes back to, am I just seeking my own good and my own pleasure or am I taking what's
00:45:59.280 good in me and trying to spread it? Yeah. And by hedonic treadmill,
00:46:02.760 you're talking about hedonism, just the pursuit of pleasure for the sake of pleasure. And it just,
00:46:07.560 it never stops. And that's why I think there is some benefit to boredom and allowing our kids to
00:46:14.120 be bored. My oldest, we're reading through the Little House on the Prairie book series.
00:46:18.940 And it's just, it's a slow cadence of book, but also just a slow cadence of life, like their
00:46:24.640 routines day after day. And there's something so beautiful in how mundane and simple their lives
00:46:31.200 were. And it challenges me as a mom. But it really, what I feel is, is that like allowing
00:46:36.420 that boredom in your own life and in your kid's life, it takes a lot of self-control
00:46:41.320 on your behalf. Because it's not like we never have any options. We always have an option to
00:46:46.540 be entertained. But clearly there's something in our soul that doesn't want or shouldn't have that
00:46:53.420 constant pursuit of pleasure because none of us feel good after we spend an hour scrolling on our
00:46:58.080 phones. All of us feel bad, not just in the physical sense, but in the soul level. It's like,
00:47:02.560 oh, I just wasted an hour of the finite time that God has given me doing something really 0.99
00:47:08.880 dumb. 0.96
00:47:09.500 That was fruitless. 1.00
00:47:11.240 It's like, we know that on a deep level.
00:47:13.220 It's interesting.
00:47:14.060 Yeah, it's that short-term pleasure versus long-term satisfaction.
00:47:18.860 And I always want to speak about this in a way that doesn't bring shame, because if we
00:47:22.940 start beating ourselves up, we just stay stuck in the thing that we're trying to get out
00:47:26.760 of.
00:47:27.000 So yes, the tendency is to go after that short-term pleasure and to avoid the silence or avoid
00:47:33.980 the boredom.
00:47:35.180 And the research shows, because all truth is God's truth, and research shows that the
00:47:40.000 more we crowd our brain with distractions and social media and anything that fills our
00:47:46.840 brain with information, the more eventually it's like a balloon that just pops.
00:47:51.040 Our brains aren't made to constantly take in information.
00:47:54.300 It would be like if, if I go to the gym and I'm doing a bunch of curls and I never stopped
00:47:58.420 doing the curls, my, my biceps are not, they're not just going to not grow, but eventually
00:48:02.980 they're going to break.
00:48:04.100 So I do the curls, I work out and then I let the muscle rest and our brain is a muscle
00:48:09.740 as well.
00:48:10.120 It's got to get some rest.
00:48:11.020 Like there was, there was a time about three years ago where I was just going through it.
00:48:15.700 I mean, anxiety, anger, sadness, depression, all that stuff.
00:48:19.620 and I'm like, all right, I know I haven't been taking time for silence and to let my brain be
00:48:24.500 bored and I need to do something drastic. So I went on an eight hour walk. Wow. Yeah. So it was
00:48:32.220 miserable. I wanted to quit so bad. And especially those first two hours, because all the thoughts
00:48:37.720 that I had been detoxing, it was detoxing. Yeah. All the thoughts I had been stuffing came up like
00:48:42.780 a volcano eruption. And like, I just, oh, I just want to quit so bad. But I knew if I just waited
00:48:48.900 it out for those seven or eight hours, I would at least feel a little bit better. And thankfully,
00:48:53.360 I did feel, it wasn't perfect by any means, but I had cleared out the junk in my brain just from
00:48:58.240 the boredom. The brain really does a lot of its own cleaning if you just give it the space to do
00:49:02.360 it. Interesting. Okay. Eight hour walk. That's one way to do it.
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00:50:26.160 Tell me a little more about your book, Tough Enough.
00:50:28.780 Yeah, I wasn't even thinking about writing a book and a publisher came to me saying,
00:50:34.220 hey, we want you to write a book for men. And I thought, well, I haven't even thought about this,
00:50:38.600 but if they want a book, I don't want to write just another book for men because there's hundreds
00:50:42.260 and they're all great. A lot of them. And I thought, all right, if they want a book,
00:50:46.040 I'm going to write to an audience that has been forgotten. And men in their twenties have been
00:50:51.120 cast aside. And even worse, a lot of people have told them, hey, we don't even need you. So just
00:50:55.940 go over there and stay there. You're not useful at all. And that's one of the worst things you
00:51:00.080 can tell a man is that you're not needed. You're not useful because especially we're wired to take
00:51:04.420 action to protect, to serve and to provide. And I looked around, the publisher and I, Zondervan
00:51:11.000 and I looked around and see, I don't think there's ever been a book written like this
00:51:14.820 specifically for young men. And the principles are for really anybody, but the examples I wrote
00:51:21.320 are all examples of here's how this principle looks for a guy in his twenties. And each chapter
00:51:27.300 is a separate issue that guys either ask me a lot about, or I just see that guys need to know about
00:51:33.340 that they've never been told. When I talk about the caveman and how to deal with emotions to a
00:51:38.380 guy face-to-face, he's like, wait, what? Emotions aren't bad? I don't have to just distract my way
00:51:44.280 out of them. It's like the light goes on. And so I thought, let's write this in a way that tries
00:51:49.920 to reach those guys that have been forgotten. Yeah. Tell me one of the chapters, the subject
00:51:54.280 of it that you tackled. The first one right off of the bat is distractions, especially for guys.
00:51:59.940 I'm like, all right, distraction is the enemy of everything that you're capable, capable of
00:52:03.640 becoming because there is a war and each guy has a purpose. Each person has a purpose and
00:52:08.860 distraction, especially for guys. I see that as the, the silent killer and I'm okay. I'm not
00:52:15.640 making distraction itself the enemy because I don't really care whether it's like one of my
00:52:20.080 friends, he's in his twenties and every night after work, he goes home and he watches a movie
00:52:24.780 like two or three hours. I'm like, what are you doing? Like what, how do you have, first,
00:52:28.500 how do you have that much time? What are you trying to distract yourself from? So whether
00:52:32.860 it's a substance or looking at the wrong stuff or movies, whatever, I'm like, let's take the
00:52:38.160 thing you're doing and let's figure out what's it helping you run away from. Because if we actually
00:52:42.580 confront the thing we're running away from, then we realize, oh, here's who I am. Here's my purpose.
00:52:48.660 Here's what I'm made for. That's growth and that's fulfillment. That's really good. It's called
00:52:53.360 Tough Enough and it's out now. People can get it wherever books are sold. And tell us where people
00:52:59.560 can follow you too, because you're on Instagram and other places. So first with a book, I always
00:53:03.580 want to say I'm donating any profits I might make from the book to organizations that help young men
00:53:07.960 and also to help end human trafficking. So I say I'm all about helping these people and I'm putting
00:53:13.120 my money where my mouth is. I'm not trying to line my pockets with this thing. So trying to get that
00:53:17.240 message into as many people as I can. So the book is available wherever books are sold. So
00:53:22.240 ruggedcounseling is my social media. Toughenoughbook.com is where they can learn more about
00:53:27.120 the book itself. Awesome. Well, Trey, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. This was so
00:53:31.080 good. This was awesome. Thank you for having me.
00:53:52.240 Thank you.