BRENT PEAK [00:00:01]:
Even what I was a working as a Southern Baptist minister who believed in...well, your audience probably isn't familiar with the term complementarianism within Christianity.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:00:15]:
No, I'm not.
BRENT PEAK [00:00:18]:
The idea that man and woman were made to complement each other, but that there is still a hierarchy.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:00:23]:
Oh, gotcha.
BRENT PEAK [00:00:24]:
There is still a hierarchy. You know what? I knew that the nuts and bolts of that just did not work at my marriage. I did not come home and say to my wife, I'm the man, I'm the husband. I am God's umbrella over you to protect you and guide you. That doesn't fly too well in most relationships.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:00:50]:
Today we welcome Brent Peak, who is an Arizona-based therapist and coach, but formerly a southern Baptist preacher. In this episode, Brent's going to talk to us about his journey away from his deeply religious roots and tell us how it affected his life and his practice. Now, you may not know this, but dad was formerly an evangelical pastor as well. He went to seminary in his twenties when he was just a young fella and actually started a church in Winnipeg in the early eighties. It wasn't until maybe 15 years later, in the mid ninety s, that he changed course to support people outside of a religious structure as a psychologist and an educator. So for me, growing up as a pastor's kid, I felt enormous pressure to conform, to conform to the rules and the regulations of religion. But I'm sure you've noticed I've since completely abandoned religion for a more personal and intimate spiritual connection with what I believe to be a higher power. So often spirituality is lumped in with religion.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:01:57]:
So if you say that you're spiritual or that you believe in spirituality, people are like, oh, you're religious, but it's not the case. I think people do this. We as a society, we do this to save time and energy. We just immediately classify people based on little bits of data we receive about them. But I think, as we'll explore through the episode, nothing is that black and white. We're also going to talk about whether there's a place for spirituality in a therapeutic session, and if so, what that looks like, and how these two former ministers integrate spiritual energy when working with their clients. Welcome to the Human Being Project, a podcast hosted by my dad and I that's an exploration of finding meaning and purpose in who we are rather than what we do. I'm Janelle Thiessen, a keen observer of human interactions and behaviors and an advocate for being.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:02:59]:
For being present, being authentic, and staying open.
RON THIESSEN [00:03:03]:
I'm Ron Thiessen, a psychologist, educator, and facilitator and I'm on a personal journey to find a balance between a lifelong habit of productivity and the presence or being state that nurtures my spirit and seems to have the greatest impact on the world around me. In each episode, Janelle and I explore ways to make space for more being and less doing, to focus on spiritual energy, intuition, and the relationship between heart and mind so we can positively impact the world through our conscious doing.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:03:40]:
Okay, so, Brent, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
BRENT PEAK [00:03:44]:
So I am a therapist, a licensed professional counselor in Phoenix, Arizona. I own a practice, North Valley Therapy Services, where I work primarily with relationships and trauma, and I've been told I should divide that up and stick with a niche here. But I don't know how to separate the two because they are so interrelated. In fact, the form of couples therapy that I use, relational life therapy, is primarily about recognizing the impact that our early relationships had on how we deal with stressors in our relationships now. So I do a lot of trauma work. I do a lot of relationship work, and more recently, I've been working on a slow transition into online coaching and wanting to build some courses around self compassion. Empowered self compassion and being able to help people more broadly through online work, as opposed to just here in the state of Arizona where I'm licensed to do therapy. So I'm a therapist and coach and I'm passionate about helping people live out a life of empowered peace with themselves and with the world around them.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:04:59]:
That's amazing. And let me say that I have already witnessed some of your content, like I was saying before, and it is just brilliant for self compassion and for actually some of the dealing with trauma stuff. I think I was in one of your lives on Instagram asking questions.
BRENT PEAK [00:05:14]:
You showed up once. You were the one person I paid $5 to show up and ask me a few questions. Yeah.
RON THIESSEN [00:05:21]:
Thank you.
BRENT PEAK [00:05:21]:
The Amazon gift card is on the. Yeah. I haven't had more than two people show up live yet, but I've only done two, so that's fun.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:05:33]:
What is that about social media? Why is it like that? I just don't get the engagement thing on social media. I guess there's just too many voices.
BRENT PEAK [00:05:41]:
There are a lot of voices. And I'm beginning to realize, and I think some of the people I listen to have been saying this all along and I kept ignoring it, hoping it wouldn't be necessary, but consistency to break through. My guess is that for every post or video reel or story that I notice from someone, they've probably posted 20 other things that I. Yeah, you're right. And so it's consistency and volume, I think. I'm not speaking from a successful experience on that yet, but that's what I'm currently working on.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:06:19]:
So I learned a little something about you when I reached out, because I saw that you were a therapist and that you were focusing on self compassion, and I thought, man, you'd be such a great guest on our podcast. But then there was another little nugget that came out in our discussion. What blew me away about this little nugget is the comparisons and consistencies between your lived experience in some ways and dad's lived experience in that. You both have roots in religion, basically. Right. You were once a baptist preacher, were you not?
BRENT PEAK [00:06:52]:
I was. I am technically still an ordained southern baptist minister.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:06:59]:
So you can do weddings and everything?
BRENT PEAK [00:07:01]:
I can marry them and bury them, absolutely.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:07:05]:
How about you, dad? Are you still an ordained minister?
RON THIESSEN [00:07:07]:
No, I'm not.
BRENT PEAK [00:07:09]:
No.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:07:09]:
How do you become not ordained anymore? How does that.
RON THIESSEN [00:07:12]:
It's because if you don't maintain your membership, then it becomes defunct just by default.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:07:21]:
It's a membership thing.
RON THIESSEN [00:07:23]:
Yeah.
BRENT PEAK [00:07:24]:
That may actually be the case for the church that I was ordained in, but if it did happen, they haven't notified me yet that my credentials have been revoked. And I'm still good friends with that pastor. We chatted on the phone just the other day, although we haven't really talked about my transition out of that very much. So I don't know how much of what may come out in this conversation will be a surprise to, but. And if he's listening, Gary, I love you. And if you're listening, I still love you. I still absolutely adore him. He is one of my favorite people on the planet.
RON THIESSEN [00:07:58]:
So are you comfortable talking about this online?
BRENT PEAK [00:08:01]:
Apparently I am. So let's go for it. Okay.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:08:04]:
You called this Brent. You said this would be your coming out as a religious man, right? As a previous religiously, yeah.
BRENT PEAK [00:08:12]:
I almost hate to say coming out. I don't want to make trite of people for whom it really is truly difficult to come out around certain issues in their life, but this is the most public I've been about my own journey out of conservative fundamentalist evangelicalism.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:08:32]:
And what about you, dad? You don't talk about it either.
RON THIESSEN [00:08:37]:
For sure. In my work as a psychologist, proselytizing is not something that you can do and maintain your license. And in my teaching at university, I point kids to the way to live, but I don't wrap it in religion. At all. In fact, I really encourage them to explore their own thoughts about religion. I do have students that come and ask me, so it seems like maybe you believe in God, or what do I do? And I just tell them, what you need to do is just go back to the roots of what you understand was, I don't know, relationship with God or your spirituality. I really talk a lot about spirituality and spiritual energy, and it opened up a really interesting dialogue with both students and clients that we can actually have a conversation about spiritual energy and spiritual power and higher power or without it crossing any kind of boundaries as far as the client or the student is concerned. And I live in a very secular society like we have in Montreal, the city that I live in, 0.2% evangelical Christian, 0.2% the lowest in North America, and overall in Quebec, 0.5% evangelical Christian.
RON THIESSEN [00:09:59]:
So the evangelical church is not very strong in Quebec. And religion is strong because the catholic church has been here for hundreds of years. And when people started leaving the catholic church in droves, the Catholic Church told them, well, you are abandoning God. And so they said, fine, if we're abandoning God, then let's abandon him, and let's just do as many things that we can think of that represent the opposite of what we think God thinks. So it's led to a very secular society, but there's such spiritual hunger, and anytime I'm talking about spiritual energy, like, people connect and they go, see, that's what I'm looking for. How do I do that?
BRENT PEAK [00:10:41]:
Now? I hear a term like spiritual energy, and I assume that a lot of people hear that and then kind of project a meaning onto that. But how do you define it?
RON THIESSEN [00:10:50]:
They do. Yeah.
BRENT PEAK [00:10:51]:
Or do you work with whatever they're projecting on it?
RON THIESSEN [00:10:55]:
Exactly. So I tell them, I'm not talking about religion and I'm not talking about God. I'll say to my clients, so tell me what you think about a higher power. And the almost automatic reaction I get is, I don't believe in God. I'm not talking about God. I'm talking about a higher power. And then I point out to them and say, if you think you're the smartest person in the room, we're in trouble because you came to me for help. If you think I'm the smartest person in the room, we're in trouble because I know me.
RON THIESSEN [00:11:26]:
And we are sitting here talking head to head about problems that human beings have had for hundreds and hundreds of years, and we haven't been able to find the solutions so if it's just us two minds working here, we're not going to find the solutions. Let's not kid ourselves. We need access to something greater. And for me, whatever my beliefs about that are immaterial. But we do need something. We need access to higher power, higher wisdom. So some people think about, it's very rare that I find someone that says, I don't believe in anything beyond myself. Very rare.
RON THIESSEN [00:12:01]:
But people think about it as, they think about it as divine energy. They think about it as the universe. They think about it as God. They think about it as the collective human wisdom. All of those things are absolutely fine with me. I don't have any issues or any problems with people thinking like that because I know that as long as they start to realize that we are spiritual beings and that we have to find spiritual answers for the things that we face, the problems that we deal with, then they're on the right track and they're going to find it in many different ways. And I'm okay with that. I get my evangelical christian friends who will ask me, and my mother used to ask me this all the time before she passed away.
RON THIESSEN [00:12:44]:
Well, don't you feel like you should feel constrained that you should give them the gospel? This is always a question. No, I don't feel constrained at all. What I feel like is I am in my practice, I have like a little hut at one of the crossroads of their lives and they're coming to me for counsel. And I'm saying to them, if you want successful, this is the way that you should go. If you want what you've always had and what you want to continue having that, then go this way and you choose and then they choose. And I'm totally fine with their choice.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:13:19]:
I'm not sure it's that black and white. But, Brent, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what he said.
BRENT PEAK [00:13:28]:
With what I asked you originally about them projecting onto it. I probably do work that way quite a bit. Most of my clients don't know that I for 1520 years was an evangelical pastor. But I do live in one of the most conservative voting precincts in Maricopa County, Arizona. And so they do make assumptions about me that there is some degree of consensus and around basic human values. There is among all of think, you know. And so that's what I tend to come back to. I would say I'm a bit proud of the fact that I've been able to effectively work with a broad spectrum of people, backgrounds and religion and all that.
BRENT PEAK [00:14:17]:
I don't back off of what I think may be really important for them to hear. For example, the couple's therapy that I do is all about power differential and balancing out a power differential that doesn't flow too well with patriarchal beliefs that tend to be a part of conservative evangelicalism. And yet, I've never had any of the christian couples that I work with really buck against that much. And it's clear from the material I give them that I believe patriarchy is part of the problem here. So I've never really had anyone disagree with that. And I think it's probably because at the end of the day, people know what works or doesn't work.
RON THIESSEN [00:15:00]:
Yeah.
BRENT PEAK [00:15:02]:
Even what I was a working Southern Baptist minister who believed in. Well, your audience probably isn't familiar with the term complementarianism within christian theology, the idea that man and woman were made to complement each other, but that there is still a hierarchy.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:15:24]:
Oh, got you.
BRENT PEAK [00:15:25]:
There is still a hierarchy. You know what? I knew that the nuts and bolts of that just did not work at my marriage. I did not come home and say to my wife, I'm the man. I'm the husband. I am God's umbrella over you to protect you and guide you. That doesn't fly too well in most normal relationships. And so even when I espoused those conservative views, I knew that that wasn't deep down. Maybe not consciously, but deep down, I knew that wasn't how it worked and how to have a really healthy relationship.
BRENT PEAK [00:16:02]:
I think that anytime two plus two adds up to more than four, you've got some spirituality going on, meaning, purpose, something bigger than the essence of what you're seeing. I do not claim to have any authoritative word on what the nature of that is, but I haven't followed him as much lately, so I really don't know what he's up to. But Rob Bell is someone that I followed in the past and I'm a fan of. And I remember hearing him talk one time about he was out paddleboarding with his wife out on the Pacific, and he talks about a whale coming up between them. And the awe of that moment just jaw dropping. This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Okay? Wealth breached the water all the time out in the Pacific Ocean. But in that moment, for those two people, that happening right there, there is meaning right there.
BRENT PEAK [00:17:01]:
There is awe right there. There is something greater right there. I do not claim to know the nature of what it is, and it may have been manufactured in the moment by what was going on in the neurons in their brain, I don't really care. It matters. That to me is spirituality. When things are more than what they seem like that, and that's something that I think we need to choose for ourselves. So in my work with clients, I believe that that's something that can be chosen. So whether you see it as a metaphor for how you want to live or the actual nature of the universe, I don't really care.
BRENT PEAK [00:17:35]:
Where are you going to find your meaning? Where are you going to find what matters? For if and if it's not there, make it. Create it. I don't see anything wrong.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:17:46]:
So it sounds like you have a far more. Like, I would say if you have a spiritual background, Brent, you have incorporated it into your practice sort of seamlessly in the sense that a, you're not abiding by the belief structure anymore. It's not pertinent to you, I think. Do you call yourself an agnostic now?
BRENT PEAK [00:18:08]:
I don't know.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:18:10]:
Well, isn't that what an agnostic is? They just don't know. They've just decided, you know what? I don't know.
BRENT PEAK [00:18:15]:
I don't know if I'm agnostic enough to speak with authority on what agnostics are. My understanding is that an agnostic is someone that would say that our ability to understand and define that true nature of whatever there is out there is just not possible. Whereas an atheist has made the conscious decision, I choose to believe that there's nothing there. I suppose I'm a little more agnostic than I am atheist. I'm hopeful, yes. I don't think there is a higher power with distinct personality, that explicit personality and volition, the way most christians would say and people of other faiths. I'm hopeful that there's something or someone out there that's looking out for us. But I'm not worried if there's not.
BRENT PEAK [00:19:20]:
I think probably as close as I'll come to being concrete on it is that I like the bible verse that says God is love. I hope that's a Bible verse. And I'm not just being a nominal Christian that thinks it's in the Bible, but I'm pretty sure there's a bible verse that says God is love. And I would just prefer to switch it around and say, love is God.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:19:44]:
Nice. I like that.
BRENT PEAK [00:19:45]:
I think that's where I'm at. I choose to make our benevolent connections my higher.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:19:50]:
Hmm. Yeah, I think I would agree with you on that one, Brent. I think that would be the way I lean as well. So how did you go from what transition happened? I don't know. Were you like the primary pastor of a baptist church? Take us back to that.
BRENT PEAK [00:20:08]:
So I went to school for that. But no, I ended up spending most of that time in children's ministry. So working with children and families, it started out as children's ministry. And then as it became cool for churches to have family pastors, I did more of that. And that was where I guess part of my passion for just looking at relationships and systems really came into play. And back in 2011, I felt the need to go back to school, realizing that I probably wasn't going to be able to be a children's pastor forever. Thankfully, the church I was at at the time was very supportive of me, working on a counseling degree, graduated with my master's in professional counseling, and in working with a counseling agency part time. While I was still a full time pastor, I fell in love with counseling.
BRENT PEAK [00:21:04]:
Now I was still a Christian, although I was having a lot of questions, by that time, I felt like I was finally doing something that was really making a tangible difference in people's lives. And I felt like I just had much more informed answers to get them, or at least recommendations, guidelines. Try this. So the work just felt so much more tangible and was so much more rewarding than what I was doing before. I fell in love with it. And by the time I graduated, I knew my next job was going to be as a therapist. So that was in 2016, I think. I went to one service to hear a friend preach after that, and that's the last time I've been in church.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:21:48]:
So that sounds like you made a move and then you just cut your religious ties at that point.
BRENT PEAK [00:21:54]:
Not completely. My shift was not a fast one, but neither was it a difficult one. I know a lot of people go through a crisis of faith. Dark night of the soul. I never did that. I have told people for years that I've just been on a slow journey away from fundamentalism. I grew up in a very ultra conservative circle of churches, independent fundamental Baptist churches. A lot of people that I went to college with in my Bible college days weren't too thrilled that I got ordained in a southern baptist church because southern Baptists were not conservative enough.
BRENT PEAK [00:22:36]:
I was taught that Billy Graham was bad because he allowed Catholics on the stage at his campaign. I mean, no one else was good enough for us in the circles that I grew up in. So that's what I came out of. And I just tell people I've been on a slow journey away from that my entire adult life. I mean, I could almost look at one issue at a time that I would let go of. I remember going back and telling in my college days, I kind of let go of the idea that the King James Bible was the only inspired version for the english speaking world. The things that we got hung up on.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:23:19]:
Wow. I know, right?
BRENT PEAK [00:23:20]:
But yet that really matters to some people. And so I remember going back and telling my high school, Sunday school, know, he was talking to me about those heretics that aren't using the King James Bible anymore. And I said, I got to be honest with you. I have a new King James Bible now. That's literally what I told him. The man literally turned his back to me, walked away, and I've never heard from him again.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:23:48]:
No way.
BRENT PEAK [00:23:50]:
Yeah. So I've been on a slow journey out of fundamentalism, and it just seemed like one small, natural step after another. I did spend a good period of time wondering, like, can I call myself a Christian? What do I actually believe? I'm not really sure. I did make a conscious choice in my first year out of church to say, okay, you know what? I'm just going to live like none of that was true and see what happens. Kind of a thought experiment. I'm not going to worry about it, not going to try and stay in church, not going to try and figure it out. At the same time, I got connected with a particular circle in the therapy world that just pretty much changed my life. I never really missed anything when I left church.
BRENT PEAK [00:24:35]:
I still had people to talk to. I still had a supportive community, good of friends, of fellow therapists that I was getting to know and connect with. I never really felt like I was missing anything. And so I came to believe that, yeah, there are some common factors here. Whether you believe in something or not, that can still be a relevant part of your life.
RON THIESSEN [00:25:00]:
Do you find that you mentioned that when you went and you got your degree in counseling, that you really felt like you were helping people. Do you feel like your education and your training gave you systems to assist people? You're doing very specific work right now you're doing in relationships and trauma, and like you said, you think they're very connected as a result of your education? Did you feel like you got very specific and targeted things that you could do that made you more effective in those fields?
BRENT PEAK [00:25:34]:
Yes. I don't know so much if it was the education. Most of what I do as a therapist isn't from my degree work. Okay. It is trainings afterwards. Much of how I work now is based on what I've learned since leaving school or what I've learned about what I learned at school. But going to school was certainly a necessary foundation for all that to kind of give me a framework. What made me the therapist I am are the people I've been around, the other therapists I've been around, my supervisors, especially the more experienced therapists that I've had the opportunity to be around.
BRENT PEAK [00:26:12]:
And initially, I would say it was my supervisor, when I was still in grad school and working as an intern, my supervisor and some of the other people that she brought in to help us with training. It was just the very practical things I learned from those people about how to be a therapist. And there were a lot of practical things that were immediately usable in my sessions. I remember very vividly my very first counseling session, and what I remember the most was my determination that this woman would not realize she was my first client ever. And I remember coming out of that session, and my biggest win was I didn't let it spill, and she didn't figure it out.
RON THIESSEN [00:27:06]:
For my first client, my first private client, it was very easy for me because he just talked nonstop from the time he walked in the door. I didn't have to say anything.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:27:16]:
Brent, on your website and in your social media posts, I heard you say that you have created a system. It says here on your website, creator of the embodied trauma recovery model. What is that?
RON THIESSEN [00:27:30]:
Yeah, I want to know.
BRENT PEAK [00:27:32]:
It's fairly new, and it's developing. One of my first jobs as a therapist, once I got licensed, was as an inpatient therapist at the Meadows. And they have a very specific model of how they do therapy, and it is very much about inner child healing, dealing with childhood trauma, the effects of it on adult relationships, very similar to attachment styles, anxious and avoidant, all that, but not quite the same. So the form of therapy that they use there is called post induction therapy. It was developed by Pia Melody. She wrote the book facing codependence, facing a love addiction. And so it was a very distinct model of development of treatment. I knew within a couple of weeks of being there that I was either going to need to drink the Kool aid or leave.
BRENT PEAK [00:28:29]:
And it's good Kool aid. So, p o. Melody's work is the foundation of everything that I do and also provides what I would say is the spiritual underpinning for the work, which to me, the most important part of that is the belief that you matter, the belief that there is something about you or a part of you that is infinitely valuable infinitely inherently valuable. And to me, my work, my job is to help people discover that, see it, connect with it, and then live it out in their life. One of the things that they do at the meadows is they give new therapists the opportunity to go through the program, a week long intensive to address childhood trauma. And I've got it. It was the most powerful, profound, and I would say spiritual experience I'd ever had. And that was after 20 years of trying to lead people in spiritual experiences, going through my own post induction therapy process, it changed my life.
BRENT PEAK [00:29:35]:
Over the years, one of the big parts of my journey as a therapist has been realizing that there is a lot of what we do as a therapist, that, whether intentionally or not, we keep clothing these interventions in certifications, in licenses. And so much of it actually comes from non clinical interventions and modalities. I do not claim to be a hypnotherapist, but in the work that I've done around getting some training in hypnosis, there is a massive hypnotic element in what happens in most trauma therapy nowadays. So basically, embodied trauma recovery is based on Pmlody's model. And then for the interventions, it is about going back to what I think are the roots of a lot of modern therapeutic interventions that weren't initially clinical. So neuro linguistic programming and hypnosis, and simply some aspects of more, what people would say is spirituality, but around manifestation and attraction. I don't claim to be a believer in that, but I like the language of it, and I do believe that whether or not the mechanism for it is whatever they say it is, I think there's something about it that works. I think we all agree that if you always focus on the negative, guess what? You're going to experience a whole lot of negativity, for sure.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:31:20]:
So that embodied trauma recovery model, is that a program a person goes through, or is it just a technique that you use even in one session, or is it a prolonged thing?
BRENT PEAK [00:31:33]:
It's a perspective and a program. So there's some presuppositions to it that we have that inherent infinite worth and value. So that's one of the presuppositions of it. So in that sense, there are things that I hope my clients will believe. So then the program itself is primarily about whatever tools are going to help someone connect with that infinite inherent source of worth and well being. I don't care if they attribute that to their spirit and God. I don't care if they simply see it as a metaphor for their existence. And frankly, to me, that's what it is.
BRENT PEAK [00:32:12]:
If it is an actual spirit of some kind, great. I'm happy with that. If that's what it ends up being. For me, great. But it doesn't really matter if someone sees it as a metaphor or a real thing. I think it becomes real and it becomes a powerful tool in therapy. And so I've also wanted to be able to develop a model that is not dependent upon being a licensed clinician. I want to be able to create something that I can offer to people outside of my practice and to be able to get to the non clinical roots of some of these things.
BRENT PEAK [00:32:48]:
EMDR has a number of pieces to it that come right out of hypnosis and NLP.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:32:56]:
What is EMDR?
BRENT PEAK [00:32:57]:
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:33:01]:
Oh, boy.
BRENT PEAK [00:33:02]:
It's one of the most common therapies for trauma nowadays, although it's applicable for a whole lot more. And the key aspect of it is that it uses what's referred to as bilateral stimulation. So the EM stands for eye movement. So most EMDR therapists that are going to use eye movements probably have a little light bar on a desk in their office, and it looks like kit from Night Rider with a little red thing that goes back and forth.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:33:26]:
Nice.
BRENT PEAK [00:33:27]:
And you just watch it with your eyeballs while the therapist takes you through a series of visualizations or memory recalls. So that visualization piece is also one of the presuppositions of embodied trauma recovery. That visualization is powerful and effective. Yeah, that's where some of the hypnotic elements can come in. But I believe that being able to visualize something can be a part of your healing. Call it the placebo effect, if you want to. There was a recent study that just came out on ketamine that if the subjects of the test are under general anesthesia, when they receive the ketamine, they don't know right away if they got the ketamine because they're not getting the trippy effects of it. And in that setting, when they are more likely to believe they did get it than if they're not under general anesthesia, and they kind of know right away if they got the ketamine or they got the placebo, there's a lot out there on the effectiveness of placebos, which to me is about positive expectancy, visualization, belief.
BRENT PEAK [00:34:29]:
Yeah, I do think that there is so much power in our mindset, so trauma gets in the way of mindset. So embodied trauma recovery is about removing those blocks from trauma. So some people don't need as much trauma healing necessarily, but a lot of people do. So embodied trauma recovery is about addressing the baggage, the blocks, and the behaviors. So the baggage is the trauma. The blocks are going to be how you're thinking, how you frame things, the mental blocks, and then the behaviors are, what are the habits that are going to support your emotional well being? There are so many non psychological factors that impact us, so many physiological factors. I was just reading this morning about lactobacillus. I think I'm remembering the name correctly, a bacteria that's in yogurt.
BRENT PEAK [00:35:21]:
In stressed individuals, it is low, and if you increase it, it can decrease symptoms of depression and anxiety. So there are so many physiological factors, but this is where the behaviors come in. Nutrition, movement, rest, mindfulness, connection with other people. So many things that don't seem directly connected to what's happening in your brain, and yet they are. So my goal is to come up with what I hope is a rather holistic model that addresses the three things that I see getting in the way most often of someone's well being. Emotional well being, trauma, cognitive framing and behaviors. Habits that may or may not seem directly connected. So, embodied trauma recovery, the goal is for it to address all of that.
BRENT PEAK [00:36:11]:
There are pieces of it that can be used in different contexts, but it is meant to be a holistic model for a coach or therapist to use.
RON THIESSEN [00:36:19]:
And you do a lot of virtual coaching. Like, people could get a hold of you and they could use you as a coach even though you're in Arizona, right?
BRENT PEAK [00:36:26]:
Yes. And that was a factor in looking for non clinical ways to support people. My goal has been to find non clinical interventions that are effective.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:36:39]:
Yeah. Then you can use them anywhere.
BRENT PEAK [00:36:41]:
Yeah.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:36:41]:
And anyone can benefit from them.
BRENT PEAK [00:36:43]:
And it's going pretty well for the folks that I'm working with. Yeah, I can work with people from out of state, but when I do, I'm a coach, not a therapist.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:36:51]:
Right.
BRENT PEAK [00:36:51]:
And I don't use clinical interventions.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:36:54]:
Okay.
BRENT PEAK [00:36:55]:
If anyone from the board is listening.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:37:01]:
So what is it that you are focused on right now? When you are looking for new clients or expanding your practice, what is it that you're focused on right now?
BRENT PEAK [00:37:09]:
I'm working on expanding the opportunity to connect with people online. So I would like to do more.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:37:15]:
Not your practice?
BRENT PEAK [00:37:16]:
Yeah, not my practice so much. I mean, right now I need it to pay the bills. There was a time where my private practice was my side hustle while I was still working in a hospital. Now my private practice is my main source of income and my side hustle, which is what I'm really wanting to focus on and get into full time over the next year is online courses and group coaching. So working on a course right now on self compassion, I think that the idea of self compassion fits really well with what I've learned as a therapist and what works specifically. Empowered self compassion. Where it's not this idea of just, I'm just going to love myself and everything's going to be fine and I'll just be this little entitled flower over here. No.
BRENT PEAK [00:37:57]:
Empowered self compassion, where I value myself and I live that out in my relationships without being a jerk about it.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:38:05]:
Ooh. So some balance there. I like that.
BRENT PEAK [00:38:07]:
I like balance. I like balance.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:38:09]:
Yeah.
BRENT PEAK [00:38:09]:
I don't like extremes.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:38:11]:
I don't think extremes are healthy.
BRENT PEAK [00:38:12]:
No. I mean, that's one thing I learned from pmlody, that if you're in the extremes, you're in an unhealthy position. Always get a little nervous when you find yourself in the extremes. It's not that they are never called for, but most of the time, an extreme response is required in an extreme situation. And even then, I would still be cautious about an extreme response to something. Yeah. So I am not a fan of extremes. I am a fan of moderation and balance.
BRENT PEAK [00:38:40]:
And I think that too many people look at self compassion and make some unbalanced assumptions about it, that it's either entitled or you're going to lose your edge. It's not assertive enough. Can a high powered attorney practice self compassion and still be a high powered attorney?
RON THIESSEN [00:38:55]:
Sure.
BRENT PEAK [00:38:56]:
Is someone in a competitive field going to lose their advantage? No. I think there's a way to live that out. My favorite example of that is the book 10% happier from what's his name, the Good Morning America guy from several years ago. He had a nervous breakdown, like on air twice, and got into mindfulness, yoga, meditation, mental health and well being. And he talks in the book about how one of his biggest fears was losing his edge in the competitive newsroom, but it's actually become an avenue for him to really expand what he does. Wow. I believe he's still with ABC. He was as of a year or two.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:39:35]:
Is that Dan Harris?
BRENT PEAK [00:39:36]:
Dan Harris.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:39:37]:
Talking about Harris.
BRENT PEAK [00:39:38]:
Dan Harris.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:39:38]:
Okay.
BRENT PEAK [00:39:38]:
Yeah. So reading his book there was really helpful for me personally to be able to kind of like, I knew it for myself, but I wanted other people to know this, too, that you're not going to lose your edge by loving yourself. And loving yourself also doesn't make you an entitled, arrogant jerk.
RON THIESSEN [00:40:01]:
Right.
BRENT PEAK [00:40:03]:
Those are out of balance. So to me, the best way to live life is very dialectical, which is another therapeutic term there right over my head. Dialectical behavioral therapy is one of the key components of it, is that we can hold two seemingly incongruent thoughts at once. And with my clients, I call those, however, statements. I really screwed up this project at work, and I'm afraid everyone thinks I'm a loser now, however. And then you need to follow that up with a balancing statement. Not a positive one, necessarily. Not something that is in denial and up in the clouds about the situation, but a balancing statement.
BRENT PEAK [00:40:49]:
And if you can't think of one, then just say, I could be wrong. I think I'm a loser. However, I could be wrong.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:40:58]:
I like that.
BRENT PEAK [00:41:00]:
And a lot of the really negative things that we say or we assume about our situations, I think we'd want to be wrong. I mean, the couples that I work with, I tell them, look, tell the person that right now they seem like a jerk, that's okay. But also let them know that you're open to being wrong about that. Wouldn't you want to be? I think you hate me right now. I think you're out to get me right now. But I'd love to be wrong. Help me see that. Help me out there.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:41:29]:
I could see that working.
BRENT PEAK [00:41:31]:
So that, to me, is part of that balance. And I think that kind of balance requires a lot of intellectual humility as well. So if I am working with a defense attorney or a surgeon, perhaps you really can't afford to get it wrong at work. But you know what? Stop bringing your work home. Let's have some intellectual humility in your relationships and be willing to be open to other people's experience. So that's balance. That's relational. I love the word relational.
BRENT PEAK [00:42:00]:
Being relational with each other instead of trying to manage everything around us.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:42:03]:
That's great. Brent. I really appreciate the things that you've shared with us today.
RON THIESSEN [00:42:08]:
Yeah, for sure.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:42:08]:
Your personal story and also how you translate that into your therapy and coaching. I'll be sure to include your website. Is there any other way that you would like to include for people to connect with you?
BRENT PEAK [00:42:20]:
Yeah, my website is brentpeak.com. Pretty simple. There's a few links there if people want to sign up for a free resource or a consultation, and then I'm on Instagram. Brentpeak ETR for embodied trauma recovery.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:42:35]:
Nice. Well, thank you for joining us today.
BRENT PEAK [00:42:38]:
Thank you all for having me. I enjoyed this.
RON THIESSEN [00:42:40]:
Yeah. Lots of insight in the things that you said, and I really appreciate you making the time to be here.
BRENT PEAK [00:42:45]:
I enjoyed it. Thank you.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:42:46]:
If you want to know more about the work that Brent does, both with his therapeutic clients and in coaching sessions, you can get in touch with him by heading over to northvalletherapy.org. That's his website and he has some great articles and really cool resources that I think will support and help you strengthen your relationship with yourself using self compassion and then also your relationship with other people. You can find the link in the show notes.
We have a very interesting podcast episode lined up for you next week with Nialll Mackay. He's a scottish podcaster and comedian living in Vietnam, and he has some really hardcore skepticism of spirituality and strong opinions about people like me who believe in something bigger than themselves. His almost irreverent take on most of the things we talk about in this podcast is kind of entertaining, actually. Unfortunately, we recorded the episode without dad because as you can imagine, coordinating a conversation between three time zones and three work schedules is really tricky. But Niall and I pulled it off anyway, just the two of us. So brace yourself for a crazy convo next week. See you then.
JANELLE THIESSEN [00:44:06]:
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