September 25, 2025 • 50 mins
Co-Host Amanda Johnson (https://mountaintoppodcast.com/amanda) Well, we're finally going there. My first-time guest is a licensed counselor in the traditional sense who also does psychedelic-assisted therapy. She's willing to throw down the truth about how therapy can leave men worse than before they ever went...and how that's a problem. Have you ever been dragged to relationship or even marriage therapy, only to feel singled-out, disempowered and maybe a little beaten-up afterward...presumably by a "female-friendly" therapy environment that basically mirrors the family law system? What effect does that have upon us as men at a deeper level, and how do we even recognize it, let alone do something about it? And then, we and/or our significant other get online and find our "echo chamber" of allegedly like-minded people, leaving us to believe we're in the right and the "adversary" is in the wrong every time. Is therapy actually contributing to the divide between the sexes rather than helping us form a healthier alliance together as men and women? Shockingly, Amanda claims that almost nobody in her practice ever comes to her acknowledging their own need for behavioral change. How is this "blame game" habit of victimhood affecting male/female relationships? What is a suitable alternative to therapy for men? (No, it's not only coaching.) I mean, after all, a man is only gonna get "scapegoated" for so long before he's got his guard up about therapy...especially when most therapists are women and might not seem sympathetic to men's reasons for coming to them to begin with, right? So what's the deal? If we're going to be better men and do better with women, are we just better off going it alone, or what? Stay tuned for the surprising answers... Get in on my new Substack channel at https://mountaintoppodcast.com/substack
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Alright gentlemen, welcome to yet another episode of the world famous Mountain TopPodcast.
To start off today, I have a question for you.
Have you ever gone to a therapist...or you married guys out there?
Have you ever been dragged out to marriage therapy and you felt diminished afterwards?
Like I was supposed to be built up like this.
I'm supposed to feel more empowered, but I feel disempowered or I feel like, man, I wasjust kind of picked on or ganged up against in this marriage counselor scenario.
(00:30):
Have you ever felt like that?
Have you ever thought maybe I shouldn't be going to a therapist or even hiring a coach oranything like that, because this isn't going to help build me up.
It's going to tear me down.
I'm going to get blamed for everything again.
Well, if you've ever felt like that at all, tune in, stay tuned today, because this isyour show.
Somehow we've gone 500 episodes without ever really throwing this on the table.
(00:55):
Uh, I don't even think it's controversial.
I think this is something all men need to reckon with.
Because a lot of us will go around not getting any help from anybody.
Some people would even tell us, you know, we're weak to go try to get help but I thinkkind of like when we approach women some of us will claim it's fear of approaching women
(01:19):
when really it's fear of being...well, fear of bothering women.
We don't want to trouble them.
They don't want us to talk to them anyway.
I think similar mind tricks can be played on us when we start thinking about, well, shouldI go get help for this?
Should I go talk to a coach?
Should I go see a therapist?
Should I try to become a better man in this way?
Or am I just going to get just slammed to the floor...body slammed by this whole processwith me today is a new friend of mine.
(01:43):
You guys are going to like her immediately.
Her name is Amanda Johnson.
She comes from God's country, man.
She is just south of Nashville, Tennessee, which is just a gorgeous, gorgeous part of thecountry.
If you guys have never been there before, that little area, it's not a little area, butthat uh swath of land, if you will, between say Nashville and Chattanooga, Tennessee is
(02:05):
probably one of the most underrated, beautiful places in the country.
She is a traditional and psychedelic assisted therapist for individuals and couples.
And she really got my attention because this exact topic is what she wanted to talk about.
Amanda Johnson, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
I'm glad to be here.
(02:26):
Yeah, we're glad you're here too.
I think a lot of guys' interest has been piqued here.
Talk to us about what, what patterns you see when men go into therapy, uh, maybe not withyour practice, but what you're observing here and what you're trying to, uh, kind of fly
the flag and rally against here.
Uh, what are some of the experiences you hear men telling you about and that you see menhaving that really keeps them from ever wanting to find help again at all?
(02:53):
Like this just didn't go my way.
Go ahead and riff on that.
Well.
You know, this comes up professionally and just in my personal life because you'll hearpeople have an experience of couples therapy um where it felt like one person had to be in
(03:14):
the wrong or the problem or the issue.
And depending on sometimes who can paint the more compelling story to the therapist onaccident, you're getting someone attempting to kind of arbitrate objective
truth about who's right and who's wrong and creating a dynamic where people can end up uhwalking away feeling more disheartened, more hopeless, more stuck, more grieved in their
(03:43):
complaints and they're not really able to move forward.
um So that's sometimes when I'll meet with people, you'll hear these stories about afailed attempt, a previous couples therapy journey where that's what happened to them and
uh
they'll likely have a lot of defenses ready to go the next time they attempt this, if theydo at all.
(04:07):
You know, you bring up a wonderful point.
Uh, in some ways, likes attract, in some ways opposites attract in a relationship.
So assuming there is this relationship, we're talking about couples therapy here right offthe bat.
And the couple goes to see the counselor...
Very often, first of all, one, one partner wants this more than the other.
(04:30):
The other one's like, why am I here?
Yeah, always.
Okay.
And they're rolling their eyes.
The other person's genuinely trying to help.
Also, women are known for being talkers and men are known for clamming up.
So the woman will give all this information and the guy will feel like, my goodness, she'slike oversharing.
And then it'll be the guy's turn to say something and he's like, well, uh, there's thisand there's that.
(04:55):
And, you know, there will be a cognitive bias that gets built here on the part of thetherapist.
And, you know, let's not pick on therapists.
I mean, it could happen even in a coaching session, right?
Where
someone will say, well, this person wants it more.
This other person isn't as articulate about it, or they seem to want it less or theirattitude isn't there.
(05:16):
So I have a good guy and a bad guy already figured out in this conversation because ofthat cognitive bias, right?
I think the easier client for a therapist is someone who's more verbally expressive, who'sable to kind of share their feelings, where they're at with things.
em Those tend to be the clients that kind of go with the process more.
(05:40):
And on accident, you can create a bias towards that person immediately because they'resort of going with the idea of what's going to happen in the room.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so what happens is more men than women, I would say, will say, you know, the heck withthis.
I'm just not going to go.
(06:01):
I don't want to go.
I dread it.
If I've been to one session, I'm certainly not looking for the next one.
And then on top of that, a lot of therapists are women and a lot of guys will feel kind ofganged up on.
It's like, okay, she's found her Huckleberry, you know, these two women are just pilingon.
And if you take
(06:22):
some of the phenomena that's been happening socially over the past decade.
Um, toxic masculinity was a buzzword, you know, it's kind of fading into the culturalbackground in terms of zeitgeist nowadays, you know?
You don't hear about it as much.
But for a while, but for a while there, But for a while there, you heard a whole lot abouthow men inherently are bad simply by being masculine, by being more
(06:52):
born male and if we can somehow whoop that masculinity out of them then they'll be goodneuter humanoids who aren't so violent and hurting everybody anymore.
When of course, the guy may be saying to himself all I'm trying to do is provide andprotect I'm trying to do what comes naturally to me as a guy.
This is this is my instinct and now you're telling me you know women don't need me forthat anymore they could take care of themselves, etc., etc.
(07:17):
You know you told me to sit down shut up stay in my lane do better but you haven't givenhim
given me anything to replace it with.
Meanwhile, you know, during the Kavanaugh hearings, was believe all women, you know, andthen the future is female and all you guys should, uh, again, sit down, shut up and let
women take over for a while.
And some guys are thinking to themselves like, why does one gender have to take over atall?
(07:41):
I don't understand.
It's just, well, you know, everything you've done to us for millennia.
Now it's our turn.
Let us have it.
And it's like, well, that doesn't sound very kind.
That doesn't sound benevolent.
That sounds like I'm writing my own writ of doom here.
So when we go as men, when we go into a therapist's office, when we traipse into thatterritory, if you will, uh, and the therapist is of that mindset as we feared she might
(08:09):
be, it's like my wife, my girlfriend has turned into an adversary and this lady isn'thelping cause she's helping build that,
foster that adversarial mindset between she and I, and I feel like it's two against oneand I'm constantly on the defensive.
And then the next thing you know, they're both pointing at me going, why are you beingdefensive?
(08:30):
You know, you can see how this snowball gets rolling, right?
That's what I hear a lot of guys, at least fearing is going to happen, even if it's notexactly their real world experience.
Although I have heard guys for whom that is the real world experience.
What say you?
Well, to me, it's important to share that if that were to happen, you know, people canstop the process at any point, you know, like I would love for people to know that that
(09:00):
would be a red flag if you felt like someone was baiting an argument or creating moretension than was already there or amplifying kind of who's in the right and who's in the
wrong.
Often in relationships, there's no objective truth.
You have two subjective realities and you need to operate a conversation with that inmind.
(09:24):
So anytime you're feeling someone, em you know, yeah, almost kind of be judge and jury onthe relationship automatically, that's not going to bring the relationship into anything
more healed.
It's a red flag.
that going to help?
(09:44):
If I feel attacked, how is this going to improve my relationship with her?
Certainly my relationship with the therapist hasn't even been established yet.
It's not going to be because now she's the enemy and she's helping my significant otherpile on against me.
That's not going to lead to more togetherness.
(10:05):
That's going to at best...
Well, I don't know if you would call it at best, but it's certainly going to
increase that feeling that we're adversaries rather than partners.
And one would think at least that the goal of therapy would be to bring us back intopartnership, you know?
Right, right.
Yeah, it calls into question how do people constructively share feedback or theirexperience of another person's behavior without it turning into kind of um cancel culture
(10:39):
or putting someone in this box of like morally inept or not okay in some way.
And I think a lot of men do
tend to feel like they're getting dismissed, demonized, maybe more confused about theirrole em in kind of current culture right now.
(11:04):
And we're seeing a lot of polarization where there's sort of an us versus them mentality,uh which is being grown in echo chambers, whether in groups of people talking online,
whatever that looks like.
Yeah, you know, when you talk about echo chambers, echo chambers play a dirty little trickon our brains because we find perhaps several hundred or even a few thousand people who
(11:28):
think the way we do.
And it's easy to fall into the trap going, that's what the world thinks.
Everybody agrees with me.
Right.
All you have to do is on any given day, here's a cute little exercise.
Look at the headlines on cnn.com versus the headlines on foxnews.com.
And you'll feel like you're living literally on two different planets.
You know,
That's how I gauge real news.
(11:49):
Actually, if both of those outlets are carrying it, something like a plane crash orsomething, then it probably is newsworthy.
But usually, you know, I've seen news, I've seen headlines on either of those outletswhere they're talking about how terrible the other outlet is pretending that's the news
story of the day.
So it's easy for us to kind of get indoctrinated into thinking, okay, my echo chamber ismy team.
(12:11):
I feel comfortable there.
I feel at home there.
These are my people.
So I don't want to let them down.
And I don't want to not believe what they don't believe.
So critical thinking, critical.
So critical thinking goes out the door and what we're left doing is going with the flow.
And one day we wake up and go, how did I get here?
(12:32):
How did I start believing all these things?
Why do I believe all these things?
And we can't even answer it.
And it's because, well, this is the group we've been hanging with.
It's kind of like junk food.
It's like getting a diet of like Cheetos and ice cream
instead of anything that's real protein or real substance.
But it made me feel good to sit with this group of people who, for example, the Men GoingTheir Own Way is always my go-to.
(12:56):
They all can't stand women.
All these women did everything to them.
So they get together and complain about women and go, yeah, we're the majority.
Men don't want to be with women anymore.
But, you know, really, it's this big of a swath of people.
Most everybody else in the world would happily like to find a girlfriend and
relate to women in a happy way, but we're not grabbing the mic because we're not angryabout it.
(13:20):
So everybody who's usually content aren't the most, aren't the noisiest ones.
So what happens is these people go to therapy after being in this echo chamber.
And what does that look like, Amanda?
Are you thinking more about like an individual therapy experience or where there's arelationship?
ah
or a couple, or a relationship or either way, whether it's a relationship or someone who'ssingle.
(13:45):
Well, when I think first about individual therapy, that is very tricky landscape tonavigate because what people bring is areas in which they're in pain, areas that they're
uncomfortable with.
What individuals bring into therapy is bias about their own pain points, which we all havethem.
(14:09):
We all have...
wounds and uncomfortable experiences that we're trying to work on and overcome becauseit's what's bothering us.
Rarely though are people volunteering information about this is where I had a misstep andhurt someone today.
Can you help me with that?
Almost 0 % of my entire 15 years in the field has someone volunteered information about Ineed help changing my behavior in this way.
(14:33):
I'm finding myself very controlling and I think it's harming this relationship.
Um, so that's been a fabulous kind of observation I've had at some point in my career.
If I kept having victims come through the door and there was no one sharing that they werein the offender position.
(14:56):
And I started looking at the math.
We can't all be, you know, having problems with other people and feeling hurt if, if noone is also simultaneously being the one who's, you know, making errors.
And the way I approach humans is we're all a little bit of both.
We all have parts of us that feel wounded or sensitized or insecure.
(15:17):
And we all have parts of us that can engage in, you know, one-up behavior or ways thatwe're allowing ourselves to be in a stance of superiority towards other people.
The problem with individual therapy is so you're relying on that person to bring the topicup, ask for help around it, and no one does.
(15:38):
Relationship therapy, on the other hand, you do get the other side of the story.
You get someone being able to chime in about what they're experiencing the other persondo.
em But because I take that stance that most of us are all at times completely capable ofbeing in the one down or the one up position, em it's dangerous to sort of
(16:06):
try to let one person be all good and one bad and then pit them against each other.
I don't know how the relationship could heal in that way.
It's just a stance.
a way of...
just fostering logical fallacy.
mean, the assumption is being made now that we don't know how to think critically, youknow, that will fall for whatever they throw at us.
(16:35):
And one of the ones that gets overused is the All-Or-Nothing Fallacy, right?
There's no gray area in anything.
All men are terrible.
All women are good.
For example, another fallacy that, that,
goes along with that would be because masculinity and femininity are opposites and men andwomen are therefore opposites, then they have to be opposites in every way.
(17:03):
So therefore one has to be good and one has to be bad because that's what opposites do.
But things can, you know, people, places, things, phenomenon, ideas can be bad or good inone way, but not necessarily in every conceivable way can they be opposite.
So if you have a situation where
the man is painted out to be the bad one and the woman painted out to be the good one, alot of times that's driven by a narrative that came from, you know, you can call it media,
(17:34):
but you know, you can even call it news or journalism, but really even most journalismnowadays is just pop culture.
And what is the intent behind this narrative to make me feel this way?
What are they trying to sell me?
You can follow the money.
And that's probably the subject of another podcast, but I find it very interesting that in15 years of practice, almost everybody who's come to you has painted themselves out to be
(18:03):
a victim.
And I guess it's, it becomes, help me be more resilient, right?
If that's not the buzzword of the 21st century or help me get them or change them.
And you, you and I both are adult enough and professional enough to know that there's noway you can coach
to or therapize someone who isn't in the room.
(18:23):
You know, I can't, I can't coach to someone else.
I can't coach to a third party.
You can't therapize this person who is the alleged problem, according to the personsitting in front of you.
I do get people who come to me and go, look, I got to do some self work.
I screwed this up.
I want to do better.
I want to be a better man.
I do get those guys.
I'm curious that you don't see a whole lot of that because it seems to me probably thebest reason
(18:49):
to go to therapy would be to heal my own past.
The best reason to hire a coach would be help me do better.
And you're seeing almost none of that in your practice.
Everybody's just like, look, I'm coming here because poor me, this person did something tome.
Now what?
That's fascinating.
Men and women you're seeing this from.
Yeah, I think um often people come because they want symptom relief in some form orfashion.
(19:15):
And it would be unfair for me to say people were across the board in a victim narrative.
But I think what's more accurate is people are personally distressed with what their ownpain points are.
So when we think about what we want help with, where our symptoms are
(19:37):
coming or stemming from, it's typically what our own organism is carrying as pain.
We're asking for help to relieve that.
And so it naturally links to, you know, experiences where someone legitimately has gonethrough, you know, trauma or overwhelming experiences or, uh you know, an adverse em
(19:59):
circumstance.
problem is sometimes
people aren't able to then link, you know, because this happened to me, where do I givemyself a lot of...
grace but simultaneously have almost zero tolerance for people who enact triggers in me orwho are catalytic for me to feel pain.
(20:30):
Where have I become, you know, sensitized to feeling like the person who is capable of mefeeling pain is then the problem.
And that's the wrong way to look at it.
Typically these pains are stuck in us from earlier experiences and then we're having
another person answer for the pain that they weren't even around to cause in the firstplace.
(20:52):
I understand.
Yeah.
You know, I think a lot of guys would be listening to this going, man, if I do that, I'm aweakling.
I'm not very masculine.
It's anti-masculine for me to go sit in front of a It's anti-masculine for me to sit infront of a therapist, just simply to get something off my chest and to vent.
And it's like, poor baby, you know, buck up and get over it.
(21:14):
A lot of guys are thinking that to themselves.
And what ends up happening is a lot of guys go without any mental health, you know,
help at all.
We just wave off all of those resources available to us out there, and we're stuck insideour heads doing our thing and not getting the help we need.
What would you say to guys who feel like you know, hey, I do have something that I want toget better at I do want some help with it uh But they feel like this isn't a very manly
(21:44):
thing to do and if my girlfriend ever finds out I'm doing that she's gonna break up withme, etc., etc.?
Um.
Those are often the people that I might not, unfortunately, get to interact with.
So I think the people, right, I think, you know, I sort of put that back on what could menas a community do for one another to start to give examples of modeling, like, this is
(22:15):
where I'm struggling, this is how I'm dealing with it, this is my plan to support myself,take responsibility.
I almost think,
It's before they get to my office because they won't unless other people are sort of rolemodeling like, you know, this is what it could look like and be more vocal about it...
um
(22:38):
to almost kind of change the culture around it, know, the, the lift the stigma a littlebit.
Do you, do you think it's a generational thing that there's differences in generationstowards this topic, or do you, do you think it's still kind of across the board that that
would be someone's sense of it?
Well, if anything, I think it's gotten better over generations.
(23:00):
think men a hundred years ago, there's no way they would do this fluffy stuff at all.
But nowadays, you you've got a whole new generation of men who bought into, you know, and,I'm going to sound like I'm being unfair here, but I'm not, I'm just going to call it the
way I see it.
I think there's a generation of men who have actually, as you mentioned before we hitclick on the record button here,
(23:25):
have drank the Kool-Aid, you used that term.
And I think it applies to what I'm about to describe.
I think they've drank the Kool-Aid when it comes to masculinity as a social construct.
I'm supposed to do better as a guy.
If anything, be more feminine.
Let women take charge.
um They've allowed it to be a mechanism by which they can check out from being manly orbeing a man or being a provider or protector.
(23:51):
Maybe even going and getting a job, perhaps even moving out from under their parents' roofat age 45.
I think those guys are all happy to go to therapy.
They're not worried about looking manly or looking weak or anything like that.
Whereas I think, you know, 50, a hundred years ago, every guy would have gone, well, what?
I don't even know, understand what you're talking about.
(24:12):
Right.
So I don't know if it's gotten worse generationally with men.
But I will say this, I think, um, the rise in the need for men's groups, men to be indeeper relationship with each other has reached a crisis pitch.
(24:34):
I also think 50 or a hundred years ago, men had more closer, had more close male friends.
And that's a fact.
Men tend to build associations and friendships around shared goals, shared experiences and
with the isolation of people and the so-called pandemic of loneliness, we're just simplyaround fewer guys.
(24:58):
And we don't have as many close friends.
So then what happens is there's this dearth of resources for us to share or for us to evenget valid feedback in general.
We're really only left with the narratives that social media and the news outlets aretrying to feed us.
You should believe this.
(25:18):
You should think like that.
You should stop doing this and start doing that.
And really it's all a big commercial enterprise.
You know, again, like I said, a lot of times it's follow the money.
What's going to be more profitable?
You know, if you tell me that I, uh, am bald and I should have hair or else no women areever going to like me, then it's easier to get me to believe that than if I go out in the
(25:40):
real world and realize that if I shaved my head, women are still going to like me and it'snot going to be any different.
Mm-hmm.
that real world experience just isn't happening for a lot of guys compared to just thisonslaught of media engagement that's coming to us from everywhere.
So coming back to what you're talking about, when guys go into a therapist and they leavefeeling disempowered rather than empowered, my guess is they're predisposed to feeling
(26:09):
that way even before they sit in front of you and they're just
listening selectively to hear what you're going to tell them that says, that, helps themvalidate the thought in their mind.
See, she's not going to want like me being a male.
She's not going to allow me to be a man.
There's that preconceived notion, that cognitive bias again, sometimes isn't there.
(26:30):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I imagine people are on guard based on, you know, the identity of the therapist sortof assuming, you know, this could go bad for me, you know, given their other past
experiences with someone who looks like that person.
(26:51):
Let me interrupt you briefly.
Not to be overlooked, that could happen on dates.
That could happen in any social interaction where we're we're, we're predisposed to a biasthat this person is going to look at me, respond to me, think something about me that I've
(27:11):
already dreamed up in my head instead of taking each interaction as it comes.
I think that's especially poignant when it comes to talking about a therapist relationshipvis a vis
you know, a fear men may have that we're going to be minimized for being masculine oreverything's going to be my fault.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
But I wanted to, I wanted to put that out in the universe so that it was said.
(27:33):
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I think it's unconscious happening to all of us all the time.
And we up the ante when we imagine we're supposed to be more revealing or share more umdetails about ourselves.
It's more more is on the line about what's how's this person going to respond to, youknow, my presence.
(27:54):
So it it there's a lot of uh risk in the relationship.
And before you have the safety and the trust, it's it's
it can be a lot of work to kind of get em people to be bought into the process.
Because most of the time, it feels more risky than you get anything out of it right in thebeginning.
(28:16):
It can be hard to stick it out.
Yeah, lot of guys have a problem with being vulnerable too, because there's this weirddichotomy with that word in the English language.
ah You know, the Brene Brownian definition of it such that, you know, we should becourageous and face that fear.
Perhaps we don't know the outcome and therefore we're vulnerable to any outcome.
(28:38):
That's the good kind of vulnerability.
Like for example, when you are sitting in front of a woman and it could go either way, oryou approach a woman and you say hi to her, maybe ask her out, it could go either way.
But because that word is the same word that also represents a sitting duck, something thathas not a chance.
And the first thing that could come along and smite it is going to kill it.
(29:00):
That doesn't feel very masculine to a guy.
So therefore we avoid all vulnerability whatsoever.
So then we probably avoid therapists and dare I say even coaches because we're afraidwe're going to be knocked down.
What would you say to a guy who has feared that and especially
Amanda, what would you say to a guy who's felt that?
(29:20):
Like I did it.
I gave it a try.
Me and the old lady went to a therapist.
I went to a therapist by myself and I just left feeling worse, not better.
What would you say to those guys?
Yeah.
um
(29:41):
You know, there's there's a lot of pieces I would be thinking about.
My mind almost goes in a lot of directions when you ask me that because some of it's sortof context specific um that would help guide me but in an instance like that I would I
would wonder how they became so vulnerable to another person's input about them if theydidn't yet feel the person knew them well, like why take their
(30:09):
uh word so why did they give away their power in that moment to take
people pleasers.
They could never have gotten any validation from anybody growing up.
They could have a poor self-image and they're afraid that their shame is going to bereflected in the words and actions and even the body language of the therapist sitting in
(30:30):
front of them.
Don't you think?
Yeah.
And that's where sometimes we can see behavior on the outside of people where they'rehardened, withdrawn, defensive.
And it's ultimately our job to connect to the more insecure parts behind the scenes thatare calling up these big defenses so that people over time figure out this balance of
(30:55):
safety.
There's a lot too that I accept my limitations on.
I'll often refer
individual clients I have that are men or part of relationships to figure out how to getsome friends like either join a gym, start a hobby, go to a men's group if you have to pay
for that initially um as a part of a coaching community because I don't think I do a manany service learning how to be vulnerable with me.
(31:23):
I think I help them figure out how to have adaptive vulnerability in their life again.
And it's got to look
like they know how to do it in a lot of other spaces, even outside the therapist's office.
So I kind of have no interest in creating something sacred with one person.
(31:43):
I think I'm best used to help that person figure out how to have that um in theirday-to-day in a lot of relationships.
I don't really want to be anyone's one person, if I'm being honest.
Well, I think that's a dangerous position to put oneself in.
That's almost too much power over anyone.
Yeah.
(32:03):
So I think that's, uh, that's very self-aware of you to even realize that as a therapist.
Cause I think certainly a lot of people in any profession, legal profession, medicalprofession, mental health profession can sort of develop a God complex.
You know, that I'm the voice of God for this person when, you know, we have no suchbusiness even pretending that.
(32:24):
Yeah, I know I've been drawn more to mem mentors that try to uh craft and I craft a stancewhere we're all kind of on equal footing.
have the gift of objectivity because I'm a third party witnessing your dynamic and youwould be the person not you but the client would be the person who can't see the forest
(32:48):
through the trees.
And there's...
not emotionally involved with what they're emotionally involved with.
So we don't have that clouded judgment.
Yeah, for sure.
That's valuable.
That's a valuable part of therapy and coaching, by the way.
That often stands alone as a reason to invest in oneself for that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's where I think my power comes from is just that I'm not in the system.
(33:10):
I'm observing the system and I can help see things that two people in the system can'tsee.
It doesn't make me special as a human.
I have my own blind spots in my own human life, but in that position you have a certainlevel of initial wisdom you can see because you're looking from the outside.
You know, what you're talking about reminds me what I've heard from lots of people in thepsychotherapy field, psychiatrists even, where they have a hard time dating or they have a
(33:39):
hard time making even social acquaintances because the gen pop tends to believe thisperson can see through me because they're a psychology expert.
So they can see all my vulnerabilities, all my, you know, all the ways that I don't likemyself.
They could read my bad self-esteem, like a cheap paperback.
And it really just
creates this massive social discomfort with people once they realize they're standing infront of someone who is in the mental health profession.
(34:07):
And so I've heard psychiatrists say, man, I just don't even tell...
When I was single, I didn't even tell women what I do for a living until like the fifthdate.
You know, I'd make something up or I would just kind of say, you know, I work with peopleevery day.
It's really kind of boring.
What about you?
And then get them to talk about themselves because well, of course that's what someone inthe psychotherapy field would do.
(34:28):
But really we are all of us coaches, therapists, we're humans.
We don't have that X-ray vision to see someone's deepest, you know, all the dirt on peoplethat easily.
And, uh, I think that is a myth.
And I think a lot of guys are thinking themselves, well, I'm not going to sit in front ofsome chick and bare my soul when, know, she's going to be psychoanalyzing me, you know,
(34:51):
the whole Freudian psychoanalysis bit.
has created more fear and angst and sturm und drang with people that probably has madethem feel better about going and laying on a couch, listening, having somebody listen to
all their stuff.
I think this has been a fantastic conversation.
And one of the key things you just said was that, look, gentlemen, if you need to getbetter with women, if you need to be a better man to get better with women, you got to do
(35:20):
the self work and it's not going to happen alone.
And it's not going to happen between you and Wikipedia and Google and God forbid ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is "Mr.
Nice Guy", by the way.
It'll just tell you what you want to hear.
So worst therapist ever, unless you're a narcissist and it feels like the best therapyever.
Cause oh my God, I'm being validated.
(35:41):
You don't have to fear ChatGPT, you know, misunderstanding you or giving you the hardtruths or the tough love.
That's for sure.
But I also, like I said, I love what you said about, look, if this person is yourtherapist or your coach and they're, they're harshing your buzz and they're bringing you
down, you have a right to fire their ass.
(36:01):
They're not better than you.
They're the wrong therapist for you.
And you can wag your finger at them and call them out.
I invite my guys, even on the first session with guys, Hey, look, if the communicationstyle isn't there, if you need me to respond to you in a different way, socially,
cognitively, if you aren't getting out of this, what you signed up to get out of it, letme know.
(36:25):
Cause I work for you and I want to be flexible.
And I think that clears the air with a lot of guys very quickly and kind of helpseverybody.
Even when we work with couples or with women, even in business coaching, everybody kindof...
breathes a sigh of relief and says, oh good.
I'm not going to be silently judged when I'm here.
And me, I don't know about you, but I'm the biggest dorky goofball in the world.
(36:48):
So, you know, once I start being vulnerable back with people, everybody goes, alright,well, you know, we're certainly a bunch of co-equals here.
No one's lording it over anybody else.
I think that's a, fantastic message.
And I think that's probably the best defense against well, being indoctrinated intothinking you're some kind of way by a, by an activist therapist.
(37:11):
I don't know how far it will go if your wife and the therapist are teaming up on you, butI think
you know, I'm sure you would agree, right?
That you still can stand up for yourself, even if it's two on one like that, right?
Yeah, well, there are moments where someone is, man or woman, is completely egregiouslybehaving and completely in the wrong.
(37:37):
There's something very not okay about behavior they're engaging in.
I think the trick though is how does everyone in the room stay on equal footing in termsof...
uh
No one's a bad person.
No one's a good person.
It's like we've got to figure this behavior out, this pattern out, because we're notwinning as a couple when this is going on.
(38:01):
Well, what if the coach or the therapist takes the side of the egregious and you'rethinking to yourself, is this really happening?
This can't be me.
It's them, not me.
Right?
But you have nobody to make that appeal to.
What do you do in that situation?
You know.
Again, I've rarely seen it in practice where one person is, you know, holding all theproblem behavior and the other person's just a sweet angel.
(38:32):
I think we've all got our days where something's going on.
uh
that the professional, the one presiding over the group as it were, over the session wouldagree with the person being egregious.
You don't see that often either?
um
You know, I will say that there are behavioral patterns that go undetected when you feelsympathy or empathy for someone's position.
(38:59):
So let's say someone has been hurt.
They were, uh the other partner cheated on them and they're hurt, right?
So in that example, you might think there's an obvious wrong person and right person.
That being said, em you know, there's
there's still therapy that will leave that relationship broken or therapy that will bringthem back into okayness again.
(39:26):
And even if someone has been hurt badly, there's...
It can feel compelling to get behind that person, you know, applaud them for sharing theirfeelings, speaking up.
But I still, we can't give someone permission to, like I was telling you, a mentor usedthis phrase, offend from the victim position.
(39:58):
If you're hurt, you've been cheated on, but your plan,
to respond includes character assassination of the other person, screaming at them,becoming volatile back.
ah All of those things still are not meant to be sanctioned, regardless of the feelingsthat are going on behind the scenes.
(40:19):
So I think, em you know, that's where true healing that's getting a relationship back ontrack.
ah You know, it's not about blame or figuring out who's
at fault, but to sort of figure out how do two people reckon with what happened and healwhere one person doesn't have to be the problem for the rest of the relationship.
(40:45):
No one's going to do a good job in their role as a husband if they're chronically theproblem or the one who messed up for all of time.
Yeah, I agree.
Um, you bring up a wonderful point and I would add to it and...
(41:06):
it's like "yes, and..." in improve.
Yes, and I think a lot of guys have been fed this fear that in therapy and I would alsolump in there family law and the family law system, they're going to take the woman's side
no matter what.
She's going to start.
with the crocodile tears and the, I didn't mean to, and but he did this and men are soawful and the emotions and men have been led to believe that's going to work a hundred
(41:34):
percent of the time, but therapists are smarter than that.
Coaches are smarter than that.
And I've heard over and over again, that judges are smarter than that more than ever.
And indeed you said something earlier that, you know, you don't have the golden child andthe evil,
horrible person.
Most people have a lot of gray area.
(41:56):
We do some good things and we do some bad things.
And okay, this person may have cheated, but you know, they try to be a good person otherthan that, they just fell to this temptation at one time, or they felt undervalued by
their spouse and acted out.
It doesn't mean they were a terrible person.
And human bias is going to happen.
But I think we as professionals, it's incumbent upon us to leave people better than wefound them.
(42:17):
Um, not just to pile on like that, but I do think a lot of guys are very
wary if not terrified to go to a therapist or to go into a divorce situation to divorcecourt because they just they they they say to themselves i'm a guy and i'm going to get
fleeced.
And you know a lot of guys who are very negative towards this they love to go findexamples in the news but if an example was newsworthy all that means is it it doesn't
(42:43):
happen every day all the time.
Like for example a guy will find a news story about a woman who
revoked her sexual consent the next morning after they had sex the night before now he'sup for rape charges.
And my...
my response to them is like, you know several thousand couples screwed in San Antonio,Texas alone last night and it went fine.
(43:06):
So I think a lot of these guys look at this like oh a plane crashed in India a month ago,therefore flying is awful and I don't want to die and I'm never gonna fly again.
Oh yeah, but a whole lot of planes took off and landed just in your hometown, your homecity between then and now.
So a lot of guys, they'll gravitate around these horror stories and go, Nope, Nope, Nope.
I'm not going to do this.
(43:27):
But if anything is ever newsworthy like that, it's usually a rarity.
Um, the bottom line here is, you know, don't knock it till you try it.
You know, if there's self work that needs to be done, if there is an issue in yourmarriage that needs to be dealt with.
If it's rooted in the past, go see a therapist.
If the two of you need to, to get on the same page and do better, go see a coach, youknow, do better in the real sense, not just in the weaponized sense.
(43:53):
You know, there's a real path.
There's a real way that we can improve.
Then do it.
And you know, if, the person sitting in front of you, the coach or the therapist isn'tdoing their job, fire their asses.
I know I'm looking in the mirror.
If I'm not doing a good job for the guys who come to me, I'm fired.
Mm-hmm.
is impetus for me to do a good job, by the way.
(44:13):
And I'm sure you feel the same way.
I feel like this has indeed been a wonderful conversation, one that we had never had onthis show, and that I was very eager to have with you, Amanda.
And I think you represented your points extremely well.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to head guys to mountaintoppodcast.com front slashAmanda, A-M-A-N-D-A.
We've never had an Amanda on the show.
(44:35):
And there you go.
And what are guys going to find when they
when they click on that link, Amanda?
It's really just a welcome page to my practice.
It gives information about the type of work I do in Tennessee, California, and Colorado.
Also, I do have some support on there.
(44:57):
Video to help people walk through their conflict archetype.
People have a lot of modes they go into uh around conflict that they don't even realize issort of a...
a unique template to them and it's not the only way to handle conflict.
And there's some information about how to detect that and figure out who you typically arewhen an issue comes up with another person.
(45:21):
Well, that's very valuable.
You caught me by surprise with the Colorado California thing.
What's up with that?
I've moved many times in my adulthood and so I've collected licenses along the way.
Oh, yeah, see, that's where you're licensed.
Fantastic.
Yeah, that's important when you're a therapist.
Very, very good.
Well, bravo.
Fantastic show today.
(45:41):
And once again, Amanda Johnson, ah thank you so much for joining us today.
It's been wonderful.
Hope you'll come back.
yeah, I appreciate this.
I love talking to men.
I like calling them into therapy, um telling them what it's all about and that if it's notfeeling right, it's just keep trying.
You don't necessarily click with everyone right away, but um the field as a whole canhelp.
(46:06):
Great.
Great.
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People have commented, you know,
why is your name only spelled with one T?
Look, if I was using a uh fake nom de plume out there, I would have at least spelled myfirst name right.
(48:29):
Right.
Correct.
So actually we're Scottish, you know, by family extraction.
So I would argue it spelled the correct way, but enough about me.
Um, when you guys get on the phone and you talk to me, what you see is what you're goingto get.
I mean, uh, I'm in podcast mode for sure, but who I am, what I'm about.
(48:50):
That's who you're going to talk to.
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(49:11):
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And until I talk to you again real soon, this is Scot McKay from X & Y communications inSan Antonio, Texas.
(49:36):
Be good out there.
Alright gentlemen, welcome to yet another episode of the world famous Mountain TopPodcast.
To start off today, I have a question for you.
Have you ever gone to a therapist...or you married guys out there?
Have you ever been dragged out to marriage therapy and you felt diminished afterwards?
Like I was supposed to be built up like this.
I'm supposed to feel more empowered, but I feel disempowered or I feel like, man, I wasjust kind of picked on or ganged up against in this marriage counselor scenario.
(00:30):
Have you ever felt like that?
Have you ever thought maybe I shouldn't be going to a therapist or even hiring a coach oranything like that, because this isn't going to help build me up.
It's going to tear me down.
I'm going to get blamed for everything again.
Well, if you've ever felt like that at all, tune in, stay tuned today, because this isyour show.
Somehow we've gone 500 episodes without ever really throwing this on the table.
(00:55):
Uh, I don't even think it's controversial.
I think this is something all men need to reckon with.
Because a lot of us will go around not getting any help from anybody.
Some people would even tell us, you know, we're weak to go try to get help but I thinkkind of like when we approach women some of us will claim it's fear of approaching women
(01:19):
when really it's fear of being...well, fear of bothering women.
We don't want to trouble them.
They don't want us to talk to them anyway.
I think similar mind tricks can be played on us when we start thinking about, well, shouldI go get help for this?
Should I go talk to a coach?
Should I go see a therapist?
Should I try to become a better man in this way?
Or am I just going to get just slammed to the floor...body slammed by this whole processwith me today is a new friend of mine.
(01:43):
You guys are going to like her immediately.
Her name is Amanda Johnson.
She comes from God's country, man.
She is just south of Nashville, Tennessee, which is just a gorgeous, gorgeous part of thecountry.
If you guys have never been there before, that little area, it's not a little area, butthat uh swath of land, if you will, between say Nashville and Chattanooga, Tennessee is
(02:05):
probably one of the most underrated, beautiful places in the country.
She is a traditional and psychedelic assisted therapist for individuals and couples.
And she really got my attention because this exact topic is what she wanted to talk about.
Amanda Johnson, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
I'm glad to be here.
(02:26):
Yeah, we're glad you're here too.
I think a lot of guys' interest has been piqued here.
Talk to us about what, what patterns you see when men go into therapy, uh, maybe not withyour practice, but what you're observing here and what you're trying to, uh, kind of fly
the flag and rally against here.
Uh, what are some of the experiences you hear men telling you about and that you see menhaving that really keeps them from ever wanting to find help again at all?
(02:53):
Like this just didn't go my way.
Go ahead and riff on that.
Well.
You know, this comes up professionally and just in my personal life because you'll hearpeople have an experience of couples therapy um where it felt like one person had to be in
(03:14):
the wrong or the problem or the issue.
And depending on sometimes who can paint the more compelling story to the therapist onaccident, you're getting someone attempting to kind of arbitrate objective
truth about who's right and who's wrong and creating a dynamic where people can end up uhwalking away feeling more disheartened, more hopeless, more stuck, more grieved in their
(03:43):
complaints and they're not really able to move forward.
um So that's sometimes when I'll meet with people, you'll hear these stories about afailed attempt, a previous couples therapy journey where that's what happened to them and
uh
they'll likely have a lot of defenses ready to go the next time they attempt this, if theydo at all.
(04:07):
You know, you bring up a wonderful point.
Uh, in some ways, likes attract, in some ways opposites attract in a relationship.
So assuming there is this relationship, we're talking about couples therapy here right offthe bat.
And the couple goes to see the counselor...
Very often, first of all, one, one partner wants this more than the other.
(04:30):
The other one's like, why am I here?
Yeah, always.
Okay.
And they're rolling their eyes.
The other person's genuinely trying to help.
Also, women are known for being talkers and men are known for clamming up.
So the woman will give all this information and the guy will feel like, my goodness, she'slike oversharing.
And then it'll be the guy's turn to say something and he's like, well, uh, there's thisand there's that.
(04:55):
And, you know, there will be a cognitive bias that gets built here on the part of thetherapist.
And, you know, let's not pick on therapists.
I mean, it could happen even in a coaching session, right?
Where
someone will say, well, this person wants it more.
This other person isn't as articulate about it, or they seem to want it less or theirattitude isn't there.
(05:16):
So I have a good guy and a bad guy already figured out in this conversation because ofthat cognitive bias, right?
I think the easier client for a therapist is someone who's more verbally expressive, who'sable to kind of share their feelings, where they're at with things.
em Those tend to be the clients that kind of go with the process more.
(05:40):
And on accident, you can create a bias towards that person immediately because they'resort of going with the idea of what's going to happen in the room.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so what happens is more men than women, I would say, will say, you know, the heck withthis.
I'm just not going to go.
(06:01):
I don't want to go.
I dread it.
If I've been to one session, I'm certainly not looking for the next one.
And then on top of that, a lot of therapists are women and a lot of guys will feel kind ofganged up on.
It's like, okay, she's found her Huckleberry, you know, these two women are just pilingon.
And if you take
(06:22):
some of the phenomena that's been happening socially over the past decade.
Um, toxic masculinity was a buzzword, you know, it's kind of fading into the culturalbackground in terms of zeitgeist nowadays, you know?
You don't hear about it as much.
But for a while, but for a while there, But for a while there, you heard a whole lot abouthow men inherently are bad simply by being masculine, by being more
(06:52):
born male and if we can somehow whoop that masculinity out of them then they'll be goodneuter humanoids who aren't so violent and hurting everybody anymore.
When of course, the guy may be saying to himself all I'm trying to do is provide andprotect I'm trying to do what comes naturally to me as a guy.
This is this is my instinct and now you're telling me you know women don't need me forthat anymore they could take care of themselves, etc., etc.
(07:17):
You know you told me to sit down shut up stay in my lane do better but you haven't givenhim
given me anything to replace it with.
Meanwhile, you know, during the Kavanaugh hearings, was believe all women, you know, andthen the future is female and all you guys should, uh, again, sit down, shut up and let
women take over for a while.
And some guys are thinking to themselves like, why does one gender have to take over atall?
(07:41):
I don't understand.
It's just, well, you know, everything you've done to us for millennia.
Now it's our turn.
Let us have it.
And it's like, well, that doesn't sound very kind.
That doesn't sound benevolent.
That sounds like I'm writing my own writ of doom here.
So when we go as men, when we go into a therapist's office, when we traipse into thatterritory, if you will, uh, and the therapist is of that mindset as we feared she might
(08:09):
be, it's like my wife, my girlfriend has turned into an adversary and this lady isn'thelping cause she's helping build that,
foster that adversarial mindset between she and I, and I feel like it's two against oneand I'm constantly on the defensive.
And then the next thing you know, they're both pointing at me going, why are you beingdefensive?
(08:30):
You know, you can see how this snowball gets rolling, right?
That's what I hear a lot of guys, at least fearing is going to happen, even if it's notexactly their real world experience.
Although I have heard guys for whom that is the real world experience.
What say you?
Well, to me, it's important to share that if that were to happen, you know, people canstop the process at any point, you know, like I would love for people to know that that
(09:00):
would be a red flag if you felt like someone was baiting an argument or creating moretension than was already there or amplifying kind of who's in the right and who's in the
wrong.
Often in relationships, there's no objective truth.
You have two subjective realities and you need to operate a conversation with that inmind.
(09:24):
So anytime you're feeling someone, em you know, yeah, almost kind of be judge and jury onthe relationship automatically, that's not going to bring the relationship into anything
more healed.
It's a red flag.
that going to help?
(09:44):
If I feel attacked, how is this going to improve my relationship with her?
Certainly my relationship with the therapist hasn't even been established yet.
It's not going to be because now she's the enemy and she's helping my significant otherpile on against me.
That's not going to lead to more togetherness.
(10:05):
That's going to at best...
Well, I don't know if you would call it at best, but it's certainly going to
increase that feeling that we're adversaries rather than partners.
And one would think at least that the goal of therapy would be to bring us back intopartnership, you know?
Right, right.
Yeah, it calls into question how do people constructively share feedback or theirexperience of another person's behavior without it turning into kind of um cancel culture
(10:39):
or putting someone in this box of like morally inept or not okay in some way.
And I think a lot of men do
tend to feel like they're getting dismissed, demonized, maybe more confused about theirrole em in kind of current culture right now.
(11:04):
And we're seeing a lot of polarization where there's sort of an us versus them mentality,uh which is being grown in echo chambers, whether in groups of people talking online,
whatever that looks like.
Yeah, you know, when you talk about echo chambers, echo chambers play a dirty little trickon our brains because we find perhaps several hundred or even a few thousand people who
(11:28):
think the way we do.
And it's easy to fall into the trap going, that's what the world thinks.
Everybody agrees with me.
Right.
All you have to do is on any given day, here's a cute little exercise.
Look at the headlines on cnn.com versus the headlines on foxnews.com.
And you'll feel like you're living literally on two different planets.
You know,
That's how I gauge real news.
(11:49):
Actually, if both of those outlets are carrying it, something like a plane crash orsomething, then it probably is newsworthy.
But usually, you know, I've seen news, I've seen headlines on either of those outletswhere they're talking about how terrible the other outlet is pretending that's the news
story of the day.
So it's easy for us to kind of get indoctrinated into thinking, okay, my echo chamber ismy team.
(12:11):
I feel comfortable there.
I feel at home there.
These are my people.
So I don't want to let them down.
And I don't want to not believe what they don't believe.
So critical thinking, critical.
So critical thinking goes out the door and what we're left doing is going with the flow.
And one day we wake up and go, how did I get here?
(12:32):
How did I start believing all these things?
Why do I believe all these things?
And we can't even answer it.
And it's because, well, this is the group we've been hanging with.
It's kind of like junk food.
It's like getting a diet of like Cheetos and ice cream
instead of anything that's real protein or real substance.
But it made me feel good to sit with this group of people who, for example, the Men GoingTheir Own Way is always my go-to.
(12:56):
They all can't stand women.
All these women did everything to them.
So they get together and complain about women and go, yeah, we're the majority.
Men don't want to be with women anymore.
But, you know, really, it's this big of a swath of people.
Most everybody else in the world would happily like to find a girlfriend and
relate to women in a happy way, but we're not grabbing the mic because we're not angryabout it.
(13:20):
So everybody who's usually content aren't the most, aren't the noisiest ones.
So what happens is these people go to therapy after being in this echo chamber.
And what does that look like, Amanda?
Are you thinking more about like an individual therapy experience or where there's arelationship?
ah
or a couple, or a relationship or either way, whether it's a relationship or someone who'ssingle.
(13:45):
Well, when I think first about individual therapy, that is very tricky landscape tonavigate because what people bring is areas in which they're in pain, areas that they're
uncomfortable with.
What individuals bring into therapy is bias about their own pain points, which we all havethem.
(14:09):
We all have...
wounds and uncomfortable experiences that we're trying to work on and overcome becauseit's what's bothering us.
Rarely though are people volunteering information about this is where I had a misstep andhurt someone today.
Can you help me with that?
Almost 0 % of my entire 15 years in the field has someone volunteered information about Ineed help changing my behavior in this way.
(14:33):
I'm finding myself very controlling and I think it's harming this relationship.
Um, so that's been a fabulous kind of observation I've had at some point in my career.
If I kept having victims come through the door and there was no one sharing that they werein the offender position.
(14:56):
And I started looking at the math.
We can't all be, you know, having problems with other people and feeling hurt if, if noone is also simultaneously being the one who's, you know, making errors.
And the way I approach humans is we're all a little bit of both.
We all have parts of us that feel wounded or sensitized or insecure.
(15:17):
And we all have parts of us that can engage in, you know, one-up behavior or ways thatwe're allowing ourselves to be in a stance of superiority towards other people.
The problem with individual therapy is so you're relying on that person to bring the topicup, ask for help around it, and no one does.
(15:38):
Relationship therapy, on the other hand, you do get the other side of the story.
You get someone being able to chime in about what they're experiencing the other persondo.
em But because I take that stance that most of us are all at times completely capable ofbeing in the one down or the one up position, em it's dangerous to sort of
(16:06):
try to let one person be all good and one bad and then pit them against each other.
I don't know how the relationship could heal in that way.
It's just a stance.
a way of...
just fostering logical fallacy.
mean, the assumption is being made now that we don't know how to think critically, youknow, that will fall for whatever they throw at us.
(16:35):
And one of the ones that gets overused is the All-Or-Nothing Fallacy, right?
There's no gray area in anything.
All men are terrible.
All women are good.
For example, another fallacy that, that,
goes along with that would be because masculinity and femininity are opposites and men andwomen are therefore opposites, then they have to be opposites in every way.
(17:03):
So therefore one has to be good and one has to be bad because that's what opposites do.
But things can, you know, people, places, things, phenomenon, ideas can be bad or good inone way, but not necessarily in every conceivable way can they be opposite.
So if you have a situation where
the man is painted out to be the bad one and the woman painted out to be the good one, alot of times that's driven by a narrative that came from, you know, you can call it media,
(17:34):
but you know, you can even call it news or journalism, but really even most journalismnowadays is just pop culture.
And what is the intent behind this narrative to make me feel this way?
What are they trying to sell me?
You can follow the money.
And that's probably the subject of another podcast, but I find it very interesting that in15 years of practice, almost everybody who's come to you has painted themselves out to be
(18:03):
a victim.
And I guess it's, it becomes, help me be more resilient, right?
If that's not the buzzword of the 21st century or help me get them or change them.
And you, you and I both are adult enough and professional enough to know that there's noway you can coach
to or therapize someone who isn't in the room.
(18:23):
You know, I can't, I can't coach to someone else.
I can't coach to a third party.
You can't therapize this person who is the alleged problem, according to the personsitting in front of you.
I do get people who come to me and go, look, I got to do some self work.
I screwed this up.
I want to do better.
I want to be a better man.
I do get those guys.
I'm curious that you don't see a whole lot of that because it seems to me probably thebest reason
(18:49):
to go to therapy would be to heal my own past.
The best reason to hire a coach would be help me do better.
And you're seeing almost none of that in your practice.
Everybody's just like, look, I'm coming here because poor me, this person did something tome.
Now what?
That's fascinating.
Men and women you're seeing this from.
Yeah, I think um often people come because they want symptom relief in some form orfashion.
(19:15):
And it would be unfair for me to say people were across the board in a victim narrative.
But I think what's more accurate is people are personally distressed with what their ownpain points are.
So when we think about what we want help with, where our symptoms are
(19:37):
coming or stemming from, it's typically what our own organism is carrying as pain.
We're asking for help to relieve that.
And so it naturally links to, you know, experiences where someone legitimately has gonethrough, you know, trauma or overwhelming experiences or, uh you know, an adverse em
(19:59):
circumstance.
problem is sometimes
people aren't able to then link, you know, because this happened to me, where do I givemyself a lot of...
grace but simultaneously have almost zero tolerance for people who enact triggers in me orwho are catalytic for me to feel pain.
(20:30):
Where have I become, you know, sensitized to feeling like the person who is capable of mefeeling pain is then the problem.
And that's the wrong way to look at it.
Typically these pains are stuck in us from earlier experiences and then we're having
another person answer for the pain that they weren't even around to cause in the firstplace.
(20:52):
I understand.
Yeah.
You know, I think a lot of guys would be listening to this going, man, if I do that, I'm aweakling.
I'm not very masculine.
It's anti-masculine for me to go sit in front of a It's anti-masculine for me to sit infront of a therapist, just simply to get something off my chest and to vent.
And it's like, poor baby, you know, buck up and get over it.
(21:14):
A lot of guys are thinking that to themselves.
And what ends up happening is a lot of guys go without any mental health, you know,
help at all.
We just wave off all of those resources available to us out there, and we're stuck insideour heads doing our thing and not getting the help we need.
What would you say to guys who feel like you know, hey, I do have something that I want toget better at I do want some help with it uh But they feel like this isn't a very manly
(21:44):
thing to do and if my girlfriend ever finds out I'm doing that she's gonna break up withme, etc., etc.?
Um.
Those are often the people that I might not, unfortunately, get to interact with.
So I think the people, right, I think, you know, I sort of put that back on what could menas a community do for one another to start to give examples of modeling, like, this is
(22:15):
where I'm struggling, this is how I'm dealing with it, this is my plan to support myself,take responsibility.
I almost think,
It's before they get to my office because they won't unless other people are sort of rolemodeling like, you know, this is what it could look like and be more vocal about it...
um
(22:38):
to almost kind of change the culture around it, know, the, the lift the stigma a littlebit.
Do you, do you think it's a generational thing that there's differences in generationstowards this topic, or do you, do you think it's still kind of across the board that that
would be someone's sense of it?
Well, if anything, I think it's gotten better over generations.
(23:00):
think men a hundred years ago, there's no way they would do this fluffy stuff at all.
But nowadays, you you've got a whole new generation of men who bought into, you know, and,I'm going to sound like I'm being unfair here, but I'm not, I'm just going to call it the
way I see it.
I think there's a generation of men who have actually, as you mentioned before we hitclick on the record button here,
(23:25):
have drank the Kool-Aid, you used that term.
And I think it applies to what I'm about to describe.
I think they've drank the Kool-Aid when it comes to masculinity as a social construct.
I'm supposed to do better as a guy.
If anything, be more feminine.
Let women take charge.
um They've allowed it to be a mechanism by which they can check out from being manly orbeing a man or being a provider or protector.
(23:51):
Maybe even going and getting a job, perhaps even moving out from under their parents' roofat age 45.
I think those guys are all happy to go to therapy.
They're not worried about looking manly or looking weak or anything like that.
Whereas I think, you know, 50, a hundred years ago, every guy would have gone, well, what?
I don't even know, understand what you're talking about.
(24:12):
Right.
So I don't know if it's gotten worse generationally with men.
But I will say this, I think, um, the rise in the need for men's groups, men to be indeeper relationship with each other has reached a crisis pitch.
(24:34):
I also think 50 or a hundred years ago, men had more closer, had more close male friends.
And that's a fact.
Men tend to build associations and friendships around shared goals, shared experiences and
with the isolation of people and the so-called pandemic of loneliness, we're just simplyaround fewer guys.
(24:58):
And we don't have as many close friends.
So then what happens is there's this dearth of resources for us to share or for us to evenget valid feedback in general.
We're really only left with the narratives that social media and the news outlets aretrying to feed us.
You should believe this.
(25:18):
You should think like that.
You should stop doing this and start doing that.
And really it's all a big commercial enterprise.
You know, again, like I said, a lot of times it's follow the money.
What's going to be more profitable?
You know, if you tell me that I, uh, am bald and I should have hair or else no women areever going to like me, then it's easier to get me to believe that than if I go out in the
(25:40):
real world and realize that if I shaved my head, women are still going to like me and it'snot going to be any different.
Mm-hmm.
that real world experience just isn't happening for a lot of guys compared to just thisonslaught of media engagement that's coming to us from everywhere.
So coming back to what you're talking about, when guys go into a therapist and they leavefeeling disempowered rather than empowered, my guess is they're predisposed to feeling
(26:09):
that way even before they sit in front of you and they're just
listening selectively to hear what you're going to tell them that says, that, helps themvalidate the thought in their mind.
See, she's not going to want like me being a male.
She's not going to allow me to be a man.
There's that preconceived notion, that cognitive bias again, sometimes isn't there.
(26:30):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I imagine people are on guard based on, you know, the identity of the therapist sortof assuming, you know, this could go bad for me, you know, given their other past
experiences with someone who looks like that person.
(26:51):
Let me interrupt you briefly.
Not to be overlooked, that could happen on dates.
That could happen in any social interaction where we're we're, we're predisposed to a biasthat this person is going to look at me, respond to me, think something about me that I've
(27:11):
already dreamed up in my head instead of taking each interaction as it comes.
I think that's especially poignant when it comes to talking about a therapist relationshipvis a vis
you know, a fear men may have that we're going to be minimized for being masculine oreverything's going to be my fault.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
But I wanted to, I wanted to put that out in the universe so that it was said.
(27:33):
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I think it's unconscious happening to all of us all the time.
And we up the ante when we imagine we're supposed to be more revealing or share more umdetails about ourselves.
It's more more is on the line about what's how's this person going to respond to, youknow, my presence.
(27:54):
So it it there's a lot of uh risk in the relationship.
And before you have the safety and the trust, it's it's
it can be a lot of work to kind of get em people to be bought into the process.
Because most of the time, it feels more risky than you get anything out of it right in thebeginning.
(28:16):
It can be hard to stick it out.
Yeah, lot of guys have a problem with being vulnerable too, because there's this weirddichotomy with that word in the English language.
ah You know, the Brene Brownian definition of it such that, you know, we should becourageous and face that fear.
Perhaps we don't know the outcome and therefore we're vulnerable to any outcome.
(28:38):
That's the good kind of vulnerability.
Like for example, when you are sitting in front of a woman and it could go either way, oryou approach a woman and you say hi to her, maybe ask her out, it could go either way.
But because that word is the same word that also represents a sitting duck, something thathas not a chance.
And the first thing that could come along and smite it is going to kill it.
(29:00):
That doesn't feel very masculine to a guy.
So therefore we avoid all vulnerability whatsoever.
So then we probably avoid therapists and dare I say even coaches because we're afraidwe're going to be knocked down.
What would you say to a guy who has feared that and especially
Amanda, what would you say to a guy who's felt that?
(29:20):
Like I did it.
I gave it a try.
Me and the old lady went to a therapist.
I went to a therapist by myself and I just left feeling worse, not better.
What would you say to those guys?
Yeah.
um
(29:41):
You know, there's there's a lot of pieces I would be thinking about.
My mind almost goes in a lot of directions when you ask me that because some of it's sortof context specific um that would help guide me but in an instance like that I would I
would wonder how they became so vulnerable to another person's input about them if theydidn't yet feel the person knew them well, like why take their
(30:09):
uh word so why did they give away their power in that moment to take
people pleasers.
They could never have gotten any validation from anybody growing up.
They could have a poor self-image and they're afraid that their shame is going to bereflected in the words and actions and even the body language of the therapist sitting in
(30:30):
front of them.
Don't you think?
Yeah.
And that's where sometimes we can see behavior on the outside of people where they'rehardened, withdrawn, defensive.
And it's ultimately our job to connect to the more insecure parts behind the scenes thatare calling up these big defenses so that people over time figure out this balance of
(30:55):
safety.
There's a lot too that I accept my limitations on.
I'll often refer
individual clients I have that are men or part of relationships to figure out how to getsome friends like either join a gym, start a hobby, go to a men's group if you have to pay
for that initially um as a part of a coaching community because I don't think I do a manany service learning how to be vulnerable with me.
(31:23):
I think I help them figure out how to have adaptive vulnerability in their life again.
And it's got to look
like they know how to do it in a lot of other spaces, even outside the therapist's office.
So I kind of have no interest in creating something sacred with one person.
(31:43):
I think I'm best used to help that person figure out how to have that um in theirday-to-day in a lot of relationships.
I don't really want to be anyone's one person, if I'm being honest.
Well, I think that's a dangerous position to put oneself in.
That's almost too much power over anyone.
Yeah.
(32:03):
So I think that's, uh, that's very self-aware of you to even realize that as a therapist.
Cause I think certainly a lot of people in any profession, legal profession, medicalprofession, mental health profession can sort of develop a God complex.
You know, that I'm the voice of God for this person when, you know, we have no suchbusiness even pretending that.
(32:24):
Yeah, I know I've been drawn more to mem mentors that try to uh craft and I craft a stancewhere we're all kind of on equal footing.
have the gift of objectivity because I'm a third party witnessing your dynamic and youwould be the person not you but the client would be the person who can't see the forest
(32:48):
through the trees.
And there's...
not emotionally involved with what they're emotionally involved with.
So we don't have that clouded judgment.
Yeah, for sure.
That's valuable.
That's a valuable part of therapy and coaching, by the way.
That often stands alone as a reason to invest in oneself for that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's where I think my power comes from is just that I'm not in the system.
(33:10):
I'm observing the system and I can help see things that two people in the system can'tsee.
It doesn't make me special as a human.
I have my own blind spots in my own human life, but in that position you have a certainlevel of initial wisdom you can see because you're looking from the outside.
You know, what you're talking about reminds me what I've heard from lots of people in thepsychotherapy field, psychiatrists even, where they have a hard time dating or they have a
(33:39):
hard time making even social acquaintances because the gen pop tends to believe thisperson can see through me because they're a psychology expert.
So they can see all my vulnerabilities, all my, you know, all the ways that I don't likemyself.
They could read my bad self-esteem, like a cheap paperback.
And it really just
creates this massive social discomfort with people once they realize they're standing infront of someone who is in the mental health profession.
(34:07):
And so I've heard psychiatrists say, man, I just don't even tell...
When I was single, I didn't even tell women what I do for a living until like the fifthdate.
You know, I'd make something up or I would just kind of say, you know, I work with peopleevery day.
It's really kind of boring.
What about you?
And then get them to talk about themselves because well, of course that's what someone inthe psychotherapy field would do.
(34:28):
But really we are all of us coaches, therapists, we're humans.
We don't have that X-ray vision to see someone's deepest, you know, all the dirt on peoplethat easily.
And, uh, I think that is a myth.
And I think a lot of guys are thinking themselves, well, I'm not going to sit in front ofsome chick and bare my soul when, know, she's going to be psychoanalyzing me, you know,
(34:51):
the whole Freudian psychoanalysis bit.
has created more fear and angst and sturm und drang with people that probably has madethem feel better about going and laying on a couch, listening, having somebody listen to
all their stuff.
I think this has been a fantastic conversation.
And one of the key things you just said was that, look, gentlemen, if you need to getbetter with women, if you need to be a better man to get better with women, you got to do
(35:20):
the self work and it's not going to happen alone.
And it's not going to happen between you and Wikipedia and Google and God forbid ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is "Mr.
Nice Guy", by the way.
It'll just tell you what you want to hear.
So worst therapist ever, unless you're a narcissist and it feels like the best therapyever.
Cause oh my God, I'm being validated.
(35:41):
You don't have to fear ChatGPT, you know, misunderstanding you or giving you the hardtruths or the tough love.
That's for sure.
But I also, like I said, I love what you said about, look, if this person is yourtherapist or your coach and they're, they're harshing your buzz and they're bringing you
down, you have a right to fire their ass.
(36:01):
They're not better than you.
They're the wrong therapist for you.
And you can wag your finger at them and call them out.
I invite my guys, even on the first session with guys, Hey, look, if the communicationstyle isn't there, if you need me to respond to you in a different way, socially,
cognitively, if you aren't getting out of this, what you signed up to get out of it, letme know.
(36:25):
Cause I work for you and I want to be flexible.
And I think that clears the air with a lot of guys very quickly and kind of helpseverybody.
Even when we work with couples or with women, even in business coaching, everybody kindof...
breathes a sigh of relief and says, oh good.
I'm not going to be silently judged when I'm here.
And me, I don't know about you, but I'm the biggest dorky goofball in the world.
(36:48):
So, you know, once I start being vulnerable back with people, everybody goes, alright,well, you know, we're certainly a bunch of co-equals here.
No one's lording it over anybody else.
I think that's a, fantastic message.
And I think that's probably the best defense against well, being indoctrinated intothinking you're some kind of way by a, by an activist therapist.
(37:11):
I don't know how far it will go if your wife and the therapist are teaming up on you, butI think
you know, I'm sure you would agree, right?
That you still can stand up for yourself, even if it's two on one like that, right?
Yeah, well, there are moments where someone is, man or woman, is completely egregiouslybehaving and completely in the wrong.
(37:37):
There's something very not okay about behavior they're engaging in.
I think the trick though is how does everyone in the room stay on equal footing in termsof...
uh
No one's a bad person.
No one's a good person.
It's like we've got to figure this behavior out, this pattern out, because we're notwinning as a couple when this is going on.
(38:01):
Well, what if the coach or the therapist takes the side of the egregious and you'rethinking to yourself, is this really happening?
This can't be me.
It's them, not me.
Right?
But you have nobody to make that appeal to.
What do you do in that situation?
You know.
Again, I've rarely seen it in practice where one person is, you know, holding all theproblem behavior and the other person's just a sweet angel.
(38:32):
I think we've all got our days where something's going on.
uh
that the professional, the one presiding over the group as it were, over the session wouldagree with the person being egregious.
You don't see that often either?
um
You know, I will say that there are behavioral patterns that go undetected when you feelsympathy or empathy for someone's position.
(38:59):
So let's say someone has been hurt.
They were, uh the other partner cheated on them and they're hurt, right?
So in that example, you might think there's an obvious wrong person and right person.
That being said, em you know, there's
there's still therapy that will leave that relationship broken or therapy that will bringthem back into okayness again.
(39:26):
And even if someone has been hurt badly, there's...
It can feel compelling to get behind that person, you know, applaud them for sharing theirfeelings, speaking up.
But I still, we can't give someone permission to, like I was telling you, a mentor usedthis phrase, offend from the victim position.
(39:58):
If you're hurt, you've been cheated on, but your plan,
to respond includes character assassination of the other person, screaming at them,becoming volatile back.
ah All of those things still are not meant to be sanctioned, regardless of the feelingsthat are going on behind the scenes.
(40:19):
So I think, em you know, that's where true healing that's getting a relationship back ontrack.
ah You know, it's not about blame or figuring out who's
at fault, but to sort of figure out how do two people reckon with what happened and healwhere one person doesn't have to be the problem for the rest of the relationship.
(40:45):
No one's going to do a good job in their role as a husband if they're chronically theproblem or the one who messed up for all of time.
Yeah, I agree.
Um, you bring up a wonderful point and I would add to it and...
(41:06):
it's like "yes, and..." in improve.
Yes, and I think a lot of guys have been fed this fear that in therapy and I would alsolump in there family law and the family law system, they're going to take the woman's side
no matter what.
She's going to start.
with the crocodile tears and the, I didn't mean to, and but he did this and men are soawful and the emotions and men have been led to believe that's going to work a hundred
(41:34):
percent of the time, but therapists are smarter than that.
Coaches are smarter than that.
And I've heard over and over again, that judges are smarter than that more than ever.
And indeed you said something earlier that, you know, you don't have the golden child andthe evil,
horrible person.
Most people have a lot of gray area.
(41:56):
We do some good things and we do some bad things.
And okay, this person may have cheated, but you know, they try to be a good person otherthan that, they just fell to this temptation at one time, or they felt undervalued by
their spouse and acted out.
It doesn't mean they were a terrible person.
And human bias is going to happen.
But I think we as professionals, it's incumbent upon us to leave people better than wefound them.
(42:17):
Um, not just to pile on like that, but I do think a lot of guys are very
wary if not terrified to go to a therapist or to go into a divorce situation to divorcecourt because they just they they they say to themselves i'm a guy and i'm going to get
fleeced.
And you know a lot of guys who are very negative towards this they love to go findexamples in the news but if an example was newsworthy all that means is it it doesn't
(42:43):
happen every day all the time.
Like for example a guy will find a news story about a woman who
revoked her sexual consent the next morning after they had sex the night before now he'sup for rape charges.
And my...
my response to them is like, you know several thousand couples screwed in San Antonio,Texas alone last night and it went fine.
(43:06):
So I think a lot of these guys look at this like oh a plane crashed in India a month ago,therefore flying is awful and I don't want to die and I'm never gonna fly again.
Oh yeah, but a whole lot of planes took off and landed just in your hometown, your homecity between then and now.
So a lot of guys, they'll gravitate around these horror stories and go, Nope, Nope, Nope.
I'm not going to do this.
(43:27):
But if anything is ever newsworthy like that, it's usually a rarity.
Um, the bottom line here is, you know, don't knock it till you try it.
You know, if there's self work that needs to be done, if there is an issue in yourmarriage that needs to be dealt with.
If it's rooted in the past, go see a therapist.
If the two of you need to, to get on the same page and do better, go see a coach, youknow, do better in the real sense, not just in the weaponized sense.
(43:53):
You know, there's a real path.
There's a real way that we can improve.
Then do it.
And you know, if, the person sitting in front of you, the coach or the therapist isn'tdoing their job, fire their asses.
I know I'm looking in the mirror.
If I'm not doing a good job for the guys who come to me, I'm fired.
Mm-hmm.
is impetus for me to do a good job, by the way.
(44:13):
And I'm sure you feel the same way.
I feel like this has indeed been a wonderful conversation, one that we had never had onthis show, and that I was very eager to have with you, Amanda.
And I think you represented your points extremely well.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to head guys to mountaintoppodcast.com front slashAmanda, A-M-A-N-D-A.
We've never had an Amanda on the show.
(44:35):
And there you go.
And what are guys going to find when they
when they click on that link, Amanda?
It's really just a welcome page to my practice.
It gives information about the type of work I do in Tennessee, California, and Colorado.
Also, I do have some support on there.
(44:57):
Video to help people walk through their conflict archetype.
People have a lot of modes they go into uh around conflict that they don't even realize issort of a...
a unique template to them and it's not the only way to handle conflict.
And there's some information about how to detect that and figure out who you typically arewhen an issue comes up with another person.
(45:21):
Well, that's very valuable.
You caught me by surprise with the Colorado California thing.
What's up with that?
I've moved many times in my adulthood and so I've collected licenses along the way.
Oh, yeah, see, that's where you're licensed.
Fantastic.
Yeah, that's important when you're a therapist.
Very, very good.
Well, bravo.
Fantastic show today.
(45:41):
And once again, Amanda Johnson, ah thank you so much for joining us today.
It's been wonderful.
Hope you'll come back.
yeah, I appreciate this.
I love talking to men.
I like calling them into therapy, um telling them what it's all about and that if it's notfeeling right, it's just keep trying.
You don't necessarily click with everyone right away, but um the field as a whole canhelp.
(46:06):
Great.
Great.
Gentlemen, if you haven't been to mountaintoppodcast.com lately, visit our three long timesponsors.
The guys over at Origin In Maine, Jocko Willink's company have come out with a whole newline of jeans, more boots than ever.
They got Chelsea boots now, which are so sweet.
Okay.
And yeah, very nice.
And they get these awesome new chambray shirts and they're very movable and breathable.
(46:30):
The thing about Origin is
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They have a way of giving you this smart, casual look while still being somewhat athletic.
That and the fact that everything is sourced and made in the USA is probably my favoritepart about everything Origin.
Not because I'm ever going to get into a bar fight, but boy, it sure feels manly to wearclothes that make sure you can bend and flex like that, even though you look smart and
(46:57):
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Check those guys out.
Hero Soap, guys if you haven't tried the shampoo yet it comes in bar form and you'rethinking this thing's gonna last me a day and a half No way, dude.
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Like, just three swipes on your head I know I got the high and tight thing going on.
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(47:23):
three swipes, it'll lather up.
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(47:45):
I've collected a couple dozen by now, um which is kind of cool to be sponsored to be ableto do that, but it won't break the bank to
get your Keyports set up the way you want it.
All three of those long time sponsors do a great job for us.
They've been here probably four or five years now each.
Um, use the coupon code "mountain10" to get 10 % off from any of our illustrious sponsors.
(48:08):
And guys, you've also heard me talk once again about coaching today.
Listen, just like Amanda, I don't think she was faking being someone she's not.
I'm not either.
My passport says Scot McKay on it.
People have commented, you know,
why is your name only spelled with one T?
Look, if I was using a uh fake nom de plume out there, I would have at least spelled myfirst name right.
(48:29):
Right.
Correct.
So actually we're Scottish, you know, by family extraction.
So I would argue it spelled the correct way, but enough about me.
Um, when you guys get on the phone and you talk to me, what you see is what you're goingto get.
I mean, uh, I'm in podcast mode for sure, but who I am, what I'm about.
(48:50):
That's who you're going to talk to.
I don't play a fictional character.
Get on my calendar.
Let's talk about where you are in your journey to being better with women.
If we put a plan together to make that happen for you sooner than later, that's great.
If not, I'm happy to have talked to you.
I sometimes just love to get your feedback on the show.
You can get on my calendar at mountaintoppodcast.com.
(49:11):
You can get in touch with our three sponsors there.
Plus there are a whole lot of other goodies that I don't talk about nearly enough, likedownloadable programs.
You can get my book Sticking Points Solved free.
Sign up for my free daily newsletter, which is also fluff free.
All of that and more is there for you at mountaintoppodcast.com.
And until I talk to you again real soon, this is Scot McKay from X & Y communications inSan Antonio, Texas.
(49:36):
Be good out there.
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