November 1, 2024 • 61 mins
Discover how the world of Dungeons & Dragons can transform therapy sessions with our guest, Joseph Bennett, an LPC associate from Central Texas. Joseph shares his innovative approach to incorporating this beloved role-playing game into clinical settings. By weaving together the immersive experiences of D&D with therapeutic practices, Joseph offers a unique perspective on enhancing client engagement and personal growth. Whether you're a counselor curious about creative methods or someone interested in the intersections of gaming and mental health, this episode promises to expand your horizons.
Join us as we unravel the concept of "bleed" in role-playing games, where players' emotions and identities interact with those of their characters. Joseph Bennett elaborates on how this dynamic can enrich therapeutic work, as clients explore parts of themselves through their in-game avatars. We discuss how creating and embodying characters can promote insight and development, drawing interesting parallels to therapies like sand tray. This creative approach particularly resonates with neurodivergent individuals, offering a safe space for exploration and skill-building.
In our conversation, Joseph provides a practical guide for therapists interested in integrating D&D into their practice. From crafting vivid worlds to facilitating meaningful client interactions, he shares his experiences and the challenges faced. We explore how role-playing can be a tool for family and couples therapy, breaking down traditional roles and fostering communication through shared narratives. Joseph's passion for this innovative method shines through, as he extends an invitation to counselors and supervisors eager to explore the potential of D&D in therapy. Be prepared to rethink the boundaries of traditional therapeutic techniques with this exciting episode.
If you have any questions about any counseling related topics or would like the twins to share their thoughts about a particular counseling case - reach out with the info below:
https://thetwintherapists.com/
Instagram: thetwintherapists
Contact: thetwintherapists@gmail.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
this is julius.
I wanted to wanted to come onreal quick and introduce our
guests for this episode.
It's a special guest.
It's somebody who's near anddear to our heart.
It's a guy by the name ofJoseph Bennett.
He's a LPC associate in CentralTexas.
He graduated from theUniversity of Mary Hart in
(00:36):
Baylor and he is unfortunatelyunder the supervision of my
brother, jude.
So during the podcast he wasblanking his eyes profusely at
me.
I think that was a sign ofdistress.
So I'm going to double check.
I'm going to double check onyour boy, joe.
But yeah, joe, and we're havingJoe on today because Joe wants
(00:59):
to talk to us about theintegration of Dungeons and
Dragons into the clinicalrelationship.
He does a really really, reallygood job of explaining how
Dungeons and Dragons can reallybenefit individual clients that
he's serving in his practicecouples as well as groups, for
(01:20):
sure and he also talks a littlebit more about how he wants to
introduce Dungeons and Dragonsinto some of his family sessions
.
So we talk about how to getstarted in Dungeons and Dragons.
We talk about how he brings itup with particular clients.
We talk about how heincorporates it into individuals
(01:45):
, couples and group therapysessions.
Um, we talk about um how he uhseparates himself as the
clinician and the dungeon masterand we also talk about um what
he he mentioned this term calledbleeding, or like a client, a
client's uh identity will bleedinto a client, into into a
(02:08):
character's identity, and viceversa.
We also talk about how he knowswhen the client that he's uh
he's working with is ready to dothe work.
Um, once the the client is kindof like engulfed in the um in
the campaign of Dungeons andDragons.
So it was a pretty interestingconversation.
(02:29):
Dungeons and Dragons is like anup and coming thing in the
clinical sphere.
I know it's been around for awhile but we're starting to see
some integration of Dungeons andDragons into the relationship,
into the clinical relationship.
So Joe does a really good jobof kind of exploring that with
us.
So my brother's been playingDungeons and Dragons with Joe
(02:52):
for a while.
Joe actually is taking mybrother's faculty through a
campaign.
I've never played Dungeons andDragons before in my life so I
kind of came at it from aperspective of I have no idea
what's going on.
So hopefully you enjoyed thisepisode.
If you have any questions aboutDungeons and Dragons or like
(03:14):
how to incorporate that intoyour clinical relationships.
You can reach out to Joe at hiswebsite.
His website isherebedragonscounselingcom, so
that's H-E-R-E-B-E-D-R-A-G-O-N-Scounselingcom.
You can set up a meeting withhim.
(03:34):
He'll, you know and I'mspeaking for him now, but he's
so laid back and he'll gladlywalk you through.
You know how to kind of getstarted in Dungeons and Dragons
and like what that's like, tolike, incorporate that into your
clinical practice.
So reach out to them.
Um, if you really you're reallyinterested in this, all right, I
hope you enjoy the episode.
And you know what.
I hope you're taking care ofyourself.
(03:56):
You know, drinking water, maybegetting enough sleep.
You know, uh, not letting thehaters keep you down, right,
hope you enjoy the episode.
How about?
(04:20):
How about?
How about you go ahead andintroduce yourself, joe?
Uh, welcome to the cast.
This is your first time on thecast, right?
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, it sure is.
It's good to be here.
I am a recent graduate ofUMHB's counseling program and I
somehow got lumped into being asupervisee of Jude over here.
So, yeah, that's what I do.
I have my own practice that.
(04:47):
I'm doing and I do a lot of youknow fun and weird stuff, so
that's like yeah, I mean, Iguess that's me.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Let's just leave it there.
Let's let the audienceimagination run wild with the
weird stuff you do in youroffice with your clients.
Just let it simmer for a littlebit.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
I'm all right, man, I don't want to be arrested for,
you know, keeping my super fuzzy.
Well, look, here's the topic,right.
It's a special episode, man,because we're talking about some
new and up-and-coming on thecusp of research-type style
therapy.
(05:25):
Dozen Dragons and I know youjust started nerding out and I,
you know I'm in a campaign,joe's my DM just a lot of layer
style relationships.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
A lot of multiple relationships going on that's
cool.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
I'm taking notes right now and reporting to the
board you know, but, no, butthat's going to be the focus,
man, because it was in timemagazine right.
Uh, I think, joe, you sent methe magazine or you brought the
magazine.
Yeah, that's like a new andup-and-coming, like expressive
type of therapy, right, andthat's mainly the focus.
(06:04):
I mean, you do individual andcouples and you know that stuff,
but a large part of your workis to do dnd groups yeah, yeah,
that's right, I run that.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
I run groups for people and we use dungeons and
dragons and um, you know reallywhat it's it's all about is I'm
trying to con people into payingme to play one of the games
that I really like, because Idon't have enough friends around
here to play with me.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Now we're getting into it.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I'm recently thinking about doing golf therapy.
It's a new up and coming.
I'm trying to do somethingcutting edge, cutting edge.
It's a it's a new up and coming.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I'm trying to do something cutting edge.
How'd you, how'd you getstarted in in, like dnd joe,
like what?
When was the first time you gotintroduced to it?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
oh gosh, um.
So I got introduced to it whenI was in college and had a buddy
of mine who randomly came overand was like hey, we're going to
play D and D and I'm going toteach you how.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
And I was like, okay yeah sure, and you had never.
You had never had like anexperience or anything.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
No, I grew up very sheltered.
I wouldn't have been allowed to, you know, engage in any of
this.
Yes that's right, yeah, this,this, this, this, this devilry
were you?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
were you into any?
Were you into like tolkien or?
Speaker 1 (07:28):
yeah, yeah, no, I I love tolkien.
Um, I fun fact about myself Iread the lord of the rings once
a year.
Wow, I go through the wholething.
Yeah, I started doing that incollege.
I got to take a class on.
It was pretty, was pretty fun,but I started, you know, I've
always been pretty, like youknow, nerdy and things like that
(07:50):
.
So when I got introduced to itit was right up my alley.
I had a lot of fun the firsttime I got to play and then,
like once Stranger Things cameout and I saw it, I was like I
got to get a group together,yeah, and so got some college
buddies together and we werepart of a campaign that lasted
four years.
So a lot of fun, yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
So well, okay, so, like I'm, I'm the person who's
essentially the the mostinexperienced with D and D,
right, like, yeah, so so I'mgoing to just ask some questions
that, like an audience memberwould.
I'm going to just ask somequestions that an audience
member would ask right, like oneof my students would ask.
So like, all right, I'm tyingthis to this experience.
(08:32):
Right?
So me and Jude, we didn't startdrinking until we were 21,.
Right?
Speaker 1 (08:46):
So like okay, jude, all right, man, I don't want you
to get fired.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I don't know if he could talk about this kind of
stuff, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
All right.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yes, we were drinking apple juice.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
We started drinking apple juice when we were 21
because we promised our mom thatwe would not indulge in such
beverages.
It was just water from then on,out you out.
And so we got introduced toapple juice by this one of our
teammates who was a little older, a little bit more experienced
(09:17):
with apple juice.
Just let me get to it, man.
And so what I felt like was theexperience of being introduced
to that by somebody who kind ofknew what they were doing and
had like an experience of likeoh yeah, let me just like, let
me introduce you into this worldin like a very safe kind of
(09:42):
intentional way really made theprocess like I don't know, man,
healthy for me.
You know, and so I know, thatthere's a dungeon master right
and there's like somebody wholike leads you through the
process.
How, how for you, specificallywhen you first started, like how
(10:02):
was having that introduction todnd by that one friend like how
had that perpetuated your lovefor them?
Speaker 1 (10:12):
yeah, yeah, so what?
What was it about beingintroduced to it by a friend of
mine that like made that caughtmy interest so much?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I thinkit was helpful having somebody
there because I didn't have toworry about knowing how, like
the mechanics of the game work.
I could just show up and, likehave a good time, you know, and,
(10:35):
um, try and follow like therules as best I can.
Um, but it mostly just I got tostart off with it just being a
fun experience and then the morethat I got into it, the more
that I started just consuminginformation.
You know about it, and I spent,you know, all of my money on,
(10:56):
like in the books and dice andyou know the whole thing.
And then I bought a DM screen,like you know, years before I
started playing or before Istarted running games, just
because I knew I wanted to atsome point.
Wow, but you know, like I, justonce I I got into the hobby,
like playing it, and was just avery fun experience and having
(11:18):
somebody there who could takesome of that like take some of
the load from that learningcurve, and it was very helpful
in enabling that process for me.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah, because there comes a.
There comes a point where it'slike you're like haha, like this
is fun, we're playing dnd tolike what are the combat rooms?
What are the combat strategies?
What can I do as a level three?
Like you start, I mean you arelike you go down a tunnel of
shame, you know, because youdon't, because you don't want to
(11:48):
, you don't want to like metaplay things, you don't.
You also don't want to findthings out about a game that
you're you know.
So you're kind of like how youdo.
It's the same with golf.
You know not to bring it down.
Here we go and I'm not trying tohijack it with my golf therapy,
but it's like it's fun and it'slike you walk in and it's like
good, and then all of a sudden,maybe you break a hundred and
(12:12):
you start thinking maybe I cango pro.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
You know let me get some blame.
I think that's just verypersonal, that's very uh.
I feel like it's related witheverybody.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I don't see the connection at all.
I don't see it at all.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
There is a strong connection.
There is a connection, there isa strong lasso type.
It's basically the same game.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
These are the same things.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Well no, I'm just thinking about, like I got some
students who have one inparticular student who's like
very interested in in becausehe's been playing dnd for a
while and he's interested inlike adopting that type of uh,
like clinical approach, right,but then there's a lot of
clinicians who have no idea thatyou can that this, this is even
(13:03):
an option for you know.
So I'm thinking like, okay, ifthere's a gateway into
experiencing this would be tofind somebody who actually knows
what they're doing, right, andthen like experience it yourself
.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Yeah, most things you can make mistakes.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, that sounds.
That sounds like a really niceway to get into it as a you know
, a dungeon master clinician.
Right At the same time, youknow how many people are out
there doing this that you canexperience yourself.
It's hard to get into thatworld.
I didn't have anybody to reallypoint me in the right way.
(13:44):
I had to convince mysupervision group to let me
experiment on them when I was inthe program, like you know.
I was really fortunate that Iwas in an environment where I
could take in as muchinformation from outside sources
and then try and figure out howI do it.
You know right and for myself,but it's hard to find people out
(14:07):
there who are doing this in youknow, who are nearby you, where
you can learn from them.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it does feel like.
It does feel like, and I wantto.
I want to talk a little bitmore about how it is as like a
therapeutic intervention ortechnique or process, about how
it is.
That's like a therapeuticintervention or technique or
process, you know, but I do feellike D&D is one of those things
.
It's like a fight club, right?
(14:35):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
I know what a fight club is, but you're going off on
one of these places that I'mstill not sure where it's going
to end up, I just like to letthem cook for a little bit.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
like to let them cook for a little bit.
You know, I feel like there's aD&D game happening right here,
like six miles away, or maybeeven on campus.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
I just don't know about it.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I just don't know about it.
I feel like D&D is one of thosethings that people don't talk
about.
Know.
It's like.
I feel like dnd is one of thosethings that's like people don't
talk about, but it's happening,and it's like there's a strong
community, oh yeah, of playerswho do this.
You know what I mean.
There's like people who go tothese groups and they get to
play out their lived experience,things that they've experienced
(15:21):
in high school or college or intheir relationships, you know.
But it's just like like if Ihad a client who I felt like
needed some experiential kind ofeven systemic desensitization,
but they could get that from aDean campaign, I wouldn't even
know.
Well, now I know you, butbefore we were doing it, where
(15:43):
would I even tell them to go?
Yeah, do you know what I mean?
Yeah, like, so it's one ofthose things that's just like.
It's like fight club.
It's like happening undernobody talks about it.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, I wouldn't even .
I wouldn't have even known that, that, like, as a clinician, I
wouldn't have even known thatthat was an option for a client.
You know, like, when I think ofstuff like that, I think my
mind goes directly to sandrae.
You know, like, when I think ofstuff like that, I think my
mind goes directly to sand tray,you know, or like some
expressive art you know type ofthing.
It doesn't go to like, oh, Ineed to find a dungeon master
and get like a D&D campaignstarted to like really live out
(16:14):
what you're experiencing in yourrelationship with your husband
or whatever.
It's not even a thing that Ithink about, you know.
So, yeah, it's like acompletely different way of
viewing the therapeuticrelationship.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So yeah, I'm glad you actually brought up sand tray.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
If I could, jump in with that.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah.
So, like one of the ways that Ikind of try and you know,
explain what this is all aboutwith people is using something
like sand tray.
You know you're often giventhis prompt, you know, like
let's make a scene in the sandand let's, you know, build
something here and then usingdungeons and dragons for for
therapy.
(16:52):
It's kind of like getting awhole bunch of people to like
build characters in the sand andthen become those characters
and then get in the sandbox andstart playing, you know, and so
it's an embodied experience thatyou get to have, but it's also
very symbolic in a way, likesand tray might be.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Oh, so okay.
So how do you?
How do you?
How do you?
This sounds like such a wideranging question, but like, how
do you do it?
Like, how question, but how doyou do it?
How do you incorporate it intoyour practice?
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah.
So it is in some ways awide-ranging question because
there's so many possible thingsthat you could do with it, which
is part of the challenge ofusing something like this for
therapy.
And even I'm going off on asmall tangent here, but even
when I first started this, I hadto kind of sit down with the
(17:50):
faculty after I graduated and weran like a very short campaign
that was just all about likefiguring out how how do I do
this?
Yeah, yeah, which was veryhelpful because kind of out of
that, I learned that the waythat I like to kind of use this
is to encourage people tobasically build out these
(18:12):
characters that they get to play, and these characters need to
be tied to themselves in somekind of known way.
So you know, you might have agoal of working on, you know, I
don't know being less anxious orsomething like that.
And so what would it be like toplay a character who's really
brave, you know?
(18:33):
Or you could do some like whatis it Paradoxical intention?
What would it be like to play acharacter who's way more
anxious than you are sure?
And then you get that embodiedexperience of kind of owning
anxiety and being in control ofit.
Yeah, you could also do it withlike some more like kind of
polarity or shadow work, whereit's like maybe your character
(18:56):
isn't quite so anxious, you know, or they're not anxious, but
it's not because there's likethis particularly brave quality
about them.
Maybe they're actually reallyfoolish, yeah, and they're just
like they just don't evenrealize, you know, the kind of
trouble that they're going toget into.
Or maybe they're just reallyreckless and they just don't
give a crap about you know whattheir like, the consequences of
(19:19):
their actions might be, andthose are perhaps, you know, for
that person, a part ofthemselves that they could stand
to lean into a little bit more.
And so my goal as the clinicianis to encourage them to build
these really fleshed outcharacters, and then my job is
to present them with things thatare going to challenge that
(19:40):
character, but also to noticewhen they're not leaning into
those things, yeah, and then wekind of sort through that as
it's coming up.
So so you could.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
So in a way, you're like ah, mama, you this is a
lack of a for a better word butlike monitor the client's
experience and like modulate acharacter building, world
building in a way that likesuits what the client needs to
explore, or maybe had said thatthey want to explore.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, that's definitely.
That's one element of it.
And then there's also thisother piece too.
One of our faculty members whowas part of the summer like
short campaign that we did wasplaying a character who her
character was supposed to bevery talkative and very engaged
(20:33):
in ways that she personally isnot as much.
And and what I noticed is thatwhenever she's interacting with
like a non-player characterthat's in the game, like the
local blacksmith or somethinglike that, she's kind of
narrating her experience withoutactually embodying and playing
that.
(20:53):
So, for example, she might say,like you know, while I go up to
the blacksmith and you know Ihave a conversation with him and
ask him about what's going onin his life, yeah, but she'll
just kind of narrate it likethat and my one of my jobs is to
encourage her to find a way todo more.
So you and I are going to I'mnow going to become the
(21:15):
blacksmith and let's have thatconversation together.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
So you, so you as the dungeon master, embody the
blacksmith.
Oh, this is so interesting.
You, you embody the blacksmith,and you, you help the client or
the person in the group toexplore the aspect of their
identity or their personalitythat you, you know, that they
(21:41):
kind of need help with.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, and even you know you could put it in a
skills way if you want to, where, if you don't, you know, like
this, this kind of therapy isalso really great for people who
are neurodivergent, might havesome social skills that that
they're lacking, you know, andyou can literally just sit
around practicing talking to um,to to people, yeah, and, and
(22:08):
that's really, you know, helpful, sure, but but the other thing
too is it has that it has thatadded benefit of like, of like
somebody doing the thing thatthey need to work on without
actually like doing that yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, I mean like sometimes in therapy we can be
like, okay, we're gonna do anactivity where we're gonna
practice talking, but with thisit's like they could do the
practice, but almost likethey're just playing the game.
Yeah it's not yeah, it's, it'sit's, it's it tricky.
It doesn't trigger theirinsecurities as much as if, like
(22:45):
you were just saying, okay,talk to me about your date.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Which may trigger them.
It kind of lowers somepsychological defenses because
we're creating a lot of distancebetween what the characters are
experiencing and what you'regoing through.
So, like in my own practice andall this, I'm very
experientially driven and Imight sit own, like you know,
practice and all this, I'm veryexperientially driven and I
might sit down, you know, andembody your like abusive father
(23:11):
or something like that.
You know, and we're going tohave a conversation and you're
going to say some things to me.
You know that you wish youcould have said or something
like that but in dungeons anddragons therapy I don't have to
do that.
I can, can just put a I don'tknow like a vampire in the game
who is like charming people andtaking advantage of people and
(23:33):
he acts in some of those sameways.
But then you have to have likean encounter with him and you
have to overcome him.
Right, you know, but it doesn'tfeel like you're going back to
that.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
You know, like that father, whoever it may, whoever
may have been.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yeah, you could actually just like roll some
dice and, you know, kill somemonsters and and play through
some experiences, you know yeah,but I'm assuming that there's a
fair amount of the client's ownmental uh, imagery that's
happening.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
That's like creating the scaffolding of the vampire
that like that's fitting piecesof their like abusive father
right and like so you know I'mcounting on it yeah, yeah.
Yeah, they kind of like piecetogether what the you know what
the character is going to looklike, based off of their, their
traumatic experience.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
So, in a way, all you have to do is kind of set up
the, set up the arena for that,yes, for that to happen yeah,
all I have to do is really setit up for them, create a space
where that kind of work can takeplace, and then I have to be
able to like and this is, Ithink, what separates like
dungeon masters from dungeonmaster clinicians- sure and is.
(24:44):
I'm not just setting up thisimmersive space, but I have to
be aware of when they'reentering the work.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
I have to be aware of .
When we're into something thatis like like when they're coming
into contact with somethingimportant.
You know, and it's important,like this moment is something
worth leaning into.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
How do you do that?
How do you do that Like?
How do you bridge that gapbetween like?
Is there like a switch thatflips in your head where you're
like oh, the work has started.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, sometimes.
So I pay attention.
This is a concept that I firstheard about from Dr Megan
Connell, who has a book and wasone of the first people to
really start publicizing thiskind of therapy as a whole.
Bleed and basically like youcan bleed into your character or
(25:41):
your character can bleed out toyou.
So what I mean by that is thereare times when we're
role-playing these characters,where, you know, my character
might be experiencing somethingtotally different than what I'm
experiencing, because my actualexperience is I'm just sitting
around a table with some friendsrolling some dice, you know
whatever.
But if I get, you know, justreally pissed at something that
(26:05):
Jude's doing, you know, then mycharacter might start to take on
some of that anger and might, Idon't know, want to take
revenge on you know Jude'scharacter for something he
didn't.
You know, like something that'snot actually happening.
Yeah, for something he didn'tyou know, like something that's
not actually happening Happening, yeah.
Then the other, the other thingthat I think sometimes happens
(26:25):
uh, perhaps a bit morefrequently is this concept of
your character bleeding out toyou.
So we're in this immersiveexperience together and I'm
trying to like trigger all ofyour anxiety.
You know, like I'm trying tolike you know, if you're
fighting this, your anxiety.
You know like I'm trying tolike you know if you're fighting
this monster.
You know I want there to besome music going.
(26:46):
I want there to be some stakes.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
I want you to get your heart pumping a little
sweat, a little butt sweatcoming yeah yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
So the the first time that, like our first session,
that we did for this facultycampaign, like the first thing I
did was I got each of them in adark room and I narrated a
nightmare to them.
Holy, it was dope.
Like, based off of their likecharacter backstories that we
just spent like hours working onand all of this stuff, and they
(27:18):
were pretty graphic andgruesome.
You know, especially June Waitwho makes this.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Because I'm an idiot.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Who makes this up?
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Joe, you make up the nightmare.
Yeah, what type of devious darkstuff has happened to you in
the past, to where you're like.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Oh yeah, you put a vampire dragon man.
What have you seen out there?
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Wow, that's a wow, so okay, so just let me, because
I'm the most experienced onehere.
So you spend hours with theindividual person in the group
to create their character, andso, essentially, you co create
this character with them.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yeah, think of it as like a pre, like you know if you
were going to start a therapygroup, right?
You?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
would have that like sure sure sure you know, like
you know.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
tell me a little bit about yourself.
What's going on for you, whatdo?
Speaker 3 (28:15):
you feel like.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah, the group.
How can I support?
Speaker 3 (28:17):
you to do that.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
You know that's kind of what it is, except you're
building this character.
And I don't know just from myexperience of building my own
character like man, it's likeit's front of games and it's
like I'm going to do this andI'm going to do that and then
all of a sudden you're like oh,this is actually a little bleed
that you were talking about, joe, yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
So yeah, this is actually part of my own stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah.
So tell me about this, tell meabout this nightmare, that that
that you concocted for forBrother Jude here.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Oh my gosh, Let me see.
Well, I want to, I want toshare some like elements of it,
without you know, withoutspoiling some stuff about his
character.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
We'll still make it yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
I can't say anything, just give me something.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
I can't say that none of the other players at this
table trust his characterbecause he seems so sketchy to
them.
So it is him, it is him.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
For the life of me, Jesus, for the life of me.
I don't understand, Of course.
You don't, Honestly, man?
Speaker 3 (29:31):
it's a dissonance.
Of course it is yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
We're opening some childhood wounds.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Yeah, will he?
Does he have my back?
Does he not have my back?
Can?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
I count on him, can I not?
Speaker 3 (29:46):
count on him.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
What is?
Speaker 3 (29:48):
this this has been something, Joe, that's been
echoed throughout our family fordecades.
Now I'm glad you're finallybringing this out to the light.
Good the confusion feeds me.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
That's how I live.
No, but you know what man likeand you can you in a way tell
the listeners like what, like,what is dnd like, what do you do
?
Because I don't think peopleknow.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Like, yeah, just like what you do.
Yeah, they're just not evenunderstanding where we're at
podcasting?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
yeah, I would, I would, I would imagine, I would
imagine that people, like, whenthey hear dnd, they think of
like nerds in a place.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah, just like hitting each other with.
Well, I mean, that's what it is, you know, like that's that's
all it is.
No, so, so D and D, you know,dungeons and Dragons belongs to
this, like family of games thatare called tabletop role-playing
games, and basically the waythat they work is that you have
(30:53):
one person who's a player at thetable who kind of acts as a
referee, who's familiar with therules, but who helps to
basically as a referee, um,who's familiar with the rules,
um, but who helps to basicallyum, create a setting, um,
totally imaginary, uh huh, um,like and um, my job is to know,
(31:14):
as this referee, the dungeonmaster, my job is to create a
world for um, the other playersat the table to play a game of
imagination.
Right, so you know, you eachhave a character that you get to
control, kind of like in avideo game.
But the difference is, becausewe're just sitting around a
(31:38):
table doing this, there's nopreset prompts like you don't
have.
You know, these, like in videogames, you you're limited by
whatever is coded in there,right?
So you have, like you know,you're presented with the
problem.
You have like three differentchoices, you know, and, but with
tabletop role-playing games,the only limit is really your
(32:02):
own imagination, and so whathappens is I narrate a scene.
You guys are sitting in atavern and suddenly a bear
crashes through the window.
What do you do?
And then the players willrespond with what actions they
(32:23):
take, and it's my job to knowwhat are going to be the
consequences of those actions.
Yeah, um, but it's not all leftup to me.
So role-playing, tabletoprole-playing games use dice,
that kind of simulate um, whatchance is like sure so.
So you say that you want to doan action, and if it's not
(32:44):
something that's, you know, liketotally easy to do, I might
have you roll a die, and if youroll pretty high on it, then you
succeed.
Yeah, but if you don't rollhigh enough, then you fail, and
so it simulates you.
You know success and failure,and I mean you can get more down
(33:05):
into the weeds of it.
Like characters all havebonuses to their stats and
sometimes penalties.
So maybe you're just very weakand so all of your strength
roles that you make you have tosubtract like five.
Like that'd be a huge weakness.
Yeah, but if you're reallystrong, maybe you get to
subtract like five, like that'dbe a huge weakness.
Yeah, um, but if you're reallystrong, maybe you get to add
five, you know.
(33:26):
So it simulates those kinds ofum things, but it's, it's a very
unique way of of playing a gameand it requires um, some
creative thinking, um, but alsojust um, it's.
It's all a silly little game ofimagination where has this game
been all my life?
Speaker 3 (33:47):
I cannot keep the smile off my face.
As you're talking about this,joe, like when you said the bear
crashes in, I'm thinking allkinds of hell would break loose.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Like I don't think.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
I don't think anybody wants to see me in their
dungeon campaign, I will be.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yeah, but see Jesus, it has to be realistic because
Jews would do some stuff.
Like the bear crashed in.
I picked up my mug of applejuice and drank it down to the
bottom, Got my grenade launcherand then I crapped up under the
bear's guard.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
I got under it, got under grenade launcher.
I crept up under the bear'sguard, I got under it, got under
the guard, gave it a nice hugand a tight squeeze.
I whispered.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
I whispered.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
This will go slowly, as I took out my shard blade.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
See, you're a natural at this.
There's no reason you couldn'tdo this.
Wow, wow, yeah, see you're anatural at this.
(34:58):
Yeah, yeah, there's no reasonyou couldn't do this.
Wow, wow, so OK, so it not.
Right now, you're doing thiswith individual clients while I
was still a student in myprogram.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
I don't know how that was allowed.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
They let you do that, they let me just do all this
kind of stuff, man.
So I got started doing that andI still do that, which might be
surprising to people thatactually play Dungeons and
Dragons, because it's not reallythought of as something you can
do with one other person Withone person, yeah.
But you can.
(35:30):
Certainly it's a little bitmore challenging, but certainly
using it in groups that aretargeting like specific issues.
You know we can, we can make acounseling group about that as
well.
So I do a bit of both.
One of the things I haven'tgotten the chance to do yet but
(35:51):
I'm really intrigued by, and Ijust need to convince somebody
to let me, you know, do it tothem.
It's like using this in familytherapy because, like you, it's,
it's like it's nuts.
You get these people who areare used to whatever rules that
they they play in their familysystem.
(36:12):
Yeah, now let's just createthese characters and all you
guys are on the same playingfield.
Yeah, and you all have likedifferent rules.
You know what's it like, youknow, for for mom to not have
authority anymore because she'sjust you know, another random
person in here.
What's it like for this kidthat you're playing with to have
a bit more power than they'reused to?
(36:33):
Yeah, um, and what kind of?
What kind of roles do theyaccidentally slip into?
Yeah, so it gets me excited asa way of like kind of mapping
out like how family systemsinteract in different situations
.
You know, yeah, and so I.
So I'd like to do that.
I haven't had the chance forthat yet, but oh man, I'm
(36:54):
chomping at the bit.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Can you imagine, man?
Can you imagine like you'reworking with a family?
And you know part of theirproblem is maybe like their
communication style, you know,and maybe they take these like,
let's say, we're going to besatire, right, and we're going
to.
You know they each take thesedifferent communication stances
in the relationship and you knowthey're going to build their
(37:16):
characters unconsciously basedoff of the stances, characters
unconsciously based off of thestances that they take.
That's like the DM, theclinical DM, which is, you know,
coined that term, you know theclinical DM.
They have to be aware that,like, Ooh, this person takes the
blame or position in theirrelationships, or this person
takes the relevant position.
(37:36):
They're going to do that in D&Dand so I feel like the power of
D&D is that nobody gets a pass,like, especially when you're in
combat.
It's like dog, it's you, whatare you doing?
Speaker 3 (37:52):
you can't well, yeah, because how much of it is the
character that you're playing?
And how much of it is likeactually what you would do in
that situation.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
You have to take the congruent position.
Sometimes it forces you to bedifferent.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Sure, because you can't play the game that way,
because you're constantlypresented with obstacles,
sometimes with no clearsolutions, and there could be
multiple right ways.
You also just people startslipping into you know, like,
who tends to freeze wheneverthey're faced with lots of
choices, who tends to, like,take initiative.
(38:33):
I mean you just kind of youslip into these roles without
realizing it.
The way that you act in thereal world is also the way that
you act in the game, so so,thank you, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh
(40:17):
man, it really it really drawson like the loneliness of of
choice.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
you know, like, when it comes down to it, you know,
because there's times where,like, there's times where we
play right, like in our camp,and you know we're new to dvd,
and so there's times where, like, you're in combat and maybe
it's your turn to go, butyou're're on deck, you know, and
you know, like, where we are.
You know you play like anisolated person, just like you
(40:48):
know, throwing sticks at a demon.
You know, like, instead of like, working together, you know,
and flank them and get a thingand all that stuff, but like you
, when it's your turn, you knowand flank them and get a thing
and all that stuff, but like you, you, when it's your turn, you
know, because, isn't it like incombat, it's really like six
(41:08):
seconds, like these things arehappening in seconds.
You know, and if I'm a kid andif I struggle to make decisions
on my own, independently and Irely on my mom and I have a list
of spells and actions andthings I can do, and I'm on deck
, and then now I'm up and I'mlooking at my mom to be like,
(41:31):
what should I do like as theclinical dm?
You have to be like mom,respectfully, yeah.
Yeah, you know, and you're likelooking at the kid, like you
can do anything you want to do.
You're only limited by yourimagination, yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
What do you mean, man ?
How, how empowering that is,you know?
For yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
I know, yeah, you know, like you know, and, and
and disruptive to the to, youknow, and disruptive to the only
shareholder, to the system.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Yeah, one of the things that I hadn't really
thought of this until youstarted talking.
So it might be, you know, totalnonsense, but I'm going to roll
with it.
Yeah, it's interesting to me tothink about how playing this
game because we're playingtogether we're lowering some
vulnerability, we're being a bitmore congruent, and so one of
(42:28):
the things that takes place isyou are actually, while you're
playing, forming relationshipscongruently with other people,
right In ways that doesn'ttypically happen in in real life
.
So there's also an element, too, to where it's like, you know,
(42:48):
my character can't help but actlike how I am yeah you know.
so what's it like for thischaracter to also be surrounded
by all of these other people andthen to be a part of a team?
Yeah, and to be a part of agroup where the way that I do
things has consequences andsometimes, you know, maybe it's
not everybody's like, maybe it'snot always everybody's cup of
(43:10):
tea, but I have this like placeof belonging here and I'm like a
valued member of this group.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Sure, yeah, man, that would.
Yeah, I'm as so, like Joe, asyou're talking.
I'm thinking about like myfamily and what it would be like
for my family to do this, youknow, and my daughter.
I have three kids and mydaughter's the middle, the
middle kid.
Now we're having our fourthhere in in April, but my
(43:42):
daughter sometimes can tend tofeel like the middle kid, you
know, not like powerless.
I think she doesn't recognizehow much power she has, and just
being like a self-aware dad towatch her make decisions that
will affect the whole group inD&D would be not only great for
her but it would be dope for metoo as somebody just to watch
(44:05):
her say like okay, I'm going to,you know, just to use the
example of the bear coming inthe window, like I'm going to be
the first to attack the bear,you know, because my daughter
probably would.
It would be like a shock to thesystem for her older brother to
like also watch her do that inthe game.
You know, yeah, yeah, man, ithas like incredible implications
(44:30):
for, like you know, especiallyfamily therapy, you know.
But how do you?
So this may take us out of theprocess, but I'm wondering, like
, how do you bring it up with aclient, like how do you say like
hey, I think this would be agood fit for?
Speaker 2 (45:31):
you there's.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
there's definitely this, this process that has to
take place right where I I kindof like get the sense that the
things we're working on, um, um,they have to be, for one thing,
somewhat similar to what I'mworking on with some other
clients.
There has to be like a um athing, unless we're just doing
(46:12):
some individual work, um, youknow, but um, typically it's
when I notice that people arereally willing to to lean into
this and at least you trust meenough to like move you from
(46:47):
chair to chair in here.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Yeah, play, play like you know different ages of
yourself and all this stuff youknow.
And if you trust me with that,maybe you'll trust me with, like
this, dungeons and Dragons, youknow game.
Trust me with, like this,dungeons and dragons, you know
game.
So so it, you know, some peoplewill come to me specifically
for this experience because it'sa um, it's not something that
(47:12):
hardly anybody is doing outthere.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Um, but you know, for people who I think this is a
good fit, you know, then that'sjust kind of a conversation, um,
um, especially if they get alot of benefit out of the more
embodied stuff that we dotogether.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
Sure, sure, so that has to be a pretty rich, you
know.
Like a connection to thepossibility that this may be a
good fit for.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I haven't had, I haven't had
this happen yet, but you know,and I question the ethics of it
a little bit but the you know,but the people who struggle to
engage with some of theseembodied experiments that are
going on, you know, these arethe people that I'm like man, I
want you know.
(48:05):
So I haven't recommended it tothem before, you know, but it's
got me like a little curiousabout, like you know, maybe this
is a good like exercise for you, you know.
But then I got to like sell themon it you know, yeah as well,
but it's.
It's got a lot of benefit forpeople that are willing to
engage creatively in this kindof way, and for people that
(48:27):
aren't, it can help stretch someof those muscles.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Sure, well, I feel like a lot of the stuff that we
do in therapy sometimes is youknow, essentially like selling,
you know a technique, or sellinga, a a cabinet client buy into,
like, hey, you know somethingthat's uncomfortable or
something that's unfamiliar forthe client you know yeah, or
something that's unfamiliar forthe client.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
You know, yeah, there's.
There's nothing like saying hey, I know you came here for some
therapy.
Speaker 3 (48:52):
What if we played dungeons and dragons?
Speaker 1 (48:53):
you know, like what, if we just roll some dice, what
is this, what?
Speaker 3 (48:58):
is this die doing here?
Wow, that's yeah what if?
Speaker 1 (49:01):
whoa, well, let's what if you were just like a
wizard, you know, we just kindof like you know.
Yeah, man, yeah, wow, wow, WowAll right, it can be a hard sell
, you know.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
Yeah, I know some clients who would, who would
love to do it.
I don't know if they would doit on like an individual level
or if they would do it in agroup, but it's just, you know,
as you say, that stuff the therolodex of clients in my head
that would benefit from it.
It's it's especially couplesthat would benefit from it yeah,
(49:37):
you start seeing.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
You start seeing, like oh my gosh man, they just
had this argument like yeah, oror or.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
What my thoughts were is that there's an argument
that needs to be had within thestructure of the relationship
that surrounds power dynamics.
And if I could just sprinkle avampire in and like tell them no
, of course you're not havingthis argument, you're playing
D&D, but like watch the argumentplay out via the vehicle of D&D
(50:06):
, but like watch the argumentplay out via the vehicle of D&D,
you know.
And then like come out of thegame and like have a
conversation about you know whattheir experience was and what
they learned, and like whatever.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
Yeah, it would, man, it would benefit this couple so
much, you know.
Yeah, one of the againsomething I haven't had the
opportunity with, but I'm kindof developing it right now.
I'm interested in collaborativeworld building with clients, so
basically where, like our firstsession, we show up and we make
some characters and then I say,okay, this is the town where
(50:42):
you guys are going to start,what else is in this like world?
But I want them to be able tocreate, like, you know,
something that ties into thestory that they've developed for
their.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so what's it, like, youknow, for that husband who's,
you know, like always felt likeemasculated by everybody, you
(51:03):
know, maybe that ties into hischaracter background and it's a
part of his story.
Yeah, um, and there's someconflict that's happening out in
this imaginary world, um, butnow, you know, like his wife
gets to be a part of thesolution of that story, without,
you know, being the enemy.
Yeah, they get to work together, yeah, you know.
(51:23):
And then, without being theperson, that's an agamemnon.
they're making suggestions, andthen and vice versa to each
person gets the opportunity tolike work through, like their
story and the story that they'vedeveloped.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Wow man.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Cause, then cause.
Then you start drawing in likeall the narrative stuff you know
, and it's like it'sexternalizing, um, but it's.
But it's also like um, I don'tknow, just giving people a lot
of opportunities to really beempowered, yeah, and to take
ownership of of something, yeah,so it's, oh gosh, it's cool,
(52:00):
and I feel like I'm.
you know, when I think aboutthis medium in particular, it's
really difficult because I feellike all the time I'm thinking
of new ways that it can be used,sure, and so it's hard to try
and like settle into just onething, you know.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
Well, how much cause?
I know we're coming to like theend of the hour here, but, like
I'm wondering, how much timeoutside of session do you spend
building worlds for clients?
Speaker 1 (52:31):
time outside of session.
Do you spend building worldsfor clients?
I spend a lot of time at thebeginning and then, because I
want to have enough contentthat's prepared, yep, um, but
you know like I'll use theexample of this, this group that
I'm running with jude, I spentprobably in preparation before
our first session, somewherebetween like six or eight hours.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
Prepping some stuff outside of session.
Speaker 3 (52:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:54):
And then the good news about that was then, for
the next like five weeks, Ididn't touch it at all.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Because it takes a lot of time to play through that
content.
Speaker 3 (53:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
Yeah, and so you spend some time.
This is how I do it.
At least I spend that time atthe beginning, being sure that
there's enough content in case,like what happens if they fly
through everything, versus whathappens if they but people
generally take a long time toget through stuff.
So cause, you're terrified.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Yeah, you're terrified the whole time.
Like you mean because you'reterrified.
You're terrified Like you cango, like you can go through a
campaign and you know you can.
Like you know the bear.
The bear falls into the windowand now it's like you're in a
tavern and the bear is there andyou can go, like I scream and
then run away and now I'moutside.
Speaker 1 (53:44):
And if everybody does that, you know that encounter
could have easily taken like 30minutes.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
you know to run through all of that, but now,
instead it's like okay, we justbypassed all of that, there's a
bear in there just rampaging Abunch of NPCs.
Speaker 3 (54:02):
That's just like what the hell.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
Maybe you have like a druid in there who's like wait,
I want to talk to this, thisbear, like I want to whisper to
it and find out like what'sgoing on in its life.
You know and and why is it here?
You know like who, what droveit this way and now, suddenly,
something that I only thought isgoing to take like 20 minutes
ends up taking like two hours.
You know because, yeah, it's,and so it's.
It's a bit of you know, acombination of those things.
(54:30):
So I like to prepare enough, atleast at the beginning, so I
have less to do later yeah, I'mabout that action.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
If, if we, if we ever do a campaign, it ain't gonna
be no talking, it ain't gonna beno talking.
Hey, I'll kill something thathas vital information for the
whole group.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
Jeez, he's the kind of player that's like if
somebody's taking too long totalk.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
He's like hey man, we gotta get JaVale Holla Like
what are we talking about?
Speaker 1 (55:03):
My first experience in the game.
I didn't really know how thegame ended.
So, like our job was to go inand rescue the blacksmith's
daughter, right, and we've beenplaying for like three hours and
I'm like, I don't know, werescued her, we're done, I guess
you know.
But I but we're still playing I, my character, just turns and
(55:23):
starts attacking theblacksmith's daughter, like
because I didn't really know,like I was like I guess I have
to end it somehow, you know.
But, um, like because I just Ididn't know, you know, but like
I mean, I, I get it there's,there's all kinds of nonsense.
Oh man, I'm not sure what thatsays about me.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
Yeah, I get it.
Yeah, yeah, I've been meaningto talk to you about that, your
friends, but no man, you couldmake this.
Like you know, we went througha house, got done with the house
, turned around, and then youknow, I don't know who had the
idea, but it was like we shouldburn this house down.
And then you just do itAllegedly.
Speaker 1 (56:03):
Yeah, only come to find out that the house came
back.
It's nuts.
Speaker 2 (56:10):
Crazy thing about haunted.
Speaker 1 (56:12):
You can't really trust man.
I would love to.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
If there's ever any time for June, me and you to go
through a campaign together, itwon't be, you know.
Obviously I'm just, you know,joking about the whole rampage
thing, but there is a part of methat is interested in seeing
how our clinical perspectivesand our clinical style plays a
(56:37):
role in what type of characterswe choose, our identity and how
we go through the campaign.
I'd be interested to see andI'm pretty sure there's some
people that's that's somelisteners out there that love to
hear us go through it, you know.
So one day, one day, we'llreconnect and try to try to get
(56:58):
this thing started, man.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
Yeah, I'll set it up we need.
How long do we need?
Probably like an hour and ahalf to two hours.
Speaker 1 (57:04):
Yeah, yeah, we can do it in an hour and a half, two
hours.
You could do a whole campaignin an hour and a half to two
hours, nah, but we could do aspecial episode.
Speaker 3 (57:12):
A special episode.
Speaker 1 (57:14):
We can do these things.
It's called a one-shot.
When you have an adventure,it's a campaign that's
self-contained, it all takesplace in one session so it
doesn't span several weeks orwhatever.
So whatever you know, like.
So it's something small, youknow, but like you can you can
do those things.
Speaker 3 (57:33):
Whoa, yeah, all right , I'm in.
Man, hey, hey, man, joe, thankyou so much for showing up.
Man Like this is, this is morethan I bargained for and I felt
like there's like this whalethat we can dive into.
When it comes to like, you knowhow do you influence your
theoretical orientation into,like your work with this stuff?
(57:53):
You know, like yeah.
Speaker 1 (57:57):
That's actually all, jude, and I do it again.
Speaker 3 (58:00):
There's no supervision going on.
Speaker 1 (58:02):
We don't talk about any of my.
We just keep tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (58:06):
I'm just playing D and D with just him.
What if, what if I get thisblade that's made of bone and
it's from that?
Speaker 1 (58:14):
But the blade is Struck by lightning.
Speaker 2 (58:17):
You're joking.
Speaker 3 (58:21):
Oh man, alright.
Speaker 2 (58:22):
It's not too far off.
It's not too far off.
Speaker 3 (58:26):
Well appreciated, joe .
You got any final thoughts,questions, reactions,
wonderments for Joe here.
Speaker 2 (58:34):
Tell him before we go .
Tell him a little bit about ohyeah, man, if anybody's
interested.
If any listeners out there areinterested in listening or
finding you.
Where can they find you?
Speaker 1 (58:45):
Yeah, sure, so I've got a state of the art website.
Thank you, squ squarespace forthat.
You know, um, but it's, it's so.
It's herebedragonscounselingcom.
You know you can come check itout.
See a little bit about me, um,and what I do.
If you're somebody who isinterested in, you know, like,
if you live in texas and youwant you know you want to
(59:06):
receive this therapy, you know,for yourself.
You know, shoot me an email.
You know, if you know, if Texasand you want to receive this
therapy for yourself, shoot mean email.
If there's a large enoughquantity of interested
individuals, maybe we can putsomething together.
But also, if you're acounseling student, if you're a
counselor and you're interestedin what it might be like to try
(59:27):
this on for yourself, you knowwhat it might be like to to try
this on for yourself.
You know we can also talk somelike non-therapeutic legal
options for for us to engage inconversation, consultation, um.
So, yeah, you can, you can findmy, uh, my email there.
Uh, you can, uh, you know,shoot me a message, give me a
call, um.
Speaker 2 (59:47):
And yeah, so Even clinicians like if you're maybe
a supervisor at a small privatepractice and you want to do some
team building stuff, where you,you know, you put your
employees and you put your otherclinicians in like a scenario
and play through it.
I mean, that's what Joe's doingfor our faculty, you know, and
(01:00:08):
so it's really cool to see usnavigate different things.
That's just fun.
Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
He also does that.
We can do that on a weeklybasis if you want to just get me
in for a day to come in and youbasically just have a day
that's dedicated to DungeonsDragons.
That was quite the alliteration, if I do say so myself.
I like it.
But if you want that, you knowwe can make that happen too, you
know.
So it's a.
You know this can be whateveryou know it needs to be for you.
(01:00:36):
So just come check out mywebsite, shoot me an email, give
me a holler, you know, and yeah.
Or if you just want to learnmore about how you can use this
yourself or what it might evenlook like to get started and you
want some resources, I'd bemore than happy to point you in
some directions.
Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
Cool All right, Joe man, Appreciate you coming in
man, All right.
Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
Thank you.
this is julius.
I wanted to wanted to come onreal quick and introduce our
guests for this episode.
It's a special guest.
It's somebody who's near anddear to our heart.
It's a guy by the name ofJoseph Bennett.
He's a LPC associate in CentralTexas.
He graduated from theUniversity of Mary Hart in
(00:36):
Baylor and he is unfortunatelyunder the supervision of my
brother, jude.
So during the podcast he wasblanking his eyes profusely at
me.
I think that was a sign ofdistress.
So I'm going to double check.
I'm going to double check onyour boy, joe.
But yeah, joe, and we're havingJoe on today because Joe wants
(00:59):
to talk to us about theintegration of Dungeons and
Dragons into the clinicalrelationship.
He does a really really, reallygood job of explaining how
Dungeons and Dragons can reallybenefit individual clients that
he's serving in his practicecouples as well as groups, for
(01:20):
sure and he also talks a littlebit more about how he wants to
introduce Dungeons and Dragonsinto some of his family sessions
.
So we talk about how to getstarted in Dungeons and Dragons.
We talk about how he brings itup with particular clients.
We talk about how heincorporates it into individuals
(01:45):
, couples and group therapysessions.
Um, we talk about um how he uhseparates himself as the
clinician and the dungeon masterand we also talk about um what
he he mentioned this term calledbleeding, or like a client, a
client's uh identity will bleedinto a client, into into a
(02:08):
character's identity, and viceversa.
We also talk about how he knowswhen the client that he's uh
he's working with is ready to dothe work.
Um, once the the client is kindof like engulfed in the um in
the campaign of Dungeons andDragons.
So it was a pretty interestingconversation.
(02:29):
Dungeons and Dragons is like anup and coming thing in the
clinical sphere.
I know it's been around for awhile but we're starting to see
some integration of Dungeons andDragons into the relationship,
into the clinical relationship.
So Joe does a really good jobof kind of exploring that with
us.
So my brother's been playingDungeons and Dragons with Joe
(02:52):
for a while.
Joe actually is taking mybrother's faculty through a
campaign.
I've never played Dungeons andDragons before in my life so I
kind of came at it from aperspective of I have no idea
what's going on.
So hopefully you enjoyed thisepisode.
If you have any questions aboutDungeons and Dragons or like
(03:14):
how to incorporate that intoyour clinical relationships.
You can reach out to Joe at hiswebsite.
His website isherebedragonscounselingcom, so
that's H-E-R-E-B-E-D-R-A-G-O-N-Scounselingcom.
You can set up a meeting withhim.
(03:34):
He'll, you know and I'mspeaking for him now, but he's
so laid back and he'll gladlywalk you through.
You know how to kind of getstarted in Dungeons and Dragons
and like what that's like, tolike, incorporate that into your
clinical practice.
So reach out to them.
Um, if you really you're reallyinterested in this, all right, I
hope you enjoy the episode.
And you know what.
I hope you're taking care ofyourself.
(03:56):
You know, drinking water, maybegetting enough sleep.
You know, uh, not letting thehaters keep you down, right,
hope you enjoy the episode.
How about?
(04:20):
How about?
How about you go ahead andintroduce yourself, joe?
Uh, welcome to the cast.
This is your first time on thecast, right?
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, it sure is.
It's good to be here.
I am a recent graduate ofUMHB's counseling program and I
somehow got lumped into being asupervisee of Jude over here.
So, yeah, that's what I do.
I have my own practice that.
(04:47):
I'm doing and I do a lot of youknow fun and weird stuff, so
that's like yeah, I mean, Iguess that's me.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Let's just leave it there.
Let's let the audienceimagination run wild with the
weird stuff you do in youroffice with your clients.
Just let it simmer for a littlebit.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
I'm all right, man, I don't want to be arrested for,
you know, keeping my super fuzzy.
Well, look, here's the topic,right.
It's a special episode, man,because we're talking about some
new and up-and-coming on thecusp of research-type style
therapy.
(05:25):
Dozen Dragons and I know youjust started nerding out and I,
you know I'm in a campaign,joe's my DM just a lot of layer
style relationships.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
A lot of multiple relationships going on that's
cool.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
I'm taking notes right now and reporting to the
board you know, but, no, butthat's going to be the focus,
man, because it was in timemagazine right.
Uh, I think, joe, you sent methe magazine or you brought the
magazine.
Yeah, that's like a new andup-and-coming, like expressive
type of therapy, right, andthat's mainly the focus.
(06:04):
I mean, you do individual andcouples and you know that stuff,
but a large part of your workis to do dnd groups yeah, yeah,
that's right, I run that.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
I run groups for people and we use dungeons and
dragons and um, you know reallywhat it's it's all about is I'm
trying to con people into payingme to play one of the games
that I really like, because Idon't have enough friends around
here to play with me.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Now we're getting into it.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I'm recently thinking about doing golf therapy.
It's a new up and coming.
I'm trying to do somethingcutting edge, cutting edge.
It's a it's a new up and coming.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I'm trying to do something cutting edge.
How'd you, how'd you getstarted in in, like dnd joe,
like what?
When was the first time you gotintroduced to it?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
oh gosh, um.
So I got introduced to it whenI was in college and had a buddy
of mine who randomly came overand was like hey, we're going to
play D and D and I'm going toteach you how.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
And I was like, okay yeah sure, and you had never.
You had never had like anexperience or anything.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
No, I grew up very sheltered.
I wouldn't have been allowed to, you know, engage in any of
this.
Yes that's right, yeah, this,this, this, this, this devilry
were you?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
were you into any?
Were you into like tolkien or?
Speaker 1 (07:28):
yeah, yeah, no, I I love tolkien.
Um, I fun fact about myself Iread the lord of the rings once
a year.
Wow, I go through the wholething.
Yeah, I started doing that incollege.
I got to take a class on.
It was pretty, was pretty fun,but I started, you know, I've
always been pretty, like youknow, nerdy and things like that
(07:50):
.
So when I got introduced to itit was right up my alley.
I had a lot of fun the firsttime I got to play and then,
like once Stranger Things cameout and I saw it, I was like I
got to get a group together,yeah, and so got some college
buddies together and we werepart of a campaign that lasted
four years.
So a lot of fun, yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
So well, okay, so, like I'm, I'm the person who's
essentially the the mostinexperienced with D and D,
right, like, yeah, so so I'mgoing to just ask some questions
that, like an audience memberwould.
I'm going to just ask somequestions that an audience
member would ask right, like oneof my students would ask.
So like, all right, I'm tyingthis to this experience.
(08:32):
Right?
So me and Jude, we didn't startdrinking until we were 21,.
Right?
Speaker 1 (08:46):
So like okay, jude, all right, man, I don't want you
to get fired.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I don't know if he could talk about this kind of
stuff, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
All right.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yes, we were drinking apple juice.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
We started drinking apple juice when we were 21
because we promised our mom thatwe would not indulge in such
beverages.
It was just water from then on,out you out.
And so we got introduced toapple juice by this one of our
teammates who was a little older, a little bit more experienced
(09:17):
with apple juice.
Just let me get to it, man.
And so what I felt like was theexperience of being introduced
to that by somebody who kind ofknew what they were doing and
had like an experience of likeoh yeah, let me just like, let
me introduce you into this worldin like a very safe kind of
(09:42):
intentional way really made theprocess like I don't know, man,
healthy for me.
You know, and so I know, thatthere's a dungeon master right
and there's like somebody wholike leads you through the
process.
How, how for you, specificallywhen you first started, like how
(10:02):
was having that introduction todnd by that one friend like how
had that perpetuated your lovefor them?
Speaker 1 (10:12):
yeah, yeah, so what?
What was it about beingintroduced to it by a friend of
mine that like made that caughtmy interest so much?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I thinkit was helpful having somebody
there because I didn't have toworry about knowing how, like
the mechanics of the game work.
I could just show up and, likehave a good time, you know, and,
(10:35):
um, try and follow like therules as best I can.
Um, but it mostly just I got tostart off with it just being a
fun experience and then the morethat I got into it, the more
that I started just consuminginformation.
You know about it, and I spent,you know, all of my money on,
(10:56):
like in the books and dice andyou know the whole thing.
And then I bought a DM screen,like you know, years before I
started playing or before Istarted running games, just
because I knew I wanted to atsome point.
Wow, but you know, like I, justonce I I got into the hobby,
like playing it, and was just avery fun experience and having
(11:18):
somebody there who could takesome of that like take some of
the load from that learningcurve, and it was very helpful
in enabling that process for me.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah, because there comes a.
There comes a point where it'slike you're like haha, like this
is fun, we're playing dnd tolike what are the combat rooms?
What are the combat strategies?
What can I do as a level three?
Like you start, I mean you arelike you go down a tunnel of
shame, you know, because youdon't, because you don't want to
(11:48):
, you don't want to like metaplay things, you don't.
You also don't want to findthings out about a game that
you're you know.
So you're kind of like how youdo.
It's the same with golf.
You know not to bring it down.
Here we go and I'm not trying tohijack it with my golf therapy,
but it's like it's fun and it'slike you walk in and it's like
good, and then all of a sudden,maybe you break a hundred and
(12:12):
you start thinking maybe I cango pro.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
You know let me get some blame.
I think that's just verypersonal, that's very uh.
I feel like it's related witheverybody.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I don't see the connection at all.
I don't see it at all.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
There is a strong connection.
There is a connection, there isa strong lasso type.
It's basically the same game.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
These are the same things.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Well no, I'm just thinking about, like I got some
students who have one inparticular student who's like
very interested in in becausehe's been playing dnd for a
while and he's interested inlike adopting that type of uh,
like clinical approach, right,but then there's a lot of
clinicians who have no idea thatyou can that this, this is even
(13:03):
an option for you know.
So I'm thinking like, okay, ifthere's a gateway into
experiencing this would be tofind somebody who actually knows
what they're doing, right, andthen like experience it yourself
.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Yeah, most things you can make mistakes.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, that sounds.
That sounds like a really niceway to get into it as a you know
, a dungeon master clinician.
Right At the same time, youknow how many people are out
there doing this that you canexperience yourself.
It's hard to get into thatworld.
I didn't have anybody to reallypoint me in the right way.
(13:44):
I had to convince mysupervision group to let me
experiment on them when I was inthe program, like you know.
I was really fortunate that Iwas in an environment where I
could take in as muchinformation from outside sources
and then try and figure out howI do it.
You know right and for myself,but it's hard to find people out
(14:07):
there who are doing this in youknow, who are nearby you, where
you can learn from them.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it does feel like.
It does feel like, and I wantto.
I want to talk a little bitmore about how it is as like a
therapeutic intervention ortechnique or process, about how
it is.
That's like a therapeuticintervention or technique or
process, you know, but I do feellike D&D is one of those things
.
It's like a fight club, right?
(14:35):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
I know what a fight club is, but you're going off on
one of these places that I'mstill not sure where it's going
to end up, I just like to letthem cook for a little bit.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
like to let them cook for a little bit.
You know, I feel like there's aD&D game happening right here,
like six miles away, or maybeeven on campus.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
I just don't know about it.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I just don't know about it.
I feel like D&D is one of thosethings that people don't talk
about.
Know.
It's like.
I feel like dnd is one of thosethings that's like people don't
talk about, but it's happening,and it's like there's a strong
community, oh yeah, of playerswho do this.
You know what I mean.
There's like people who go tothese groups and they get to
play out their lived experience,things that they've experienced
(15:21):
in high school or college or intheir relationships, you know.
But it's just like like if Ihad a client who I felt like
needed some experiential kind ofeven systemic desensitization,
but they could get that from aDean campaign, I wouldn't even
know.
Well, now I know you, butbefore we were doing it, where
(15:43):
would I even tell them to go?
Yeah, do you know what I mean?
Yeah, like, so it's one ofthose things that's just like.
It's like fight club.
It's like happening undernobody talks about it.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, I wouldn't even .
I wouldn't have even known that, that, like, as a clinician, I
wouldn't have even known thatthat was an option for a client.
You know, like, when I think ofstuff like that, I think my
mind goes directly to sandrae.
You know, like, when I think ofstuff like that, I think my
mind goes directly to sand tray,you know, or like some
expressive art you know type ofthing.
It doesn't go to like, oh, Ineed to find a dungeon master
and get like a D&D campaignstarted to like really live out
(16:14):
what you're experiencing in yourrelationship with your husband
or whatever.
It's not even a thing that Ithink about, you know.
So, yeah, it's like acompletely different way of
viewing the therapeuticrelationship.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So yeah, I'm glad you actually brought up sand tray.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
If I could, jump in with that.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah.
So, like one of the ways that Ikind of try and you know,
explain what this is all aboutwith people is using something
like sand tray.
You know you're often giventhis prompt, you know, like
let's make a scene in the sandand let's, you know, build
something here and then usingdungeons and dragons for for
therapy.
(16:52):
It's kind of like getting awhole bunch of people to like
build characters in the sand andthen become those characters
and then get in the sandbox andstart playing, you know, and so
it's an embodied experience thatyou get to have, but it's also
very symbolic in a way, likesand tray might be.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Oh, so okay.
So how do you?
How do you?
How do you?
This sounds like such a wideranging question, but like, how
do you do it?
Like, how question, but how doyou do it?
How do you incorporate it intoyour practice?
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah.
So it is in some ways awide-ranging question because
there's so many possible thingsthat you could do with it, which
is part of the challenge ofusing something like this for
therapy.
And even I'm going off on asmall tangent here, but even
when I first started this, I hadto kind of sit down with the
(17:50):
faculty after I graduated and weran like a very short campaign
that was just all about likefiguring out how how do I do
this?
Yeah, yeah, which was veryhelpful because kind of out of
that, I learned that the waythat I like to kind of use this
is to encourage people tobasically build out these
(18:12):
characters that they get to play, and these characters need to
be tied to themselves in somekind of known way.
So you know, you might have agoal of working on, you know, I
don't know being less anxious orsomething like that.
And so what would it be like toplay a character who's really
brave, you know?
(18:33):
Or you could do some like whatis it Paradoxical intention?
What would it be like to play acharacter who's way more
anxious than you are sure?
And then you get that embodiedexperience of kind of owning
anxiety and being in control ofit.
Yeah, you could also do it withlike some more like kind of
polarity or shadow work, whereit's like maybe your character
(18:56):
isn't quite so anxious, you know, or they're not anxious, but
it's not because there's likethis particularly brave quality
about them.
Maybe they're actually reallyfoolish, yeah, and they're just
like they just don't evenrealize, you know, the kind of
trouble that they're going toget into.
Or maybe they're just reallyreckless and they just don't
give a crap about you know whattheir like, the consequences of
(19:19):
their actions might be, andthose are perhaps, you know, for
that person, a part ofthemselves that they could stand
to lean into a little bit more.
And so my goal as the clinicianis to encourage them to build
these really fleshed outcharacters, and then my job is
to present them with things thatare going to challenge that
(19:40):
character, but also to noticewhen they're not leaning into
those things, yeah, and then wekind of sort through that as
it's coming up.
So so you could.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
So in a way, you're like ah, mama, you this is a
lack of a for a better word butlike monitor the client's
experience and like modulate acharacter building, world
building in a way that likesuits what the client needs to
explore, or maybe had said thatthey want to explore.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, that's definitely.
That's one element of it.
And then there's also thisother piece too.
One of our faculty members whowas part of the summer like
short campaign that we did wasplaying a character who her
character was supposed to bevery talkative and very engaged
(20:33):
in ways that she personally isnot as much.
And and what I noticed is thatwhenever she's interacting with
like a non-player characterthat's in the game, like the
local blacksmith or somethinglike that, she's kind of
narrating her experience withoutactually embodying and playing
that.
(20:53):
So, for example, she might say,like you know, while I go up to
the blacksmith and you know Ihave a conversation with him and
ask him about what's going onin his life, yeah, but she'll
just kind of narrate it likethat and my one of my jobs is to
encourage her to find a way todo more.
So you and I are going to I'mnow going to become the
(21:15):
blacksmith and let's have thatconversation together.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
So you, so you as the dungeon master, embody the
blacksmith.
Oh, this is so interesting.
You, you embody the blacksmith,and you, you help the client or
the person in the group toexplore the aspect of their
identity or their personalitythat you, you know, that they
(21:41):
kind of need help with.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, and even you know you could put it in a
skills way if you want to, where, if you don't, you know, like
this, this kind of therapy isalso really great for people who
are neurodivergent, might havesome social skills that that
they're lacking, you know, andyou can literally just sit
around practicing talking to um,to to people, yeah, and, and
(22:08):
that's really, you know, helpful, sure, but but the other thing
too is it has that it has thatadded benefit of like, of like
somebody doing the thing thatthey need to work on without
actually like doing that yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, I mean like sometimes in therapy we can be
like, okay, we're gonna do anactivity where we're gonna
practice talking, but with thisit's like they could do the
practice, but almost likethey're just playing the game.
Yeah it's not yeah, it's, it'sit's, it's it tricky.
It doesn't trigger theirinsecurities as much as if, like
(22:45):
you were just saying, okay,talk to me about your date.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Which may trigger them.
It kind of lowers somepsychological defenses because
we're creating a lot of distancebetween what the characters are
experiencing and what you'regoing through.
So, like in my own practice andall this, I'm very
experientially driven and Imight sit own, like you know,
practice and all this, I'm veryexperientially driven and I
might sit down, you know, andembody your like abusive father
(23:11):
or something like that.
You know, and we're going tohave a conversation and you're
going to say some things to me.
You know that you wish youcould have said or something
like that but in dungeons anddragons therapy I don't have to
do that.
I can, can just put a I don'tknow like a vampire in the game
who is like charming people andtaking advantage of people and
(23:33):
he acts in some of those sameways.
But then you have to have likean encounter with him and you
have to overcome him.
Right, you know, but it doesn'tfeel like you're going back to
that.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
You know, like that father, whoever it may, whoever
may have been.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yeah, you could actually just like roll some
dice and, you know, kill somemonsters and and play through
some experiences, you know yeah,but I'm assuming that there's a
fair amount of the client's ownmental uh, imagery that's
happening.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
That's like creating the scaffolding of the vampire
that like that's fitting piecesof their like abusive father
right and like so you know I'mcounting on it yeah, yeah.
Yeah, they kind of like piecetogether what the you know what
the character is going to looklike, based off of their, their
traumatic experience.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
So, in a way, all you have to do is kind of set up
the, set up the arena for that,yes, for that to happen yeah,
all I have to do is really setit up for them, create a space
where that kind of work can takeplace, and then I have to be
able to like and this is, Ithink, what separates like
dungeon masters from dungeonmaster clinicians- sure and is.
(24:44):
I'm not just setting up thisimmersive space, but I have to
be aware of when they'reentering the work.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
I have to be aware of .
When we're into something thatis like like when they're coming
into contact with somethingimportant.
You know, and it's important,like this moment is something
worth leaning into.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
How do you do that?
How do you do that Like?
How do you bridge that gapbetween like?
Is there like a switch thatflips in your head where you're
like oh, the work has started.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, sometimes.
So I pay attention.
This is a concept that I firstheard about from Dr Megan
Connell, who has a book and wasone of the first people to
really start publicizing thiskind of therapy as a whole.
Bleed and basically like youcan bleed into your character or
(25:41):
your character can bleed out toyou.
So what I mean by that is thereare times when we're
role-playing these characters,where, you know, my character
might be experiencing somethingtotally different than what I'm
experiencing, because my actualexperience is I'm just sitting
around a table with some friendsrolling some dice, you know
whatever.
But if I get, you know, justreally pissed at something that
(26:05):
Jude's doing, you know, then mycharacter might start to take on
some of that anger and might, Idon't know, want to take
revenge on you know Jude'scharacter for something he
didn't.
You know, like something that'snot actually happening.
Yeah, for something he didn'tyou know, like something that's
not actually happening Happening, yeah.
Then the other, the other thingthat I think sometimes happens
(26:25):
uh, perhaps a bit morefrequently is this concept of
your character bleeding out toyou.
So we're in this immersiveexperience together and I'm
trying to like trigger all ofyour anxiety.
You know, like I'm trying tolike you know, if you're
fighting this, your anxiety.
You know like I'm trying tolike you know if you're fighting
this monster.
You know I want there to besome music going.
(26:46):
I want there to be some stakes.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
I want you to get your heart pumping a little
sweat, a little butt sweatcoming yeah yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
So the the first time that, like our first session,
that we did for this facultycampaign, like the first thing I
did was I got each of them in adark room and I narrated a
nightmare to them.
Holy, it was dope.
Like, based off of their likecharacter backstories that we
just spent like hours working onand all of this stuff, and they
(27:18):
were pretty graphic andgruesome.
You know, especially June Waitwho makes this.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Because I'm an idiot.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Who makes this up?
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Joe, you make up the nightmare.
Yeah, what type of devious darkstuff has happened to you in
the past, to where you're like.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Oh yeah, you put a vampire dragon man.
What have you seen out there?
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Wow, that's a wow, so okay, so just let me, because
I'm the most experienced onehere.
So you spend hours with theindividual person in the group
to create their character, andso, essentially, you co create
this character with them.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yeah, think of it as like a pre, like you know if you
were going to start a therapygroup, right?
You?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
would have that like sure sure sure you know, like
you know.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
tell me a little bit about yourself.
What's going on for you, whatdo?
Speaker 3 (28:15):
you feel like.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah, the group.
How can I support?
Speaker 3 (28:17):
you to do that.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
You know that's kind of what it is, except you're
building this character.
And I don't know just from myexperience of building my own
character like man, it's likeit's front of games and it's
like I'm going to do this andI'm going to do that and then
all of a sudden you're like oh,this is actually a little bleed
that you were talking about, joe, yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
So yeah, this is actually part of my own stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah.
So tell me about this, tell meabout this nightmare, that that
that you concocted for forBrother Jude here.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Oh my gosh, Let me see.
Well, I want to, I want toshare some like elements of it,
without you know, withoutspoiling some stuff about his
character.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
We'll still make it yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
I can't say anything, just give me something.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
I can't say that none of the other players at this
table trust his characterbecause he seems so sketchy to
them.
So it is him, it is him.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
For the life of me, Jesus, for the life of me.
I don't understand, Of course.
You don't, Honestly, man?
Speaker 3 (29:31):
it's a dissonance.
Of course it is yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
We're opening some childhood wounds.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Yeah, will he?
Does he have my back?
Does he not have my back?
Can?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
I count on him, can I not?
Speaker 3 (29:46):
count on him.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
What is?
Speaker 3 (29:48):
this this has been something, Joe, that's been
echoed throughout our family fordecades.
Now I'm glad you're finallybringing this out to the light.
Good the confusion feeds me.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
That's how I live.
No, but you know what man likeand you can you in a way tell
the listeners like what, like,what is dnd like, what do you do
?
Because I don't think peopleknow.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Like, yeah, just like what you do.
Yeah, they're just not evenunderstanding where we're at
podcasting?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
yeah, I would, I would, I would imagine, I would
imagine that people, like, whenthey hear dnd, they think of
like nerds in a place.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah, just like hitting each other with.
Well, I mean, that's what it is, you know, like that's that's
all it is.
No, so, so D and D, you know,dungeons and Dragons belongs to
this, like family of games thatare called tabletop role-playing
games, and basically the waythat they work is that you have
(30:53):
one person who's a player at thetable who kind of acts as a
referee, who's familiar with therules, but who helps to
basically as a referee, um,who's familiar with the rules,
um, but who helps to basicallyum, create a setting, um,
totally imaginary, uh huh, um,like and um, my job is to know,
(31:14):
as this referee, the dungeonmaster, my job is to create a
world for um, the other playersat the table to play a game of
imagination.
Right, so you know, you eachhave a character that you get to
control, kind of like in avideo game.
But the difference is, becausewe're just sitting around a
(31:38):
table doing this, there's nopreset prompts like you don't
have.
You know, these, like in videogames, you you're limited by
whatever is coded in there,right?
So you have, like you know,you're presented with the
problem.
You have like three differentchoices, you know, and, but with
tabletop role-playing games,the only limit is really your
(32:02):
own imagination, and so whathappens is I narrate a scene.
You guys are sitting in atavern and suddenly a bear
crashes through the window.
What do you do?
And then the players willrespond with what actions they
(32:23):
take, and it's my job to knowwhat are going to be the
consequences of those actions.
Yeah, um, but it's not all leftup to me.
So role-playing, tabletoprole-playing games use dice,
that kind of simulate um, whatchance is like sure so.
So you say that you want to doan action, and if it's not
(32:44):
something that's, you know, liketotally easy to do, I might
have you roll a die, and if youroll pretty high on it, then you
succeed.
Yeah, but if you don't rollhigh enough, then you fail, and
so it simulates you.
You know success and failure,and I mean you can get more down
(33:05):
into the weeds of it.
Like characters all havebonuses to their stats and
sometimes penalties.
So maybe you're just very weakand so all of your strength
roles that you make you have tosubtract like five.
Like that'd be a huge weakness.
Yeah, but if you're reallystrong, maybe you get to
subtract like five, like that'dbe a huge weakness.
Yeah, um, but if you're reallystrong, maybe you get to add
five, you know.
(33:26):
So it simulates those kinds ofum things, but it's, it's a very
unique way of of playing a gameand it requires um, some
creative thinking, um, but alsojust um, it's.
It's all a silly little game ofimagination where has this game
been all my life?
Speaker 3 (33:47):
I cannot keep the smile off my face.
As you're talking about this,joe, like when you said the bear
crashes in, I'm thinking allkinds of hell would break loose.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Like I don't think.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
I don't think anybody wants to see me in their
dungeon campaign, I will be.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yeah, but see Jesus, it has to be realistic because
Jews would do some stuff.
Like the bear crashed in.
I picked up my mug of applejuice and drank it down to the
bottom, Got my grenade launcherand then I crapped up under the
bear's guard.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
I got under it, got under grenade launcher.
I crept up under the bear'sguard, I got under it, got under
the guard, gave it a nice hugand a tight squeeze.
I whispered.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
I whispered.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
This will go slowly, as I took out my shard blade.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
See, you're a natural at this.
There's no reason you couldn'tdo this.
Wow, wow, yeah, see you're anatural at this.
(34:58):
Yeah, yeah, there's no reasonyou couldn't do this.
Wow, wow, so OK, so it not.
Right now, you're doing thiswith individual clients while I
was still a student in myprogram.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
I don't know how that was allowed.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
They let you do that, they let me just do all this
kind of stuff, man.
So I got started doing that andI still do that, which might be
surprising to people thatactually play Dungeons and
Dragons, because it's not reallythought of as something you can
do with one other person Withone person, yeah.
But you can.
(35:30):
Certainly it's a little bitmore challenging, but certainly
using it in groups that aretargeting like specific issues.
You know we can, we can make acounseling group about that as
well.
So I do a bit of both.
One of the things I haven'tgotten the chance to do yet but
(35:51):
I'm really intrigued by, and Ijust need to convince somebody
to let me, you know, do it tothem.
It's like using this in familytherapy because, like you, it's,
it's like it's nuts.
You get these people who areare used to whatever rules that
they they play in their familysystem.
(36:12):
Yeah, now let's just createthese characters and all you
guys are on the same playingfield.
Yeah, and you all have likedifferent rules.
You know what's it like, youknow, for for mom to not have
authority anymore because she'sjust you know, another random
person in here.
What's it like for this kidthat you're playing with to have
a bit more power than they'reused to?
(36:33):
Yeah, um, and what kind of?
What kind of roles do theyaccidentally slip into?
Yeah, so it gets me excited asa way of like kind of mapping
out like how family systemsinteract in different situations
.
You know, yeah, and so I.
So I'd like to do that.
I haven't had the chance forthat yet, but oh man, I'm
(36:54):
chomping at the bit.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Can you imagine, man?
Can you imagine like you'reworking with a family?
And you know part of theirproblem is maybe like their
communication style, you know,and maybe they take these like,
let's say, we're going to besatire, right, and we're going
to.
You know they each take thesedifferent communication stances
in the relationship and you knowthey're going to build their
(37:16):
characters unconsciously basedoff of the stances, characters
unconsciously based off of thestances that they take.
That's like the DM, theclinical DM, which is, you know,
coined that term, you know theclinical DM.
They have to be aware that,like, Ooh, this person takes the
blame or position in theirrelationships, or this person
takes the relevant position.
(37:36):
They're going to do that in D&Dand so I feel like the power of
D&D is that nobody gets a pass,like, especially when you're in
combat.
It's like dog, it's you, whatare you doing?
Speaker 3 (37:52):
you can't well, yeah, because how much of it is the
character that you're playing?
And how much of it is likeactually what you would do in
that situation.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
You have to take the congruent position.
Sometimes it forces you to bedifferent.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Sure, because you can't play the game that way,
because you're constantlypresented with obstacles,
sometimes with no clearsolutions, and there could be
multiple right ways.
You also just people startslipping into you know, like,
who tends to freeze wheneverthey're faced with lots of
choices, who tends to, like,take initiative.
(38:33):
I mean you just kind of youslip into these roles without
realizing it.
The way that you act in thereal world is also the way that
you act in the game, so so,thank you, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh
(40:17):
man, it really it really drawson like the loneliness of of
choice.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
you know, like, when it comes down to it, you know,
because there's times where,like, there's times where we
play right, like in our camp,and you know we're new to dvd,
and so there's times where, like, you're in combat and maybe
it's your turn to go, butyou're're on deck, you know, and
you know, like, where we are.
You know you play like anisolated person, just like you
(40:48):
know, throwing sticks at a demon.
You know, like, instead of like, working together, you know,
and flank them and get a thingand all that stuff, but like you
, when it's your turn, you knowand flank them and get a thing
and all that stuff, but like you, you, when it's your turn, you
know, because, isn't it like incombat, it's really like six
(41:08):
seconds, like these things arehappening in seconds.
You know, and if I'm a kid andif I struggle to make decisions
on my own, independently and Irely on my mom and I have a list
of spells and actions andthings I can do, and I'm on deck
, and then now I'm up and I'mlooking at my mom to be like,
(41:31):
what should I do like as theclinical dm?
You have to be like mom,respectfully, yeah.
Yeah, you know, and you're likelooking at the kid, like you
can do anything you want to do.
You're only limited by yourimagination, yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
What do you mean, man ?
How, how empowering that is,you know?
For yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
I know, yeah, you know, like you know, and, and
and disruptive to the to, youknow, and disruptive to the only
shareholder, to the system.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Yeah, one of the things that I hadn't really
thought of this until youstarted talking.
So it might be, you know, totalnonsense, but I'm going to roll
with it.
Yeah, it's interesting to me tothink about how playing this
game because we're playingtogether we're lowering some
vulnerability, we're being a bitmore congruent, and so one of
(42:28):
the things that takes place isyou are actually, while you're
playing, forming relationshipscongruently with other people,
right In ways that doesn'ttypically happen in in real life
.
So there's also an element, too, to where it's like, you know,
(42:48):
my character can't help but actlike how I am yeah you know.
so what's it like for thischaracter to also be surrounded
by all of these other people andthen to be a part of a team?
Yeah, and to be a part of agroup where the way that I do
things has consequences andsometimes, you know, maybe it's
not everybody's like, maybe it'snot always everybody's cup of
(43:10):
tea, but I have this like placeof belonging here and I'm like a
valued member of this group.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Sure, yeah, man, that would.
Yeah, I'm as so, like Joe, asyou're talking.
I'm thinking about like myfamily and what it would be like
for my family to do this, youknow, and my daughter.
I have three kids and mydaughter's the middle, the
middle kid.
Now we're having our fourthhere in in April, but my
(43:42):
daughter sometimes can tend tofeel like the middle kid, you
know, not like powerless.
I think she doesn't recognizehow much power she has, and just
being like a self-aware dad towatch her make decisions that
will affect the whole group inD&D would be not only great for
her but it would be dope for metoo as somebody just to watch
(44:05):
her say like okay, I'm going to,you know, just to use the
example of the bear coming inthe window, like I'm going to be
the first to attack the bear,you know, because my daughter
probably would.
It would be like a shock to thesystem for her older brother to
like also watch her do that inthe game.
You know, yeah, yeah, man, ithas like incredible implications
(44:30):
for, like you know, especiallyfamily therapy, you know.
But how do you?
So this may take us out of theprocess, but I'm wondering, like
, how do you bring it up with aclient, like how do you say like
hey, I think this would be agood fit for?
Speaker 2 (45:31):
you there's.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
there's definitely this, this process that has to
take place right where I I kindof like get the sense that the
things we're working on, um, um,they have to be, for one thing,
somewhat similar to what I'mworking on with some other
clients.
There has to be like a um athing, unless we're just doing
(46:12):
some individual work, um, youknow, but um, typically it's
when I notice that people arereally willing to to lean into
this and at least you trust meenough to like move you from
(46:47):
chair to chair in here.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Yeah, play, play like you know different ages of
yourself and all this stuff youknow.
And if you trust me with that,maybe you'll trust me with, like
this, dungeons and Dragons, youknow game.
Trust me with, like this,dungeons and dragons, you know
game.
So so it, you know, some peoplewill come to me specifically
for this experience because it'sa um, it's not something that
(47:12):
hardly anybody is doing outthere.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Um, but you know, for people who I think this is a
good fit, you know, then that'sjust kind of a conversation, um,
um, especially if they get alot of benefit out of the more
embodied stuff that we dotogether.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
Sure, sure, so that has to be a pretty rich, you
know.
Like a connection to thepossibility that this may be a
good fit for.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I haven't had, I haven't had
this happen yet, but you know,and I question the ethics of it
a little bit but the you know,but the people who struggle to
engage with some of theseembodied experiments that are
going on, you know, these arethe people that I'm like man, I
want you know.
(48:05):
So I haven't recommended it tothem before, you know, but it's
got me like a little curiousabout, like you know, maybe this
is a good like exercise for you, you know.
But then I got to like sell themon it you know, yeah as well,
but it's.
It's got a lot of benefit forpeople that are willing to
engage creatively in this kindof way, and for people that
(48:27):
aren't, it can help stretch someof those muscles.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Sure, well, I feel like a lot of the stuff that we
do in therapy sometimes is youknow, essentially like selling,
you know a technique, or sellinga, a a cabinet client buy into,
like, hey, you know somethingthat's uncomfortable or
something that's unfamiliar forthe client you know yeah, or
something that's unfamiliar forthe client.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
You know, yeah, there's.
There's nothing like saying hey, I know you came here for some
therapy.
Speaker 3 (48:52):
What if we played dungeons and dragons?
Speaker 1 (48:53):
you know, like what, if we just roll some dice, what
is this, what?
Speaker 3 (48:58):
is this die doing here?
Wow, that's yeah what if?
Speaker 1 (49:01):
whoa, well, let's what if you were just like a
wizard, you know, we just kindof like you know.
Yeah, man, yeah, wow, wow, WowAll right, it can be a hard sell
, you know.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
Yeah, I know some clients who would, who would
love to do it.
I don't know if they would doit on like an individual level
or if they would do it in agroup, but it's just, you know,
as you say, that stuff the therolodex of clients in my head
that would benefit from it.
It's it's especially couplesthat would benefit from it yeah,
(49:37):
you start seeing.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
You start seeing, like oh my gosh man, they just
had this argument like yeah, oror or.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
What my thoughts were is that there's an argument
that needs to be had within thestructure of the relationship
that surrounds power dynamics.
And if I could just sprinkle avampire in and like tell them no
, of course you're not havingthis argument, you're playing
D&D, but like watch the argumentplay out via the vehicle of D&D
(50:06):
, but like watch the argumentplay out via the vehicle of D&D,
you know.
And then like come out of thegame and like have a
conversation about you know whattheir experience was and what
they learned, and like whatever.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
Yeah, it would, man, it would benefit this couple so
much, you know.
Yeah, one of the againsomething I haven't had the
opportunity with, but I'm kindof developing it right now.
I'm interested in collaborativeworld building with clients, so
basically where, like our firstsession, we show up and we make
some characters and then I say,okay, this is the town where
(50:42):
you guys are going to start,what else is in this like world?
But I want them to be able tocreate, like, you know,
something that ties into thestory that they've developed for
their.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so what's it, like, youknow, for that husband who's,
you know, like always felt likeemasculated by everybody, you
(51:03):
know, maybe that ties into hischaracter background and it's a
part of his story.
Yeah, um, and there's someconflict that's happening out in
this imaginary world, um, butnow, you know, like his wife
gets to be a part of thesolution of that story, without,
you know, being the enemy.
Yeah, they get to work together, yeah, you know.
(51:23):
And then, without being theperson, that's an agamemnon.
they're making suggestions, andthen and vice versa to each
person gets the opportunity tolike work through, like their
story and the story that they'vedeveloped.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Wow man.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Cause, then cause.
Then you start drawing in likeall the narrative stuff you know
, and it's like it'sexternalizing, um, but it's.
But it's also like um, I don'tknow, just giving people a lot
of opportunities to really beempowered, yeah, and to take
ownership of of something, yeah,so it's, oh gosh, it's cool,
(52:00):
and I feel like I'm.
you know, when I think aboutthis medium in particular, it's
really difficult because I feellike all the time I'm thinking
of new ways that it can be used,sure, and so it's hard to try
and like settle into just onething, you know.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
Well, how much cause?
I know we're coming to like theend of the hour here, but, like
I'm wondering, how much timeoutside of session do you spend
building worlds for clients?
Speaker 1 (52:31):
time outside of session.
Do you spend building worldsfor clients?
I spend a lot of time at thebeginning and then, because I
want to have enough contentthat's prepared, yep, um, but
you know like I'll use theexample of this, this group that
I'm running with jude, I spentprobably in preparation before
our first session, somewherebetween like six or eight hours.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
Prepping some stuff outside of session.
Speaker 3 (52:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:54):
And then the good news about that was then, for
the next like five weeks, Ididn't touch it at all.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Because it takes a lot of time to play through that
content.
Speaker 3 (53:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
Yeah, and so you spend some time.
This is how I do it.
At least I spend that time atthe beginning, being sure that
there's enough content in case,like what happens if they fly
through everything, versus whathappens if they but people
generally take a long time toget through stuff.
So cause, you're terrified.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Yeah, you're terrified the whole time.
Like you mean because you'reterrified.
You're terrified Like you cango, like you can go through a
campaign and you know you can.
Like you know the bear.
The bear falls into the windowand now it's like you're in a
tavern and the bear is there andyou can go, like I scream and
then run away and now I'moutside.
Speaker 1 (53:44):
And if everybody does that, you know that encounter
could have easily taken like 30minutes.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
you know to run through all of that, but now,
instead it's like okay, we justbypassed all of that, there's a
bear in there just rampaging Abunch of NPCs.
Speaker 3 (54:02):
That's just like what the hell.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
Maybe you have like a druid in there who's like wait,
I want to talk to this, thisbear, like I want to whisper to
it and find out like what'sgoing on in its life.
You know and and why is it here?
You know like who, what droveit this way and now, suddenly,
something that I only thought isgoing to take like 20 minutes
ends up taking like two hours.
You know because, yeah, it's,and so it's.
It's a bit of you know, acombination of those things.
(54:30):
So I like to prepare enough, atleast at the beginning, so I
have less to do later yeah, I'mabout that action.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
If, if we, if we ever do a campaign, it ain't gonna
be no talking, it ain't gonna beno talking.
Hey, I'll kill something thathas vital information for the
whole group.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
Jeez, he's the kind of player that's like if
somebody's taking too long totalk.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
He's like hey man, we gotta get JaVale Holla Like
what are we talking about?
Speaker 1 (55:03):
My first experience in the game.
I didn't really know how thegame ended.
So, like our job was to go inand rescue the blacksmith's
daughter, right, and we've beenplaying for like three hours and
I'm like, I don't know, werescued her, we're done, I guess
you know.
But I but we're still playing I, my character, just turns and
(55:23):
starts attacking theblacksmith's daughter, like
because I didn't really know,like I was like I guess I have
to end it somehow, you know.
But, um, like because I just Ididn't know, you know, but like
I mean, I, I get it there's,there's all kinds of nonsense.
Oh man, I'm not sure what thatsays about me.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
Yeah, I get it.
Yeah, yeah, I've been meaningto talk to you about that, your
friends, but no man, you couldmake this.
Like you know, we went througha house, got done with the house
, turned around, and then youknow, I don't know who had the
idea, but it was like we shouldburn this house down.
And then you just do itAllegedly.
Speaker 1 (56:03):
Yeah, only come to find out that the house came
back.
It's nuts.
Speaker 2 (56:10):
Crazy thing about haunted.
Speaker 1 (56:12):
You can't really trust man.
I would love to.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
If there's ever any time for June, me and you to go
through a campaign together, itwon't be, you know.
Obviously I'm just, you know,joking about the whole rampage
thing, but there is a part of methat is interested in seeing
how our clinical perspectivesand our clinical style plays a
(56:37):
role in what type of characterswe choose, our identity and how
we go through the campaign.
I'd be interested to see andI'm pretty sure there's some
people that's that's somelisteners out there that love to
hear us go through it, you know.
So one day, one day, we'llreconnect and try to try to get
(56:58):
this thing started, man.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
Yeah, I'll set it up we need.
How long do we need?
Probably like an hour and ahalf to two hours.
Speaker 1 (57:04):
Yeah, yeah, we can do it in an hour and a half, two
hours.
You could do a whole campaignin an hour and a half to two
hours, nah, but we could do aspecial episode.
Speaker 3 (57:12):
A special episode.
Speaker 1 (57:14):
We can do these things.
It's called a one-shot.
When you have an adventure,it's a campaign that's
self-contained, it all takesplace in one session so it
doesn't span several weeks orwhatever.
So whatever you know, like.
So it's something small, youknow, but like you can you can
do those things.
Speaker 3 (57:33):
Whoa, yeah, all right , I'm in.
Man, hey, hey, man, joe, thankyou so much for showing up.
Man Like this is, this is morethan I bargained for and I felt
like there's like this whalethat we can dive into.
When it comes to like, you knowhow do you influence your
theoretical orientation into,like your work with this stuff?
(57:53):
You know, like yeah.
Speaker 1 (57:57):
That's actually all, jude, and I do it again.
Speaker 3 (58:00):
There's no supervision going on.
Speaker 1 (58:02):
We don't talk about any of my.
We just keep tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (58:06):
I'm just playing D and D with just him.
What if, what if I get thisblade that's made of bone and
it's from that?
Speaker 1 (58:14):
But the blade is Struck by lightning.
Speaker 2 (58:17):
You're joking.
Speaker 3 (58:21):
Oh man, alright.
Speaker 2 (58:22):
It's not too far off.
It's not too far off.
Speaker 3 (58:26):
Well appreciated, joe .
You got any final thoughts,questions, reactions,
wonderments for Joe here.
Speaker 2 (58:34):
Tell him before we go .
Tell him a little bit about ohyeah, man, if anybody's
interested.
If any listeners out there areinterested in listening or
finding you.
Where can they find you?
Speaker 1 (58:45):
Yeah, sure, so I've got a state of the art website.
Thank you, squ squarespace forthat.
You know, um, but it's, it's so.
It's herebedragonscounselingcom.
You know you can come check itout.
See a little bit about me, um,and what I do.
If you're somebody who isinterested in, you know, like,
if you live in texas and youwant you know you want to
(59:06):
receive this therapy, you know,for yourself.
You know, shoot me an email.
You know, if you know, if Texasand you want to receive this
therapy for yourself, shoot mean email.
If there's a large enoughquantity of interested
individuals, maybe we can putsomething together.
But also, if you're acounseling student, if you're a
counselor and you're interestedin what it might be like to try
(59:27):
this on for yourself, you knowwhat it might be like to to try
this on for yourself.
You know we can also talk somelike non-therapeutic legal
options for for us to engage inconversation, consultation, um.
So, yeah, you can, you can findmy, uh, my email there.
Uh, you can, uh, you know,shoot me a message, give me a
call, um.
Speaker 2 (59:47):
And yeah, so Even clinicians like if you're maybe
a supervisor at a small privatepractice and you want to do some
team building stuff, where you,you know, you put your
employees and you put your otherclinicians in like a scenario
and play through it.
I mean, that's what Joe's doingfor our faculty, you know, and
(01:00:08):
so it's really cool to see usnavigate different things.
That's just fun.
Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
He also does that.
We can do that on a weeklybasis if you want to just get me
in for a day to come in and youbasically just have a day
that's dedicated to DungeonsDragons.
That was quite the alliteration, if I do say so myself.
I like it.
But if you want that, you knowwe can make that happen too, you
know.
So it's a.
You know this can be whateveryou know it needs to be for you.
(01:00:36):
So just come check out mywebsite, shoot me an email, give
me a holler, you know, and yeah.
Or if you just want to learnmore about how you can use this
yourself or what it might evenlook like to get started and you
want some resources, I'd bemore than happy to point you in
some directions.
Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
Cool All right, Joe man, Appreciate you coming in
man, All right.
Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.