Barry Samson: The River of Distress

Ross Tayler (00:00)

Hello, I'm Ross Tayler, your host and guide for Sacred Sundays, a space to slow down, tune in, and return to what's sacred within and around you. I'm also a life coach for empaths and sensitive souls, walking alongside those who are ready to come home to who they actually are. These conversations are part of fulfilling that purpose, a collective exploration of what it means to live in connection with the sacred. Some weeks you'll hear a sound-based offering to open the space. Other times we'll simply begin in conversation. However it unfolds, this is an invitation into presence, connection, and the beauty of the unseen. If these conversations find you, please subscribe, rate, and share so others can find their way here. Pour a cup of tea, settle in, and let's begin.

Ross Tayler (00:48)

Today on Sacred Sundays, our guest is Barry Samson. It's interesting, because the day we're recording this is 12 years to the day since Barry and I met at a New Warrior Training Adventure hosted by the ManKind Project here on Vancouver Island. And I just got chills thinking about all the men who are on their journey today to a weekend that's happening this weekend as well. So it feels like a full circle moment. That was when I first met Barry, when we were in the depths of our hero's journey, going through this initiation experience. And after that experience, I discovered that Barry and I had trained at the same school for our life coaching, which at the time was the Coaches Training Institute.

We touched base after our weekend and went to some events together. Most memorable is that Barry hosted multiple events called the Depression Confessions. I went to one with my two sons, and they both really appreciated the conversation. Both of them have struggled with anxiety and depression, and my oldest son especially found it so helpful to crack open this door, to talk about something that at the time was still so hidden and couldn't be talked about freely.

So fast forward to about a month and a half ago. Barry reaches out to me, after we hadn't touched base in years, and shares the project he's been working on. And of course, the first thing I say is, let's have you on the podcast and have a conversation about this work, which I think is very exciting. I've definitely dipped my toe in, and for me there's a real alignment with things that have occurred on my path and beliefs I've developed over my time working with clients. There's this amazing alignment between what Barry is bringing out into the world and my own perspectives, and I'm really excited to talk about that with you today, Barry. So welcome to the podcast.

Barry Samson (03:04)

Thanks, Ross, it's great to be here.

Ross Tayler (03:07)

Maybe the easiest way to start: I understand this project was born from a manifesto. Maybe you could start by speaking about the impetus for this work. I know it's been many years that you've been working on it, and it's been birthing itself. So maybe we could start there and see where the conversation goes.

Barry Samson (03:29)

Yeah, I agree. To start with a little bit about me: I didn't just start writing manifestos in the middle of the night. My journey goes right back to my story of origin. I had a bumpy childhood. There was lots of violence and fear in the family I grew up in. Lots of very good things too, but there was enough bumpy stuff to prime me for distress. So early in my life, I had a template for finding my way into depression and anxiety, these sorts of things. They really manifested in my high school years. Without a doubt, grades 10 and 11 were the darkest years of my life. I was suicidal, with all kinds of heaviness in my life, extremely lonely, and just a lot of pain. Without going into my story too much, that's the foundation that primed me to eventually become someone who wanted to dig into this thing we call emotional life and bring something to help clarify things, because there seems to be lots of confusion and dogma when it comes to emotional life.

So that's the foundation. And if I jump forward, before I wrote my manifesto, I ended up at the Haven Institute on Gabriola Island, here on the West Coast. That came from visiting a really gifted therapist in Saskatoon, a really healthy man. I walked in as this frozen, frightened 40-year-old man, and he sized me up immediately, in one or two sessions. He actually sat on the floor, waved me over, and I snuggled into his lap, sort of like you would comfort a two- or three-year-old. And he just held me for about 15 or 20 minutes. This was a profoundly different experience from anything I'd had with men, or with any human, really. And it was wonderful for me. It calmed me immediately, of course. And he said, well, you and I can go through some conventional therapy here over the next two to three months, or you can just jump on a plane and go to this place called the Haven, and I think they've got what you're looking for.

So I took his advice. I booked a flight and went the first time there was an opening in their schedule. I arrived there, and he was exactly right. In five and a half days, I experienced the ice within me thawing, and I began to get access to something I'd had no access to before, or at least not since some scary moments in my childhood, where I could befriend the emotional engine. It was a wonderful coming-alive experience for me. So that's the story foundation.

Then, as I began to heal my own life, I wondered, why does society have such a hard time figuring out how to help people like me? There's so much therapeutic product on offer, but not much of it is working. So fast forward: I took CTI training, just like you did, Ross, and I saw powerful stuff there, but it still didn't have what the Haven had, which is the relational aspect. To me, that is absolutely critical to help people who are in emotional distress. With my CTI training, and at that point already interning at the Haven, not just as a participant but as someone on the leadership track, I decided it was time to reach out and create an event: assemble the people who are deep in distress, tell them my story around depression, and then ask them what they want, what they think we need to help heal this thing that I now call the river of distress.

So that's what I did. We set up our first Depression Confessions event in Vancouver. People showed up and filled the room, and a co-presenter and I presented our stories with depression. At the end, we did a Q&A, and a young woman stood up. This woman obviously knew what we call depression from the inside. And she said, well, this is all fine and dandy, but what now? What can I do now? And of course I had nothing for her. I hadn't thought that far ahead. So that really landed. I took it to heart and went back to the drawing board.

For the next year and a half, I experimented with putting people together and trying different things virtually, because I wanted something that anyone, anywhere in the world, could participate in, as long as they had connectivity, whatever this modality was that we were going to create. So we practiced. We got a group together, which we call a pod. We practiced with a lot of CTI material, and that worked pretty well, but we really started focusing on the Haven curriculum, which is relationally based. I believe the Haven is one of the best places anywhere for people to learn experientially, in their bodies, how relating works, how it doesn't work, of course, and how to get it working in our lives. So we wove all of this together, and we got it to the point where I thought, okay, I think I've got something.

Then I created another Depression Confessions event, again in Vancouver, down at the Yaletown Roundhouse. This time we had different speakers come and present. At the end of the event, I asked the audience who would like to participate in this virtual program, this thing I thought was now ready for the world. And of course I was terrified to look into the audience, because this was kind of my moment. I had no place to hide. If no hands went up, I'm a failure. Anyway, I looked into the audience, and there were hands up everywhere. It was a big, big moment in my life.

So people had expressed interest, and I had something to offer. We ran these groups for three months. We broke them up into loved one pods and pit pods. Pit pods, of course, are for those who are in the pit, in this thing we call depression, who don't really know how they got there and don't know how to get out. And then we had other pods for loved ones, people who are in relationship with someone in the pit. We ran them for three months, and I was just blown away by how game everybody was to lean into the process.

Everyone I talked to before that said, oh, you can't do this. What about safety? When I talked to therapists, they would ask, how can you do this and also bring sufficient safety to those who have experienced real trauma? And I guess my response was, the same way the Haven has been doing it for 35 years. They just bring what works. There's nothing to be afraid of. There's nothing that presents through the human nervous system to truly be afraid of when it comes to emotional distress. Just create a compassionate and open space in which we can explore and help each other heal.

So we did that for three months, and there's no question it worked. People moved the needle on their vitality gauge, predictably. Everyone improved their emotional states. And they also demystified their relationship with their emotional engine, which is a big deal, because a lot of people walk through life thinking emotions are just this chaotic weather system inside them, and you're just along for the ride, and they have no purpose. I ran the pods for about six years and was very satisfied with how they had evolved, and with the predictable improvement in people's emotional states.

And then I got tangled up in a business venture for six years, and I just shut everything down. Because I wear two hats. I'm a social entrepreneur and writer, but I'm also a businessman. So I got tangled up in the business world for a while. But I sold that company in October. And this nagging thing in my imagination, which had been there for years, wanting me to write a meaningful, coherent work on emotional phenomena, suddenly had runway. When I finally cracked the computer open and began, it just flooded out of me. In 12 days, I roughed out three books. I had no idea that was in me. And here we are almost three months later: book four is well on its way, and book five has been mapped out.

So that's the story that gets us to this point, Ross, where you and I are now talking about a written work, some of which actually surprises me. I had no idea when I started. This was just going to be a primer for the people in my pods, who first of all didn't know what they were in when they were in distress. They didn't know how they got there, and they had no idea how to get out. They were just floating in what we now call the river of distress. Well, before I finished book one, book two insisted that I write it. And before I finished book two, book three said, you should also write me. So in 12 days, they just flooded out. I've been revising book three for about a month now, and I'm spending most of my time on book four, which is my best attempt to understand how emotional phenomena impact political life. And that is very much, I believe, the story of our moment right now, as we look around the world in front of us.

Ross Tayler (15:06)

So there are so many roads we could go down just with the story you presented at the beginning, and I want to get to what's coming next. But I do want to comment on one thing. You're reminding me of when I worked in treatment centres. There's a lot of fear around the depths of depression, and a lot of fear around suicidal ideation. Intuitively, in my body, I always found our response interesting: someone says, I'm feeling suicidal, and the next thing we have to do is a suicide assessment.

Barry Samson (15:43)

I know.

Ross Tayler (15:45)

It's not to say we shouldn't take what we hear seriously. We do need to respond. But what someone needs is to be heard, to have compassion and kindness, and to know there's someone there for them. And instead we're doing an assessment. That's one example. Around that same time, a fellow practitioner said to me that what suicidal ideation is really saying, if we translate it out of fear, is, I'm in so much pain that I can't see any other road. So I would play with that with clients. When suicidal ideation came up, I would say, you know what? I'm not scared of what you just said. I really feel that you're in a lot of pain. And all of a sudden it would open up so simply, right? I'd still do the assessment, but in a different way.

Barry Samson (16:40)

For sure. And you bringing this notion of fear to our conversation, that's one of the biggest things I think is deep inside our collective therapeutic response. The system is terrified of emotional phenomena. It's terrified of human emotion, and it really gets freaked out when the only road to peace seems to be death. I get it. That frightens a lot of people. However, the practitioner must remember that they are not creating the stimulus that led to the person's desire to reach for a light switch that can just flick off all the pain. I think that's a really important thing to remember.

And again, I go back to the Haven. The Haven just made lots of room for everything. People end up at the Haven because the next stop is an institution. Nothing else has worked. And what I witnessed there, and what we now do in our pods, is that we make room for everything. I mean everything. It's a huge container. We're not afraid of people's pain, even if that includes, as with lots of people in emotional pain, fantasizing about killing themselves. That's part of the deal. I've been there in spades.

I did an event in Saskatchewan this past winter. There were lots of practitioners in the room, and immediately they were on the topic of safety: can this be safe? And my response is, we are bringing what we were designed to bring, which is connection and support and space without fear, so that this person can present whatever is there within them to present. No judgment, no nothing. Just be with them. It's just so simple that way. But as soon as you start flagging this with a red flag, danger, the person who needs the relational nutrients is not going to get them.

In our first pit pod, we had a guy who, I don't think he showed up at the event, or if he did, he didn't put his hand up. But he reached out to me afterwards by phone, and I could tell he was in a lot of pain. He wanted to make sure, first of all, is this thing free? Yes, it is. And are you sure, even with my package? He was really too hot to handle for all the practitioners he had dealt with. He was a mercenary, a paid soldier. He'd seen action in Northern Ireland, in Afghanistan, in Iraq. And the stories he could tell, you can only imagine. Interestingly, the people in our pit pod thought he was too hot to handle. When the people in the river of distress think another person is too hot to be in there with them, that puts him in a league of his own. And of course, my response was, don't be ridiculous. Of course we're making room for this guy. He has reached out to us. He wants to give this thing a try. So we're just going to make room for him.

So we did that. For the first month, he didn't even turn his camera on. He was just an icon on the screen. No audio, no video. By the second month, the camera came on, but he might only be there for a short time. Eventually, the camera came on and stayed on. The audio came on and stayed on. And by the end, I think it might have been a six-month pod, he was just a different guy. He could see that we were not afraid of anything within him, and we sure as hell weren't afraid of him. And the strides he made were just unprecedented. He was able to reinvest in his relationship with his son, who lived overseas and whom he hadn't seen in 20 years or so. He's one of our superstars.

So to your point about fear: practitioners had better get very curious, very quickly, if they're going to work with people in this sacred space I call the river of distress. You'd better get very clear that your fear is a signal. If you use it as an excuse for what not to bring, then it's a problem. If your own fear is a signal that says, ooh, let's get curious here, let's lean into this, let me bring my fear into the therapeutic space, then now you've got something. But fear is most often the way out of the therapeutic space for most people. And especially people who've been clinically trained believe, through their training, that people who are on the edge need to be handled differently from everyone else. What I've learned at the Haven and from running my pods is that they need the very same thing we all do, which is a relational, generous space that works. That's it.

Ross Tayler (22:49)

Again, lots I could comment on, but I want to make a really quick point that hopefully opens up what comes next. I remember a module I had to teach at the treatment centre, and it was called Negative Emotions. And I always reframed that for the clients. Negative emotions? No, there's no such thing as a negative emotion. I can't look at it this way, I can't teach it this way. We have emotions. We're emotional beings. Now, we might express an emotion in a way that isn't pleasant for people, but it's not a negative emotion. It's a signal. It's a sign. I think this is a core piece where you and I are in alignment. And I think it's a good segue into what is emerging for you now, and what the components of it are. Because really, what you're creating is a doorway into a paradigm shift, where we look at mental health in a completely different way, one that's much more accessible and simple, which I really appreciate. It takes into account the nervous system, and the nervous system is a hundred percent relational. So take it from there.

Barry Samson (24:02)

Yeah. What makes me most sad is all these people who are in distress, and the families who love the people in distress, and yet all these rules and protocols around something that is just normal. It was designed into us. It's the most incredible piece of evolutionary engineering so far in the cosmos. I have no indication that anything better than a human nervous system actually exists out there. The navigational hardware and software of the human nervous system is unsurpassed. And all this complexity that our modern world has thrown at our understanding of emotional phenomena, it's just bizarre.

You don't need a graduate degree to understand that you like to hear birds sing, or to know a good song when you hear one, or to understand what's going on when you look into the eyes of a beloved and your whole world turns upside down. And when things present in our world that we do not like, like jobs that are totally meaningless, relationships that are completely dysfunctional, urban environments we find unpleasant, of course the nervous system will signal to us and say, hey, I don't like this. How about we go somewhere else? How about we do something differently?

So as I got into my writing project, of course I got a little historical, because I wanted to go back and see where this war with human desire and emotional phenomena came from. How did emotion end up at the back of the bus and reason at the front? It just didn't seem fair, especially when emotional phenomena seem to be what's actually steering us. It's the actual navigational system. It's the thing by which we can steer toward a life full of the things we want and love, and steer away from the things we don't want. So why is it at the back of the bus? Well, I'm not exactly sure, but a lot of people who have written important works mostly seem to have celebrated reason. And it seems that historically we have had this deep mistrust of what we consider to be the messiness of emotional life.

It seems to me, through the process of writing these books, that it is only messy because we've suppressed it. It's only complex because we've buried it. If you've ever watched a toddler, there's no filter, right? They like this, they really don't like that. There's no guessing. It's not complex. And that's available to every one of us. The problem is we have this cultural overburden. It wants us to spend our working day doing something, and in a work environment, most often people will hear, either internally or externally from management: tough it out, get on with it. It doesn't matter what your nervous system is presenting. Life is hard, get on with it.

So the truth is, we can optimize almost any situation for maximum limbic output. Meaning, there's always an opportunity, in any relationship, in any environment, to have it work better for us, so we don't just have to tolerate our lives. These choice points are everywhere. And the interesting thing is that people who are highly invested in tolerating life don't want to see these choice points, because it activates the part of you and me that we call the saboteur. The saboteur explains to us that we need to tolerate the things we don't want, and postpone the things we do want, all in the service of, I don't know, efficiency or survival. But it's outdated software. We just need to update the software. And there are opportunities everywhere.

Ross Tayler (30:04)

And all of these experiences are taking our focus away from our internal landscape, our internal knowing. We're being distracted outward, when really we need to be turning inward, which is where all of this information is. And you've mentioned it many times, the river of distress. Those things keep us in the river of distress, because we're looking outside of ourselves instead of using that innate ability to look inside.

Barry Samson (30:38)

Yes. So there's an interesting relationship with the internal locus of authority. Of course, we need to not live our lives in the opinion of others. We need to anchor ourselves internally. But if we are dysregulated, if we are not living an aligned life, we have to reach outside of ourselves to find other nervous systems to help regulate ours. So that's the crazy inside-outside dance. The best way I can explain it is what the dog whisperer, Cesar Millan, does with a dysregulated dog. Either he relates to it one on one, and just brings solid boundaries: we can do this, but we can't do that, and there's no negotiating. And it's not big, dramatic stuff. It's just, this is unacceptable and this is acceptable. And he helps the dog regulate that way. The other thing he does is take a dysregulated dog and put it into a pack with all these other regulated, healthy dogs, and he just lets the pack do all the work. And the dog has no choice. As part of that pack, they just don't tolerate what doesn't work.

Humans are no different. We're just the same. You put a dog into a pack of dogs, you put a horse into a herd of horses, or you put a dysregulated human into a pod of fairly healthy humans. They don't have to be completely aligned, just sufficiently aligned and curious. It's just inevitable. This is the way we're designed. This is how we regulate. And essentially, that's how our pods work. There's no voodoo. Very, very simple.

And I think the important thing, if anyone listening to your podcast is deep in this thing they might want to call depression, though I don't call it that anymore, I call it the river of distress, because it opens things up, there are many more opportunities there for us: as we bring more of what works and less of what doesn't work into our lives, we will predictably move the vitality needle in our lives, and we will predictably make our way to the shore. No ifs, ands or buts. For anyone who's been in therapy for years and years and years, that's a signal telling you you're not getting what you need to get better. For people who show up in our pods deep in distress, their needle moves within two weeks. Not two years.

Ross Tayler (33:31)

And you and I know this because we've had the gift of experiencing it. I'll never forget the day I showed up for my CTI training to become a coach. I had no idea what I'd signed up for, because it was all guided by signs and synchronicities. I'll never forget sitting down in the circle in this hotel room in the West End of Vancouver. There was an almost 360-degree view of English Bay. It was an amazing space. I remember sitting down in the chair and thinking, is this, did I maybe sign up for another MLM marketing thing? I didn't know for sure. But I remember the facilitator saying, you can take the book we gave you and put it under your chair. You're not going to need it. And then the feeling that came from sitting in a circle, looking around at these other faces, and everything that came next, was something I had never experienced before.

The point of sharing this is that it's an edge. I know the benefit of sitting in circle and witnessing others, but it's also an edge, because our pain often comes relationally. And going to a group means showing up and participating relationally, which is where the healing happens, or can happen. And yet there's an edge there. So when people make the choice to cross that edge and come to a group, they've already given you permission in a lot of ways.

Barry Samson (35:01)

Yeah. CTI, did you certify, Ross?

Ross Tayler (35:06)

I didn't do my certification. I just did the first modules, the core.

Barry Samson (35:10)

Well, just like all good experiential learning, I did the certification, and what they did was bring real feedback, constant feedback. If we're presenting in the world, and just back to the dysregulated dog, if we're that little chihuahua that can't calm down, that barks at everything and is afraid of everything, and nobody brings anything different, the dysregulated dog will just continue presenting the way it does and freak out over everything. But if you put it into a pack of healthy dogs, it gets feedback. The other dogs say, hey dude, we don't like this. We really don't like this. We strongly suggest you try something else.

And that's what they did to me in CTI. They gave me so much feedback in my certification process that I was afraid to open my mouth, because nothing I said or presented was measuring up. Then they gave us three weeks or a month off for Christmas, and I was able to let things integrate. And when I re-engaged after that, I could present and be with my coaching clients in a different way. But the secret was feedback.

And what I explore in my books is this resonant cascade. If anyone is serious about repairing their emotional life, it's virtually impossible to do it alone. It's just no fun doing it alone. It's much more fun to do it with other people, and it's way more efficient. What we get from being with other people, if they're also brave enough to give us feedback... remember, they're loaded with the same hardware and software you are, which is the human nervous system, this incredible navigational tool. If you present in such a way that their navigational tool goes, ooh, I don't like this, this isn't working for me, and they share that with you, now you've got the real goods, real data. And if they have no reason to bullshit you, which of course they don't, unless they're your employer or whatever else, then you can look at it and say, well, maybe this is how I present in the world. I thought it was this, but these people are saying it's that. And if you get the same thing from 10 other people who have no reason to bullshit you, it's time to consider that maybe this is how you present. Of course, if you're not open to feedback, then you're stuck.

Ross Tayler (38:22)

And feedback can come in different ways. We get feedback just by witnessing someone else step into their truth courageously and share openly. It gives us permission to do the same. That's why, when you gave the example of the fellow who was too hot to handle, he eased into it over time, began to thaw, began to share and began to connect, by witnessing others do that exact same thing. Feedback comes in all sorts of ways.

Barry Samson (38:51)

Exactly. And that's why I don't like to work with individuals. There's just so much more gold, so much more resource available when you're working with groups. Because, to your point, when people watched our fellow, Mr. Too Hot to Handle, go through his process, they went, well, holy shit, if he can do it, what excuse do I have?

The Haven model has always been heavily focused on resonance. And just imagine that. Our world, from my perspective, the modern world and the economic system, is mostly at war with the human nervous system. And here's this nervous system that we've been battering for centuries, and it is still able to resonate when it experiences the things it wants and loves, and it will also tell us, at the same time, the things it doesn't want or love. And it's already inside everyone. We don't need to go invent another algorithm somewhere and then train everybody. All we need to do is tell everyone, it's already in you, and this is how you access it. And if you follow it, you'll never get lost, ever.

Think of how transformational that is. The world asks, how are we going to fix this whole mental health problem, or whatever. The system is already in us. It will solve it at the individual level, at the partner level, at the organizational level, and at the civilizational level. It'll heal everything. All we need to do is follow it.

Ross Tayler (41:01)

It's clear to me that this is going to be part one of potentially many conversations. So I want to throw something out there, because I think it's a beautiful metaphor that you and I both use. With this system you're talking about, this beautiful inner guidance we can rely on and listen to, we've effectively been doing what some of us have done in our cars at different times in our lives. We're putting black tape over the check engine light, which is the very thing that's trying to get our attention and tell us something.

Barry Samson (41:37)

Yes. That's a metaphor I use. I think it's in book one. It's so tragic that we have mistaken the signal for the thing the signal is pointing to. That's a little abstract, but let's use your metaphor of the check engine light. If something in a vehicle isn't working right, the engineers have designed in a red light that shows up on the dashboard and is hard to ignore. And the reason they do that is so you can take care of your car before you blow it up. Well, the evolutionary Darwinian forces, or whatever it is that designed the human nervous system, did the same thing. And the check engine light is your depression, your active addiction, your anxiety, your third divorce, your failure to thrive commercially, whatever it is. And our collective response is to make that light on the dash wrong. Like you say, tape over it and hope for the best.

Well, if you've ever talked to a mechanic, he will say, do not tape over the check engine light. Go find out what's wrong in the engine and deal with it, and then your car's your friend. The human nervous system is the same way. When we present with depression, or, God forbid, suicidal ideation, everyone just wants to make that go away. Calm this person down, he's freaking me out. And no one deals with the alternator, or the oil pump, God forbid, which is the core of the problem. And then we do this for 40 frigging years, and we spend billions of dollars taping over these check engine lights. And then we wonder why our world is full of distress, and why our heroic therapeutic endeavours just aren't getting us anywhere. It's kind of crazy.

Ross Tayler (44:06)

And I think Brené Brown said it well when she said you can't selectively numb. When you numb the pain, you numb the joy, you numb the happiness, you numb everything. And that's the metaphor of this tape, right? We're covering up everything. That's such an important thing to consider, because when I think about the check engine light and going to get your car looked at, the other side of the metaphor is, well, I can't afford to stop and do that. I have to keep going, because I'm part of this system that needs me to keep going, and I need to pay my rent and all those things. So it's a complicated problem. And yet what you're saying is, hey, if we step into this pod and start to connect relationally, it's going to get easier, and you're going to see things you can't see. Which is just a different way of taking the tape off, returning to our innate wisdom instead of numbing it.

Barry Samson (45:09)

Yeah. There's a reason the human nervous system has made emotional pain impossible to ignore. And if anyone's listening to your podcast right now, hear this: emotional pain is the most important thing in your life. If it's there right now, it's the most important thing for you to attend to right now. It's trying to tell you something very, very important. Get curious. Do not push it away. Feel it fully. Let it inform you. Let it motivate you. Pain is a wonderful motivator. Numbness motivates nobody.

Ross Tayler (45:51)

And to that point, if possible, reach out to someone and share that. At the very least, let someone know, because I think, more than we realize, we've all had this experience at some point in our lives. Just by voicing it to someone close to you, you might find out they've had that same experience. And all of a sudden, and this comes back to the Depression Confessions, right, you have an ally who is supporting you, instead of someone you think won't support you.

Barry Samson (46:22)

Well, the tragic irony, though, Ross, is this. Let's say Ross is in deep distress. He's contemplating flicking the light switch, because life is just too full of pain. And he reaches out to someone and says, hey dude, I'm on the edge here, I just don't know what to do. The problem is that culturally, we have made this moment so tricky and complicated that the other person will probably go deep into their own fear, rather than deep into their compassion and humanity, and want to hand you off to someone in a white smock with a prescription or something like that. And that's the problem.

Ross Tayler (47:15)

That's a good example, and a good reminder. And that's also what you're trying to offer an alternative to.

Barry Samson (47:26)

Well, yeah.

Ross Tayler (47:28)

And that's where we get into the part two of this conversation, if not more than part two.

Barry Samson (47:33)

Probably, because I thought there was just book one, and book five is already mapped out. But the important thing for anyone listening who's in distress: when they reach out to someone, and that person looks like a deer in the headlights, they just go, oh my God, oh my God, what am I going to do with this? If you're lucky enough to have a friend who will sit with you and make space for your emotional distress, you're halfway there already. But if the people you reach out to scamper and want to hand you off to cold clinical interventions, which will not deliver the nutritional meal, the relational meal, you've got to keep looking. There are incredibly skilled practitioners, warm people. They may not be in the therapeutic profession. They might be religious leaders, community leaders, a family member. But whoever it is, you need someone who can make room for your distress. And then it gets easier after that.

So my life purpose at this moment in time is to create a warm and generous space where people can come with all their distress, and we more than make room for it. We actually want them there. It's a genuine wanting. That's half the battle right there. And from there, it's easy for us to help them.

The metaphor I want to use is climbing a mountain. Let's say there are five or six of us climbing a mountain. There's a rope beside us, and all of us are clipped onto that rope. That rope leads down to the parking lot, and it leads up to the summit. As long as we remain clipped to that rope, and the other climbers on the mountain with us can tell us which way is up and which way is down, then it is our choice to point ourselves up the mountain and put one foot in front of the other. And predictably, the altimeter will change immediately, and eventually we will step out of the clouds. That's how it works. That's how emotional life works.

Ross Tayler (49:59)

I love that metaphor.

Barry Samson (50:01)

No voodoo. Just cause and effect. And our nervous system is our friend, even though most of us have been trained to believe it's the enemy. It is our friend. It will lead us home every time. We just need to know how to use it.

Ross Tayler (50:19)

I a hundred percent agree with you on that point, for sure.

Barry Samson (50:23)

Yeah, me too.

Ross Tayler (50:24)

And if anybody is inspired by what you've shared in this conversation today, what's the best way for them to reach out to you? I'll make sure that goes in the show notes.

Barry Samson (50:34)

Right now, just email. We're still setting up all the websites. Everything I had for the Depression Confessions has been on hold during my six-year commercial venture, and I'm firing all that up again. Have them reach out to you, Ross, and then through to me. Anyone who is curious about hosting an event and would like me to speak, or who wants to participate in a pod, all that stuff, I'm more than interested. Anyone who has a genuine wanting, who feels the tug, please honor the tug. Reach out to Ross, Ross will reach out to me, and we'll get connected. We're going to be part of the solution. We're not going to be part of the problem. There are too many problems out there. We need people to be part of the solution.

Ross Tayler (51:29)

A hundred percent agree.

Barry Samson (51:30)

Cool.

Ross Tayler (51:31)

So thank you, Barry, for making the time to have this conversation. I want to touch again on the fact that 12 years ago, we were walking toward the descent of our hero's journey, and we were in a small pod together within that journey. That was 12 years ago today. So I'm really excited to be having this conversation with you, which I never could have imagined 12 years ago.

Barry Samson (51:54)

Yeah, I know.

Ross Tayler (51:55)

And it's cool, because there are people close to me who are making that same journey today, which is equally cool.

Barry Samson (52:04)

Yeah. These are all fixable problems. All the big problems facing us at the civilizational scale, and certainly the mental health crisis. This is totally a fixable problem. Let's fix it.

Ross Tayler (52:16)

Thank you for your perspective and your journey, and I look forward to continuing this conversation sooner rather than later.

Barry Samson (52:24)

Okay, my pleasure. Anytime, Ross.

Ross Tayler (52:25)

All right, bye for now.

Ross Tayler (52:27)

Thank you for joining us on Sacred Sundays. I hope something in today's offering spoke to your spirit, stirred something true, or simply gave you a moment to breathe. If this conversation resonated, please subscribe, rate, or share. It truly helps this work reach the people who are meant to find it. If you'd like to step inside my world a little further, I host a free live practice three mornings a week called Start With You. Just 20 minutes on Zoom to return to your own energy. Everything you need can be found at the link in the show notes. Until next time, may your day be slow and sacred.