Get Real Self Defense Podcast
A dose of personal protection discussion to help you become more confident and prepared to protect yourself and your loved ones. Train Today. Protect Tomorrow.
We just launched our YouTube and Instagram! Give us a follow @smartsafedefense.
Get Real Self Defense Podcast
Ep #25: The Proactive Approach to Crisis - Self-Regulation and De-Escalation Mastery with Andy Prisco
Imagine having the skillset to confidently handle any crisis situation, to de-escalate with poise and defuse tension like a pro. That's precisely what you'll gain from our enlightening conversation with Andy Prisco, founder of one of the largest psychiatric emergency response team programs in the U.S. and developer of the first and only crisis intervention verbal de-escalation certification. This episode delivers a deep dive into the importance of competence-based training in personal safety and the transformative impact it can have on your ability to manage crises, both in the professional world and at home.
Who'd have thought Star Wars could teach us valuable lessons about self-regulation and de-escalation? We take a leaf from Qui-Gon's book in his iconic lightsaber battle against Darth Maul, analyzing how his calm approach compares to aggressive responses in tricky situations. We then bring it closer to home, discussing how such techniques can positively influence our familial relationships and why our homes make the perfect training grounds. Andy also shares the profound significance of listening and posture in communication, how to utilize validation statements, and the potent role of identity in conflict management.
But what of the moments when our back's against the wall, when we feel cornered, helpless? We tackle the dangers of this sense of helplessness in de-escalation, using the metaphor of a 'porcupine' versus a 'wounded tiger'. Andy enlightens us on how involving people in crisis in the decision-making process can lead to safer, more manageable outcomes. We critique the alarming tendency of the healthcare industry to default to physical restraints and highlight alternative, more effective de-escalation techniques. This thought-provoking discussion on self-regulation, de-escalation skills, and the resources available through Jumpstart Mastery is a must-listen for everyone.
Check out Andy's Website Here: https://www.jumpstartmastery.com/
Andy's LinkedIn Here
Please be sure to give us a 5 Star review for this Podcast!
We are now also a video podcast! You can find us @smartsafedefense to follow and subscribe on YouTube and Instagram!
You can also join the Waiting List for the upcoming 5 Day Situational Awareness Challenge Course - Coming Soon.
When you have the ability, let's say through some kind of meaningful competence-based training in personal safety, where you know how to defend yourself. When you live with that competence and confidence, you can lean into de-escalation a little bit more. This is the basis of spearcare with Tony Blower, for example. You are not able to lean into de-escalation if you're afraid. So we want awareness of our own fear and how that works, and then if we can deal with the learning that's necessary for us to acquire a sense of competence, not necessarily to fight, but to just know that we're not going to be a victim.
Speaker 2:When it comes to de-escalation and crisis management, it doesn't matter if you are in a professional capacity as law enforcement or some other first responder or nursing capability, but it also just be personal, where you're on the street and somebody is dealing with you or you them, and you have to talk with them and hopefully talk them out of fighting you or you having to do anything physical in response to what is they're doing. However, there are those who are not going to listen very well, who are not going to be reasonable, because they themselves are in what is called AAV, which is anger, aggression and violence, and that often is the culmination of a series of events that have happened to them, where they are in a crisis whether that is a mental patient of some sort, whether that is a person who is transient on the street and between drugs and life and everything else has brought themselves to a point of overwhelm, it doesn't really matter what it is. Sometimes there are people who just won't easily listen to you and that can put our selves in a crisis moment ourselves because we're not able to just reason with the person. I don't know about you guys, but I like to reason with people. I like to have logic when it comes to my interactions and conversations, and there are some people who aren't going to be akin to that. They are off their rocker, so to speak, or or having a really bad time, and they're not going to easily just hear you say, hey, hey, just calm down, it's not that bad, or whatever, because that can actually, by saying those words, can actually make things worse. And so, as I was searching to how to be a better communicator, both for my law enforcement job as well as for myself personally, and so that I can bring something valuable to you guys, I came across a person named Andy Prisco of Jumpstart Mastery.
Speaker 2:Andy Prisco is a lifelong student of responding to AAV, who maintains a deep experience in avoiding the use of force in managing behavioral crisis incidents featuring AAV.
Speaker 2:Andy is the founder of one of the largest legislatively funded psychiatric emergency response team programs in the United States. He co-developed the first and only crisis intervention verbal de-escalation certification available from a professional mental health association. His training programs and consultation services have been leveraged by federal, state and regional law enforcement agencies, as well as care and service systems, correction systems, behavioral health agencies, youth and family service organizations and, since COVID-19, the public sector. Businesses have also had an upheaval in experiencing the uptrend of AAV at points of service delivery and have leveraged Andy Prisco as a result. In other words, this man has worked with hospitals, has worked with law enforcement, has worked with all sorts of people in all sorts of capacities, and he was gracious enough and willing to sit down with me so that we could talk about crisis management and de-escalation, so that you guys can have a better understanding of not only how to manage others from a crisis management situation, but also how to better manage yourselves in that crisis management situation. So, without further ado, andy Prisco from Jumpstart Mastery.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the Get Real Self Defense podcast. Here you get your daily dose of personal protection discussion to help you be more confident and prepared to protect yourself and your loved ones. And now let's get real with self-defense.
Speaker 1:Andy, how you doing, brother? It's good to be with you. Adam, I'm doing well. Thank you and congratulations on your newborn.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you. Yeah, For those that are listening, I actually just had my kid. I know that I talked about it on the podcast before that. The child was supposed to arrive at any point and, lo and behold, just the other day he did. I'll get more into that next week. However, I'm really excited because, like I said in the intro, I'm talking with Andy, prisco and Andy, you and I talked a little bit before as well when we connected, and the reason why I connected with you is because of the background you have in crisis intervention and de escalation. And so, real quickly, even though I gave a little bit of an introduction for you, just give us a quick spiel on what you do and what your company does and what you're striving to achieve with your company.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you. Thank you for that, adam. It's delightful to be here. I'd say if I were speaking to people who, let's say, were not familiar with the profession or domain of psychiatric care and services or mental health, I would say I'm from that world, a world where people very often have come into contact with the justice system because of behavior, but there's also been a mental health problem associated with whatever the event was misdemeanor or felony crime that brought them into contact with the justice system. And then, when people are in that system, they very often can wind up in state hospitals or residential treatment facilities or total confinement facilities where there is some relationship between treatment and care and the justice system.
Speaker 1:And that's the professional world I come from for a long time, where we have to support people who can present very challenging behavior, very challenging behavior. They can become very assaultive, they can express themselves very angrily in a very scary way, and the people who work in those settings are not like public safety or law enforcement workforces where they have tools and use of force spectrums that they can rely upon. In most of these behavioral health settings, people only have their words to respond to those kinds of emergencies and what I do today is a product of that experience, in working in that environment for a very long time, and that is to provide training and education to lots of people, professionally and on a non-professional basis, people who are just interested in getting good at what we refer to as de-escalation. De-escalation, in my view, is a term that has almost become a buzzword now, but de-escalation really is the idea of engaging with someone in such a way that they engage their own capacity to calm down and that we're not suppressing or controlling them or threatening them. Rather, we're staying with them in their presentation of anger, aggression or discontrol and helping lead them to a calmer state.
Speaker 1:What I do today with Jumpstart Mastery is bring together as many experts around the world as possible on those principles so that we can all share in collective learning and applying these principles in our personal lives, our family lives and our professional lives. And it's been working. I was a government employee, like many, many other people, just up until two years ago, and while I was doing this professionally in my job for the state, the demand for what I did became so great that I literally made the jump, no pun intended, into the education space with my wife, and that's what we do now with Jumpstart Mastery is we provide training and education and de-escalation in lots of lots of places justice systems, juvenile justice systems, institutions, large police agencies, small police agencies, mobile crisis mental health units, co-responder units, schools. There's no shortage of places. So that's the long way around. I provide a lot of de-escalation, education and training and I provide it in a lot of places.
Speaker 2:No, that's excellent.
Speaker 2:I mean, I actually one of the earliest episodes that I did is a quick spiel on my take on de-escalation, and one of the things that came up in my mind was is that it, though, like talking about, hey, redirection and summarization and all these different things, verbal judo, so on and so forth, but what's interesting is that you know there's obviously more to it and not everyone's going to have that kind of capability necessarily without first, I think, doing what I like to call and maybe I'm reinventing the wheel first in some spaces but what I've tried to summarize as intentional awareness, if you will, which is like everything you know with yourself internally, externally, and one of the things you call, I think if I don't want to misquote you, but you know that's what you tackle, in a sense is combating dysregulation or somebody who is in their own crisis.
Speaker 2:They can't respond and help other people. So, like, what do you think is the biggest problem with crisis response? You know, you got that person that's on the street who is in a mental health crisis and you want to use your words, but you're feeling overwhelmed and panicked, you know, because you got this guy or gal who is just out there you know freaking out on you and you're not necessarily a professional, or even if you are, I know that myself as a cop you know there's people that freak out on me and I'm sitting there like, and I have to control my natural responses of, like, breathing and everything else.
Speaker 2:So what you see is the kind of the main problem that people have in not being able to use those buzzwords or, like you know, verbal judo. You know, what do you think is the main problem that people have that they need to overcome first before they can really use any of those skill sets.
Speaker 1:Adam, I think it's a great question and it goes to the heart of what makes de-escalation successful. I would say that the techniques and the methods that we use in de-escalation with someone who's presenting, let's say, psychiatric symptoms, delusional ideation, auditory hallucinations, perhaps it's been influenced by substances, or someone who's just angry and has grown up in an environment where getting angry has been a way to engage the world, to get their need met, so they become very big, perhaps they propose aggression or violence to get their need met, I would say the techniques that we use to address those are the easy part, the hard part and I would say if you get this next part that I'm about to describe dealt with, you could eliminate probably 70% of the incidents that we would describe as, let's say, de-escalation efforts that might have gone bad, and that is the capacity for self-regulation. If you, as a person in the world, are a person whose emotional state is constantly influenced by the external world, what someone says, what someone does, that someone cut me off, that someone used a particular word, that someone looked at me the wrong way, that I have a sense of something being unfair, I have a sense of something being unjust. I have someone is trying to show me disrespect or shame. If my emotional state is constantly influenced by the stimulation of the external world, and if my emotional state when someone presents anger or discontrol to me is going to be influenced by that and I have no control of it, it's going to be very hard to do any kind of de-escalation technique or method to lead someone to calm down. So the best way to describe it in the simplest terms is to be and to model the very example of self-regulation that we would like another human being to move toward when they are presenting anger or discontrol. Tony Blower calls it calm is contagious. But are you a Star Wars guy, adam? Of course Okay.
Speaker 1:So for anyone who saw the Phantom Menace, I would say that the most famous lightsaber battle of all time between Qui-Gon and Darth Maul represents in illustration this, this principle I'm trying to share in as simple terms as possible.
Speaker 1:Qui-gon was a Jedi who did not become angry, who did not become enraged, who fought with high technical skill but was, let's say, a strategist from the defensive school, while Darth Maul was wildly aggressive, very technically skilled but ultimately lost the fight at the end. And the approach that we try to help everyone appreciate is in a de-escalation capacity when we have a responsibility. If our kid is upset, our loved one is upset, our neighbor is upset, if our response is like Darth Maul and we just want to suppress or control, there's no way you're going to get to an outcome of de-escalating another human being and them calming down. We have to first be the example of self-regulation, which means that whatever you're doing is not influencing my emotional state to a place where I can't control it. It doesn't mean I'm not going to feel things, it just means that I'm not going to have my behavior driven by my emotional state. We call that self-regulation. Sure.
Speaker 2:So that actually brings up an interesting thought that I would like to actually try to tackle with you, and that is you brought up like family and kids, and I think that is actually something that law enforcement, military, everybody really can take on, and that is, if you are really good at your job and, let's say, really good at de-escalation, if you want to coin at that just for the sake of conversation with people that are not your family, but then you go home and you're snappy and reactive and angry to your spouse or to your kids, you're sucking at practicing your very job.
Speaker 2:Yes, maybe you've used a lot of that energy, if you will, that mental and emotional energy, but like who's more? I mean not that there's necessarily more important people than anybody else, but like for your own family, they're the most important people typically, and so it's definitely important that you don't just do a really good job de-escalating everywhere else except your home and then just being reactive. And so a good practice point in my or place, I guess, in my opinion, would be if you're at home and you have friends, family, no-transcript, maybe you're quicker to anger or you get upset with. Maybe that is the best place to have a potential training ground, if you will practicing, if you will de-escalation and self-regulation of your emotions and whatnot. Would you agree with that or is there a better strategy?
Speaker 1:Not only do I agree with it, adam, you brilliantly described the laboratory where you can work on this the most, and that is because at home we are in our most vulnerable state with relationships, because we have need. I have need in my relationship with my wife, I have need in relationship with my children. When I'm out in community, when I'm in an institution, when I'm on a response with a public safety agency, I have no need of the other human being. My role is different. But when I go home, I want to feel love, I want to feel valued, I want to feel cared for. And if my kids or my wife are having a tough day, and in the one environment where I feel safe to express what my needs are, if I don't get them met, that's the time for me to practice these principles of self-regulation and lead someone else to a state of self-regulation. So I have to be at first.
Speaker 1:You described in some workforces, adam, our referrals to EAP, which is the employee assistance program for those who are working in any kind of, let's say, large bureaucratic organization or company. You're probably familiar with that term. Our referrals in EAP are at probably an all-time high right now because people who have challenging jobs go home and their home life is impacted heavily because that's the place where they go to get their own needs met. And if we're in a world that appears to be getting angrier, where even truth to some extent is becoming relative and people are having a hard time navigating it, the likelihood of you going home to a partner or a spouse that's having a bad day is probably increased. So if you can get good at and there are things we can talk about that enhance that capacity if you can get good at self-regulation and do that well at home, I'd almost argue that going out in the world and doing it is even easier. Doing it well at home is probably the best training ground to do it out in the world.
Speaker 2:I absolutely would agree with that, and let's air this one out real quick, just in case there's anybody that may be thinking this and that is so in self-regulation, are you suggesting that we have to be emotionalists and basically completely stoic all the time, or what do you mean by self-regulation? Can?
Speaker 1:you dive into that. That's a great question. So another way of asking that would be what does it mean to be self-regulated? It means that I can observe the impulses that I feel when those impulses become generated by involuntary systems of my physiology as well as voluntary systems. So we all have a part of our brain and circuitry that allows us to constantly and we don't have to be conscious of it. It constantly enables us to assess risk to our own personal safety.
Speaker 1:There are things that can precipitate that risk system, that are being perceived by our neurology and neurobiology before we're even conscious of it, and generally those are things that we observe in the psychomotor domain, where we're observing another human being, how they may be looking at us, how they're postured, where they're spatially related to us, sounds, smells of a particular type. Those can be conditions that stimulate our desire to preserve our well-being and safety. In the polyvagal theory of neurobiological thought we would call that a fight-flight mobilization state. There are also states that we can be in, where we have wide diversity of thought and expression, that we can see those kinds of things and when we feel the impulse that occurs in our limbic system, that when we feel or are aware of an impulse in our fight-flight system, it doesn't mean we have to do anything about it. That doesn't mean that I'm asking people to surrender their need to attend to their own well-being and to be safe, but the idea is to observe and be aware of your impulses as they're occurring, without allowing them to unidimensionally drive your behavior, and that's like an experience that any extreme athlete would have, learning how to do their craft. In other words, if Alex Honnold, netflix is a great resource for these kinds of propositions I'm making, alex Honnold is probably one of the most interesting free solo climbers that we have available to the masses that you can learn about, because Alex's amygdala works different than many other people.
Speaker 1:Alex reports that when Alex is climbing on a rock face with no belay, rope at heights that he would completely perish if he fell. He's not afraid when his hands and feet are on the rock face. He's afraid when he sits on the ledge and looks out over the horizon. And there are a number of people who free solo climb. Do you think they're not feeling any impulse at all for fear? Of course they are. They have developed a capacity to trust their technique and their knowledge and their practice and their experience of being on the rock with belay rope so often that they were able to get to a place where they could be on the rock in a high risk situation and not have fear grip them from proceeding or continuing to climb.
Speaker 1:And you can apply that principle in so many areas. That's how we train in firefighting, that's how we train in any high risk endeavor. We learn the craft and the knowledge so much that fear does not drive what we do, but instead our knowledge does. And I would say that when people have learning experiences, that they can feel the impulse when somebody presents behavior that's angry or looks like discontrol, and in the learning environment, when we can expose them to graduated, let's say, experiences of this while delivering very specific de-escalation techniques. When they go out into the world, they don't get rattled. When someone starts mother effing them or getting all animated in their space, they can be the Qui-Gon Jinn from the Phantom Menace. This is your emergency, not my emergency, but I'm here to try to help you. So let's try to do that together and that's something that takes practice.
Speaker 2:Sure, and that's actually a perfect segue into the next question I have which you brought up, like rock climbing and belaying and how you don't get to that upper echelon that Alex does. You have to start from trusting your equipment, trusting your movements, getting your strength and your understanding of your proprioception. I mean so on and so forth. So what is, I guess, the? If you were to start someone quote unquote on rock climbing? When it comes to de-escalation, how would you start them off? What would you want them to look for understand before they start really moving up to those buzzwords and phrases that people typically associate with de-escalation? What's the baseline and how would you proceed with a new person?
Speaker 1:So I'd introduce them to some ideas to consider, and then there are some practices that I would offer them to try. The first thing that I would ask someone to be aware of is that you're going to feel things when someone presents discontrol, dysregulation. You might even appraise what someone else is doing and feel not personally at risk because of the behavior, but you might find it offensive. You might. It might be something that you disagree with and, as a result, it's making you feel some kind of way. The first idea I would introduce to someone is start to get good at identifying your own feelings as they're happening. There was a great thinker in this domain of naming feelings and needs. His name was Dr Marshall Rosenberg. He's the founder of Nonviolent Communication. I was introduced to his work in 2008 in a professional capacity, and I'd say that one of the great takeaways from Nonviolent Communication was the incredible value that comes from naming a feeling that you're experiencing as you're experiencing it, which has a inherent power to render it less influential in your life. If you can name a feeling that you're feeling that's unpleasant, as you're feeling it, you can claim it and tame it. Name it, claim it and tame it, as the great Cassandra Wojcik says but if I can name that, I'm feeling angry. If I can name that, I'm feeling offended. If I can name that, I'm feeling disrespected, unsafe, irritated. If I can name that, I'm already on the journey to regulating it. The next thing I would try to raise awareness about is that that's normal. That's going to happen involuntarily, initially In the personal safety world. Tony Blower would refer to that as the startle flinch response. In the polyvagal domain that would be the fight-flight mobilization state. There is a kinesiological, psychological and even psychomotor interrelatedness when something happens out in the world and we feel this that's normal. The second idea I would present to someone is is it possible for you to believe that you can experience that and still do something that's complex and still do something that does not feel natural? In relationship to that feeling, we would begin to introduce people to the idea that that's possible and then, in concrete terms, a fun practice exercise might be for anybody. And if you're not even, let's say, you have a trade you don't really encounter a lot of people that are angry, but once in a while you do and you're interested in de-escalation. And what can I do to start on that journey?
Speaker 1:Try to make the first thing that comes out of your mouth in response to anybody who presents anger, aggression or discontrol what we would refer to as a validation statement Anything that lets the person know that they are seen, heard and or understood without any value or appraisal. I hear you saying that there are nanobots coming out of the shower head. Looks like you're very angry. It sounds like you're saying I'm here to take you to the lake of fire for all of eternity. I hear you telling me to go F myself. Looks like you're upset because I'm in this position in line.
Speaker 1:Imagine forcing yourself when anybody says anything to you in a category that you would think requires some kind of de-escalation. Imagine starting with a validation statement instead of you need to back up, stop, knock it off. Imagine meeting it with a validation statement first. Now we have a whole sequential thinking and speaking method in Jumpstart Mastery. That we do, but if I were based on the proposition of your question, I would say, for anyone who just wants to start on the road, imagine meeting everybody in the world that presents you some kind of difficulty with validation, and I would say that the simplest way to remember what validation is is to let the other person know that they are seen, heard and understood without any appraisal or judgment of what we are seeing, what we're hearing and what they're doing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I just want to make it clear for those listening too, that when it comes to validation, that doesn't mean the typical what you hear maybe in the social, political environments of just like everybody is correct. You have to appease everybody, you have to cout out everybody. What Andy is talking about is making sure that they know that their communication is received, even if you don't necessarily agree with it. Notice that the words he used weren't words that said, oh, I agree with you or I am buying into your delusion. It's all things that have to do with I acknowledge what you're saying, I want you to, and basically all he's doing is communicating to them so that they know okay, what I've said has gotten to this person, they have received my message. It doesn't mean that Andy is saying I agree with your message, I'm gonna follow through with your message, or that that person is correct. Simply, the words that he was using are all about letting that person know that what they said was actually sent and received to the person that they were directing it to.
Speaker 3:And so, Andy, with that, let's say it's brilliant Adam yeah, kind of go into.
Speaker 2:you can jump on that absolutely. But then my question will be what are some ways to start building that verbal, I guess, plethora of responses? Or are there any kind of not to coin it this way but catchphrases or anything like that that are good, easy, defaults under pressure that people can use to make sure that they receive, or let that person know that they received, the communication? You've already used some, but are there any good ones?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll mention by category six different forms of validation. It'll help people think about what validation can be, and these are not my invention. These levels of validation come from a particular school and mode of thought and psychotherapy known as dialectic behavior therapy. Dialectical behavior therapy, to be precise, and created by the great Dr Marshall Linehan, and the validation levels that we integrate in our education are based on the six levels of validation in DBT Listening and observing.
Speaker 1:That's like the use of physical expressions, parallel language, conferring to another human being that they are absolutely seen, heard and understood. And then observation statements. I see you changing a tire with a tire iron that has an end of it sharpened. That doesn't mean anything other than I'm observing it. And, like you said, adam, I hear you saying there are nanobots coming out of the shower head Doesn't mean I agree that there are nanobots coming out of the shower head. It just means I hear you saying that and I'll explain why that's so useful.
Speaker 1:Accurately reflecting what has been stated. Other people might have heard that as mirroring or reflection statements. I hear you saying do I have it right that you claim this? Accurately reflecting what has been stated is a second way of doing this validating. The third way is describing what they haven't said yet. So let's say someone is smashing a phone to a million pieces because they're angry at what someone else did, but they never say that they're angry, they're just describing what the other person did. That SOB did this to me and that to me and they're destroying some property and I say, wow, that looks like you really feel offended and angry at that person. Yeah, don't you think what? Are you Sherlock Holmes? Well, they may say that to me, but what I'm trying to do there is get them to attach a feeling word to what they're experiencing. There are neurobiological reasons that the moment that that happens, when we have a feeling word that lands on the feeling that someone's experiencing and they really agree with that appraisal, that word that instigates the cognitive process of reappraisal, which is linked and we don't know why, but it's just true, it's linked to the parasympathetic nervous system and people calm down.
Speaker 1:We also call that emotional labeling. When we help someone use a feeling word to describe an emotional state, the next level of validation might be in terms of history. Well, man, if I had gone, I've gone through that too I know what that feels like. I know what it's like to be in jail. I know what it's like to not have a job. I know what it's like to be in a car wreck.
Speaker 1:When we validate in terms of history because we potentially share experience, or that we recognize that someone's history could be driving what we're doing, that has a very salutary effect Validating in terms of current circumstances.
Speaker 1:Man, if I were going through what you were going through right now, I could totally see why you'd be upset or shared experience in radical genuineness. Level six, where there's genuine intimacy and shared experience because of, let's say, two people have a history of deep and profound loss or neglect or abuse or alcoholism. I mean I'd say that as someone who's coming on their fifth year of sobriety, one of the best experiences I have had in living a life of sobriety is knowing that there are others I can talk to who know what that feels like and can share in their genuineness by understanding that whatever suffering I went through was not something I had to go through alone. They know what that feels like. So that would be the best way for me to describe a whole range of validation and things for the listener to consider in their own journey of developing some skill at this.
Speaker 2:No, that's excellent, and congratulations on five years. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you what I would suck at communicating anything like that to you, because my family, like extended family, throughout history has had extended periods of alcoholism and whatnot, and so I've never partook. And so, because I've never partaken, I would not be able to communicate that well with you. I'd sit there and go. I don't know what that's like, but I think that's really cool that you have overcome that challenge for sure, and to your point, though, with that, one of the easiest ways, I think, is through shared experience. And so, for instance, you get a lot of guys out there who are maybe if you're living, especially in a bigger city like Seattle or Chicago or someplace like that, where there's a lot of displace people who are having mental health issues and whatnot, and you come across them. Oftentimes there's a good chance one of them's a veteran, and so if you are someone, for instance, who is a military veteran, that is one easy way to default to a shared experience. Hey brother, I served too. I know what it's like, or that war sucked. There's the ways to connect just on a default level like that. And you also talked about people who have been incarcerated before. If you are someone who's incarcerated and you've come across somebody else who might have gone to jail, or it looks like they just got out. Maybe one of the things they say is man, I just got out and my girl? I find out my girl left me and this and that, and they're just freaking out on the street. Then, hey, man, I was in too. That's a really easy way to create connection with somebody, for sure, and so one of the things that I find interesting is the stuff that you brought up, the number one thing that you brought up, by the way, with communication, or all the different, the six different methods that people can use. You talked about listening and posture, and not to bring up another military example, but in the military we talked about, or we were taught, that you had to go into what's called parade rest and, for those that don't know, basically your hands go behind your back and you stand with your feet, you have a shoulder width apart and you stand there at a position where it's fairly rigid, and the idea is that you're open. You're open to communication, because one of the quickest ways is folding your arms and that kind of shows that you're closed off to communication, even if you're not necessarily. That's the communication physically, that happens, and so, for those that are listening and not watching, andy was actually showing things, like putting his hand on his chin. As he's leaning forward, his eyes are looking forward at the person that he's would be talking to. So like listening and communication.
Speaker 2:What's interesting is that, in influence and con artists actually use listening and posture as the number one way to get people to do what they want them to do. And, in the end, that's the one of the few ways that, in my opinion, de-escalation and influence intersect is that there's actually a lot of similarities. Where you have somebody that is in a crisis, in a bad position, how are you going to influence them, de-escalate their situation to get them back to a position where they're back in some sort of control? And, for sure, the number one way and Andy brought it up and hit the nail on the head is your posture and the fact that you are listening. And again, going back a little bit, you notice that Andy had talked about saying I hear you say this again.
Speaker 2:That is back to listening, and so making sure that you are listening, you're letting that person know you're listening, you're showing the posture that you're listening is going to be a great, I guess, if anything else, in my opinion, a great way to get the ball rolling on being solid, or starting to become solid, in de-escalation. That doesn't mean, though and, andy, I'm sure you can jump into this and I'd like you to and that doesn't mean, though, as you're focusing on de-escalation, that you are not ready to physically protect yourself Is your safe still going up, that's exactly right, or is it, or am I wrong?
Speaker 1:No, you're 100% right. In fact, I think that there have been forces that have not been helpful in the, let's say, public information about de-escalation being willing to lead someone to a place where they can calm down is generally better respected when it comes from a place of strength, when someone else can see your self-regulated effect, your confidence, your competence. That allows the effort of de-escalation to potentially be more respected than when really appeals to, let's say, calmer states that someone might make that are value statement-oriented because it's just better to do for humanity Like the last thing someone wants to hear when they're angry is a value statement on how their anger is impacting others around them and making them feel uncomfortable. I've never seen anybody respond positively to the proposition when they're in crisis and they're angry and now I'm there as a result of the crisis that the method to calm them down is to let them know how terrifying their behavior is to everyone around them and how it needs to stop. That doesn't incentivize someone to stop. What incentivize someone to stop is that when we get around through validation their experience of us initially as a potential threat or risk, and we assist them in marshaling self-control so they can make decisions to get their need met. That's how we're really making the world a better place and they are more apt to respect what I'm trying to do if they experience in us who are doing this, the innate, quiet, implied ability that, look, if this goes in a direction that's potentially physical, I'm ready for it to go that way and I would prefer that it doesn't. So that's why we're gonna focus on all this other possibility here.
Speaker 1:Now. There are some people who may believe that that's something that they could never achieve. They might feel, for any number of reasons, that I am not gonna be perceived as a risk or a threat physically to anybody and I'm not proposing that you are. What I'm proposing is that when you have the ability, let's say through some kind of meaningful competence-based training in personal safety where you know how to defend yourself, when you live with that competence and confidence, you can lean into de-escalation a little bit more. This is the basis of spear care with Tony Blower, for example. You are not able to lean into de-escalation if you're afraid. So we want awareness of our own fear and how that works. And then, if we can deal with the learning that's necessary for us to acquire a sense of competence, not necessarily to fight, but to just know that we're not gonna be a victim. That's gonna help immensely in any de-escalation effort you have with particularly a stranger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and one of the things there's a I'm gonna use a phrase, I'm gonna paraphrase a little bit, but there's a wounded tiger is the most dangerous and it's I believe it's a Chinese proverb of some sort, if I'm not mistaken but the when you when for people that are listening, when you think about it, a lot of people, when they're in those crisis moments, are that wounded tiger and that's where, and that could be for a myriad of different reasons, but they're emotionally or mentally unstable at that time. And you know physical things. Things can get physical pretty easily if you're not careful, which is why it's so important that you also show that you are not. You're not gonna just be a Eat, a free meal or a victim. You don't have to be a tiger yourself. You can just be a porcupine, you know. Let him know hey, if you approach me, you know it's not gonna feel good.
Speaker 1:That's a great example. The porcupine example is a great one, you know, because the there's no virtue in Helplessness that, generally speaking, is respected. There's virtue in restraint. So I have extraordinary, I feel extraordinarily aware and respectful of someone who has, let's say, great visual and visible capacity to control a situation, but exercises grace so that I have an opportunity to choose and participate in Whatever the outcome of the situation is. Imagine it's like. Imagine someone Saying I see that you're suffering. I can appreciate that you're angry and feeling not in control right now.
Speaker 1:Safety here in this place is very, very important and we will assure that things are safe. If you can tell me a little bit more about what's going on, perhaps we can find a better way to solve your problem than what you're doing. That way you can keep your liberty and freedom out here doing what you're doing in a way that's Getting your needs met. Imagine if a big, ominous looking person who was physically capable said things to me that way. I'm looking at them, knowing Potentially well this person could contain me. But they're not doing that. They're, they're trying to lead me to where I choose To be safe, I choose to collaborate, I choose to be in relationship. So the unspoken Quality of this person is Look, we can go any direction you want this to go, but I'm trying to help you get to a place where you can make a decision on your own and Maintain your freedom and your dignity. That's a much different deal and it takes longer to do. Takes longer to do that than it does to just Contain someone or isolate them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so and that's actually interesting because you brought that up a couple times in it and I didn't think about this until you started bringing it up on your like, your, your side, you know chats where you have the, you know you have your pipe chat I think is what you call it on LinkedIn and and what. What it was is, you know, talking about how Too many people, even in the, the, the, the healthcare industry, default too much to physical restraint and To to that effect. I mean we can talk about that for sure, but to kind of parallel that. That's part of why a big part of why I wanted you on is because there's too many people, I think, that default to just the kicking and punching aspect, without considering all the other options that they have at their disposal before it even gets physical. And there's too many times where I watched for my own personal, I guess, if you will, educational purposes, where I'll watch On YouTube or whatever else violent encounters where half the time it's a guy who had Somebody like you talked about early on.
Speaker 2:You know, somebody say something to them they weren't regulating themselves, and so they get angry or offended. They then move up. They say, hey, what do you, what did you say to me, or whatever? And they get in their face and all of a sudden the guy gets Stabbed at some point and he could have avoided the whole freaking thing had he just started by regulating and Himself. And then, yeah, I'm going on to that de-escalation. So like, do you see too often that people in the health care industry or anywhere else Default to physical control first, or what do you think? What do you think is the problem there, if there's any? And then? And then how are you solving it or helping others solve that issue?
Speaker 1:The problem is everywhere. It's with parents and families who engage in control and suppression rather than trying to empower and Lead. And there and there's no judgment in that we have some big problems in our family systems across the country right now for a number of very serious reasons, to where youth and family organizations are now meeting episodes of crisis in the home and providing Peer support specialists, parents support specialists, family support specialists, social workers and being present during day-to-day interactions between parents who are either living with mental health challenges or socioeconomic challenges or Addiction and substance use, and they have kids and they're in need of support. So the problem of suppression and control is Seen there. It's seen in health care, it's seen in public safety, as you know. It's seen in corrections, it's seen in schools, where we actually have seclusion rooms and public schools, and the problem is exactly what we've been talking about, adam. 99.9% of the time, people are initiating control procedures during a state of limbic system activation. There arousal level has been Influenced by the presentation of the other person and they're doing what comes natural to controller, suppress the other human being.
Speaker 1:And if I told you the events that have been on the media, that have gone bad, where I have been called by a city government or a state Agency to render some kind of opinion about what happened. You you would know the names of the people of that were in the media where that kind of event occurred. Someone was presenting discontroller, dysregulation. They were met with a response that was suppressive or controlling in nature and somebody died or was seriously injured. I get a lot of those phone calls and I go to a lot of places to try to help leaders fix those problems and the problem I Would say is in the individual context, helping someone develop a capacity to self-regulate. In the cultural context, if the culture enables Control and suppression and rewards it, it makes it even harder. So you can think of communities where there's Control culture, gang culture, prison culture, control culture can make it very challenging to develop a skill set where we're gonna lead someone to a state of self-regulation as opposed to control.
Speaker 1:The problem is the outcomes of Physically controlling other human beings are generally not good. I don't know if you're familiar with the work of Bob scales in the state of Washington, but he helps large, let's say, government agencies create data dashboards on use of force and he's come up with about 150 or 154 key performance indicators in use of force events in Bob's dashboards. The most common thing that is found in a bad use of force incident is responder emotional dysregulation. Every single use of force event that was determined to be bad Contemplated dysregulation by the responder in 16,000 Events that were in subject to the research. 16,000 that's astonishing.
Speaker 2:No, that's, that's insane, I mean to think, to think that really the baseline of all the problems that even law enforcement faces is gonna be based off of the self-regulation, for instance, as an example, or someone who is in the you know, mental health, like nursing capacity or something like that. All those times that things went wrong had to do with Themselves not being able to control themselves in that moment. And I think that goes to a deeper thing and this and we talked about how we wanted to keep it somewhat on a Basic level and then go into the weeds. And this is where I think we start going into the weeds a little bit, andy, and that is To me, I think, a lot of the. That problem is the some. It could be summarized in a the.
Speaker 2:It's a question of identity, if you will, and where you have one person who is in a crisis of identity that's usually where crisis comes from is that somehow their identity is shattered their white, you know, their wife cheated on them. You know with somebody or left them for somebody else and took their money, and you know their dog and their kids and everything else, or Somebody you know, let's say, like somebody lost their job or was gonna get fired. That's where, you know, some workplace violence stuff comes in. A lot of that has to do with identity and that's where I think a lot of people go wrong too is if somebody calls me a name or, you know, says your mama, as is the school yard, you know, joke used to be. It's like well, that's part of my identity. And that's where people get upset, that's where people get offended, because now you're questioning my identity or you're trying to Smash my identity in some way. And so now I have to show you and really it's more myself that my identity is valid, that that who I am is valid, and you're going to see it and I'm gonna make sure you see it. And so in that, in that world you know, world of I, you know talking about identity, I'm leaving it pretty open, but the idea is that you know where.
Speaker 2:So, since so many people go wrong in in physically controlling people because they are allowing their identity to come first over the person they're trying to serve, where can we apply this for somebody who maybe isn't in that field? That isn't really there. I'm not here to serve you, guy like I'm just. I'm just normal Joe. You know, citizen, that I'm trying to just get on my way, I'm trying to get to work or I'm trying to have a good time with my family at, you know, the mall or something like that, and you're ruining everything, what you know. Like we should still be in the service mindset Correct. Like we should still try to serve and love others, not just ourselves, in those moments if we want to make the world a better place, I would suggest we do.
Speaker 1:You know the the uptrends on episodes of anger and aggression in our places of work, in our retail spaces, in our shared community spaces. You know, I think of courtyards and you know Like food courts, those kinds of common shared space. The reason I mentioned that, adam, is you know you're you're referring to it as a question of identity and using those terms, I would say, the more that we anchor our sense of Identity on what others are saying about our identity, the more we're going to have problems. Being told to go screw myself don't no longer moves my needle. Someone telling me to go f myself Does not move my needle because their opinion of me is not important.
Speaker 1:I have a sense of who I am. That is a result of what I've done in my life to acquire that sense and that's more than just a cliche, where you know, I know who I am, I know my identity. No, really, I've gotten to a place today, in my mid fifties, where there are very, very few things, very few, where someone's opinion or statement is going to move my emotional needle in a way that's going to drive behavior that I can't control. My wife has the unique ability to get me going, but there probably is no one else who really knows how to do that, unless I've become very vulnerable with them. But the more in love and service we can Treat others the way that we would want to be treated which is an axiom as old as the Bible the more that we can do that, the more that we're gonna make the world a better place.
Speaker 1:And we are in a culture today that is being fed by technology and and Mainstream media messaging that my consciousness and awareness is constantly on what you just described as identity, me myself, how, my Appearing in the world. And if you assail that, if you threaten that in some way, I guess I have to defend that and try to control you, because my sense of myself is now being compromised because of what you just said or did and what a what a waste of time. More than ever, I think our culture has become Enraptured with that myth, especially kids. Kids who have been leveraged by the power of technology to To engage the world through a series of selfie images, to regulate or try to control what others think of them. Where's the real substance there?
Speaker 1:Yeah you know where is the real person when you have to invest so much time in projecting an image and having the image be so fragile that someone making some kind of caustic or or or Offensive statement threatens that to the extent that you now become angry. Someone could someone, even in the professional domain. Today, adam, someone can come to me and say you know what, andy, you suck as a deescalation educator. That's not going to move my needle Because I know I'm good at this and I don't need your opinion to Give me a sense at all that I'm not good at it. It's not going to make a dent in my opinion about that and that is that's not just acquired because I just choose to believe it. That's something I've had to work through as an adult. So I think the big challenge today with our youth is getting them to invest in practices that give them a strong sense of Identity that doesn't require what other people think or believe about it To do anything to them.
Speaker 2:Sure, and also to what you kind of said about Youth and social media, actually comes up to something that I think is actually quite an advantage in what you do and what you teach, and that is because people are so conditioned now to Look at social media and have superficial appearances with each other and then respond, you know, with superficial responses, and everyone knows subconsciously in some way, shape or form, even if they don't realize it, that it is Superficial and that the connections are superficial and that the opinions are superficial, but they still take it to heart. And so what's an advantage of what you do and what you teach is that, since people are not, especially in today's generations, not conditioned to actually have real Connection and real communication, having that self-regulation and then being able to communicate, like you said hey, I hear that you believe, or I hear you say that you see these things, you know on the walls, nando's on the walls, like all those things, that that kind of communication a lot of people aren't going to be able to know a Necessarily how to necessarily respond in a negative way to that because like, oh my gosh, what is this? I have someone's connecting with me, someone's communicating with me, and it's a pretty raw and real and emotional and open and Exposed. There's no filters or anything like that kind of conversation. And so, just on the day-to-day practice, being able to invest in what you do and learn from someone like you and what you guys do at Jumpstart Mastery is going to be a huge boon.
Speaker 2:Just an overall communication, because people don't know, aren't they're just not trained to have those kind of interpersonal communication Skillsets in the first place, and that gives you a huge advantage in being able to better acquire Somebody's under like an emotional state and being able to help regulate them, so long as you yourself are Regulated and so and you talked about how you've had to work years at it and if we were to go down what, how we can get to that point of self-regulation for a lot of people, you know Whether that be philosophy or mentality we'd be here for another six hours, I'm sure right.
Speaker 1:It's different for everybody. There's a road to that is different for everybody.
Speaker 2:So with that, you know we'll have to save that maybe for another podcast episode in the future on how to how we can get to that point of identity and self-regulation. But we're coming, we're coming up to that hour now, so let's let's get into a little bit about a little bit more about what you do, what you offer and what people that are listening can do to engage In in what you offer or what other people you recommend offer, so that they can get a better handle on deescalation and Self-regulation, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:Hmm, thank you, adam. Jumpstart. Mastery comm is a website that offers a network community of public safety, behavioral health and workplace violence prevention. Just to quickly address something you said earlier About everyday people having these skills, I never thought Until pandemic that I'd be getting phone calls from large fortune 500 corporations that are standing up huge departments to help employees Feel safe and be safe in the workplace because of more and more adverse events that are occurring in lobbies, showrooms, distribution centers, offices, and the employer can no longer turf these events to the emergency response system. They're either too late getting there and the events already happened, or the outcome is one that the employer doesn't want, where someone's arrested. Corporations now are standing up inward facing behavioral responses to employees and crisis and Requiring this kind of training that we do. I never thought I would get that phone call until pandemic, but since then, so much of what I do now is Not only public safety and behavioral health and fire EMS, but it's it's, let's say, department store chains, telecommunications companies, people who want to develop support for workforces with these skills at work.
Speaker 1:Jumpstartmasterycom provides digital content that people can have access to online masterclasses, weekly live learning sessions, pre-recorded Sessions that are in a vault where people can go back and see just the wide Diversity of experts that we've had visit our space over the years providing learning. It's a subscription based service. You can get free access right away and there's a lot of free content. There's a subscription that you can also undergo for 27 bucks a month and have access to digital content. Or if there's just masterclasses that you want to purchase and not necessarily Engage in the network environment, you can do it that way and that's all at jumpstartmasterycom.
Speaker 1:And then I do a lot of, let's say, collaborative work with other organizations that are trying to engage in reform in a variety of domains. The Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint is an organization that I support a great deal who are trying to end the use of seclusion and restraint in schools. Tony Blower's organization, spear you know the spear organization and his training approach known as spear care, which is meant for healthcare environments or environments where we don't have duties or responsibilities to Restrain but rather we want to avoid the use of containment procedures. I try to support Tony's work with spear care in those settings and the I enjoy the collaboration. I collaborate with hostage negotiation Very visible people if I mentioned their names you'd know them instantly. We're trying to do, work together in creating content to share these principles with the world. So come check us out at jumpstart mastery and become part of our community. I don't think you'll regret it.
Speaker 2:No, that's excellent and actually one thing I want to add to is for everybody listening is that he mentioned 27 bucks a month for membership and, realistically, how much do you spend on McDonald's, right? I mean, right now, you spend 40 set. You can easily spend 40 plus bucks for a family of four. Trust me, I know, to get you know the family, you know some food and so, if you can, you know, invest that $27 to start learning from some of the best people in the world on this subject. And Obviously it's going to and he mentioned it it's more than just for first responders. Where it's law enforcement, military, it's also going to be for people who are in the workplace, I mean, and in everyday life, whether that be corporate, whether that be retail, it doesn't matter. Every you know this type of skill set applies to everybody and that's what's really awesome about what you do, andy, and I appreciate you coming on the podcast, taking the time to speak with me. I had a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love your approach to get into it in the future for sure, yeah, me too.
Speaker 1:I hope we can do it again and and having a Talk in the future about ways that people can develop a capacity for self-regulation, ideas that we can propose, things that I've seen others do, sharing my own story. I would love to have that conversation and I thank you so very much for what you're doing in trying to help, let's say, the vast majority of People in our country who are in need of a sense of safety about themselves and how they can create. That is a Noble, noble endeavor. So well done, adam Jolly and the real self-defense podcast. Thank you for what you're doing.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you, brother. Thank you so much for being on and we'll catch you next time in Wow guys. So Andy Prisco Absolutely crushed it and all the conversations that I've had with them before they podcast and after. He's always been a person that comes from a place of deep Understanding and tries to internalize what you're saying before he speaks and Response to you, and that is something that I struggle myself with. I don't actually pause all the time and internalize what you're saying before I respond, and that is a weakness of mine.
Speaker 2:Andy does not have that weakness and that is the sign of a really strong communicator, and so take advantage of what he's saying in this podcast episode, as well as the offerings that he has on the different courses. One of his courses was $27 monthly, and that gives you an Exorbitant amount of training on all aspects when it comes to de-escalation, crisis management, and it gets you the springboard. You need to really get better at Multiple facets of life, whether that be from a professional or a personal capacity. So absolutely take advantage and reach out to Andy if you appreciated this podcast and what he offered, and let him know, through jumpstart mastery, what you thought about this episode or what he thought what you thought about what he said and you know, say thank you, that'd be, I think. I think that would mean a lot to him, because that's the kind of person he is. He is very personable and I really appreciated what he took the time to speak to us about.
Speaker 2:Absolutely take advantage of what he's saying, guys, and, like I've said before, please be sure to give us a five star review on iTunes or wherever you found this podcast, and Let the algorithm know that you appreciate this, so that other people can also acquire the same opportunity for training like you guys are getting right now and what I'm trying to give you right now. So, train today, guys, protect tomorrow. I appreciate you. I will catch you, guys, the next episode. Take care.
