Your Therapist Needs Therapy 94 - Healing Belongs to the People with Bruno Lenzi

Jeremy is joined this week by a fellow therapist, community organizer, and honestly one of his favorite humans, Bruno Lenzi. Jeremy and Bruno talk about the power of collaborative and dialogical therapy, community healing, and resisting colonial models of mental health. From massive public therapy circles to revolutionary reading groups and access for people from all socioeconomic statuses, Bruno offers a vision of what mental health can look like when it’s led by the people, not institutions. This conversation blends theory, joy, political urgency, and the importance of tabletop gaming without fascists. We even get to namedrop a few of our favorite fantasy authors.

Bruno is doing such amazing work, you can learn more at assimsc.org.br (English speakers just hit the translate button in your browser!), and on Instagram. You can check out Bruno’s book here, and other resources for free at the Taos Institute Worldshare Books. If you want to learn more about the Taos Institute and social construction and dialogic practices, you can check out the Taos Institute Commons with some self-paced courses, in addition to many opportunities to connect with like-minded professionals. 

Jeremy has all his practice info at Wellness with Jer, and you can find him on Instagram and YouTube. To show your love for the show you can pick up some merch! We appreciate support from likes, follows, and shares as well!

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Podcasts about therapy do not replace actual therapy, and listening to a podcast about therapy does not signify a therapeutic relationship.

If you or someone you know is in crisis please call or text the nationwide crisis line at 988, or text HELLO to 741741. The Trevor Project has a crisis line for LGBTQ+ young people that can be reached by texting 678678.

Transcript

Your Therapist Needs Therapy - Bruno Lenzi - 2025/04/10 09:01 CDT - Transcript

Attendees

Bruno Lenzi, Jeremy Schumacher

Transcript

Jeremy Schumacher: Hello and welcome to another episode of Your Therapist Needs Therapy, podcast where two mental health professionals talk about their mental health journeys and how they navigate mental wellness while working in the mental health field. I'm your host, Jeremy Schumacher, licensed marriage and family therapist. To support the show, do those internet things that helps people find my work and the people who I have on. Today I have a guest who I have selfishly kept in my back pocket because he's a wonderful human being and anytime I get the chance to converse with him, it brightens my day. And so I've kept him for a moment of need and if anyone's paying attention to what's going on in the world,…

Jeremy Schumacher: I decided now is that time where I need to have a conversation with Bruno. So today I am joined by ay. Bruno, thanks for joining me.

Bruno Lenzi: Thank you for having me. It's such a pleasure and I'm surprised by these introduction words because I feel the same when we're together in our multiple online meetings and…

Bruno Lenzi: We won't have video on the podcast but I always connect to your posters on your background and I have my own post books connecting to your posters and I was like my god Jeremy is familiar it's a friend from the  All right.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yes. Yes.

Jeremy Schumacher: So, Bruno, you're my first guest from South America, so I'm crossing some continents off. So, I'm excited to talk a little bit about some of the cultural differences in our practices. but I want to start with the same question I always start with, which how did you end up in the mental health field? What was your journey to the mental health spaces?

Bruno Lenzi: I'm speaking from Florenopoulos, Santa Katarina, Brazil, which is a very small island that is capital of our state. It's the second state of Brazil from south to north. So the second one, we have a little island. that's the capital of the state.  So we have a culture of being a small tourist island and at the same time having our federal university. So people from all over the state and the country come to study around here. We have a very academic and u knowledge production community.

Bruno Lenzi: personally my mother founded our association after she graduated from psychology in our town here. She was from the first group of students that got Psychology wasn't even a lawful profession in Brazil at the time.  So she was graduated and afterwards we had the law recognizing the psychologist profession and she began studying psychonamics working with families with kids in the hospital. But with the kids there were always the parents.

Bruno Lenzi: And then she began to meet the limits of psychonamics and began to study family therapy. That was when together with a few colleagues they founded an institute founded by students that hired their teachers to train them in family therapy. I love this story because from the beginning it is made by the people that want to learn not by a few of us that want to teach.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: They wanted to learn to become and they hired their teachers. So right after her graduation in family therapy, she kept building this knowledge, teaching new students, new groups.  And this was in 1987. Since then when I got graduated in psychology in 2011. And after I made how do we a quick internship in Houston with Harleen Anderson at the Houston Galveston Institute.

Bruno Lenzi: I came back to our institute to teach and…

Bruno Lenzi: practice collaborative and biological therapy. that's the long story part

Jeremy Schumacher: And no,…

Jeremy Schumacher: that's good. That's perfect. there's so much in there that I want to talk about. Harleen is our sort of common factor where our professional paths have crossed with the Talis Institute. Harleen, I've talked about it on other podcasts, but really is the reason I'm still in therapy because in grad school, I had a lot of the evidence-based practice stuff and I hadn't found the fit for how I approached therapy. And Harleen's Conversations, Language, and Possibility, was like, not only can I do therapy, hooray, but also someone else is doing it the way that my brain wants to do it."

00:05:00

Jeremy Schumacher: And so she's very foundational in my work. I've met Harleen and I told her she was my therapy crush. And Harleen's this little old lady and I'm in my 30s, so she was very taken aback. But, really truly, for the field of psychology, maybe not a super recognizable name, but for the work that I have,…

Jeremy Schumacher: she's as big of a celebrity as can be. So, I want to talk about Houston Galveston and the Talis Institute, but I'm curious…

Bruno Lenzi: Mhm. Uhhuh.

Jeremy Schumacher: because you grew up with a parent in the field that you're in. Was that sort of something that you were drawn to? Was that something that you like bristled against and pushed against? My dad teaches my dad, both my parents are teachers and my dad teaches AP psychology, the college level course in high school. And so people are often like, "Oh, so you want to be a therapist because your dad" I was like, "No, no, no, absolutely not.

Jeremy Schumacher: so I'm curious what that was like for you. If that was something that spoke to you early on or that was something that you wrestled with or how that journey went

Bruno Lenzi: Mhm. Yeah, of course. I have a story about that. And I would begin with our lunch times moments table when mom was talking about arresting moments with clients, adventures that she was able to live through their stories. and she would share with us those moments,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.  Yeah. Okay.

Bruno Lenzi: it seemed exciting moments, very tense and everything was never the same, right? It was always something new and that seems like something that I could spend quite a few years doing.  But when I told her, she was taken a back. she was scared because she was like, "My son, it's not an easy life. it is not easy money. It is not easy life. It is and it's not because you're my son that any door will be open because it's not like that.

Bruno Lenzi: she has her practice and I have to have my clients and my clients will stay with me because of my work, my abilities, my connections. but I was very confident at the time. our family was already very into self-development and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Okay. Sure.

Bruno Lenzi: family development and quality time, dialogue, conversation.  and mom is a family therapy of course at that time around to close to 2010. We were not yet introduced to collaborative and dialogical practices but we were already dating narrative therapy and the amazing paper of not knowing from Hardin and Harry.

Bruno Lenzi: so introduced, yes, but not as intimate to the work. Anyways, I chose to follow this path. And what happened afterwards was that when I was close to graduation, mom said, "Okay, it seems that you took it seriously. You're graduating. So now you have to do something different.  You have to bring something that will really make you your own ist, make you Bno therap the therapist and not mom's son.  So we talked about and I talked about with my teachers and you were thinking of Australia and New Zealand to learn from narrative therapists or Houston to learn from Harding.

Bruno Lenzi: And at that time I was a little more into the conversation and I was really in love passionate about the concept of not knowing of witness and being public as a therapist. So it is hardening for me.  I went to Houston, spent five to six weeks over there with them and came back with my own identity and all the conflicts that it came with because I wanted it to be our focus.

00:10:00

Bruno Lenzi: I was already very critical about the way we were practicing family therapy like all the mixed not very rigorous doing of it and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Mhm.  Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: and then we had a very turbulent season of becoming social constructionists and after a few more  radically collaborative and dialogical practitioners.

Jeremy Schumacher: And I think I'll speak a little bit for most of my audience is therapists in America like the postmodern therapies are sort of grouped together as collaborative language which is what Bruno and I connect over narrative therapy which is the Michael whites from Australia to New Zealand and solution focus which I'm in Milwaukee Wisconsin which is really where solution focus got its start. So that's got a historical context here and…

Bruno Lenzi: very different.

Jeremy Schumacher: I was trained by somebody who trained under INSU Kimberg who is one of the founders of the brief solution focused model. So those get grouped together but they're very different. and so they all sort of start from this philosophical place of postmodernism Michelle Fuko and different French philosophers in the 60s.

Jeremy Schumacher: But therapy and psychology in general is always I would say a decade or two behind where philosophy is. So it's like these postmodern movements hit the therapy world in the 80s about 20 years after they had been written about and talked about. So there's almost a weird cultural like lapse that happened sometimes. but shifting to social construction is a big shift because it is so very different even from the other postmodern philosophies of narrative and solution focused because it is moving away from that evidence-based model in America here. Not something insurance likes at all and if you're looking for reimbursement.

Jeremy Schumacher: So it is a big shift and then to really make it how you see everything. You're talking about this radical shift like it is it's a paradigm.

Jeremy Schumacher: It's hard to explain to people who haven't experienced it. It is a paradigm shift in how you view every single interaction you have with people.

Bruno Lenzi: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: And it's crazy because I remember listening to a conversation with Sheila McName from social constructionism and…

Bruno Lenzi: she was saying but our practice is based not their evidence-based our evidence because we really do practice based on our client based on their story their experiences.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: The whole collaborative and dialogical therapy was built with the clients from day one. So it's a very humanizing practice and every time I get very critical about it. I go back to the seinal texts and it is confirmed again as talking as a Latino person.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yes.

Bruno Lenzi: I am very critical about colonization. So I still stand with Harleen and because of their sensibility to how therapy can be a colonization pool and how collaborative and dialogue collaboration and dialogue resist colonization resist the deposit of ideologies on the minds of other.

Bruno Lenzi: And we cannot say that about many other practices that are being done by our colleagues.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yes. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: And western idea of the medical model, I would argue flatly is a colonizing tool. You are well and You are healthy and you is just a way to sort people and create these group outgroup dynamics.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: Yeah, that's…

Bruno Lenzi: why we do it over here on community based mental health. We are very critical and oppositional of the DSMs and CDs because we can't understand how this will help It will first of all alienate people from their identity giving them an general identity a box to fit in.

00:15:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: And that's already enough for us to resist it and to join people into learning and investigating their sufferings without the need of an external name for it. Unless they will benefit from security or…

Bruno Lenzi: or health insurance and then we will do a very concatizational process of this is not This is for the insurance. But you're way more than this few pages can ever describe.

Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: And even with I own my own practice so I don't need to diagnose but when it's helpful for the client doing a lot talking a lot about the language around diagnosis and doing a lot of meaning making for each person individually as opposed to saying this is what the diagnosis means asking what does this diagnosis mean to you we're using it as a shorthand it's a quick way to summarize an experience but that experience is unique and I think

Jeremy Schumacher: that's just so much more powerful than doing it the other way…

Bruno Lenzi: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: where you're just slapping a label on somebody and fitting them into a box. So, I do want to talk about the organization. your mom was one of the founders and that you work with because, doing community-based healing is really great for a lot of reasons, but also is a phrase that's getting thrown around a lot, especially in America right now as we're dealing with a fascist government and overtake.

Jeremy Schumacher: people are saying, " hey, indigenous communities, black and brown people have been doing community- based healing for a long time. Maybe we could learn from them." Which is " correct. Lovely." …

Bruno Lenzi: Of course.

Jeremy Schumacher: so yeah, do you mind talking a little bit about the association and sort of the community- based approach that you guys have been implementing for years now, we're been a long successful run.

Bruno Lenzi: Thank And if I may, we have the paper that we published recently translated to English and it's available on a book on the TAS Institute website. if people search for tal institute or dialogical practice worldshare books they will find it. We have five of our authoral papers published and translated to English available in a huge success for us and thanks to TA because they granted us a grant to do this work.

Bruno Lenzi: So we were paid to translate it and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: it made it so much more possible for us to share our work again to being anti-colonization and bringing our peripheral voices into the game. But over here we work with a synthesis of the community therapy as made by Adobe Bahetu huge name in Brazil. He began this practice synthesizing the dialogical aspects of Palo with indigenous and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yep.

Bruno Lenzi: anthropological knowledge. how do we say that in English? ancestral knowledge to make a very cultural sensitive practice that may be performed with a large number of people. So it's not like a traditional group therapy that we have I don't know seven, eight people. my teacher Marilyn Gesu which is in Brazil. She's a huge name in Brazil. She made as I know the biggest round of community therapy with,400 police officers.

Jeremy Schumacher: Wow.

Bruno Lenzi: The sky photograph that was took from this conversational wheel.  It's like a spiral of little heads, little dots that grows without end. And they had several microphones being thrown around so people could speak. But the main focus of community therapy is not only speaking, but it's connecting to a theme that is shared because we are under the same cultural umbrella.

00:20:00

Bruno Lenzi: We are under the same…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: if not in the city, in the state, in the country or in the west under late stage capitalism. We have a lot in common. So it's not about talking about the problems of one person, but how that theme represented by that person's examples.  So we can have material data connect to all of us in So we do our community therapy drinking a lot from these source but also mixing it and synthetizing it with the sensitivities of collaborative and dialogical practice.

Bruno Lenzi: Mainly when we give a lot of focus to our conversational questions to get the knowledge built from within the experience and in the way that we promote listening as a skill and sharing as being public and talking about my themes my experience in the first person not we. But my experience was that I did it this way and what worked for me was no. So we have four online groups of community therapy being facilitated by for our teams of two. So eight therapists that facilitates it.

Bruno Lenzi: The one I facilitate with a colleague it happens on Thursdays. Next week we have a meeting.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.  Yep.

Bruno Lenzi: It's an open group. So we have two of them that are open to everyone.  Of course, we speak in Portuguese, but we have evenos from Latin America that join our group and they try their portune Spanish and we make it work because the important thing is to listen to connect with other people.  We have a third one that is specific for women and now beginning a fourth one that is specific for black community, black population being facilitated by of course black therapists and it's very fenonian in their bibliographical references.

Bruno Lenzi: So again we are doing another synthesis to bring community therapy dialogue and…

Bruno Lenzi: transfons decolonizational texts and voice into this therapy. was a little broad but just to begin

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: And it's I mean, compared to what I think people have for a frame of reference, like you said, group therapy, people think six to 10, maybe 12 people. You do it for a couple of weeks and then your group therapy is done and that's the sort of very broken mental health system of and it's because it's cheaper, that's why people do it this way here. you pay less per session. but it's not what I have seen as collaborative practice.

Jeremy Schumacher: It is still individual people all coming together and there's some group dynamic but it is much more about each person's individual experience and…

Jeremy Schumacher: that can be healing when it's done well but it's not done necessarily at scale and it not done with any sort of consciousness around class or on culture. It's sort of still that medical model of the therapist who knows best and is running things.

Bruno Lenzi: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: Our groups have around 25 people nowadays. If we do more marketing and promotional stuff, we get a lot more people. We can get to 60 70 people. but we're holding it.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: We're always holding it. So we can manage the training all the other responsibilities.  But what I think it's very important about community therapy is that and it's so connected to our practice in practices, collaborative dialogical CD, is that the goal is for the therapist to disappear. The goal is for the community to talk. Okay, I'm here. I'm there just to make sure the time works.

00:25:00

Bruno Lenzi: We have 90 minutes. So we have to go through certain stages of the conversation. So we have the initial ice breaking so people can get comfortable in speaking and then we invite the first themes. We listen to three to five different clients and their themes from the night.  So right after this three to five sharings, the whole group selects the theme that made the more sense or maybe they got them moved. So we work with a quick election on the chat like I want Jeremy's story.

Bruno Lenzi: I went Bruno's story and we go with the simple majority because again we understand that the simple act of expressing and organizing all these abstract feelings into language and describing it to the group to several weird never seen before people.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: It has a lot of transformational power to already be challenging yourself into giving it words that you may never had the chance to say before. and then the group ask questions. that's something that I'm very proud of our work because we ask the community to get to know these people, this example, this theme. So they ask questions to get to know his or her experience.

Bruno Lenzi: That's the whole foundational principle of collaborative therapy investigating it the data to broaden the information and so with more knowledge we may access some creativity to work with it in different novel ways. So that's a very important stage for us. And finally we have the final stage of the people that were asking questions. the selected person will share their own experiences their testimonies of how they connected to that team and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: how they tried something to begin a overcoming process. So it's not the same thing. It's not so you do like that. No, no, no. I felt it's connected to the way I raised my kids and the way I did it was through studying positive education blah blah blah blah blah. it's never a suggestion. It's never counseling. It's always sharing different resources.

Bruno Lenzi: So if that one person wants to do something good, but it's for everybody and the questions are for everybody.  the one person will answer, but everybody's listening to those questions. And it's impossible not to think on apples if we're asking about apples, right?

Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: And that seems not just from the collaborative dialogue background, but also that's been a thing that you mentioned a little earlier for this organization. that it'ing It's been about meeting people where they're at so they can use these skills. Not that the therapist is needed to run the group, but that the community that the collaboration that's can then be used anywhere. Yep.

Bruno Lenzi: And then people wants to stay even if they're not going through that issue anymore. the group is free.

Jeremy Schumacher: Mhm. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: Our services are free.  So people stay and all yesterday I was talking to one of our clients because we have WhatsApp groups where everybody's in so we can share the link on the WhatsApp group and they get into our meeting session.  So they are always exchanging over there, always sharing something, a music, a song a text a video. And this one person was like, "I've been here for two years now, and I can't remember when I stop I stopped needing therapy, but I feel like I'm important to these people. I feel like I belong."

Bruno Lenzi: and he's one of our clients he's been with us for two years now. my god, it's crazy. we are always very aware and getting close to our as we say veteran clients because they have the experience. They always help us to bring in the new clients, the new people that are joining in that are a little uncomfortable with speaking large groups. And these are the community leaders that will really make it go forward and get characterized as a community therapy and not a group that it's always single session and…

00:30:00

Bruno Lenzi: has several persons. It has a continuity in the sense that the people are coming back…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: but it's always middle and end on the same session. Mhm.

Jeremy Schumacher: And healing through connection. I think that's one of the things when I talk about collaborative work that I do, it's so hard to explain to people how it works because they want that linear trajectory of healing. I don't really do that much in session. what techniques to use. I just try and try and be a person in the room with someone else and listen. and that is so healing for people.

Jeremy Schumacher: That is the connection of you're not alone and that other people care and…

Jeremy Schumacher: that your experience and is valid and people will listen to People will ask questions. it doesn't need to be solving problems or giving advice. It's that connection that creates the space where people can heal. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: It's incredible.

Bruno Lenzi: It's how simple it is. But at the same time, it's a simplicity that we are alienated from. We forgot how we need connection. We forgot how to humanize and be mutually humanizing practices. That is dialogue in my experience.  So we don't need to do anything if we're there connected being human beings and not professional therapists but being human beings that has a certain set of skills especially in listening.

Bruno Lenzi: I think my most favorite skill that I am always developing is my listening and my ability to feel with the person.

Bruno Lenzi: Not to feel stronger than my client but to feel with my client and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: the same intensity as they are feeling to connect. And this is humanizing. We have to be humans if we want to be healthy. And what is happening is that we're becoming our fessions, becoming our roles, becoming things that are not human. And you've got people sick.

Jeremy Schumacher: And it's not from that top down perspective either. There's no hierarchy where we're not feeling bad for our clients. We're not like, " you poor thing. Your brain is broken.

Jeremy Schumacher: That must be so difficult." we're joining with them instead of sort of being on that pedestal looking down on them. And that's a much different experience.

Jeremy Schumacher: And at least for my clients, not one they get from other professionals.

Bruno Lenzi: Yes. Yes.

Bruno Lenzi: we are very used to what we listen still hear a lot from our clients is that I didn't like it because only I spoke or she didn't say a thing for several sessions and then when he or she spoke she made a TED talk about my life and explained to me everything that I was going through and I was a little bit overwhelmed about

Jeremy Schumacher: right?  Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: all these explanation what I should and should not do and I was like my god yes again first of all people don't connect the therapists right don't respond and answer I'm saying respond to clients even nonverbally but being here feeling breathing with them and then second it's not about education it's therapy It's dialogue. It's not explaining. It's not educating people about their lives, about how to be normal. It's about an investigation. It's about learning more and more and more until all this knowledge brought to consciousness will inevitably foster creativity.

00:35:00

Bruno Lenzi: It is inevitable to be more creative.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yep. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: Creative after you're conscious to a reality. You cannot go back to the same thing after you you're conscious to that thing.

Jeremy Schumacher: And again, I'm just laughing because I'm thinking of times where I've tried to explain this process to people who are very rigid. I spent five years in higher ed, which is another very broken system in America. And just explaining I was using basically appreciative inquiry, which is another school of thought from that the TAS Institute has a lot of great folks who do that work.

Jeremy Schumacher: and using it for I worked with athletes so using it with the team captains so working on some mental health stuff with them and it's just sort of like what are you studying what are your measurements what are these things like no no no I'm letting them do it like I'm not doing it they're doing it and…

Jeremy Schumacher: it was just such this foreign concept as you're the leader you're the educator you're the therapist so you should be doing the

Jeremy Schumacher: most. I was like, "No, I should be doing the least." if I've done it right, I'm sitting back and letting them take over and they right, like you said, inevitably come to their own solutions and that works better. Then they don't need me.

Bruno Lenzi: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: They just go do it themselves.

Bruno Lenzi: There is a saying I think it was Harleen that it really struck and…

Bruno Lenzi: stayed in my heart after I've been to Houston that it was something like …

Bruno Lenzi: but is collaborative therap more faster than other therapy practices and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: Haren would say its it's not slower It is on my client's time. It's on my client's rhythm. I was like, go Harling. If it's not on the client's rhythm,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: 

Bruno Lenzi: it is not for the client. It's and I will say a lot to my students that we must resist the magical trick and how do you say New Year's when we get those fireworks not about fireworks and magic tricks on therapy even if the client goes like my god I loved that reflection that you made it's dangerous

Bruno Lenzi: It's dangerous to get clients dependent on their therapist therapists.

Bruno Lenzi: It's way better when the results the outcomes happen between sessions. When the client is just living their lives and suddenly they do something different. That's the outcome that we're looking for.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: I get a lot of feedback that This is weird. I'm recording this for public consumption, but I get a lot of feedback that I don't do a lot. but then I will simultaneously get feedback from other clients that say you're the therapist who's given me the most feedback I've ever gotten and so it's always I like getting feedback like that where people are coming in with some sort of expectation for how therapy is supposed to go and then that's like we build it together and so there isn't an expectation and that frees it up so much to have very different experiences.

Jeremy Schumacher: Occasionally I still get someone who's rigidly Give me homework. give me worksheets." and just reflecting that back, but it's one of those it's so joyful in a way that I never got with when I was in school and trying to implement treatment planning and some of this other stuff. to journey with someone is so much different.

Jeremy Schumacher: It just is a much different experience to sit with than I'm going to fix this. Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: And when we look at our mentors our teachers Hardin Ken Gagen they are old folks they are on their 80s forward and…

Bruno Lenzi: they're doing it Haren is coming to Brazil at the end of the month we're going to meet again.

Bruno Lenzi: Dear doing it with health,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: with life quality, and that's a road that I want to take to be able to keep working with it without burnout, without getting ill myself through my old age. that I don't mind working on the last day of my life…

00:40:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: because it's very intense and I can see myself having a heart attack with one of my clients. I hope they don't get traumatized, but it's something that fulfills us back because it's human connection. It's not one-sided. It's mutual.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah. how I don't want to put you in a place to speak for an entire country.

Jeremy Schumacher: But what's sort of just like I guess the general stance around mental health in Brazil? Is it something that's relatively accepted? Is I don't know buy Is there some work to get people invested in the process or…

Jeremy Schumacher: is it pretty like yeah this is a thing that's well accepted and people go to therapy and that's normal. Yeah. Okay.

Bruno Lenzi: Yeah, I don't think so.

Bruno Lenzi: It is always a struggle to talk about it. Of course, we're having a lot more success. It's not a taboo anymore. People talk about it. Of course it may be, but it's not the rule anymore. it used to be. But what I struggle the most is…

Bruno Lenzi: how colonized our views of mental health are. So people don't know and it's not their fault. It's hard to get some critical readings of mental health because the monopoly is so strong on over diagnosis as treatment. Come on.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: They Don't get me wrong. They work. But they won't strengthen you. it's like a surgery and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Right.

Bruno Lenzi: What really strengthens your body is physiootherapy. It's the recovery process,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Right.

Bruno Lenzi: not the surgery. If you don't do anything,…

Bruno Lenzi: the surgery may even impair your movement forever.

Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yes.

Bruno Lenzi: So mental health is a struggle to bring people to talk to us informally just to plant the seed and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: and then they get connected. I remember a very traditional family that I had as clients and one day after months the father would tell me but Bruno doesn't do therapy with us. He's like a family's friend. I was like, "Okay, if that's what he needs to be coming back in our month wide family therapy process, I can be the family friend." And that is therapy for them.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: That is transformational for them. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah. The class consciousness is I mean I'm rolling my eyes. It's a podcast. People can't see that, but Bruno see me roll my eyes. it's so we obviously have an authoritarian regime that is working against this and rolling things back like diversity and equity movements, but you're talking about France Fenan like somebody…

Bruno Lenzi: There was Heat.

Jeremy Schumacher: who wrote the 60s and 70s. This is not a new concept. and it's drawing from a lot of the philosophy like the books I have on my shelf in my office are first of all a bunch of high fantasy. It's my favorite author and then I have a shelf of comic books and then the very bottom is my therapy books but it's far more philosophy. It's Michelle Fuko and it's other DDo and it's books about propaganda and things like it's about being living through this modern life more than it is therapy books or self-help books.

Jeremy Schumacher: And I think clients are always surprised you don't have a lot of psychology books on your shelf. I'm like no that's not I don't know that that's how people heal. so I love just the class consciousness and that you have it accessible to so many people.

Jeremy Schumacher: That's a model that so many people are struggling to figure out how to make that work in America because we're so committed to a for-profit healthcare model, which isn't working for anyone but the insurance companies. And yet, it's very hard to divest from that

Bruno Lenzi: Yeah. And it is threatening and I like to be threatening but from time to time the psychology council will knock in our doors or people will get us into investigations because community based mental health doesn't need professionals to be medical professionals,…

00:45:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: physicians, psychologists need to be people sensitive to suffering.  It's the people wanting to connect and the preparation is very subtle. It's not the academic studying that will make great community therapists. And that's what we do in our institute. we're working with clients and they were like, "Oh, but I loved our experience so much. How can I become a therapist?" And I jumped in.

Bruno Lenzi: We have a 18month course where we train therapists from all over the place from all areas of professional background because to learn collaborative biological practice to learn social constructionism to learn community based mental health it is not on the universities it is on the streets it's with the people.

Jeremy Schumacher: right the people.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yes. Right.

Bruno Lenzi: Yes, we have to get out of this elitist intellectual herbs and go back to the neighborhood where people are leaving their struggles and learn with them.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah. And for people who are I'm a heady intellectual. That's what my brain likes.

Jeremy Schumacher: There is all this deep heavy stuff like reading a seinal text on social construction is not super easy you have to go slow and…

Bruno Lenzi: No. True.

Jeremy Schumacher: actually process what you're reading because it is kind of heavy steps but then in practice in application it is just very much about being a person who's connecting with another person and so I always appreciated that depth because it's not unscientific it's not anti-evidence It's just decolonized. and that's really lovely. And that depth that's there for the people who want the heady stuff and the thinking things and want to read the books and the texts that formed it. that's all stuff that you can really sink your teeth in. and you don't need to pass a test on that stuff to be able to relate to another person and create a helpful space.

Bruno Lenzi: Yes, absolutely.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: Yes, I too love my philosophy. I like to read my Vikingstein, my John Sharters, my Mikail Bing. But what I get from them is the do you know studios Gibli's Miyazaki? So he was ranting on anime and he was like anime is a mistake because the writers of anime they don't look to people they are fed in their little rooms writing their stuff from their mind but mazaki looks into life being lived and…

Bruno Lenzi: that's our philosophy That's what Bin was saying when he studied Dostoyavski's books how DSTOski was able to depict life self in his characters.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Right.

Bruno Lenzi: Vitinstein will say that we have to come back to the Horse in the meaning that that is not soft smooth horse reality of language, not the logical language,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, right. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: not the grammatical rules, but the rules as they are played in language games between people. I love those philosophies. they really have me going back to downtown and…

Bruno Lenzi: just living with people, looking at people, connecting to people. Yes.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. and…

Jeremy Schumacher: it always keeps it fascinating. continually I've been in therapy for 16 years and I'm like everyone's always so interesting. it's never boring when you have this approach when any conversation when the way somebody uses a word in a unique way or how their partner responds to a certain phrase that's always so new and fresh because you're meeting these people as the experts in their own life that they know what they're doing and that it's learning about them. And so it's always interesting.

00:50:00

Jeremy Schumacher: It's never like h another affair case or another whatever. it's always fresh and new gender.

Bruno Lenzi: Yeah. …

Bruno Lenzi: how boy scouts and girl scouts English in Portuguese it's just scouts. We don't gender this word. So scouts have their badges of merit.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: I always say that our students get one badge of merit when they say that they don't find any client boring anymore because that's a skill you build.

Bruno Lenzi: 

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: It's a very subtle and special skill to be able to be fascinated by any content that the client brings to the table.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah. Bruno, how are we doing for time? Do you have a few more minutes?

Bruno Lenzi: I have Yes.

Jeremy Schumacher: So fitting with the theme of the podcast, I'm curious just sort of you take care of yourself. What does cultivating joy look like in your life?

Jeremy Schumacher: As an American going through an authoritarian regime, I'm curious coming out of Bolsinaro running things in Brazil and where you're at now, what do you do to take care of yourself? What does sort of your process look like when you're not in the therapy space?

Bruno Lenzi: I was ready for this question.

Bruno Lenzi: I was wanting to get here and of course I have my therapy group. I do my therapy in a group.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: It's very rare to want an individual session nowadays, but when it happens, I have Adela Garcia, an Argentinian collaborative dialogical therapist. She is so amazing, and she speaks Spanish, but it's closer to Portuguese. So, I feel culturally easierly connected, but beyond therapy, and that's the important thing.  That's what keeps me hanging in this world. I am organized with the radical movement, with the communists here in Brazil. That really helps me to have a place not only to feel the anguish and class hate, but to work. So, we're working on occupations of people.

Bruno Lenzi: People are occupying these abandoned buildings and living there. So, we're working with them, protecting them legally. And I work with the therapy of the community and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: They have to be a community. It's not just neighboring. They have the community farming. They have the the community school, everything is com it's communal communally based sorry English that really helps me to fulfill my heart after all the draining of the news and getting the macro part of the oppression. yes, over here every week we're having more and more news of how the extreme right and the fascists are very well organized,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.  Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: very full of money to invest into propaganda and to invest getting into people's minds and hearts.  And the pueblo is being kidnapped by this propaganda.  If we don't do something with way less than they have, we will have them elected again and then the danger only goes forward, right? But when I'm not feeding my political self, I can feed my therapist self with philosophy.

Bruno Lenzi: really makes me happy to have my mind blown by a few words on the paper. I love it to melt my brain. And me and my wife, she's also a therapist. we were reading John Shart's book and we counted the time we were able to read 10 pages per hour.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: It's very very little for our rhythm. so hard it was to get to turn a page. And on my more informal and just relaxing time, I love my literat I love my role playing games. I play a Brazilian system that is based on Dungeons and Dragons on the third edition.  So they get the system but they do it the Brazilian system world building it's amazing with my very curated group of friends that we were able to connect countrywide to play together and there are no fascists between so selecting people that I will be able to be vulnerable that I will be able to have fun with without

00:55:00

Bruno Lenzi: the looming threat of a fascist word idea and position. I think these are the main health feeding resources today.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: I just finished reading Yellow Face. It's amazing. It's from the same author of The Poppy War. She's a Chinese American writer.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yep. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: Amazing writer. And maybe I'll go back to Middle Earth before the …

Jeremy Schumacher: I see some Ursula Kayla Gwyn back there. I'm seeing the sci-fi back there. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: You were the first one to see yoursel here. I forgot word. She's a recent purchase.

Jeremy Schumacher: purchase. You sure?

Bruno Lenzi: Purchase. Yes,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yep. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: she's a recent purchase.

Jeremy Schumacher: I've got my cinematic theaterized poster of Lord of the Rings behind me from Fellowship of the Ring.

Bruno Lenzi: I was looking for it.

Jeremy Schumacher: Ursula Ka Gwyn is a favorite of mine for Steven Ericson,…

Jeremy Schumacher: I don't know if you've read Mal and Book of the Fallen, but I'll do a plug here. that's there 10 books in the main series, and that's the top shelf in my office. And people always ask me " that's just my favorite series.

Bruno Lenzi: Remember finding hope in desperate times.

Jeremy Schumacher: If you like fantasy, that's my recommendation." Always nice to go to Middle Earth and see people get through the struggle together. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yes, for Bruno, this has been lovely.

Jeremy Schumacher: I try not to have expectations but this is what I hoped it would be. if people want to find more about your work, if people are able to support the work that you're doing, where can they go? How can they find you?

Bruno Lenzi: Yes. We have a website.

Bruno Lenzi: As s.org.br It's easier to find us through Instagram. We're still under Mark's monopoly of getting connected to people.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yep. Yeah.

Bruno Lenzi: We still have a little liberty. We're not harassed by him yet, but with asc. A S S I M S C. people can find me through my email. I have an Instagram. I don't like it. I try to forget I have it because it's hard to close it down. So I would love to connect with people through WhatsApp. So email it's easier. It's my name Bruno…

Bruno Lenzi: then P from my surname Pa P and Lindsay is L E N ZI dot I mean atgmail.com and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yes.

Bruno Lenzi: people can find my email and stuff on Google with our publishings. So if we search for lensy dialogical practice something it will show up.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. yes, it does come up.

Jeremy Schumacher: you're the only Bruno Lindsay therapist when I searched for it.

Bruno Lenzi: Good Yes.

Jeremy Schumacher: But also that the world share Anttowis has a lot of publications that are free to download. you mentioned that earlier. So we'll also link to that if people want to find those articles that are translated. Some of them are up just on the interwebs as well too. As I was prepping the podcast, I found some of them without downloading the book. So that stuff is out there. We will have links to all that. great stuff in the show notes.

Bruno Lenzi: Thank you.

Jeremy Schumacher: Bruno lovely as always. Thanks for taking the time to join me today.

Bruno Lenzi: I had a lot of fun. Let's do it again.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, sounds good. And to all our wonderful listeners, thanks for tuning in again. We will be back next week with another new episode. Take care, everyone.

Meeting ended after 01:00:06 👋

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