Developing Meaning

#18: Ridghaus Follows the Golden Threads - A Story of Adoption, Grief and Meaning.

• Dirk Winter • Episode 18

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Can you imagine learning at 35 that you were adopted?  In this episode Ridghaus, my friend and Level I IFS Program Assistant, shares how this discovery transformed his sense of identity and led him to advocate for adoptee rights and communities.

We also explore the profound loss of his 18-year-old son and how he has grieved. Through our conversation, Ridghaus reflects on the "golden threads" that have guided him—moments of insight, connection, and healing. We discuss how Internal Family Systems (IFS) has played a role in his process, helping him hold space for his parts and for others in their own healing journeys.

This episode is part of a series on my Level I IFS training experience, in which I introduce the IFS model (#16), introduce my Lead Trainer Jory Agate (#17). Upcoming episodes will introduce another trainer Margaret Conley (#19), who is an expert in complex trauma and legacy burdens, and then an audiodiary (#20) will follow.  My intention in this series is to share this exciting new model of healing with classically trained therapists and anyone else curious about mental health and meaning.  

Developing Meaning is NOT AFFILIATED WITH ANY INSTITUTIONS, and is NOT MENTAL HEALTH ADVICE.

Theme Music by The Thrashing Skumz.

This episode was produced by Dirk Winter, Fariha Fawziah and Caroline Hinton and is brought to you by Consilient Mind LLC.

Dirk:

Free audio post production by alphoniccom.

Dirk:

Welcome to Developing Meaning, a podcast where we seek to understand mental health from a perspective of meaning rather than psychopathology. I'm your host, dr Dirk Winter, board-certified adult and child psychiatrist. I work in community mental health and in private practice in New York City and am on the psychiatry faculty at Columbia. I am a mainstream psychiatrist who has recently become fascinated with alternative healing approaches and want to take you along as I participate in experiential trainings, learn new models of the mind and interview fascinating healers I meet along the way about how they create meaning in their own lives and in the lives of their clients. This is a show for mental health professionals, clients and anyone seeking to build more meaning and purpose into our lives. This show is intended to explore serious topics in a fun and playful and informative manner but is not affiliated with any institutions and is not intended to be mental health advice.

Dirk:

Hello, meaning seekers, are you excited? I'm excited. Today you are going to meet Ridgehouse and you are going to find out how he got his one word name. So who is Ridgehouse and why would you want to meet him? I asked Ridgehouse, who is my friend and also the PA for the Level 1 Internal Family Systems training that I completed in January of 24, to give me a short bio, and this is what he said. I'm just going to read his email now.

Dirk:

Hi, dirk, how's this for a bio? I am a human being slash, becoming in the world a lifelong learner, an archaeologist of cultural artifacts, a dudist priest, a poet, a teacher, a creator, a guide, a father of six, parent of five, level three trained IFS practitioner and a hope merchant connecting with people at their life intersection, and a dreamer of dreams. That's beautiful to me, and Ridgehouse is a beautiful, warm being and soul. But this is not a fluffy episode. This is a deep and impactful conversation. For me, there are at least two reasons why you will want to listen to this episode, besides just getting to know an interesting person. So Ridgehouse is an expert in adoption, because when he was 35, he got a phone call letting him know for the first time that he was adopted. Can you imagine, at 35, finding out for the first time that you have different parents than you thought you did, helping others understand their identity and their life trajectory and becoming an expert in helping people in adoptive communities? And so that's an impactful aspect of this conversation. But this conversation goes a lot deeper than that. In this conversation, there's a moment where I learn about a major tragic loss that happened several years ago. This is an experience of grief and loss beyond words, and as I stumble into this part of Ridgehouse's life story, he really guides me in how to be present in a helpful way when someone shares a story of massive loss, and this is something that I didn't really learn in my training at least didn't learn very well and it's something that really all of us should know, because we are all going to lose loved ones that are close to us, and we are all going to be present when other people share their experiences of loss and knowing the difference between saying I'm sorry for your loss in a way that closes off conversation and makes us move on from an awkward moment and really holding space and being present is really the essence of grief work and you're going to learn from someone who really has a deep embodied, experiential knowing of how this grieving process works and how to be present for people during moments of grief. So this is a powerful episode. It is heavy at times but it is overall a hopeful and uplifting episode.

Dirk:

I just want to say a couple words about the structure of this episode. The beginning 15 or 20 minutes. I'm asking questions about Ridgehouse's early background. He was a precocious kid in a place where he didn't fit in and he ended up getting four different master degrees in law, philosophy, writing, epistemology, the early story and getting to know somebody's roots and what we're born into and then how our life path is shaped that's really what fascinates me as a child psychiatrist impactful experiences and get to a point where we ask questions about meaning and we can really connect with those experiences and know how they apply or don't apply to our personal lives.

Dirk:

And this is where I want to just do a little mini rant about therapeutic anonymity. I think there are a lot of healing communities, therapy communities that I have been a part of and trained in, where there is a culture of anonymity where the therapist basically says nothing about themselves and the patient says everything, I think can lead to an unhealthy power imbalance and it also makes it very hard for me when I'm a client in those kinds of situations to know what to make of the person. They have a fancy suit or they're dressed nice and they have a degree, but I don't really know how to apply their perspective to my own life unless I know some concrete things about them. So I really think we do ourselves a disservice often by overvaluing this culture of anonymity, and this is part of why I've moved away from some of those healing traditions and into approaches like internal family systems therapy, where it's easier to be present as a real person and share real experiences in a self-led, appropriate way.

Dirk:

And lastly, before I share this conversation, I want to say that this is part of a series on my Level 1 IFS training. If you want more background on what is IFS, listen to Episode 16, the Multiple Minds episode. But you don't need all that background to follow along. Today we explain concepts as we go along. So this is part of a series and the previous episode in the series introduced Jory Agate, my trainer, and then this is Ridgehouse, one of the program assistants, and then the next episode is going to be Margaret Connolly, another program assistant, and then I'll do an audio diary. So that's where we are in our developing meaning journey, and now I'm excited to present to you my conversation with Rich House.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, it's nice to see you.

Dirk:

I feel like I just want to chat with you about all kinds of stuff, but let's do this podcast. And so we met at the IFS Level 1 training. You were a PA there and that's how we're connected and I am excited to hear your story. Maybe, since we're doing an IFS podcast, I want to just start with Tammy Sullenberger's question of what do you see if you look out your window? Where are you?

Ridghaus:

And then, as I look towards the primary window that I face, I've got shore pine and fir and myrtle wood. I'm basically in a town in the middle of Siuslaw National Forest, so I've got town stuff around me, but it's a rich, green, moist environment because we're coastal oregon coastal oregon is where you're at.

Dirk:

Yeah, okay, and I'm looking at a brick wall. I'm a block from central park and, if I like, lean out, like to front, I could see a little bit of sky.

Ridghaus:

Yeah.

Dirk:

With some barren branches from a tree.

Ridghaus:

I've got blue and white sky. It had rained earlier in the week and it had rained overnight, but we've had beautiful days to go down to the beach or to hit a hike.

Dirk:

Maybe to just get right into it. I just want to start. I'm always interested in what kind of healer people are, or therapists, and how did they get to be that kind of therapist? I feel like very few people just do sort of an evidence-based treatment approach. People sort of find the therapy approach that fits their personality, and so I'm going to ask you what kind of therapist are you? How did you get to be that kind of therapist?

Ridghaus:

However and maybe this will lead in Sure yeah, so I was born as baby boy maybe Kyle was my first name House to an unexpecting very young 17, 18-year-old couple, and they'd experienced a dissolution in their relationship, so I was relinquished for adoption.

Ridghaus:

At birth, I took on another name, given my adoptive family. At that point and I talk about that in other podcasts I don't really care what that name was. You know, like it had meaning to me for a period of time, but it's since lost all meaning for a period of time, but it's since lost all meaning. And then, seven years ago, I had made reunion with my biological family and so I just started to think about what's a name that has meaning for me, and I took portions of my biological father's name as well as my biological mother's name, and I created a portmanteau of them, and so that's how Ridge House came to be. It's got like the meeting of two rivers in some foreign country, and so that's how Ridge House is and so that's that's how rich house is, and does this connect to your story as becoming a therapist?

Dirk:

so I'm curious what were the main factors that went into you becoming a therapist? What's your story of becoming a therapist?

Ridghaus:

yeah, I think that I think I'm moving in the way that I have towards helping profession is in part due to some of my childhood. It was heavily drug and alcohol influence, a lot of abuse. As a high schooler maybe early high school I had fantasized about ways of escaping my environment and perhaps even getting into a place of helping others find their own healing. But that got lost.

Dirk:

And can you paint a bit of a picture of that high school environment?

Ridghaus:

Yeah, can you ask that question a little bit differently, like high school isolating, you know, like it was a big high school, a thousand people, and I didn't find a lot of resonance. You know, I had a couple of friends that were close and I knew people from a lot of different groups. I had taken on kind of a chameleon nature so that I fit in wherever I was. Taken on kind of a chameleon nature so that I fit in wherever I was, and so that was part of my kind of safety features. Where was that school? Oh, that was in Kansas, central Kansas, wichita.

Dirk:

And is that where you grew up?

Ridghaus:

Yeah, I was actually born in Wichita and both of my biological parents left and neither of my adoptive parents were born there. So it was like my biological family left Kansas and my adoptive family came into Kansas and so everything kind of centered around that. But I should also say I did not know that I was adopted growing up. So there was a lot of question you didn't fit in in high school. I didn't fit in in my family.

Dirk:

I had no sense of why these things were- In what way did you not fit in with your family?

Ridghaus:

Yeah, in growing up, both of my adoptive parents barely made it through high school, like they just had an intellectual capacity. That in the 1950s meant they graduated and then they went to start working. So college was never on their uh, on their radar. And when I was in third grade my local school ran out of curriculum for me. I had worked my way through everything that they had to offer for all through sixth grade. So my local elementary school was like he can't stay here, there's nothing else we have for him. I'm a very intelligent, observational, precocious adolescent in a family that heavily relies on drugs and alcohol to make it through the day and has a more diminished intellectual capacity.

Dirk:

Okay, what were their professions? Your parents, I mean your adoptive parents- yeah, my adoptive parents.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, my adoptive parents. He was a heavy diesel mechanic and she was a medical record keeper.

Dirk:

And did they have other children? Or was it you only?

Ridghaus:

It was me for the first five years. And then they adopted a little girl, a newborn little girl, and I remember they said we're going to go to the hospital and we're going to come home with a sister for you you know what I'm five, and so like, of course, that's what you do, right? I mean, stores deliver babies, you go to hospitals, you get the babies, you know, and so I didn't comprehend at five that she wasn't pregnant and so never raised a question for me. So then I grew up with younger sister until I left the house at 16 so okay five to 16.

Ridghaus:

You know 11 years with her.

Dirk:

So you had a sense you didn't fit in with them. They had different intellectual capacity. And then you went to this big high school and you said you were kind of a chameleon there.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, I played football, played basketball, I enjoyed sports, but I wasn't an athlete. I was in the gifted and advanced classes but I wasn't. You know, I didn't have the, either the parental support or the drive. I didn't have my identity, you know, in being intelligent. So I didn't fit in with the. You know, the, what are they? The math elites? Right, I wasn't a stoner, you know. I drank alcohol, in part because that was what modeled for me, you know, as a coping mechanism. But yeah, I just really, I really had a difficult time finding a crowd, you know, that seemed to fit in high school, and was there a sense that you would become a therapist or a healer at that time?

Ridghaus:

You know, I'd fantasized about being a psychiatrist or you know something like that, to be able to prescribe medications, to be able to work with people. I was always drawn to the model of the mind why do people do what they do? How do people function? But for a while that led me into philosophy, because then I got into epistemology and some of these ancient philosophies, perennial wisdom. What is epistemology? Yeah, epistemology is the philosophy of knowing a thing Like how do we know something? And that's where epistemology is. It's the foundations of being able to say that we know anything at all.

Dirk:

Cool, then who were your main philosophers?

Ridghaus:

I really appreciated Immanuel Kant and I loved Plato and, I think, more recently, john Rawls, particularly with Theory of Justice and within this concept of how do we create a just society. These were the philosophers that I found myself gravitating towards, self-gravitating towards yeah, that's, it's been a minute, you know, it's been a minute since I dove into some of these things, but I always find the traces, you know, like I'll, I'll be reading something and suddenly I'm like, oh wait, like they just created a logical fallacy there. You know what's, what's, what's underneath that? Let's, let's figure, you know. So I, I still have these very natural logical tendencies. You know, when I'm reading anything and really, because of ifs, I see it as a part that really loved this way of knowing, consistently applying something and that part's skill is really in that. So being able to take that knowledge, take that skill, kind of shine in that it's, it's a lot of fun cool and so you see it as a part, and you're talking about ifs.

Dirk:

Maybe do you have an explanation of what is ifs to somebody who may not know um, you know the?

Ridghaus:

the answer to that is often contextualized by the situation within which the question is asked. If I say to someone, oh I'm, you know, I'm an IFS practitioner, internal family systems, they're like what's that? And I say well, it's a model of the mind that's used as a therapeutic modality to allow people to get to know themselves better and to find more peace and harmony in their life. So that's just kind of like an average person on the street kind of reply.

Ridghaus:

Most people understand psychoanalytics or depth psychology or CBT I can put those around it, similar kinds of frames. But for someone who comes towards, like the healing profession, then I'm like well, I begin to talk about the core concepts of ifs, which is there is a self. This self, particularly in the psycho-spiritual realms, you know, this self is a reservoir of wholeness and energy for all of the parts that function in making up the whole of ourselves. I think ifs has some challenges in some elements or some streams, uh, particularly with some psychoanalytics, because freud didn't believe in the multiplicity of self, and so you can have someone come in without a concept of multiplicity who then balks or finds the concept of multiplicity jarring or will immediately want to move towards dissociative identity disorder, because it's a fragment of the self that needs to be restored and all of that. So it just kind of depends on the context. I'm afraid I can get kind of long-winded on the more philosophical sides.

Dirk:

I'm always curious how people, what people's sort of quick explanation is. My spiel recently is that there are. You know, we always have different lenses through which we interact with the world and our mind is split and we have to split it. I have to be able to hold you in my mind. I have a part of me that's imagining what you know, what you're going to say or what, and I have lots of different aspects of myself that are context dependent, so sort of a curiosity of sort of what, what's the filter that we're applying? But it's, on the one hand, very intuitive, on the other hand, pretty weird. Yeah, and so how did you what? How did you first come across IFS? Was that the first like? Is that part of your story of becoming a therapist?

Ridghaus:

No, no, actually IFS probably drove me in towards the therapeutic route. I followed philosophy into rhetoric and then rhetoric into visual rhetoric, which led me to cultural artifacts and critical lenses of understanding.

Dirk:

What is visual rhetoric? Sorry.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, so visual rhetoric. You know, rhetoric was classically established through Cicero right, and Cicero somewhat updated the goal of rhetoric. Rhetoric is the art of the good person speaking well. That's a classic definition of rhetoric.

Ridghaus:

Visual rhetoric is in part dependent upon ways in which we read. So, for example, a typical person raised in the United States is going to read a text from top to bottom, left to right, and so, within the visual fields, if you look at a you know an advertisement on a billboard. Or if you look at something that pops up on Instagram and you follow the top to bottom, left to right, you're going to see the structure of how information is organized in this way, which gets a little funky. Visual rhetoric finds some marshiness when I'm watching an Akira Kurosawa film, because in Japan they do top to bottom, but it's right to left. Or if it's from the near Middle East, they're likely to go from right to left, but not necessarily top to bottom, but it's right to left. Or if it's from the near Middle East, they're likely to go from right to left but not necessarily top to bottom. So there are cultural contexts around visual rhetoric. That's basically it. What other information is being constructed?

Ridghaus:

Marshall McLuhan said the medium is the message. How a thing is being communicated is part-.

Dirk:

Who is Marshall McLuhan?

Ridghaus:

Oh, he was a digital, like a pre-digital communicator, communication theorist in the late 60s. He had a book oh crap, I forgot what the name of the book was now but he's got a couple of brilliant little things. You know, like the medium is the message. How you communicate something is as important as what it is that you're communicating. That's one of Marshall McLuhan's things. The other one was sorry to get a little astray here.

Ridghaus:

I don't know who discovered water, but I'm sure it wasn't the fish. That was another Marshall McLuhan saying. That was another Marshall McLuhan saying.

Dirk:

So this seems pretty esoteric. How are you supporting yourself while you're learning this stuff? Is this sort of undergrad stuff that you're doing, or where are you at this point?

Ridghaus:

Yeah, it was undergraduate and then grad school and I did like. My first graduate degree was law and so I worked as a consultant and then, when I got into academia, I started to create curriculum around media and law. So landmark, intellectual property, supreme Court cases, you know, I developed curriculum around that.

Dirk:

Okay, so just to be sort of concrete about this. So you did your undergraduate and then you did a law degree any particular kind of law.

Ridghaus:

I focused primarily on comparative constitutional law, so like human rights and intellectual property, and then appellate advocacy and trial advocacy. So a lot of the you know, a lot of the kind of speaking and communicating elements of law.

Dirk:

Okay, and then you worked for a while as a consultant, and then you did more graduate school, or you were a teacher at a law school or what.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, I taught grad school at my undergrad, taught undergraduate classes, and then I worked at other colleges in the area there were five or six colleges around Wichita, so I was an instructor, professor, lecturer and kept doing grad school. I got two more grad degrees and then, when I encountered IFS, someone had recommended that I-.

Dirk:

Hold on. What were your other grad?

Ridghaus:

degrees? Oh, one was in composition and rhetoric, so that was an English degree with some literature focus. And then the other degree was a master's in communication, which was visual rhetoric and broadcast journalism.

Dirk:

Okay, so you're in this rhetoric, philosophy, law world, and then how does IFS find you?

Ridghaus:

My first encounter with IFS was through a friend. At 35, I found out that I was adopted. I got installed into the adoption community.

Dirk:

And can you just say that story? How did you find out that you were adopted?

Ridghaus:

I had a social worker call me and say I have a request for contact from your biological mom and I was like I don't have a biological mom. I mean I'm not adopted, so I think you're reaching out to the wrong person. But it turned out that she wasn't reaching out to the wrong person. I just had never known that I was adopted.

Dirk:

Wow, what was that like?

Ridghaus:

It was like I imagined the world of the snow globe. You know where you take it. You turn it upside down, Everything goes to the top of the globe, and then you set it back down and then you just watch for the next two years all the things that fell towards the top. You know like everything got displaced and now everything is kind of like coming back down, but I had more control over where it went. So like rebuilding all of those things around me took place with a lot more intention.

Dirk:

So you could go back now through your whole life and put your story together again in a different way.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, not recommended, but it gave me tools that are invaluable at this point. One of the tools was to move and work with intention in a way that most people don't develop, and so I have such a strong sense of intention now that I wouldn't ever want to give up.

Dirk:

What do you mean by that? And maybe we can get back to that. But also I'm struggling how to. There's a lot of different threads here. I don't know which one to follow. So one thread is bringing in IFS and how that found you and then intention.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, I think that we can probably go towards ifs, you know, and then that's going to come back to intention. So, after finding out that I was adopted, a couple of years later, I got involved with the adoption community, adoption rights, and one of the people that I met there was a woman named kathy and she had told me that she was an IFS therapist and that she worked primarily with adoptees, which I found interesting and I just kind of made a mental note of that. But she and I had developed a friendship. So I knew that I would never be able to be a patient with her because she had a LMSW, you know, was her credential, but we maintained a friendship and so occasionally I would hear just little tidbits about IFS.

Ridghaus:

And then, in 2019, my youngest son. I should actually probably give a little bit of content warning here for listeners who have been impacted by death, grief, suicide. Uh, my youngest son died by suicide in 2019 and he was 18 years old. Uh, and I found, I found a pool of grief so deep, deep that I it was just this. There's this thing that happened where grief, grief came like a uh, like how we would describe parts uh to people, uh, today, and it would, and I could just invite grief to come and sit beside me so that I'm not overwhelmed by it, um, but there were times where it did feel, you know, like drowning but wow, I'm.

Dirk:

I'm very sorry that that happened. I don't think I remember that or I don't know if you had said that when we talked before yeah, I don't I don't um, like I don't not talk about it, but it's also not.

Ridghaus:

you know what I lead with um, so, um, I think, if I, I think, if I weren't able to say something, you know, just about people responding to grief, you know, and tragedy like that, I think that one of the things that happens is we watch a TV show and somebody says my father died, my sister died or my son died, typically on a TV show or a movie, what somebody says back to you immediately is I'm sorry to hear that or I'm sorry for your loss, or something like that. Um, and this is not a, this is not a campaign or a cause for me yet, um, but what I would prefer to hear from someone you know, in that situation is wow, that really, that really seems heavy. Or yeah, wow, I uh, yeah, I'm like I can really feel the death.

Ridghaus:

you know that loss, um, because it's like and I and I'm not trying to call you out dirt, please- do yeah, no, yeah when people say I'm sorry, um, that often makes me think about they may indeed be sorry for the loss you know that someone experienced, but in the moment it feels a lot more like they're sorry for kind of the awkward heaviness that's now present in the conversation and and they want to get past that.

Ridghaus:

That's like I remember. I remember just a few weeks after he had died, I had to go to the store for something you know, and so I'm. So I'm in the store and just wearing like this somberness, you know, like a holocaust loop, and I'm walking down an aisle and I see a friend of mine, you know, coming around the corner towards me, you know, from the opposite end of the aisle, and they look up and they see me and they immediately turn around and and go, you know, to a different part of the store. And I remember feeling such a shock on top of all of the other sorrow, and really what I would have preferred is for them to just be with me.

Dirk:

Just to be present in the heaviness.

Ridghaus:

Just to be present to witnessiness, just to be present to witness that, you know, not even saying a thing, um, they don't have to put a hand on the shoulder, they don't have to say anything. Um.

Dirk:

So, uh, I just, uh, I just get into this because, um, ifs, I think, gives us that space to recognize a part right now, feels really awkward in this moment and I'm just going to be with that part and I'm going to witness you in a review bar and just be so, um, content yeah, I mean content warning, but I I mean this is um, I feel like I don't know if it's this podcast, but I feel like this kind of thing is coming up and, you know, just learning how to be present with each other in this kind of a heavy situation where there, you know, I think I have parts that are like, okay, let's distract and or how can I say the right thing and to feel that is so powerful and to express empathy in the right way. It's not easy for me I think I've gotten better at it, but I do appreciate you sharing this and, yeah, I'm just kind of lost for words now kind of lost for words now.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, and I think that I appreciate your tenderness in this so much and letting the distractors know that they don't have to distract away from this. There's not a fear of overwhelm, that this is serious and it's the depths of humanity, it's the depths of experience, and we can sit with it and be a witness and just be present with it and be a witness and just be present and there's such a healing in that, to just be with someone and not have the words because there aren't right. I remember a very dear friend of mine. We opened our house the week after, right, right, I remember. I remember a very dear friend of mine.

Ridghaus:

We, uh, we opened our house the week after Gabriel died and just invited people in and they could share stories, they could bring food, they could just sit around. You know we had a fire pit, um, but we, just we were present with all of it. You know we present with the, the laughter. We were present with all of it. You know we were present with the laughter, we were present with the absence, the missing, the sorrow, and we were ending one of these evenings. And you know, my dear friend Seth, with all sincerity, you know, and genuineness said what do you need? And I said I need him back and just like the whole, like just that, that moment froze in time, because I wasn't dismissing um his sincerity at all and it was the truest thing that I could say. He just nodded, you know, he was like yeah.

Dirk:

Yeah, that does sound like the truest need. And to be able to sit with. That is.

Ridghaus:

I think a gift of IFS Probably not just IFS, but I think IFS lots of ways, because I didn't encounter IFS fully until like a year and a half after Gabriel died, and it was through an interview. Dick was doing an interview with Tim Ferriss on Tim Ferriss' podcast and Dick was very invitational and gentle. And Dick was very invitational and gentle, you know, and as I was listening to the podcast, tim started to express something vulnerable and Dick immediately said I don't need to know that. You've got a part that has some sensitivity here. I don't need to hear it so long as that dialogue is happening. You know with you, for you dialogue is happening.

Ridghaus:

You know with you for you, um, and so I witnessed that spaciousness in the interview and and then I heard the timbre of tim's voice after going through some of that work and I thought, in fact, I had to stop the podcast. I I just started crying because it felt so accessible and I was thinking if Gabriel had had someone who could be with him in this way and let him know that that suicidal part doesn't have to take over, that he would still be here. So I stopped the podcast to take over that he would still be here. So I stopped the podcast, I cried my eyes out and then I called my friend Kathy, who had mentioned IFS a few years before, and I said tell me more about IFS, wow.

Dirk:

I remember that podcast and I'm a big Tim Ferriss fan of this. In a way, it comes from Tim Ferriss sort of the idea of doing this podcast. I mean, I guess I like podcasts from the beginning or from earlier, but he has that. You know, the vulnerability and just the audio of two people connecting and creating something, a real moment, and being able to be a fly on the wall as that happens in a slow, meaningful way. I think he's done that in an incredible way, wow. So that moment played a part in you then calling Kathy and she connected you with someone, or how did?

Ridghaus:

it go from there. Well, actually so I I listened to the interview, I felt very moved and and I just thought, man, this, this could be absolutely transformative. And I remember Kathy saying that she was an IFS-trained therapist, and so I sent Kathy a text right away I was living in Western Mass at the time and she was in Colorado and she responded to the text promptly, which I'm always surprised with therapists, you know. I mean, they're like stacking clients on clients and you know, busy days and you know I have such.

Ridghaus:

I have such respect for the amount of healing you know that they consistently pursue. But she she responded promptly and said I'm, you know, I'm free. You know, in a few hours do you want to get onto a call? And and I said yeah. So she directed me towards the IFS website and she told me more about the modality and she said and Ridge, you don't have to be a therapist to do this. They're developing a coaching track. So if that's something you're interested in, being a non-therapist at the time, then that's open to you. So I went to the. I went to the institute's website. I read through the modality. You know, like the goals of IFS, the defining principles of IFS.

Ridghaus:

I eventually found my way to the training site and there was nothing open to coaches per se At the time. There was just level one, which was open to everyone, and so I filled out a web form. That was like, hey, I'm interested in learning more. And then I think I got an email from the Institute that was like if you're interested in level one trainings, there's a lottery system. So this was 2022, like December 21, january of 22. And I was like, oh, there's a lottery. Okay, so I signed up. I put my name to the first lottery that opened up. After I found out and I think four or five days later you know this would have been maybe mid-january, maybe mid-january of 2021 I got an email from the Institute that was like hey, there's a hybrid partly in-person, partly online training happening in New York in May and you've been selected through the lottery for this.

Dirk:

And I was like ah man, amazing, and I mean the odds of this at that time. I don't know what they are. I know I was applying for more than a year to be able to get into a level one training.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, yeah. And I didn't know that at the time because I got the email from the Institute and it's like you're in this training, please let us know that you want a spot. And so I called Kathy and I'm like, hey, so I got into this New York training, please let us know that you want a spot. And so I called Kathy and I'm like, hey, so I got into this New York training, but I'm thinking about just saying no, because I don't really want to go to New York to do this and Kathy goes. Don't do that, Just say yes. And if you get into another training that's Midwest or West coast, great, but don't say no. And she didn't say anything more about it at the time, she just said don't say no.

Dirk:

And so I didn't.

Ridghaus:

I didn't, I didn't say no, you know, and I had, uh had an amazing training with Mary Kruger as lead and Chris Rote as as the uh assistant and, yeah, it was transformative for me.

Dirk:

Can you say a bit more about how it was transformative?

Ridghaus:

Well, for the first time I began to see how Dick gave such spaciousness to Tim by not being blended and apart, by being able to sit with somebody's vulnerability. You know, and just witness it.

Dirk:

My and blended with a part, maybe just for lay people. What does that mean?

Ridghaus:

Yeah, actually uh, I think you know I I'd been in the training for like 30 minutes. So it's Monday morning, you know, we're in the training, We've gone around the circle. There's 33 people plus 11 PAs, plus Chris and Mary, and uh, so we've just gone around. This is my name, you know. This is where I'm from. You know something brief? So we're 30 minutes in and one of the other participants had said something about parts. Part of me wants to get Italian, part of me wants to get Mexican, you know? So it's a way of kind of distinguishing what part within.

Ridghaus:

But maybe they're in polarizations or you know they're kind of opposed to each other Right, kind of opposed to each other right and as, as this participant was saying that, I could feel like this skepticism just kind of come in like wait a second, what? What do you mean? What do you mean by a part? You know I was. I had read the second edition. I had watched interviews with dick. I had read parts of no bad parts, you know so Parts. I was familiar with the content, no way.

Ridghaus:

But not having experienced it, when this skeptical energy just came all over, I'm like hold on, I hear you say that, but I just have some doubts around that Mary was sitting three people down from me and so she just like turns, makes eye contact and she says so a part of you is feeling skeptical. And it's like, as soon as she said that, I could just feel the skeptic like slip back off of the control mechanism and immediately take me into a memory where I was in eighth grade and Debbie Moore had just said to a group of people oh, he's schizophrenic. And I didn't know precisely what she meant by schizophrenic, but I saw their reactions to it and they all just kind of backed away and I felt this incredible loss of community, you know, associated with some kind of mental condition, and that's what the skeptic was concerned about, with. A part of me wants this, but a part of me wants that.

Dirk:

It was protecting you from that kind of a reaction.

Ridghaus:

Yeah. And so as soon as Mary said that I'm in this memory and I had a fantastic PA Mary, she was going by Margaret because there was a couple of other Marys in the training and she's like, yeah, so what Mary's saying? And I'm like, oh, no, I got it. And I'm sure that came off like dismissive because she was like no, no, like you know, the word is no, no. I got it Like I'm right in the middle of it right now. I totally understand all of this part stuff right now, you know.

Dirk:

And I followed up with her later and I said, listen, I'm not being dismissive, like I was in that junior high moment and I was able to be like, oh, this is what that part is concerned about, you know, the loss of community, some kind of it's amazing this, yeah, the feeling of watching a part step back and I feel like I like I had that this week with a client and sort of talking about dissociation, which had been a big role and a big part, and then the client I was just loving that dissociation and saying, hey, you have been doing so much important stuff and then saying, how do you feel towards that Dissociating?

Dirk:

And the client goes I don't care. And I go oh so you're here right now. And the client goes I'm saying the client because I don't want to reveal gender, because I don't want to be identifying at all, but he goes yes, I am the dissociating part. And after that it was like the clouds parted and before that it was like a presence, a different level of presence happened. And I felt that and maybe I should have just picked some example from myself, because I don't want to talk about other people but-.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, well, we could do a U-turn. I'm seconding your example.

Dirk:

Yes, we can do a.

Ridghaus:

U-turn, so what's coming up for you as you think about the associate? So, anyway, that was that, was it? I mean like that moment um, and lots, lots more after that, but it was just such a like. I just, you know, I love your example and this is something that we talk about in training. You know, it is like the self is always there itself is the sun and the sky, but sometimes we can't see the self because of the clouds, and so in that moment that Mary said so you have a part that's skeptical. Suddenly I could see the skeptical part, and why the skeptical part felt so protective. I wanted to raise the questions and keep some distance and I was like, oh, oh, I see you.

Ridghaus:

And then I had such compassion for the care that the skeptical part was bringing in for me.

Dirk:

So that was the beginning of a hugely transformative and ongoing transformation, of working with my system and learning more about IFs. So it hasn't been very long for you 2022 yeah, 2022 is when that started.

Ridghaus:

The interview with tim ferris was fall of 21, and you know, I think a couple of things come up for me, dirk of things come up for me, dirk. One I've been in therapy for a big portion of my adult life and so once a couple of things clicked into place around parts, work and self, then so many other things just fell in behind it. So I come in with a lot of other experiences that suddenly reorganized themselves under this concept of self and parts. So in terms of duration, it hasn't been long, but I have a very flexible and open-mindedness and so I can. I can reorganize things pretty quickly in different conceptions, so I still bring all of those parts, bring the skills and knowledge that they've developed over the years, right into that pattern.

Dirk:

And so how has your healing journey looked since then and I kind of screw up because I always ask too many questions at the same time, but at the same time I'm thinking about your professional journey too and how have those kind of synchronized or not kind of taking it from this welcome skeptical part moment how have you progressed since then and where are you now?

Ridghaus:

Yeah, I you know I'd always been drawn to kind of Buddhist Zen meditation and so I quickly incorporated parts invitational meditations into kind of that practice. So I'd move towards kind of a mindless space, thoughtless space, and then just invite parts in to share themselves, to make themselves known, to see where they fit in with the system.

Dirk:

so that's been some of my own work around that is that a daily practice or how do you do that?

Ridghaus:

I'd say it's probably three to five times a week. I tend not to do like um, I don't do, I don't do anything rigidly there's not, there's never like a it's 9 am I'm making my espresso, it's 9, 30 I'm washing my cup. I know that I have parts that can move towards those tendencies, but the whole system doesn't benefit, you know, and so I give them other, I give them other rigid things to be rigid around so how do you um and how do you do it?

Dirk:

do you do it in a room, quietly? Do you do it when you're in a walk in nature? How do you do it?

Ridghaus:

yeah, actually both. Sometimes it's on hikes, sometimes it's. I tend to awaken somewhere around my second, like after my second dream cycle. So I tend to awaken about six hours after I go to bed, you know, and I find myself going through two, two dream cycles. I will wake up and then I just kind of run a quick little assessment. So if I wake up and I feel kind of that heaviness around my eyes, I know that I'm not going to be awake for long, and so then I just do a check-in, you know, and I'm like, hey, are there any parts that need some attention? Is there a reason that we're kind of waking at this point in time?

Ridghaus:

And then other times I wake up and I don't have that heaviness. So I know that I'm going to be probably awake for another hour and a half, and then I just start to focus on breath. So I'll lay there, I'll do my out breath, sometimes box breathing where I pause at the bottom and top. Sometimes it's just following the breath increasing, noticing the movement, like some Thich Nhat Hanh kind of meditation, finding kind of like the tangerine meditation. Here's the breath. The breath is in me. I am in the bed. The bed is connected to the ground, the ground is connected to the floor, the house, kind of that expansiveness getting into a place of mostly just mindlessness, to just be with that's the tangerine meditation, starting with a tangerine and then expanding outward, or what is that?

Dirk:

yeah yeah, and where are you now in terms of healing from your son?

Ridghaus:

I don't think there is healing from an intimate loss like that, and that's okay, I'm okay that there's not healing. That's okay, like I'm okay that there's not healing. I think, broadly, there's an illusion that there's always this return to normal. You know something has disrupted your life in a way, and then you're, you know you're getting back to normal and I can, you know, I can push that down into something that's largely inconsequential. You have a flat tire on your way to work and you're late to work and you have to fix the tire. Then you have to go to the shop and get the tire replaced and you do all the things that you need to do. Then a couple of days later you're back into the routine because everything was fixed. That's probably more of a mundane example that perpetuates the illusion of the normal, right, because the normal is you drive to work, you do your work, you drive home, you know, and then you're home. But I think normal is an illusion and there's little in our world's experiences that shatters the illusion of normal as much as losing an intimate love, because they will never short of resurrection, they will never return, and so there is never a moment where their absence isn't felt in some way and I'm please don't misunderstand me, I would take him back in a moment right, no-transcript.

Ridghaus:

When I encounter someone, I find myself immediately assessing all kinds of things about them. I find myself appreciating minute details and logging those details into memory, even if this person was just wearing kind of a beautiful scarf. As I walked out of Starbucks and saw like I saw this beautiful scarf and I look at them and then I can just like look at all of them and just be like, oh, I wonder why they selected that scarf. I wonder how that scarf has them feeling about themselves. I wonder who made that scarf. I wonder if anyone else around them can have the same appreciation for all of these components kind of coming together into this beautiful moment right here. And I don't know that I would have done that before Gabriel died, because I have such a grasp on like any moment. You know at any moment, you know at any moment.

Dirk:

You're talking about the a depth and grasping the moment, and this is an example, with just a stranger at starbucks and a scarf. But you're also very much a healer now, and what does that world look like for you now?

Ridghaus:

Yeah, I think several things kind of come together. One I'm finishing grad school for my fourth graduate degree as a clinical mental health counselor, so that's a thing. I'm into psychedelic work, which I don't really like. I mean, I get why it's called psychedelics. I prefer the term entheogen because I think that there is an access to sacredness or the divine that comes through experiencing entheogens, so I really see spirituality around it. And of course, there's my capacity to be able to sit with others in loss, because I know there's nothing that I can fix.

Ridghaus:

I can be there, I can witness, I can remind them of hey, take a shower, you know be, kind to yourself, so I can be with them in the depths of their sorrow and just just hold space. So I've got the, you know, I've got the therapist track coming up. I've got entheogen work. I can be with sorrow, which comes up a lot. Somebody's in a journey, an entheogenic journey. There's a lot of sorrow that people just kind of stack down, and I feel like IFS complements all of those things in allowing me to continually tune in to what's happening in my system. How can I make connection? What do I observe in their system? How can I help them kind of see their own system, to recognize parts, to be with parts, to allow parts to heal? So right now I feel like I'm kind of at this place where four different roads all kind of intersect, to just to be with people, to help, however, is helpful to them.

Dirk:

And you have these experiences with grief and loss that allow you to connect and help people and your adoption work also. It sounds like that's also a big part of your clinical not clinical, but your healing work your clinical and not clinical, but your healing work.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, yeah, I continue to work with and not just adoptees, and this is, you know, this is another part of the ongoing growth back in 2023. I've been a part of different organizations there that are involved with deputy rights, human rights, birth record openings, including those that open birth records in New York and Massachusetts and Connecticut. So one of those organizations, the National Association of Adoptees and Parents, paired up for a summit conference with another organization for donor-conceived persons and non-MPE, non-parent parent. Expected because adoption then kind of in the political and social world for a long time, but because of advances in technology donor conceived, you know is now a thing which also fosters the capacity for someone to raise a child in the way that I was raised but not having gone through the experience of adoption. So like, for example, jacoba Ballard has a. She has an interview with a dear, sweet woman named Lily Wood and Lily Wood runs a podcast called NPE Stories. And Jacoba Ballard, she did 23andMe and then suddenly my sister and a brother and suddenly she's got five half-siblings that are coming up on 23andMe.

Dirk:

And so she goes to her mom and she's like oh, non-parent expected or non-parent event.

Ridghaus:

So it's when someone finds out that the family that they grew up with they have at least one non-biological connection Got it, but they had no reason to suspect that they weren't biologically related to the people that they grew up with. So, jacoba Ballard, there's a documentary on Netflix called Our Father, and I think at this point they found 99 siblings because the fertility doctor kept using his sperm with patients who wanted it.

Dirk:

I think I read about this story yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ridghaus:

So I met Lily Wood last year at this summit and she did an interview with me and she is such a dear soul and she just continues to bring people on to tell stories. So when I talk about the adoption community, really what I mean is anybody who has this kind of biological misidentity thing, which would include donor conceived you know, dcps, npes, late discovery adoptees like myself, or adoptees who grew up knowing, transracial adoptees, international adoptees. So there's a really large and growing community because of technology that I work with to help them get towards identity. Who are they? Who do they want to be?

Dirk:

Sounds like very important work.

Ridghaus:

I mean it's healing right. Like we, I feel like it's criminal to do anything but bring healing into the world. So I don't feel like I can do anything else, in whatever capacity that looks like.

Dirk:

Do you feel like something, is there something that most non-adoptee people don't know or wouldn't think about, that you could say to be helpful in terms of thinking about identity and how to be helped? I mean, in general, just be present, but I haven't thought about this topic really at in the depth yeah, yeah, I think that, um, you know, I love that question, derp.

Ridghaus:

I think one of the things that that is hard for people to kind of comprehend is that if you are adopted by non-biological well, if you're adopted by, like an aunt and uncle or a grandparent, it's called a kinship adoption, and MPEs can experience this and especially donor conceived persons can experience this.

Ridghaus:

To not grow up around somebody who shares biological identity is so dysregulating and it's impossible. If you grew up with a mom and a dad, or a mom and a mom or a dad and a dad, or you grew up in a kind of poly family, but you always had connection with somebody that was biologically connected to you, it's impossible for you to think about how important biological genetic mirroring is. Like I didn't see a person that I was related to until my son was born and I had no idea what that feeling was of looking into someone you know, looking into a baby's face, and feeling like, oh, that's me, like there's a part of me in the world and I've never had that experience before and I didn't know that I'd never had that experience because I'd never seen anyone that shared my biological identity. And that's a profound moment and it is so difficult for somebody who didn't grow up with biological family to understand, grow up with biological family to understand. But it's instrumental, it's pivotal to a sense of wellness and self.

Dirk:

So that's what I would say thanks, so I could talk to you all day, but I want to be a little mindful of time and I want to turn towards meaning and I am sort of playing with this idea of Viktor Frankl that our central drive, human drive, is towards meaning and sort of trying to figure out what is that and when is something a symptom of a mental health thing, or when is it just sort of an internal sign that we need to move ourself or our system in a direction of a mental health thing, or when is it just sort of an internal sign that we need to move ourself or our system in a direction of more meaning and change our life if we're feeling mood or anxiety or something internally. So I am curious what your thoughts are about meaning and kind of in a general sense, and then I'll ask some more specific questions yeah, I think that I observe in my own life valleys and plateaus of meaning.

Ridghaus:

And when I, when I land in places of meaning and I feel like I'm kind of entering one of those plateaus of meaning right now and I look back at the valley, I understand all of the kind of obstacles that I just had to navigate and how they're useful now that I'm up on the plateau. But when I'm in the valley, sometimes meaning is difficult to really get around. But I know it's there, you know. And so what I do for myself, I just continually kind of tune into what's the loving, what's the kind. I just continually kind of tune into what's the loving, what's the kind, what can I do with my skills right now while simultaneously resourcing myself so that I have like time and space to address? And then, is that for me to address, or do they continue to need to do like a search to find the right thing, or do they need to find the resource within? So that's kind of a daily operating for me and and so that's like just every day, what?

Dirk:

What's loving, what's kind, what skills. I like that.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, yeah, because it matters right Thich Nhat Hanh talks about. We can put anger and despair out into the universe and those energies will ripple on forever. Or we can put compassion and love and care out into the universe and those will ripple out forever. Which feels better, which accomplishes more of what we want?

Ridghaus:

So that's kind of the valley for me, like the everyday thing is kind of the valley, and I really struggle to find perspective on meaning when I'm in that time. But I also know that I have these plateaus where I really feel like I'm reaching out, plateaus where I really feel like I'm reaching out, I'm making impacts, I'm really landing beautifully where I need to, kind of in the flow of the universe kind of a thing, and I get to see the impact on people right away. And that's when I feel like, ah yes, this is what I'm here for, this is the meaning of this. So for me, meaning is about getting through the valley with as much grace as I can and being prepared to land on those plateaus and then really be impactful in loving ways.

Dirk:

I like that, so I want to ask you some rapid fire questions.

Ridghaus:

So according to me, ridgehouse house, the meaning of life is love nice and I'll let you elaborate a little yeah, yeah, I was gonna say I just to to, to act with loving kindness towards whomever you can put your hands on right. I kind of want to tell a story, but I want to stay in the rapid fire.

Dirk:

Tell me the story. Let's do this story.

Ridghaus:

So I came to that because a friend in fact the same friend that had said what do you need, seth? He's a Quaker preacher and he had been invited to speak at this Quaker church. One morning and as he was sitting in the front pew and he was being introduced and they were like singing songs and doing whatnot he looked over and there was a woman sitting beside him who had painful bunions and immediately he felt like I can touch her, like I can reach out to her and like help massage that bunion, you know, so that she has less pain. And he felt that immediate kind of presence of a loving act towards someone who was near enough for him to act that out. And Seth is also incredibly agoraphobic, so the thought of touching another person just activated all kinds of parts, and so he told me that story later and I was like so do you rub her feet?

Ridghaus:

he's like no, I'm not gonna touch somebody's feet, but I was so impressed with just the resonance and when he's, when he told me the story, I was like oh, like that feels true. Love, those that are close enough to touch in the ways that you can, and then just do it. You know, do that.

Ridghaus:

So love, that's the meaning so next question the most meaningful thing that I did yesterday was wow, yeah, the most meaningful thing that I did yesterday was Wow, yeah, the most meaningful thing that I did yesterday. Man, I had a lot of conversations yesterday that landed with purpose and connection. I think the most meaningful thing that I did yesterday was I attuned to people. I sat with them, I listened, I tended to my own parts and I was present for them. I think that's the most meaningful thing that I did yesterday, nice.

Dirk:

And if I come to you and I say Rich House, I'm in an existential crisis. I feel like I don't have meaning. What's your next thing?

Ridghaus:

Yeah, I'm going to invite you to just breathe with me. Let's just take a breath together. That's pretty heavy, so I just want to be with you in this. So can we tune into your breath?

Dirk:

Okay, let's just be with that nice and uh, when I am dust dead and gone, the thing that I would like people to remember me for most foremost is, I immediately think about returning to the roots of a you know, an oak grove.

Ridghaus:

So when I'm dust, the earth recycles me right. I become part of an oak or part of a you know, mycelial hyphae, or I become rain. Maybe I'm able to leave this planet in some way and continue traversing the universe. So that's immediately what I think of. Maybe you don't leave.

Dirk:

Maybe you're still around in some other capacity. But what about other people? What do you want them to think or go through their mind when they think of you?

Ridghaus:

You know, I think that I want them to feel like they mattered to me, that they were important, nice.

Dirk:

If you had a big message, a Tim Ferriss billboard question to get out there, is there something you would put on that?

Ridghaus:

I'd say love one another, and I don't mean I don't mean love. You can't love my soul without loving my body. You know, I think there's a reason that. I think the reason that great teachers have admonished followers to do things like care for the widow, care for the orphan, like if we're not actually tending to people's physical, you know, immediate needs. I don't think they give a shit about their spiritual destination.

Dirk:

So physical show.

Ridghaus:

Physically demonstrate love for one another.

Dirk:

Okay, well, I really appreciate you and our conversation. Is there anything else that you want to say before we finish?

Ridghaus:

crew and you know our time to connect there's so treasured, um by me. So thanks for thanks for this opportunity to just talk, see you again and and have these kind of meanderings around ifs and meaning and and all of that stuff. Um, there was a thread earlier. You know, we were kind of like torn. Did we go this way? Did we go that way? Did we pick that back up? Were we able to complete that circle?

Dirk:

I forget now what the it was like impact. Or I forget what the yeah, it was something around that you had used a word intention, intention. You said something about living every day with intention.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, and I think that's the only thing left to kind of close up on that. So when your life is turned upside down and I just heard somebody share a story yesterday they basically pulled their. They were moving from one part of the country to another and so they pretty much had 90% of their life in a trailer a fifth wheel trailer behind their truck, you know, a fifth wheel trailer behind their truck and one of the tires got offset. Um, as they were driving down a road and the trailer just popped off the back of their truck and rolled down that side of the mountain. So they lost everything that they had brought with them.

Ridghaus:

And I sat and I listened to the story and I was like, yeah, like that's, that's a lot, you know, like I can, I can sit with you, you know, and and experience that loss of that's everything. And there was another part of me that's like wow, that's awesome. Like you get to just start over, you get to pick what was really important about that thing and now you get to put it back into your life. Sure, you're going to have to work at it, you're going to have to go find that thing and bring it back or find another thing like it. But this is the same thing with entheogenic journeys.

Ridghaus:

When we reset the default mode network, people get to pick what they want back in their life. They've taken the knapsack and they've dumped it out on the bed and they're like, oh, you know what's really important to me Time with friends. Okay, so let's put that back, let's put that back in the sack. What else? So that's intention, and I think that IFS really complements intention, because you know, like a part pops up, they get blended. Somebody gives them an opportunity to observe the blendedness. They find that space, you know, and, unblending, they tap in with self. They go back to that part, you know, and say what do you need? You know there's such intention.

Dirk:

I love that starting over with intention. Yeah, that's a great story and a great analogy identifying these two parts of one attachment and really valuing attachment and the other authenticity. And you move that into two other people in our group acting out those two parts and, um, yeah, my head goes back to that frequently. It's still. These are still parts that I'm working with and aligning and but I appreciated our, our work together and bringing yeah, and I love that.

Ridghaus:

I love that moment, you know, and I'm I'm glad that you're willing to mention it here. It's probably worth more attention than a, you know, a doorknob kind of conversation. But, man, I got to tell you I don't know if you remember that I moved into that with such hesitancy because it's like I don't want to spoil the thing that we're practicing. Right, that's really important and I just want to offer to all four of of us. Here's something that I'm observing. You know, is there other work that can be done that kind of facilitates a better understanding of this? And when all and all of you signed on.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, that was.

Dirk:

That's bringing in the creativity c and which I think ifs is so well suited for. There's so many ways to play.

Ridghaus:

Yeah, and connection and community. I mean it was a great moment and I had a part, that rule follower part, that's like no, no, this isn't what we're practicing. So there was a lot of apprehension, but I was able to deal with that part and open it up to you all and it's what I love about the model it just gives such spaciousness for people to be connected and creative very cool.

Dirk:

well, I appreciated being connected with you and appreciate our connection now and, uh, hopefully a lot more to come right, right, yeah, yeah for sure it's such a treasured moment to be with you.

Ridghaus:

Again, dirk, thanks for this.

Dirk:

Ditto, and also just a moment for Gabriel. I got to hear that part of your story and share that with you. Okay, all right, yeah, I feel good about this. How about you? Yeah, yeah, feels complete. So thank you for listening. That was a really special and meaningful episode for me. Before we close, I just want to explain briefly the last two minutes.

Dirk:

In the last two minutes of this conversation, ridgehouse and I are talking about a moment in my Level 1 training where we have split off into a little room. There's two therapists and me and Ridgehouse, and Ridgehouse is leading an exercise getting to know my parts. There's another therapist who's working with me and the parts that I'm working with are very common parts that I think we all many of us have One part of myself wanting authenticity and authentic self-expression and another part wanting attachment and there is an inner conflict happening in me that I'm working with. And in IFS, what we do is we take our internal parts and we externalize them and we personify them, and so he used a technique where he had the other two observing members of our little group act out my two parts, and I got to be the director and I got to tell one of them. Okay, you're going to be my attachment part and this is your attitude, and then the other person is going to be my authenticity part, and then they will have a conversation and I will choreograph and learn from that and it was a cool experience and so you're going to hear more about that when I do my audio diary episode, which is coming up.

Dirk:

Next episode will be another very special person that I met during this level one training Margaret Connolly. She's an expert in complex trauma and healing legacy burdens, cultural burdens that are passed down through the ether, and this is super relevant in our times right now I think it's always super relevant and she is a really special healer. You're going to want to hear her episode and then the one after that. I'm going to take you through my own audio diary as I move through my level one training, and so that's where we are, that's where I am on my developing meaning journey and we're in IFS land in my Level 1 training, meeting very special people and learning how internal family systems heals trauma and other aspects of ourselves. And thanks for being with me, thanks for listening. I really appreciate you being part of this developing meaning community and until next time I hope you have a meaningful, meaningful month and, as always, if you figure out the meaning of life, let me know she says free audio post-production.