A Walk into Self Discovery with Mike Lamerato

Join us as we welcome Mike Lamerato, a dedicated men's therapist from Metro Detroit, who shares his transformative journey from the fields of pre-med and neuroscience to embracing the world of psychology. Mike delves into his personal challenges, including moments of uncertainty and personal upheaval, which ultimately led him to realize his passion for healing and understanding human behavior. His mission to normalize therapy among men is a driving force behind his work, offering individual sessions and organizing retreats that help men access and embrace their mental health needs.

Explore the profound impact of "nice guy syndrome" on men's personal development and relationships. Mike provides insight into how societal expectations and childhood experiences foster behaviors such as anxiety and passive-aggressiveness. Through engaging stories and personal anecdotes, Mike emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and prioritizing personal needs to build healthier, more authentic relationships. This episode encourages listeners to embark on a journey of self-discovery and emotional honesty, freeing themselves from traditional conditioning.

Discover the power of intuition and inner wisdom in guiding men toward their true potential. Mike shares how connecting with one's core energy can lead to fulfilling life choices, emphasizing the role of therapy and wilderness retreats in this journey. We discuss breaking down barriers surrounding men's mental health, highlighting the need for open discussions and regular check-ups as crucial steps. By finding the right therapist and embracing therapy as a vital aspect of self-care, men can cultivate meaningful relationships and lead more harmonious lives.

Transcript

Alex Lange 0:02

Hey, good morning. I'm on here with Mike Lamardo. I met Mike on a mental health call in the uncivilized nation. He was hosting this mental health call for men, a space where we could just open up and be ourselves, and I remember sitting on that call and we were talking about different types of therapies and the one thing that caught my eye was that a lot of the men in that group were open to the therapy process and it's not something that I think is normalized amongst the men's community.

Alex Lange 0:35

So I asked Mike to come on a few months ago and I'm glad that we finally got the opportunity to jump on here, and today we're just going to talk about his journey, from his time going from undergrad to grad school and the challenges he faced, and then why he chose therapy and some of the things that are associated with therapy and normalizing therapy amongst men. And I want to just take a moment and say that he's a men's therapist and I haven't met many of just men's therapists. So this is this is great to have you you on, mike, how are you doing today?

Mike Lamerato 1:09

Great, yeah, thanks for having me. Man, happy to be here and share a little bit about yeah and men's therapies. They tend to be a little bit more elusive, but I think it's getting a bit more popular these days. So, yeah, happy to be here.

Alex Lange 1:26

Mike, tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey, and then we'll dive right into that painful moment or that challenging moment in your life.

Mike Lamerato 1:32

Yeah, of course. Yeah, so I live out here in Metro, detroit area, royal Oak, michigan. I've been a mental health professional for the last 10 years and I was telling you before the call just celebrated kind of our 10 year anniversary and made the pilgrimage back to grad school and just to kind of get to see where you came from and where you learned, and so this stuff is all kind of fresh on my mind, which is, I think, perfect for today. But yeah, like you said, I treat men here primarily. So individual therapy is kind of my bread and butter, my main gig. I've had my own practice for three years now and then a newer revolution has just been getting into men's retreats, running men's groups throughout the year. That's something I've been doing for a while, but really just getting the men on the land and connecting and getting them away from there, just the city, the communities, and and bring them to the, the inner communities of nature and other men. So yeah, if it's, if it's men's issues involved or men's health involved, that's, that's my game.

Alex Lange 2:38

So yeah I appreciate that I was, as I mentioned to you before the call, the theme or the purpose of this, this podcast, is to share stories of men that have turned their pain into their power, where they've this challenging moment, uh, in your life that really changed the trajectory of where you, uh, ultimately are sure, sure, yeah.

Mike Lamerato 3:11

So yeah, I think a pretty good time to talk about is just the transition from undergrad to grad school. And you know, I just want to say, initially too, like very, very fortunate life, just in terms of having everything I need, and so I don't want this to sound like you know, poor me or anything like that, but um had been very fortunate in life. But I think the bigger, the bigger kind of crucible here is like young guys kind of figuring out who, who the hell they are in this world. You know, um, it's something I see kind of every day a lot with with younger men. We see um men going to college less and different things. So I think it kind of speaks a little bit to just how confusing it can kind of be. And I know you have a military background and maybe had to make choices around that too, right? So, um, yeah, essentially my story starts kind of from day one of knowing that I was curious about people. Um, just uh, whether you want to call it anxiety or just Consciousness or whatever, from an early age I was just always seeing myself in relationship to people. I was always curious. I would always kind of ask questions about that I wondered people why people did the things they did, right. So, um, and yeah, that kind of progressed throughout the years.

Mike Lamerato 4:36

Uh, when I got to undergrad it was like a whole whole new world right.

Mike Lamerato 4:40

I kind of came from a bit more of a sheltered kind of, went to parochial school stuff like that, and so when I got to undergrad it was kind of the world opened up and I learned all these things but pretty much always knew I wanted to be a healer, kind of jumped around from pre-med to neuroscience to psychology, to law enforcement. That was during the 07-08 crash, so law enforcement and municipalities were kind of on the decline at the moment. So I said, okay, let's double down in psychology. Right, it's interesting, started doing some research and undergrad research and looking into different things and was in a pretty serious relationship at the time, kind of heading into senior year of undergrad and then was pretty kind of destined just to go into what I would call more of a safe route. Right, I was just going to go into research, psychology, kind of get a master's, got into Arizona State, you know the idea was my girlfriend at the time we were getting married, right, as everyone thinks, at some point.

Mike Lamerato 5:48

And, yeah, last semester of senior year, everything got kind of turned on its side. That first or second real big relationship ended and I was about a couple of weeks out from graduation not really knowing who the hell I was and what I'm going to do. Right, this was before. The nice guy approach was readily available and readable, right, but I identified with that a lot. I decided not to go to Arizona State. I was looking into potentially doing personal training, which nothing against personal trainers, I think it definitely is a good route to go but I wasn't valuing, kind of, who I was and I wasn't believing in myself and it was a very painful moment. Right, I think depression is one of the things that most guys probably have dealt with. It's probably one of the more common kind of things. So I mean, I can remember just that last semester, not getting off my couch, barely getting to the gym, barely making it by, just just kind of I don't know, just just vegetating Right, just just just in that pain. It was the first relationship that ever really kind of knocked me to that core, right, um, and then, uh, kind of out of the blue, I'd applied to some other grad schools and, uh, remember, I came home packed up everything from college, didn't really know what I was gonna do, got back to back to my summer job, so I said, okay, well, at least I have three months to, you know, make a little bit of money here, live at home for a minute. And then I got a call from another grad school that essentially they had an assistantship opening. So assistantships are essentially you take a job with the university and they help pay for, uh, some of your your time there.

Mike Lamerato 7:46

So decided to switch programs, uh, and go to a place that I had never visited or didn't even really know anything about, um, in the middle of nowhere, illinois. So, um, and it doesn't even really stop there, right. So I went there, um, I went to orientation and I remember my mom take, coming, coming down with me, and we stayed in a hotel for a couple days and we found a place to live. And then she took the train back and I was like, okay, like this is happening, I'm out here on my own, you know, kind of taking that hero's journey, that jump.

Mike Lamerato 8:20

And the next thing was really wild. Right, we were at, or I was at orientation and I saw people from another program there in clinical psychology, and I was just could not, like I couldn't stop, like staring at these people, like wait, what are these people doing? You know cause I was kind of in this safe world of research, experimental psychology. But something in me just kind of in the safe world of research, experimental psychology, but something in me just kind of clicked and it just so happened that in that program someone had dropped out. So what happens is, as long as you're in the psychology program, essentially you can. If there's a spot you can, you can kind of transfer, you're kind of a free agent. So, uh, yeah, I I approached the clinical program director and said, hey, I don't know what's really telling me this, but, um, I think I need to be over here with you guys.

Mike Lamerato 9:13

And uh, as luck would have it, he said, yeah, we actually had someone drop out last minute. So, um, the spots yours. We never really done this before, but the spots here is if you want it. And so I grabbed it and I said, okay, well, I, I'm gonna see how this goes for three to six months. You know, let's not make any decisions.

Mike Lamerato 9:34

Um, the first three to six months were pretty wild.

Mike Lamerato 9:36

It was like what am I doing?

Mike Lamerato 9:37

Am I sure I could do this?

Mike Lamerato 9:39

Do I even want to be a therapist?

Mike Lamerato 9:40

But I kind of listened to that, that piece deep and deep inside of me, right, and some people might call that intuition or core energy or the Holy spirit or what have you, but I think that's within all of us, right, and I think, um, as guys, we'd be wise to listen to that more and um kind of turn down some of that um other otherly, worldly stuff, or just criticism or doubt.

Mike Lamerato 10:08

So yeah, in the matter of a month my life went from I don't know what the hell I'm going to do, I'm done with college, my whole life has crashed in on me to now I'm in the middle of nowhere, rural Illinois, and feeling like I kind of found my home. So it was just a, really, and I look back to it and got a bit emotional when I went back this past weekend because it's just, you know, it's just crazy how life works out like that. Somehow, you know how out of like you said before, out of pain or hardship or heartache can come some of our greatest things right, and sometimes you have to trust yourself and take that next step yeah so yeah I appreciate that.

Alex Lange 10:54

I was um A few months ago. I was on a walk. We were in Virginia Beach, virginia, and I was on this trail and I was by myself and I just had this thought that came to me because I was focused so much on my failures. And I'm a very big believer that when you have negative thoughts, you're going to attract negativity, negativity, right, so it's being aware of of you know how you're um your self-talk, the power of yourself and I, and I had this free frame moment.

Alex Lange 11:29

That was what if my biggest failures were my greatest successes and that out of our, out of our failures, perceived failures?

Alex Lange 11:40

yeah from our greatest successes. So I want to, I want to take a minute and go back back to that time and ask you the question of so you, so you were having a lot of chaos in your life. Your girlfriend had just broken up with you. You talked about associating you, you could associate with the nice guy, and you were talking about not going to the gym and things of that nature. Well, what were you doing? How were you coping with all these feelings? Uh, that you were, yeah, you were having, because many men we don't do, we don't like feeling we don't.

Mike Lamerato 12:10

We don't want to do that, we want to stay far away yeah, well, I can tell you, not well, initially, right, um, you know that was, uh, that was 21 year old, mike, right. So, yeah, pretty standard, right. Uh, I didn't go down the more stereotypical routes of drinking and that kind of deal, but I had just, uh, you know, the body's fascinating, right, when you have this pain and especially depression, it actually lights up the same parts of your brain as, like, actual physical pain. So I'm more and I find that everyone kind of reacts to depression differently, right, but I was more of a disassociator, right. So I was kind of like a zombie walking around.

Mike Lamerato 12:52

You know, I can remember sleeping and some guys might identify with this, but just sleeping so much.

Mike Lamerato 12:59

And you know I'm a fairly active guy and I was just laying on the couch, you know, my roommates thought I was like it was like, hey, you should like go to the hospital, you're like dying or what's going on.

Mike Lamerato 13:09

So it was really just not allowing myself to feel those emotions first, right, then it wasn't, until I kind of came back home, like thank god, I kind of was graduating, just getting back to some home life, and had a bunch of high school buddies who were working out again and that kind of pulled me out of it. Tell you the truth, um, I I preach about this probably too much, and daily with my own clients, but uh, it's movement, man, I really think movement as guys for everyone. Obviously you know we see that going on at a national level, but movement as guys allows us to kind of dive into our deeper kind of crevices elsewhere. Right, and I think that's, I just think that's really important. So, yeah, I started moving and when you move you can say okay, yeah, what's going on over here? Or let's get curious about that. It almost arms you or allows you to engage your emotions in a more direct manner.

Breaking Free From Nice Guy Syndrome

Alex Lange 14:21

Yeah, I appreciate that. Uh, there's a practice that I do with my coaching clients, uh of like feel the feelings and part of that is it's movement right, like in my opinion that I'm able to get these emotions flowing. You have them, so I really do appreciate that. And in the time of no there there was no like probably deep literature on the nice guy syndrome, can you?

Mike Lamerato 14:47

and I know there's a lot more now.

Alex Lange 14:48

but can you tell me about the nice guy syndrome? And then what? How are you started to move away from that, how you started to get in connection, like you said, with that intuition within yourself? Because I think a lot of men, we don't have connections with ourselves because we're so externally focused. We're worried about our kids. As a father of four it's going to be five I'm worried about my kids' emotions. I'm worried about my wife and my wife's emotions.

Alex Lange 15:13

I'm worried about making sure that the house is taken care of. What is a nice guy? And then, what did you do to start getting in touch with yourself?

Mike Lamerato 15:23

Yeah, of course.

Mike Lamerato 15:25

Yeah, I think a lot of people have a different definition of the nice guy, but I tend to look at it as an anxiety disorder. I tend to look at as a part of us that says somewhere along the way, and a lot of people would say it's just, it's kind of in our generation, somewhere along the way, and a lot of people would say it's just, it's kind of in our generation. So I would say, like, older twenties to early, early fifties, late forties is a good like subset of nice guys in my opinion. But, um, it's this anxious part of us that says, hey, somewhere along the line you learned that it wasn't okay to kind of speak up, um're not totally okay with yourself and you need to be really respectful and overly respectful of everyone else, right, and I think it really comes from the origins of just not being validated on certain things, not being able to open up, kind of be seen, not heard.

Mike Lamerato 16:22

There are some like societal things that probably happened during our childhood too, of just you know, don't, don't distress women, don't cause problems for people. I have this concept I like to call no wake. You know, like water, no wake zone. Don't create wake, don't create waves, um, be a good boy and just kind of travel on that way, and then the problem becomes right, uh, we, you can. You can act like you don't have needs until you're blue in the face. But, shocker, we all have needs, right, we're humans. So, um, those needs get covertly kind of threaded into passive, aggressive behavior and that things get real wonky. Right, you know, women are like, oh, this guy is just so, he's perfect, he's so nice, he does all these things. There's never any drama until that one day where that resentment leaks out or you know something leaks out and it gets really. It can get really dark, right, you know, guys can. Some of the stuff's been stewing for a long time. So, yeah, I look at it as more of a societal response to, kind of where our parents were at when we were little.

Mike Lamerato 17:37

Um, not talking about the deeper emotions shame, guilt and, unfortunately, kind of internalizing those.

Mike Lamerato 17:44

Um, and looking back, man, it's like cringy because I saw that so much in this, in this relationship.

Mike Lamerato 17:52

Right, that was only my second, third girlfriend at the time, you know, um, and how I kind of reclaimed that was, unfortunately, I think, sometimes not all the time, but sometimes guys have to kind of be chopped down a little bit, to really feel and really move through that pain and to then, on the other side, hopefully claim something for yourself. So my pithy answer to that is essentially just, at some point you have to choose yourself, and that might mean standing alone for a while, that might mean doing something crazy, like going to a grad program you just accepted to two weeks prior. That could be for some people, I think, too, entering, entering the military, something they need to do for themselves or to better themselves, or to have have a calling or family um. But yeah, I think at some point you realize that if you don't ever choose yourself first, that you can't show up for anyone else in a in a healthy, masculine manner in a in a healthy, masculine manner, yeah, yeah I appreciate that.

Alex Lange 19:07

Um, I want to ask this question because it came up and and if you can't answer, that's okay, sure, but yeah, I think about two and a half years ago, alex, right, I'm 13 years in the day. Um, yeah, I'm solely focused on my career, yeah, and and when you had said, right there, and and I'm I, I have challenges by this now of like creating messaging to, to, to reach men like two and a half year old, or two and a half year old 2.5 years ago, alex, um, when you say, choose yourself, like I am choosing, am choosing myself.

Alex Lange 19:44

I am you know, working and I am providing for my family. I'm doing things that I what I perceived that I want to do, right. But then I pulled these layers back and I realized that I joined the military because I wanted a connection with my father. Like I didn't have any connection with my father. My father was a 20-year name, uh, air Force veteran and uh, as soon as I joined the Navy man boom, we were, we were communicating, we were having long phone calls, we there was, there was some type of connection, uh. So my question is this like what does choose yourself, look like to men?

Alex Lange 20:18

that yeah, it may not be. I don't the word conscious, but have not done some work to peel back layers?

Mike Lamerato 20:26

Yeah, I think it's starting to look at your programming. You know it's interesting. Your 2.5 self was, you know, thinking that they selected the Navy to, and I'm sure there was parts of you that were really fascinated or felt good about that. But yeah, it was tied to your dad. So it's almost like I almost wanna say it's like this rite of passage thing that doesn't always happen in our culture, right? So until you can't really shake that out, until you've kind of been able to stand in the clearing right it's a phrase I like to use with some people of standing in the clearing is essentially just saying you are somewhere between leaving your family of origin and starting a new life, and life kind of knocks you down in a sense, right. So, um, I think, for maybe even some of the younger guys, is how that would translate is trying something on your own, you know, trying to get out into the world in some way, right, whether it's through military things or just college, or just traveling Europe for a year, whatever you need to do. But you need to stand in the clearing of your life at some point, and that's where I think we're seeing a lot of problems with that right now, in the US, obviously, but I think that's what we're seeing a lot of problems with that right now in the us, obviously, um, but I think that's what we're called to do right, um, and yeah, I'm not discounting that that can be significantly daunting and overwhelming and people may not have the means to be able to do that right, or they they rely on their parents or their, their family or their culture to kind of, you know, to survive, but they also know it's kind of keeping them held back. Um, I think that's tough and there's no like there's no really minimum or maximum age here, which I think is kind of the scary things.

Mike Lamerato 22:35

Some guys wake up. You know I work with, uh, I pretty much work from 20 to 60 is like my range then and there's some guys who don't wake up till 50 and who are now saying, wow, I've been, I've been an engineer for 30 years, but you know, ivilized is just doing this work earlier and giving these men, young men, experiences where they can figure out kind of who they are at younger and younger, like moving that bar back down to what I think should be like a proper time of adolescence, of spending time away from your parents and figuring out. Um, I just got back from a vision quest in March and being a 33 year old man and finally still, or finally, getting to the point in my life where I can like, trust myself fully and and have that, it's like man we, we need, need to offer those, that stuff to younger generations, yeah, so hopefully over that answer, hopefully not rambling too much on that one, but yeah, I mean I.

Alex Lange 23:48

I think that it's important that you know being like a highlight to that because, like you said, many men don't, sometimes we are.

Alex Lange 24:00

I started joining a bunch of Facebook groups recently my dad's Facebook groups because I was on a call with Trevor on the unsupply father and he'd asked me like, what are fathers struggling? And I can only tell you from my experience what I'm struggling with. And so, in the men that I work with, I know a little bit, but I'm like I want to know more. So I joined all these facebook groups and I got in onto these facebook groups and I immediately, immediately saw a lot of negativity and fear and a lot of victim mindset. Right, and which comes to my, my next point of like the, the, how common this victim mindset is of where, like, life is happening to me instead of me create you know, I'm the creator of my life right, like, instead of seeing everything and this is, I know this is a higher thought than people may be able to process, and then I'm not taking any hits there, but if you can change the way that you see life of like this is good or bad, it's just happening.

Exploring Men's Inner Wisdom and Work

Alex Lange 25:07

Right, like this is just happening and having the curiosity and what the lesson is. Why is this, you know, like having more interest into the question rather than the answer? Right? Because when you get the answer, when you're looking for the answer, you're, like, committed to being right, you're committed to this path of defensiveness, closed-minded. But if you just have this open mind and you're curious of what comes from it, I think there can be change. And I say all that to preface that you talked about this intuition a couple couple minutes ago, that you, that you, you followed into clinical psychology right to bring it back to you here. Tell me, tell me, was that built, was that something you've always had, or what did you do to get that intuition? Because I'm sitting here and I'm like wow me and you were the same.

Alex Lange 25:59

We're the I'm like. I'm still trying to find the intuition from time to time.

Mike Lamerato 26:05

Sure, sure, yeah, I think it means different things to different people, but I think it really is.

Mike Lamerato 26:11

I think we all have an inner core energy, or, if you want to call that, your core self. And I think if you do, if you listen, if you can quiet some of the generational voices, if you can quiet, you know the world a little bit. I think that voice is really there. You know, and we talked about wilderness, retreats to previous, and it's pretty clear that when you guys, when you get guys on the land, you listen to things a little bit better, you know, um, but yeah, I, I think it's something that's built into all of us. I don't think you just find it one day at the you know back of your closet. I think it is. It is there. It's about kind of doing the work to get back to yourself. I think we all have an inherent wisdom in there. Some might require a little bit more excavating than others, right, just because we have such unique experiences and we live in a diverse country with a lot of things. And I think it's there. I think it's there Most guys, if you'll talk to them, they'll know that that marriage maybe wasn't the thing for them. They'll know that, taking this very safe job, they still heard a little faint voice that wasn't totally okay with that we're doing is we're kind of like. We're kind of like calibrating men to listen to those deeper areas again and not get so wrapped up in over performing, over providing. You know all the things that our dad's generation did pretty well.

Mike Lamerato 27:55

I would say um, for most guys at least. Um. But getting back into, oh, actually life works better if I actually honor the things that I like to do. You know, I tell people all the time, like if you were to, if you were to kidnap me and I woke up and I was somehow now an accountant and I was working at a firm and I was auditing people, like I wouldn't last a week, man, I, I would run, I would run away. I would run away. You know, I would escape because I can't, I couldn't do that, I couldn't do that. I have to. I have to work with people. I have to work for myself. I have to work with men. Now, they don't like women. I love women, but it's just yeah Once you kind of engage that core self and there's. You know, there's a lot of different ways to get there right Therapy, wilderness, retreats, men's initiation, men's groups talking with other men.

Mike Lamerato 28:49

I can't tell you how many men this past year alone that have randomly met throughout life have wanted to connect and have been very curious about what it means to be a therapist right, and there's not. I don't think that's a coincidence, right. I think what we're talking about is guys are waking up to like what they actually want to do with their life, because at the end of that is if you're doing what you want to do, no surprise here, everyone else is happier in your life, right. Your wife actually likes you, your partner likes you, your kids can look up to you, you feel good about your community, you're in right. It's so kind of wraps around to that nice guy question again, but if you, if you do this work, like, everyone else celebrates that too and you're just a better partner and a better father and civilian and whatnot, whatever you know. So, um, yeah, I think it's there. I think it's there and I think people like us are trying to help guys acknowledge that.

Alex Lange 29:53

Yeah, I appreciate that. I've said this many times on different podcasts about, like, the importance of doing your own work. You know, for years my wife tried to get me to do the work and she wasn't successful and there was a point where she had to. You know, like she was doing her own work and she was hiring her vibration and there's two. You know it goes in two directions, right, like, if you're in partnership or whatever your situation is, if you're around people that are not doing the work and their vibrations lower, you're gonna, you're gonna match that. But if you surround yourself with people that that are doing the work, that have higher vibrations, you're either gonna, you know, detach from them you're gonna, you know, go your separate ways or you're going to higher your vibrations. I think that it's important as men, that we understand that energetics is real, right, like we get so caught up in the tangible, we get caught up in the, in the material, everything that's around us.

Alex Lange 30:47

But yeah there is an energetic piece that I think that we lack and that's why I asked that intuition question, because I really do think that energetics has a play there on that, uh, transitioning. I want to ask this question to you because I've been very intrigued, like why therapy, why therapy? So you went to clinical psychology, you know you had this intuition, but why therapy? Men's therapy? And now we were talking about wilderness therapy. Tell me about that.

Normalizing Men's Therapy and Healing

Mike Lamerato 31:11

Yeah, yeah. So I kind of had a plethora of interests in undergrad, right. I kind of bounced between pre-med and neuroscience, law enforcement. I knew I wanted to be in the helping field, so I was in the right quadrant. I was just kind of looking through the jungle of what do I actually see myself doing? And, I think, just putting yourself into different shoes. And I did different experiences, did research, shadowed people, interviewed people which I always recommend to younger people. Just interview people, like if I always recommend the younger people, you know, just interview people, like if you see a guy doing what you maybe like to do talk with them, take them out for coffee, you know, go out to breakfast. But um yeah. So I kind of tried on all these different hats in a slight way. Uh, you know, pre-med was no I. I suck at chemistry and calculus and I had a hard time getting into those classes. So I kind of was like all right, well, let's look over here, we can kind of keep this on the back burner. Law enforcement I'm really interested in that, but still not always just helping people at the end of the day.

Mike Lamerato 32:18

I looked at neuroscience and experimental psychology and really cool, really fascinating, right. What does the brain do? Finding different medications and cures to things was really cool. Still not intimate enough for me. And then I think how it landed on clinical psychology was just. I can't think of a better privilege or anything that's more interesting than to be able to know and work with people's stories and to see people, especially men, show up in their life, right. So obviously I didn't know that as I was getting into the field, it just seemed like what can I do? How can I do the best or serve the most within the capacity?

Mike Lamerato 33:06

That seems the most interesting to me and you know it's talked about a lot in grad school is the therapeutic relationship is unlike any other relationship you ever have in your life, right, I mean, you can open up to this person. This person might know everything about you and your partner might know that too, but it's a person that you don't have to do anything for, right. It is a is such like a coveted, special, important relationship that. So that's why I think really just pull the therapy right. It is such a unique experience. You might know more about this person than anyone else in their life does and you might see them in that darkness, but then you also get to see them kind of reclaim their life and crawl out of that.

Mike Lamerato 33:57

So I'm biased man, honestly, but I don't see that. That's just a cool. That's a cool gig, you know. I don't know anything else other than maybe like surgery or something like that, where you would be that intimate with someone and and help him kind of walk during that path of life, knowing that that guy has not only kind of saved his own life but is now, you know, there's these ripple effects within his family and his partner and his society. You know a lot. What traver talks about too is just kind of helping one man at a time. You're not just helping the man, right, you're helping everyone around him. So continue to be very blessed by that, and I just personally can't see a more interesting job. So that's how I kind of landed on therapy. Yeah.

Alex Lange 34:46

It leads me to this question of how do we normalize therapy as men Right, like and this is a big question. Maybe I could try to be more specific, but I often, when, when I'm talking to men and these Facebook groups or I, you know, just interact with in public, as soon as I mentioned men's work or therapy, I get like pushed away by this hard boundary gets put up and uh, it's. It doesn't personally hurt me when they do it, but it hurts that I know that these men are. There's pain, right, there's pain, and it's important that we're able to understand our pain Because, like I say, the theme, if we can understand our pain.

Alex Lange 35:34

It can propel us to our purpose in life. And so like how do we? Normalize therapy, because I think I am a firm believer therapy is a is a. I think it's a necessity, like we need this right. We need this to take the transformation steps, and not in the sense there's something wrong with you, but that that it's a tool or a resource that you can just vent out.

Men's Health

Mike Lamerato 36:00

Yeah, I think what we're already doing, I think having guys open up about these things, I think the men's work I think if you can get get guys into men's work as a group, it becomes less daunting. Uh, I think we have guys open up about their experience with, with therapy and just sharing that. I remember years ago a University of Michigan football player opened up around going to therapy and this was like probably six years ago and everyone was like why are you in therapy? You're the star, whatever, and you play for Michigan. Like you shouldn't, you shouldn't be depressed, like what's wrong with and I'm glad to see that's improved now. But I think it starts with like people really just opening up, uh, getting into men's work.

Mike Lamerato 36:49

Um, that's more of the open-ended but I think on more of a just health or clinical kind of side is just go to the doctors. You know like, go if you're in your, go if you're in your, if you're in your late 20s or 30s, just go to your primary care doctor, right, and say hey, um, you know, most of them are trained now to to check for depression and just be honest. You know, um, this is caring for yourself. So maybe the first step is just to say, hey, I haven't had a physical in five years. I should go do that and not being afraid to and hopefully have a good PCP, but hopefully telling him, hey, him or her, hey, like I'm not doing. Okay, you know, do you have anyone locally who you'd recommend? So starting there can be a really easy way of an inroad if you don't know where to start, and therapy doesn't hurt. It's uncomfortable, but it doesn't hurt. Talk with someone, get a free consult. Myself and a lot of people I know here at least offer free consults and we had a saying in grad school all these things from grad school are coming back because it's fresh.

Mike Lamerato 38:01

But date around. You know, we used to say, like, finding a therapist is kind of like dating initially, right, sometimes you got to date around a little bit and find someone. You, you want to like this person, right, so you don't. It's this weird thing that guys will do sometimes is like, oh, I've seen this doctor for like 50 years and he saw my, my parents and my grandparents and but I don't really like them. You know, it's like well, like date around. Then like it's, it's okay, you don't have to. Just because they have an advanced degree doesn't mean they're going to be the best fit for you. So, yeah, I would say talk with people. If every guy so at least one guy in every friend group probably has been to therapy,