Dr. Paul Leslie: Creating Magical Sessions and the Art of Creative Transformation

In this episode of AWAKEN, Ryan DeJonghe sits down with Dr. Paul Leslie, an author, psychotherapist, and educator known for his unique blend of clinical expertise and creative "magic" in the therapy room. Inspired by the recommendation of James Tripp, Ryan explores Paul’s philosophy on moving beyond the "mechanical" nature of modern therapy to embrace the unpredictable, the creative, and the truly transformative. They discuss how to build a "magical session" where the therapist and client co-create a reality that makes change not only possible but inevitable.

Key Discussion Points
The Magical Session: Dr. Leslie breaks down the core concepts of his book, Creating a Magical Session, explaining how to move away from rigid protocols and toward a more fluid, presence-based approach to healing.

The "Tripp-Leslie" Connection: Paul shares insights from his fruitful friendship and collaboration with James Tripp, discussing how their shared views on hypnosis and change work have influenced each other.

Beyond the Diagnostic Label: Why Paul believes that treating the "human" rather than the "disorder" is the key to unlocking profound breakthroughs in psychotherapy.

The Role of Mystery and Play: Discover how Dr. Leslie incorporates elements of mystery and creative play into his work to bypass the conscious mind’s resistance to change.

Clinical Intuition: A deep dive into how practitioners can develop their intuition to know exactly when to "break the rules" for the benefit of the client.

Memorable Quotes
"A magical session isn't about tricks; it's about creating a space where the impossible starts to feel like a choice."

"If you’re just following a script, you’re missing the person sitting right in front of you. Transformation happens in the 'now,' not in the manual."

Special Segment: Hypnotic Gift
At the end of the episode, stay tuned for a special hypnotic gift provided by Dr. Paul Leslie. He leads a gentle yet powerful session designed to help you integrate the learnings from the conversation and tap into your own creative resources for personal growth.

Episode Timestamps
00:00:01 – Introduction of Dr. Paul Leslie

00:06:30 – The influence of James Tripp and the synergy of their work

00:14:15 – What makes a therapy session "Magical"?

00:25:50 – Breaking free from the "Medical Model" of psychotherapy

00:38:20 – The importance of presence and "Unknowing" in the room

00:51:10 – Creative interventions: Using mystery to spark change

01:05:30 – Hypnotic Gift: A Journey into Creative Resourcefulness

01:10:19 – Closing thoughts and where to find Paul’s books

Connect with Dr. Paul Leslie

Official Website: drpaulleslie.com

My favorite book of his: Creating a Magical Session on Amazon

Connect with Ryan DeJonghe

If you are a practitioner looking to add more "magic" to your work, or an individual ready to experience a transformative shift, let's connect:

Website: trancewell.help 

Email: ryan@trancewell.help

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome everyone. We have Dr. Paul Leslie here from South Carolina, right?

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Yeah. And as a little frame of reference for everyone listening, I'm a huge fan of James Dritt. I've been following him. Uh he really revolutionized my view of what hypnosis is. And he James keeps talking about Paul Leslie. I'm like, okay, I gotta find out. If if James is inspired by someone, I gotta find out who James is inspired by. So welcome, Paul.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Well, thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm inspired by James. James and I have a very good and uh fruitful friendship. So uh I appreciate that. He's a good guy.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

He is, absolutely. And I was reading your book, The Art of Creating a Magical Session. And you have what, six, seven books out? Uh quite a few.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Yeah, I have a as I'm now nine, I'm working on the tenth now, and I need to stop before I uh, you know, one of my mentors said, you know, stop me before I write again. And I feel like uh, you know, that's that's where I am.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Now I'm curious, what's this new book about?

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Uh it's actually on um uh strategic therapy. Uh, what I'm doing is I'm looking at what I'm referring to as strategic interact uh interactional therapy, which is what the early uh therapy was kind of referred to that the uh mental research institute, uh Palo Alto briefed what became brief therapy and the work of Milton Erickson, what those early uh developers were doing, and how unfortunately so much of that has just been lost in the uh the psychotherapy marketplace.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

And you know, yeah, and I laugh because I I'm remembering your your early stages, you've got into what was your first like school uh psychotherapy that you were involved with?

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Well, when I went to well, when I initially started doing uh or should should say started having an interest in uh personal transformation, client transformation, I actually started with uh hypnosis and uh I did a uh neurolinguistic programming, which has uh some things good, some not so good things from my perspective, but there's there's some richness there. I always credit NLP that that led me really to the work of Dr. Milton Erickson, who uh even though I I couldn't I I never uh met him, but he he was just such a profound influence on my work and on my life, and that led me to train with uh several direct students, uh uh people who are direct students of Ericsson. And uh I've learned a lot. So, within that, there's that whole realm of what we call brief therapy, which came out of the uh Gregory Bates and Dom Jackson, a lot of the Jay Haley early uh therapeutic work. And out of that came solution-focused therapy, solution-oriented, you know, uh neurolinguistic program kind of came out of Ericsson, some of Ericsson in the MRI work. So to answer your question, I'm I'm kind of bringing it back, going old school with my book. But when I got into graduate school, uh it was cognitive behavioral therapy, rational emotive therapy, which which are not bad therapies. Um, and I was actually, at least to me, I was pretty good at them, but I always felt that it just didn't fit me uh to be a strict uh cognitive therapist where you're just constantly challenging people's um uh beliefs and thought patterns, trying to restructure them, trying then to think rationally, whatever that may be. And uh we could use a little rational thinking these days for many people, but uh so I I kind of did that for a while, but then eventually I found my way back, thankfully, to strategic brief therapies, Ericsson, um, you know, and and that's that's really where I operate out of.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

So for the layperson, what is the solution-based uh cognitive behavior versus the brief therapy, the Ericsson model? What are the differences between the two?

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Okay, well, with uh cognitive therapies, uh as I mentioned, it's the focus is on, you know, what are your thoughts? The the belief uh is that the ideology of all our problems is our thinking. If we have lousy thinking, we have lousy lives. So uh I think we can all agree on that. Uh so the whole premise is to get people to think more logically, rationally, not to over-generalize and globalize negative things, and just have a more balanced viewpoint in your in one's thoughts. Where how I contrast that with the Ericsson work is that there's not a real direct attacking, if you will, uh, and I mean that in a playful way, but attacking of somebody's belief system. What the Erickson work led me to do is to realize that people are already little systems. I mean, every all living systems are creating their own kind of uh environments within a context. And it's very difficult to get people sometimes to shift the way they think without a lot of work, a lot of effort. So with Ericsson, a lot of the brief therapies, the importance is giving them a new experience because Ericsson's idea is that he came up at a time that insight was what was therapists were going for from the psychodynamic Freudian is once you understand why you have a problem, then your problem you know will go away and all of that. Well, uh Ericsson felt that insight doesn't lead to change, experience leads to change, and experience leads to insight due to change. So he felt like they had it kind of backwards. So what Ericsson would do would create uh situations, directives, and certainly his masterful skill of hypnosis that you know very few people probably will ever equal, uh, would be used as a way to kind of reconstruct someone's reality, if you will, but not in a manner where you're directly trying to fight them and trying to get no, no, no, no, you're thinking irrationally. This is how you need to think. Because one thing we've learned from biology is, and I'm thinking specifically of the Chilean uh biologist Humberto Maturana, who talked about that how systems, you you really can't change a system from the outside. The structure of the system has to change from inside. So the most that the outside environment context can do is to perturb the system, shift it in a way that causes the inside to restructure itself. And so to me, cognitive therapies, although can be very effective, it's a lot of trying to uh get inside uh from the outside that it's hard to get inside and get someone to think differently. It's better to just give them an experience to shift little things. So that allows them to physically, emotionally, mentally realize that they have so many more options on how to respond, but without being confrontational, without trying to force people to adopt new ideas or do things, just in a way that's very congruent with where they are. And it's kind of like uh, in a way, it's kind of like Taoism is in, you know, you're going with the flow, but you're now kind of since you're flowing, you're taking it in the flow in a slightly different direction. So uh again, I I don't want to sound like I'm putting cognitive therapy down because it can be very effective. But for me personally, I found it very limiting.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Yeah, and I like how you bring it to the Dallas idea of that middle way of somewhere between pushing and pulling, that uh that ebb and flow, that yin and yang. And I like how you sprinkle, you have a little bit of both. You have that CBT background and you have that Erickson, but then in reading your book, you also have the local indigenous uh people. I want I'm curious about that. What got you into that and what's a little bit of history for the the listeners here?

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Okay, all right. So what uh you're referring to uh the local indigenous uh groups that are kind of near in my area, these are uh people known as the gullah, sometimes called the Geechee when you go into the state of Georgia. I'm in South Carolina there, uh so sometimes you'll hear it called Gullah Geechee. These people are the descendants of enslaved people in uh uh the uh kind of the eastern seaboard from like around Jacksonville, North Carolina down to Jacksonville, Florida. So these are people who were abducted from their lands and brought over to work in the the uh rice and indigo uh fields uh during uh pre-Civil War. Um so after the Civil War, uh a lot of those areas were kind of abandoned. The old plantations went out of business, people had left, and so what ended up happening, this area called the Sea Islands, right on the coast, these uh people kind of were left alone in some uh degree, and they kind of have their own culture. Uh, they still have, you know, you know, American culture and all, but they have their own language uh specific to them, which is a mix of some aspects of African uh uh dialects in with uh English and and some other things. And uh they have uh different ideas, uh spiritual ideas, um different ways of of uh creating uh healing in their own communities. A lot of their work uh people refer to as conjure, and sometimes they will be uh called hoodoo. Uh, we what we say a lot around here is called root work. And uh people who are root workers or hoodoo doctors, uh conjure doctors, sometimes we call them two-headed doctors. One head is in the physical realm, the other head is in the metaphysical uh realm. Uh, they uh will do things like create spells, uh rituals, things like that to help people heal, but in some cases also to create a um perhaps a uh negative spell, like uh if one has an enemy and you want to to curse them, you know, that's kind of the the dark side of it. But what I found uh in my in my research of the of the area is that historically the hoodoo doctor, the root doctor, uh played the role of kind of a spiritual leader of people pre-emancipation because they didn't have access to a lot of health care. And even after emancipation, there wasn't a lot of access to health care. So root doctors became not just um uh naturopathic doctors using herbs and roots and things like that, but also spiritual doctors that people would go to for advice and healing and to have curses removed and all of this. Uh it's funny, is this is a um a thing that the colonists in the United States also had, but they called them witch finders. Or, you know, they would have people, and these are the white upper class colonists in the early days, they would have people there to do the similar kind of thing to help uh block potential witchcraft. And so, you know, there's there's a rich history of uh kind of these more um esoteric, odd, strange kind of things in in my area historically. I don't I don't call myself uh a root doctor and I don't think I'm doing hoodoo. Uh what I learned from this culture is more the idea of creating a performance for healing, because a lot of the way that they work is that when you go in and you you meet a root doctor, it's not the first thing they do is they don't sit you down in a chair and go, Well, what brings you in today? They don't uh just say, okay, well, I need a list of all the things that uh you know is going on that's bad for you, and I need to know your family history, and let me see the list of your medications. And this is your first time in who do that, you know. Um, and before we go, we need to do here sign these documents. From the get-go, most of the the ones that were really effective created an interaction with their clients that was out of the ordinary, they would seem almost terrifying to the client or very charismatic or whatever it was, and and would say and do things that gave the client when they were in the presence of the root doctor, the hoodoo man, hoodoo woman, an experience that's different than their everyday experience. So this led me to go back to what I was saying about perturbing the system. Right in therapy, you perturb the system by creating a new novel experience that that sets the stage to create the conditions for true transformational change to emerge. So, what we're trying to do is I think doing it backwards. We're trying to get change to merge to have a transformational interaction, but it's got to be the interaction first. But the thing is, it's got to work for that particular person. If I'm going to see a root doctor, I almost expect the root doctor to be a little different, to be a little scary, to be a little charming, to be a little just out of the ordinary or mystical and all. Um, so that will work for some people. Those two things have to line up. But now, uh, if my mom needed some help and you know, an elder in her Presbyterian church, and she's, you know, a fairly conservative person, I might not send her directly to the root doctor because that would not create the experience that she needs that is out of the ordinary. So there is something, there's not a template for this. There are several concepts, and you you kind of have to find the concept that works for you as the therapist and the client, because again, the most important person in the room is the client. It's not, you know, the technique, it's not the theory. You know, we have this wonderful thing in psychotherapy, and it's in hypnosis too, where everyone keeps hoping they'll find the newest, greatest technique, the new thing that's gonna create change in people. And if they could just learn this new technique, and that's it, and then now that I know it, it's like a silver bullet, and I can plug it in with everyone. Yes, yes, all the data shows that that is absolutely 100% incorrect. Change only uh happens uh a lot of times, true generative change in therapy of any kind, if there is a therapeutic alliance, a working relationship, trust and expectancy. And if those aren't there, it's real hard to get anything uh really you know, cooking. So uh, but anyway, I laughed.

SPEAKER_02 15:54

Yeah, I I'm laughing because I work I have two two hats I wear. One is the hypnotherapist, and the other one is during the day I work at the VA, the veterans hospital, and uh our unit has um a neuropsychologist assigned with us, and there's one story. I know she's not listening to this, but where uh a veteran sat with her and there he's talking about his dog, and then he asked her, he's like, What kind of dog do you have any animals or any pets? And then she's like, This isn't about me, this is about you, and that alliance you're talking about was just kaput right then. He just closed off, like, nope, not doing this. But I'm wondering, I want to rewind a little bit. You're talking about your mom, the Presbyterian elder. So you have clients that come see you, I imagine, with different backgrounds. So, do you have like in your one drawer you have like a headdress, and then in the other drawer you have a Bible? Like, do you or do you have your own style of hoodoo or whatever?

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Uh I'm just me.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

Yeah. So I just wonder like, do you find yourself changing your persona to meet the client where they're at?

SPEAKER_01 17:13

Yeah, well, absolutely. I mean, I but not in a way that's not me. Um and I think this is uh we're we're going a different uh angle here, but I think it's important. We need to uh change ourselves to help our clients change. And if we are only gonna uh showcase ourselves in one way, we're limiting the exchange because that might not be the right exchange with the client. So for me as a therapist, it's important to do that deep work on myself that I can be comfortable uh being the uh person that maybe is a little rough around the edges, but also being the person that's very kind and gentle, being the kind of person that that likes a good body joke in the middle of a session, even though you're not supposed to say those things. I I have to have the flexibility of the human experience to match and be who that person needs me to be and who that person that I need to be for me. Because I if I'm always gonna come in like the traditional uh Freudians where they had just it was the blank slate, there was nothing there. Uh I'm I'm there's only going to be a select group that that's gonna work with. But by being being myself, being genuine, um it doesn't mean that I'm only one way. It's there is this interaction that happens. It's like there's you know, what's the old saying? There's not an I and a U, there's a we. And that we is a complexity. If you think about two things come together, create the complexity, the complexity is this dynamic interchange and interaction with the client. Because whatever the client says, there it's like volleyball. They they hit the ball and it comes to me. Well, I gotta hit it back, and we have to do this back and forth. Now, if they hit the ball to me and I grab the ball and hold it, well, the game's over. Or I tell them they're not doing it right. Or, you know, I start changing the rules of the game and then they're frustrated and confused because that's I that's me trying to fit them into something that doesn't fit the structure. Going back here we are to this whole idea of a living system, the structure, and it is the due to the interaction between myself and my client that they're given this space. Is it going back to the idea of creating the conditions to bring forth change?

SPEAKER_04 19:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

I have to be incredibly flexible, but it's not for me, it's not a flexible as like, okay, they're acting like this. I need to uh pretend to be this or I need to do that. It's just having enough comfort in your own skin to be this fluid uh person that can meet people where they are, but not lose yourself in the process of doing it.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Yeah, I love that. I'm wondering because you you mentioned earlier too about improving yourself, working on yourself. So for the for the hypnotherapist or the psychologists are listening here, how do you improve yourself so that way you could show up authentically for your client?

SPEAKER_01 20:26

That's a good question. First question is just to accept what you don't like. Say more to that because we're all gonna have things we don't like. So if I could give you a, and again, I'm not a technique guy, but if I could give you and everyone listening, write down the things you don't like about yourself and then write all the ways, really be honest and write all the ways that actually serve you. I I can be very short-tempered, I can be very aggressive, I can be very intense. I don't like that about me, but I love that about me because there's times I need to just in daily life, I need to be intense. Uh, I also teach college. Sometimes I have to shut down some nonsense in the classroom. I need to be aggressive, somebody's bothering my family. I need to be aggressive. I need so there's there's reasons to have all of these. We wouldn't have them. Nature would have gotten rid of all the negative stuff. But what we do is we sit and we say, Oh, this is a negative thing about me. I don't want it, put it away, and then I'm gonna feel bad that I have it. And okay, well, how is it serving me? How is being impatient serving me? That's a tough one, right? Yeah, but yeah. Sometimes we need to be impatient, but other times we don't. So, first we have to accept that the things that we might not love about ourselves are completely lovable because it's all in context. And so rather than say, I want to cut off this part of me, if you honor it, you love it, and say, you know, I can work on it and manage it, and and instead of trying to like create an exorcism and get Rid of it. Yeah. Which honestly, I believe that's what most modern therapy is a disguised exorcism. I have I have anxiety. Well, let's get rid of it. Let's get it out. And you know, and then guess what happens? You get more of the anxiety. Always, you know, that's that's the Taoist thing. The more you try to do it, the more uh it doesn't happen.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

So if I just accepting and changing my relationship with my anxiety, then it's amazing where the anxiety kind of disappears and goes. Same way with my uh impatience. Some if I just change my relationship to it, that's the first stage. Accept, change my relationship. Okay. Then the the um the second thing as far as improvement is this concept that will be familiar to anyone who studied the work of Dr. Erickson, is something called utilization. Now, for those who might not know, utilization is when you're in working with a client, whatever a client gives you, whatever comes forth in the session, you actively take what that is and try to find a way to make it work for the client's benefit, for the session's benefit. So if a person says, I'm so down on myself because uh I'm so worried about my kids, I yell at them a lot. And you may say, Well, so they know that you really care about them because if you weren't yelling, you know, it wouldn't, they might think you didn't care about them, you know. So whatever they're giving you, it's it's not just reframe, it's taking how can I use this and do it. Well, the same thing is with ourselves. What we don't like about ourselves, you know, how can I use this to make myself a better person? How can I use what I have? What are my talents? How do I utilize what I'm giving out? Because again, we're going back to that volleyball kind of thing. They give me this, and oh, I'm gonna utilize it. Let me go and bounce it back. So doing that with myself and then doing it within uh the session, you know, there's this famous psychoanalysis named Eric Fromm, who had this quote that said, most therapists are just waiting for the client to show up that helps them heal. So we were always kind of the you know, thinking in the back of our head about our own growth and our own development. So I think when you accept those things and utilize them, uh, you can get some just that alone, you can get some remarkable progress just in how you interact with life in general.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

I love that. And as you're talking, I uh multiple things came to my mind. One part is like Jung talking about the shadow self, and then the other part is even in DBT having like two truths that seem opposite, but like you're talking about the parent yelling at their child. Yes, a child might feel one way, but at the same time, they also can realize that's care. It's a form of care. I love that. And I love the idea of you're talking about systems, and when you're with a client, it's like there's two bodies of systems. The client has all these their own systems, and you have your own systems. And would you like are these parts? I'm right now in my studies. I'm looking between the internal family systems and then I'm looking at parts work, ego state. Like, do you have a model that works well for you?

SPEAKER_01 25:23

The the bulk of my work uh is trying to find client resources and strength and focusing the session on those and only those. I have found that too often my field, even when they're trying to be humanistic and positive and all that, they still find themselves squarely strangled by the problem. So uh, you know, you can talk about parts and all this. Well, to have a part means that there's another part, right? So you have a negative part of you, or the unhappy part of you, or the depressed part, but then you have the happy part of you. And the happy well, you know what we've done? What now we've created a dichotomy. And we're still focusing on the problem because here you can't have one, you can't have problem without solution. And that's that's how from MRI brief therapy, most of the time our problems are not the real problem, it's our attempted solutions that didn't work that we keep applying over and over again because we believe we're not supposed to have the problem. A lot of times, just keeping people from trying to solve their own problem, the problem goes away. So anytime that we set up uh the focus of discourse and interaction in a problem-focused context, we have very limited access to resources and strengths. It's only when we leave the context of problems and actually talk about things that are funny, that are resourceful, that are engaging, and then start to shift the focus of therapy away from any problem talk to not solution talk, although that's not bad, but solution talk still tied to what?

SPEAKER_02 27:12

The problem.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Right. Try and solve the problem.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Yeah. Talk about resource. So somebody comes in and they're frustrated at work and they're angry and they're uh just hurt by the way things are. And in session, they're they're telling me their problem, and they start raising their voice and it's really intense. And I say, Hey, listen, the way you just said that is pretty powerful. Have you ever thought about public speaking? Because that just, wow, the passion you have. Now we're exiting out into no, there's a resource, there's passion. There's if the client takes my volleyball and goes, No, I have it, tell me more. You know, we can start focusing the session on what it's like to be a passionate speaker. How can you make your life better being a passionate? Who can you go inspire as a speaker? So the problem's still there, but somehow by accessing the resources and strengths that are outside that context, the problem changes. Because when we how do I put this here? Um, when we get hit by life, and we all will, yes, um, some people get hit by life so much they die. Hmm, wonder who that would be uh there, Ryan. Yeah, you get you you actually die and then you come back. But uh so we all get hit by life, but when we get hit by life, really knocked down, I think of us as a homeostatic system. And what happens is we have good and bad, but when we're a homeostatic system, we're doing both, right? And we're flowing, but then we get knocked over. It's like we're off balance, and only one side is working. So for me to spend more time focusing on this problem that's really driving my life, that's taken up, it's not getting me back on balance. I've got to go over to the other side and start accessing those strengths and reminding indirectly, particularly if you're a hypnotist, indirectly, reminding the person of the resources and strengths they have, that that alone is enough to bring people back to a more balanced state. So we haven't gotten rid of the problem, but with the activating of the resources, people solve their own problems.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

And that's what I think modern a lot of modern therapy is missing. They say they do this, but they still end up getting hung up in these theories and these techniques that still have to have uh problems. Most therapists are problem-focused therapists, even when they try not to be. And I'm not trying to be uh critical of people because everyone's if you're working and it's getting results, keep doing it, and and we need you. I mean, the world needs you. But I think too much of the theories are tied to a problem focus. So going back to cognitive therapy, that was my issue, is that your problem are your thoughts. So the more that we focused on correcting your thoughts, the theory is that you'll get better. And some data shows you do get better. But we all know that the more you focus on some thoughts, the more you focus on those thoughts. And the more you focus on those thoughts. And the more you focus on those sleep. Now you're in a different hypnosis, right? Where it's all promise. So nothing's changed. So that's why you know, getting someone to say, okay, you've got these thoughts are real negative. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to get up 30 minutes every day. And I want you to go to a quiet room, and I want you to get out your pen and paper, and I want you to write down every thought. But you can only think these negative thoughts during this 30-minute period before work, but it's got to be intense. You got to really say and just say, I've got 30 and just and then really do it. And then they come back to you in a week or two and go, like, well, I did it. I noticed for some reason I'm not thinking that much about the thought, you know, because we perturbed the system a little bit, right? You know, we didn't spend all the time going like, okay, let's talk about let's dispute. We just told you to interrupt the pattern that you have with your problem. And then it's an amazing thing when you do that, the client gets more flexibility. Flexibility is a resource that people have that they don't feel they have because they're caught in this loop.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

So and when you say the word flexibility, the the other synonymous word that pops to my mind is creativity.

SPEAKER_04 31:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

Like it feels like when we focus on the problem, we're like trapped or brought into this deep well versus where we don't feel creative.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Yeah. Yeah. You got it. Was it Einstein who said that uh um you can never solve a problem at the level that it was created? Yeah. And and that's that's true. You have to your creation has to take at a different level. It's like um orders of change, first order change, second order change. Yeah, first order change is essentially when you're shifting little things that in the end don't really transform the system. So for example, somebody's depressed and you ask them to scale their depression on a scale of one to ten, and they say, you know, uh 10's the you're feeling great, one, you've got to go to the hospital, you're terrible. You go a two. And you go, okay, well, I want you to uh just notice that two, and between now and next week, I want you to write down when you feel better on a piece of paper and bring it in. It's really not a bad thing to do because it's kind of distracts them a little bit uh from that. So they come back and they go, Well, I got a three or I got a four, and they're a little better. But what happens is that really hasn't changed the system. So the next life challenge comes, boom, you know, they're they're back to see you. And that might be a good model if you're wanting to, you know, build a new house on your clients to where you get them to keep coming back to you. Um yeah, I'm being silly, but uh uh second order of change is where you profoundly change the system. So you you tell them that, okay, if if you're depressed and you're gonna be depressed, then be the best depressed person you can do. And and let how can we do depression even better than you're doing it now? You know, maybe we need to have a depression room where you spend your time. But here's the thing if you're gonna have a depression room, you need to paint your room. You need to go in and paint your room. What's the color of depression? And then you need to get candles that are depression candles. Then you get them doing all these different things, and now they have a project, and then they know it, they call you uh two weeks. I got the depression room, but I got no real reason to go into it. And then you say, Well, okay, that's fine. If you want to go ahead and make it a different kind of room, you can. So that's a different order of change to where, again, we've perturbed the system enough to where it's had a new experience, creating that flexibility and being creative in the moment. But here's here's the thing, and and I appreciate you, Ryan, you're letting me ramble today because I feel like I'm I'm rambling too much. But here's the thing is that it's got to be something that connects to that specific client. So if I say the depression room and paint a depression room, client A will be like, that's great, yes, let's do it. Uh, client B will say, That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I'm I'm I want my money back. I'm not gonna do it. I like being depressed. I don't know what they'd say, you know. But uh so it has to be such a connection and an agreed upon shift in reality that it works. That's why these uh standardized treatments have limited return. Because as my dear friend uh Dr. Rob McNeely, who is a student of Erickson, told me, he said, Paul, I've never seen a standardized client.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

Right. And you you talk about perturbing the system and I think a lot of a lot of that comes from the therapist or the hypnotists saying they're afraid. Like they're their subconscious is saying offer this, but they're afraid of the feedback that the client says they're afraid that the the client using your volleyball example is just going to spike that ball and give them a bloody nose. So how do you learn to trust that intuition or your subconscious, whatever you want to call it?

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Well, it doesn't happen overnight.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Right.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Uh but uh some people it may happen a little faster. I find that you you'll never know. There is a um uh uh physicist, cyberneticist, this brilliant polymath uh who was named Heinz von Forrester, who was real big into cybernetics and things like that. And he said the only way we can know is that we first have to act. It's only when we do something that something's created. So we can never know until there's an act, and he says you have to act in order to know. So I've tried to take that to heart. Sometimes when my guts tell me something, I just say it, and if it falls flat, most of the time it's not a big deal. You know, so for example, if if I'm talking to someone and I get this image of a of a red bird in my mind, and I just I've said there's like listen, I I don't mean to interrupt. Does something about a red bird mean anything to you? And they'll go, well, no, you go, okay, I'm sorry. It just yeah, yeah. And you know what? We just go on, nobody flips out, right? Now I will give anyone listening kind of a tip that's worked for me when you are asking your client to do a certain in hypnosis, a certain uh, or even just hypnosis in general, uh, technique, or you're asking them to do some kind of out-of-the-ordinary uh therapeutic ritual or something. I like to always start with a preface to the client that I'm asking them to do something that they clearly probably won't want to do.

SPEAKER_02 37:37

Very Ericsson.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Yeah, I start, and it's usually something like if you were my client, go, Ryan, look, I want you to go do something. Because in my gut, I know it'll help you. I mean, I really, really know it'll help you, but you're not gonna want to do this. And as a matter of fact, Ryan, you may even question why you came in here today. You may run screaming out of this room when you hear this, you may demand your money back, you may get angry with me, you may become so frustrated and so weirded out by what I'm gonna ask you. I don't know if you can sit there or not. And I honor that, and I understand. By the time I get to that, the client's like, okay. And then when you tell them, it's nowhere near as bad as what they've already envisioned. Right. And number two, I've kind of just been up front. I'm about to give you something weird, you know. Eight out of eight out of ten times, oops, sure, they'll do it.

SPEAKER_02 38:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

So just that, yeah. It's kind of uh I didn't model it from Ericsson, but it is very Ericksonian. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

I I like how you build that container of safety for them. Like you kind of preface it with you can leave, you can ask for your money back, you know. I love that. And speaking of the weird, uh in reading your book, I'm wondering how or where these things came up with. For instance, the one that story that pops in my head is you had uh a father and a son that weren't talking to each other, and then you had them talk to each other as professional wrestlers. So where did that come from?

SPEAKER_01 39:18

It came from them. Um I found in the interaction that they both like for some reason professional wrestling. See, the whole point is that the dad had some personal issues and was out of the son's life for several years and had come back in. And they were trying to work through their stuff. And they were doing okay, but they're at an impasse. And so I've just asked them the things that they like to do. And the dad was old school, like the old school wrestling, but he watched a little bit of it, you know, and professional wrestling for those who don't know, this is like the Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair kind of dramatic uh uh sports entertainment, emphasis on entertainment.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

Uh and the son, he was into it, you know. And I I asked him, I was like, well, what do you like about it? And the the more we got is they both were into it. So what I thought would be funny is to get them to say the things they needed to say, not as themselves, but as if they were professional wrestlers. And what I mean is a lot of times these um professional wrestlers for the TV programs, they cut what they call promos, in which they have a microphone and they talk to the camera and they tell the camera what they're gonna do to their opponent next week. You know, you know, well, listen here, when I'm down at the Omni in Atlanta, I will take you down, I'll snap you in two, and you know, it's all just over-the-top ridiculousness and goofy fun. Well, they actually agreed to it. And I had to tell the dad, you abandoned me, and if I ever have an opportunity, I'll snap you in half. And then the dad, I had to leave to get peace in my mind, and now I'll be back on your tag team, you know, and they were laughing and carrying on. But here's the thing they were actually talking about the problem, right? Right, and hearing each other, but they were laughing about it. And so the next time I saw them, they had been watching wrestling together, you know. As you mean, they're also interacting more, and there was not that resentment air that you could smell in a room when you're in a family session, yeah. And so it's anything I do, it's really not that clever. It's I get it from the clients, yeah. And my intuition, oh, it just came to me. I personally believe that I actually picked it up somewhere from the client, nonverbally. So I don't want to, you know, I don't want anyone to go away going like you know, Paul J. Leslie is just brilliant because he's magical and he comes up with the I only the only I just pay attention to resources, I pay attention to strengths. And I've seen some of the worst therapy cases out there, and there's always a strength, there's always a resource. We just have to be patient and listen for it and not get hypnotized if I can use it on a hypnosis podcast, hypnotized by pathology, by problems, because where our attention goes is where we're gonna work from. And I I don't don't want that. I want to work where there's a resource, where there's a strength, where's there's flexibility and creativity, playfulness. That's always uh the best way. You know, you mentioned you worked at the VA. I've been uh honored to be part of a program uh teaching trauma-informed hypnosis to therapists uh across the country who work in the VAs. And they're always shocked that the hypnosis we're teaching primarily focuses on finding a resource. They're they're they're delighted that they don't have to regress someone back to combat and let them have relive it and get the emotions out because it's necessary to create change. So again, it's nothing, and I can't trademark it or say I came up with it. If you just listen and say, okay, what's working? What's what's and ask a question, ask somebody what they like to do for fun when they're not being depressed or anxious or anything, and and how can you utilize aspect of that? If someone says, Well, I like to go walking in nature, my guy, as a hypnotist, uh, Ryan, you know, you just you just gave you a plethora of a wonderful hypnotic induction about walking in nature, you know. Right. Someone says, I like to play video games. Well, there's something a resource there, you know, right? So that that's that's really the bulk of it. Going back to kind of what we started with, that's where I focus because I'm not gonna get in and try to you know psychoanalyze inside the system. I'm closed. System's closed. I can just provide an experience to perturb the system to be a little bit more flexible by moving. Moving it slightly toward a resource or a strength. I mean, that's really it.

SPEAKER_02 44:04

I love that. And you're talking about some of your extreme cases. Is there one that comes top of your head that was just still amazes you to this day? Like of something that presented to you, you're like, wow, what am I going to do? And then all of a sudden they offer something, and you're like, oh, this is cool. Let's let's run with it.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

Yeah, I've got several. Um, one I had a little while back, a couple of years back. This is uh I'll try to make this as brief as possible. Uh, this lady, uh, she was essentially homeless. She had been living with a family friend. Uh, she had gotten out of a um an abusive marriage to where uh she had been essentially, pardon me, essentially kidnapped and raped and beaten for days on end. And then she finally was able to escape and he went to jail. Um, she had her son, 10-year-old son, die. Uh, she had a medical condition where she was very uh much in pain most of the time and then had no money and was couldn't even sign up yet for uh Medicaid or something like that to get the surgery. She finally got on Medicaid, but then had to wait so long. So she has no income, she's in constant pain, she's horribly depressed, she can't work because she's in such pain. She's living with a family friend that drives her absolutely crazy to the point to where she can't find a moment. She's just basically seeing if she can borrow uh uh scan a little marijuana for somebody to go smoke so it'll put her to sleep, so she can get away from the family, just so she has the room and food. And you and there's more. There's a lot, there's a lot more. That's a lot. That's a lot. There's a lot, uh, but you hear it, and then you know, again, you feel yourself getting hypnotized. Yeah. But I I I said, you know, there's got to be a resource in here. And I noticed that, you know, she she her son, she had one son that was still alive and she really cared about the son. And she mentioned that she was concerned about some woman she that she used to know. And I said, uh, it sounds to me like you're the kind of person that other people turn to when they're going through hard times. And she kind of sat back and she said, Yeah, I'm kind of like that. I said, Yeah. What do you like to do for fun when you're when you're not having issues? And all she goes, I like to watch trash TV. And I said, What's trash TV? She says, You know those uh reality TV shows where you, you know, 30, 90 days and you marry somebody you don't know, and all these, you know, my 700,000-pound life or whatever it is. Yeah. And uh I said, uh, what do you like about those? And she says, I'm just interested in the people and their stories. And I said, That's it. You're interested in people and their stories because down deep, even though you don't know these people, you care about them. And that's that part of you that was also saying, you know, people turn to me. So we started going with the trash TV hobby, how she's cared. That led us into a whole different realm. I'm not there's there's a lot more to it, but ends up by the time we ended our time together, which was a few months, not only was she finally, thankfully, nothing I did, was able to have her surgery schedule. Oh, I forgot. She had been in a coma due to COVID and almost died. I got to throw that one in. Um uh, but she had her surgery uh up and ready to go in a few months. But she told me that she was planning to start a nonprofit organization to help women who had been in abusive relationships and help them get job training. Now she did it. Yeah, she did it, yeah. But if I had spent all my time going down the rabbit hole of I mean, we didn't even really talk about the trauma of you know being beaten and raped and you know, all that kind of thing. She needed resources more than she needed psychological archaeology. And I personally believe most of our clients they need to tell their stories, definitely need to listen to their stories and honor those stories. But if we get stuck in their stories with them, nothing changes. So rather than try to tell them that's the wrong story, why don't we just, I don't know, indirectly give them a new story, a new resource, a new strength, or connect them to what they already have, and then just watch that's where the magic kind of unfolds.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

Yeah, that is that is wonderful. I love that. And then another part of me, too, just on a personal level, because I think a lot of therapists, hypnotists, they want to help people. And you're talking about this lady that doesn't have money, and you trans you, but you together, you and her, transformed her life. And then one part of me is like, well, I want to help people. And then a lot of people that I have a heart to help don't have money. And then I'm like, Well, how do I pay the the bills? How do I keep the company running? So it's like, do you set aside a certain amount of pro bono, or how do you do that as a business to support yourself?

SPEAKER_01 49:34

Well, right now, uh fortunately, I'm not having to do uh work as a therapist full time because uh my primary job that I'm grateful for is I teach uh psychology, oversee uh behavioral science and human services program at a local college. So that gives me keeps my academic mind going, uh, my scholarship. I consider myself a scholar, you know, do that. So I have a little more flexibility than someone who is um uh having to you know pay the bills due to uh doing therapy only, you know. Right. So uh I I I don't really have an answer for that. I think the the thing is if someone's come to you in in a therapeutic uh interaction, somehow uh you you gotta get paid. I mean, that's just the way it is. At the same time, in that kind of situation, sometimes you do pro bono work. I mean, I've I've done that, but this is I don't want anybody to feel ashamed that they say, Oh, I should be doing this for free and all. The universe relies on fair exchange. When the Big Bang happened, there was an expansion, but there was also a contraction. Here's that good Taoist, yin and yang. Because if you didn't have the contraction, you couldn't stabilize for gravity. So things just didn't, if it kept it, you know, it'd fall apart. If it only contracted, it would fall apart. Money is that way to me. Business is that way for me. There's got to be some fair exchange. Now, if you're a hypnotist uh rather than a psychotherapist, you actually have a little more flexibility. So you may do a barter, you know. You may say, look, I know you can't uh pay me, but you could, you know, do some other things, like um, you know, um you're good, you said used to do yard work for somebody. Would you like to do some yard work for our our company or for you know whoever? Would you like to donate your time to do whatever? Yeah. Um there's certain rules ethically that psychotherapy and bartering and and all that. Right. But you got to have fair exchange though, because unfortunately, too many therapists, it's all give, give, give.

SPEAKER_04 51:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:57

And and there's got to be some return there. So you could be like the attorney I knew. He he lived on a houseboat, and he he did all this pro bono work. And I remember I asked him one day, I said, uh, how are you able to do that? He goes, All I need is one garbage truck or semi-truck to hit an old guy, and that pays me for the year. I make tons of money off one or two cases like that. Yeah, and I just live on this boat and I and do so. He was doing great, good financial, but he saw that he could have a fair exchange.

SPEAKER_02 52:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 52:34

You know, so each person has to find it their own way.

SPEAKER_02 52:38

Yeah, and as you're talking, I'm thinking about like in the Bible, Paul talking about being the tent maker. It's like, okay, I'm making tents, but I'm also building the church.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

Right. Interesting guy, Paul.

SPEAKER_02 52:50

Yeah, yeah. You could, yeah, this this is actually a hot topic for me because I used to be a preacher before I died. And I said, I said, and I left the church, and then I said, it took me dying to find God, for what you call it. And I see all the religions pointing at something, and we get so transfixed in who's doing the pointing. So we ignore what they're pointing at.

SPEAKER_01 53:16

Well, it's just say what you just said. Now take that out, and it's a beautiful thing you just said, but to me, that's psychotherapy. We're so hung up on the techniques and the that the big thing that we're supposed to be paying attention to is what we're missing.

SPEAKER_02 53:32

Yeah, so I'm I'm furious with Paul. Like I think Paul is Saint Paul. For those listening, I just put up quotation marks. Because the more I study it, the more I look at it, and the more I feel it, and the more I experience and what I experienced in my my death experience was Jesus was teaching something totally different than what Paul teaches. It's like two different things, but that's a that's another topic for another day.

SPEAKER_01 54:07

Well, well, we all all teach what comes out of our own nervous system. Even if it's new, if it's new information, it's still through the filter of that system that's on the inside. Right. See how I tie everything together. It's just I love that.

SPEAKER_02 54:22

Yeah. So Paul's system was the law. It's like even though it was the Jewish law, now it's oh, the Jesus law. Right, right. I think more people are driven to depression and they feel like they're sinners because of Paul. But anyhow. Earlier you're talking about having these Hudu people having one foot in the physical and one foot in the metaphysical. And speaking of that thing that they're all in religions, they're pointing at the thing that we're talking about, the subconscious, or we talk about Young talking about the collective unconscious. Is there something there like that connects us? Is there an energy, the Taoist energy, maybe, or the Qi? What's your take on that?

SPEAKER_01 55:15

So you're asking a shrink, a little shrink from South Carolina, these big metaphysical questions.

SPEAKER_02 55:21

Um yeah, because I know you thought about them. Oh, of course.

SPEAKER_01 55:25

Do much. Uh should be focusing on other things, uh, but yeah, yeah. Uh yeah. Uh I I will tell you just my own personal uh belief is that there is a force that I refer to as nature, that everything resides within. Now, uh my colleague Bernardo Castro, who's a um a computer scientist and philosopher, talks about something called um analytic idealism, to which basically everything is within consciousness. And and we're all a part of that, you know, and and so when we leave that consciousness, it's like we have a multiple personality. We think we're somebody that we're not, you know. And that's an intriguing idea idea to me. Um, but I just think we're all part of this nature. And when we follow what nature does, life tends to work out and we feel connected to something greater. And that greater may not be a metaphysical deity or or something like that. It may just be, hey, this is the way the universe works with the you know, the the tides move in, the tides move out, you know.

SPEAKER_02 56:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01 56:35

And I I I find that it's just whenever I try to do something that's against what's natural in nature, is always a problem. So, for example, limits. To me, a very spiritual idea are limits. Now, what are we taught? You know, you can be limitless, you can do anything. You know, right. No. Um, I think that it's important not to get stuck with a limitation mind, but to realize there's always gonna be uh limits. I mean, my God, our our uh deficit in the United States is like$34 trillion. Eventually, you know, we're past the limit, but eventually there's just gonna be a limit and we go bankrupt. Um, you don't cut down all the trees because there's a limit. You know, uh drinking water is good for you. But if you drink nothing but water every minute for eight hours, you're probably gonna get sick and die. So there's always a limit. At the same time, you can't have a deficit. You can't not spend money and expect government to work. You can't not cut down a tree and build a house or start a fire. You can't not drink water and live, right? It's kind of like the Goldilocks bed too soft, too hard, just right. It's that limit to me is an important ideal that you know we we we don't want to think about. But when we acknowledge that there are those limits and that you know we don't want to have deficits, that is that balance that nature has, that fair exchange, that yeah, flow of the Dow, if I can use that. At heart, I think I'm a a really bad Taoist.

SPEAKER_02 58:10

And I think it's also another word, another word that you mentioned earlier is uh homostasis. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That balance that yeah, I love that that system.

SPEAKER_01 58:22

But but we totally misunderstand what balance is in our own lives. I mean, I hear clients all the time say this. I'm just trying to have a balanced life. Balance doesn't mean to them, it means everything's operating at 100%. Well, if I've got four things and I divide them, that's 25%, 25%, 25%. I don't know what kind of math you're doing, but you can never have everything balancing. What you have is homeostatus is flow. Sometimes you got to pay more attention to your business. Other times you have to pay more attention to your family.

SPEAKER_04 58:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:58

Other times you got to pay more attention to your friends, your health, whatever it is. And it's this balance flow rather than everything's always set this way, and then I'm gonna make myself crazy if it's not. So it's the same thing with chemicals in the brain. Talk about a chemical imbalance. There's no such thing. There's an issue with flow. Deficit. So, for example, you start getting a deficit of serotonin. What happens? There starts to be a deficit in oropinephrine, which is energy, you know, adrenaline. So then what does that happen? I don't know, depression? Yeah. But you get too much uh anopinephrine, and here, and it's that's connected to serotonin, and you start having anxiety disorders because you got too much, you know. So that that to me is that flow is is the real thing rather than some kind of arbitrary uh idea of a 100% balance.

SPEAKER_02 59:47

I love that. And in just a moment, we'll do a little hypnotic gift for the listeners and and viewers. And I appreciate all the time you spent with us today. And for those listening, I'll put the links to your website down below that has all your books and your trainings and how to get in touch with you. And I wonder, before we get to that, is there a message that you would just love to tell the whole world, whoever might be listening?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:23

The whole world. You you already know. That would be my message, because we all already know. It's just we gotta remember.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:40

That is great. We're gonna have to put that up on a poster. A picture of you and Cinematura's a meme. But that's a great quote. I love that. You already know, you just have to remember. That's right. All right, well, thank you again so much. And then for those that are watching, hopefully you're not driving a car, but uh but for those listening, it just be safe. You know, don't operate any heavy machinery. Go ahead and hit pause and take a moment for yourself here as Dr. Paul J. Leslie gives you a little hypnotic gift.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:20

Thank you. So next uh five to ten minutes, uh thank you for being with me, whoever's listening, watching. Because it means a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:31

So, in just a moment, you can always uh decide how you want to feel and you can feel how you like to feel. Some people like to go ahead and relax. Other people might not want to go ahead and relax. And that's okay. In a way that's comfortable, in a way that's natural, in a way that's easy, in a way that's comfortable, in a way you don't let yourself be when you allow yourself to really be in the moment. You allow your unconscious mind for you to be present for you. Just check in that space in that place that you can always return. And you always know what you can be, and you can just remember a sense of comfort And you can pay attention to your thoughts Or you cannot pay attention to your thoughts you can release tension in your jaw you cannot release tension in your jaw, you can focus on your breath Or you cannot focus on your breath It's really what you want to do if you want to go into a trance Then you can go into a trance It's really where you need to be for you and only I don't know how deeply down you can go I'm sure it's where you need to be for you in a pleasant uncomfortable way over the last hour we've talked about many different things. You may remember some things, you may not remember other things. The one thing that you might remember is that you always have more resources inside than you think. You just have to begin to notice them. And when you notice, and you really notice, magical things can happen. It can be small things or it can be large things. It's almost as if your unconscious mind knows which thing. And I'm not sure how your unconscious will provide you with this information. It could be with an image. It could happen now. It could happen tomorrow. But when you become open to new ideas and open to creativity, and that little piece of you that knows, that really knows. That's where you go. You just allow that to happen. When you're ready to allow that to happen. When we get out of our way, it's amazing what can happen. Just by taking all the time that you need, that you really need. Let your body shift down into a comfortable place, but a receptive place. An open place. A place that can be where you need to be. The more you notice, the more you allow. And the more you allow, the more you notice. But you know you can only allow things for your highest good. Things that really are there to create a great new experience of being alive. So alive. So content in who you are, knowing the wisdom of who you are. Because when you remember who you are, you found it. That piece of you that you need. And it's there the whole time. It's the great mystery of being alive. And with every breath, you can take in new ideas. Take in new insights. Allow yourself to really become comfortable in who you are. Because they're just right. And every part of you creates a whole that is wonderful and unique. And the next moment, just allow yourself if you choose, to receive any information insight from your unconscious. I'll be quiet for just a moment. You can always return to this state anytime you want. Later today, tomorrow, the next day, the next week, the next month, the next year. That's right. So in the next few moments, we're going to slowly take our time, coming more alert, but bringing back all the teachings and learnings and good things with us. That's right. Slowly bringing your swareness to the sounds in the room. Noticing the seats you're sitting in, shifting a little bit in your chair, removing your body, stretching, doing calculus, or not. So I want to thank everyone listening for taking this little trip with me because I went too and I enjoyed it. So hopefully you did as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:45

Wonderful. Thank you so much again, Dr. Leslie. It's a pleasure having you here.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:51

Well, I was honored to be here, Brian. Thank you.