The guys continue onto part 2 talking to Scotty Reid about Racism and look for answers to stop it.
After discussing some current events in our town with a Confederate Soldier monument and how Mental Health plays into that, the guys continue talking about what it would take to help society with the issue of Racism. Scotty Reid gives great insight adds what actions people need to do to stop racism. Scotty also shares personal experience with Racism long ago as a child that still affects him viscerally today. Afterward, Chris and Craig continue to go over different ideas on how different people have provided ways to help and create a more harmonious life through good mental health practices.
Tune into this episode to listen to Part 2 to see Racism Through a Therapist’s Eyes and a coach!
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Listen to Episode #93 – Racism in a Mental Health Context with Mr. Scotty T. Reid Part II
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Episode #93 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] All right, this is part two. I am Chris Gazdik and you are Mr. Craig Graves. I am a mental health and substance abuse therapist. I do have a book available coming out soon, not available, but it’s coming out soon, Rediscovering Emotions and Becoming Your Best Self. Mister Craig Graves. You are an unbeatable mind coach.
What is that
Craig Graves: [00:00:21] mindset? Mindset coach. A lot of things hold us back in life. It’s our mind that holds us back. If you can get you over those humps.
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:29] So we welcome you to, Through a Therapist’s Eyes the podcast, see the world through the lens of a therapist and a coach, but being aware it is not the delivery of therapy services in any way.
Check out our website throughatherapistseyes.com, where you can get full show transcriptions. That’s kind of an E.P thing, right?
Craig Graves: [00:00:47] Yeah. Yeah, that’s common. We’ve done several shows, but we haven’t done them all. We got over got over and I think we got over a hundred total out there.
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:55] Yeah. We’re going to be doing them as we go now.
I believe. And then some of the past ones we’ll be picking them back up. The human emotional experience. Let’s figure this thing out together. We’re going to skip the fun fact. We agreed. We were going to continue doing that, but we go way too much to cover here with, this racism issue. It is a good topic that we’ve had.
We just got done with part one. We’ve. Reserved. We had to cut time up a little bit with our guests, Scotty T Reed. so we can have him on part two. We’re going to start off kind of finishing out our stuff on what is the solution to racism. And he was participatory in our conversation there, and then we’re going to kind of work hard to sort of sum all, all this stuff up.
But. in way of introduction again, Mr. Scotty T Reed is the founder of the nonprofit media organization, Black Talk Media Project. He’s the creator of the award winning media pro platform Black Talk Radio Network. He’s the host and producer of the BTR news podcast and was the co producer of the award winning new abolitionists radio podcast.
He has been producing news talk programming since 2007 has interviewed hundreds of guests on various topics over the years and assistance many with technology questions concerning creating podcasts and digital radio stations. So that is the introduction. And here we go with the conversations on part two, what do we do?
To help solve the problem of racism.
So we, Scottie, we’ve been talking here on part two with different things. but we wanted to, you know, have you back for the whole part two, we’re only gonna do part a part two, I guess Craig is that we’re doing part a part two
Craig Graves: [00:02:33] part two.
Chris Gazdik: [00:02:34] That’s what it is.
So, cause we didn’t get to get to what we like to do. Craig, you you’re always talking about, you know, what’s the takeaways and I wanted to make sure that we reserve time. For Scotty to be able to be on, the part of our discussions with all of this that had to do with the single most important question probably yeah.
About racism ain’t nobody ever really talked too much about, or at least talk intelligently about importantly about. And so the question I asked you, Scotty, it, we wanted to end up on is, you know, what is the answer here? You know, everyone gets so frustrated. Everyone gets so crazy. Everyone gets so emotional, right?
Scotty Reid: [00:03:12] I had to figure it out. I figured it out a long time ago,
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:17] Alright I want to hear that then. But I want to say before you do.
Scotty Reid: [00:03:20] Okay.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:21] Because it’s interesting when I was doing this section, see Scotty, sometimes when I’m preparing my show, I do it is so my clinical experience write down, organize my thoughts and stuff, and then I’ll, I’ll pop a Google search or whatever, and I’ll just kind of see what maybe I miss.
What did I do? Craig, did you know, I did that for this question, you know, that I said, what’s the answer to racism? You know, I went to Google page one over to two, down to three, you know how you can click on the little circle sport. I stopped at the little fifth circle on the Google side because I did not see, and this bothered me, man.
I did not see one page that was like sort of a bonafide, you know, well, in mind or psychology.com or, you know, a mental health site, it was talking about what is helpful and what is the answer to racism. And that bothered me, man. I was like our psychology field talks about all sorts of emotional things you told.
I told you in part one, I don’t know if this is right in the middle of this. And it bothered me that I went five pages deep and saw nothing from nobody. On this, it was wrong. It bothered me, bothered me so well, what, what do you say? You figured this out a long time ago? What is it
Scotty Reid: [00:04:35] First of all? Let me just say that.
It’s impossible to change. What’s in somebody’s heart. Only they can change. You can get them the information, you can point them in the right direction and what have you. But at the end of the day, ultimately it’s up to them. Like you said, we got racist who don’t even think erase is just like an alcoholic.
Don’t believe that he’s an alcoholic. So that part will be, but I believe nobody’s born racist. I believe it’s a taught behavior, whether it’s the parent’s teaching it, whether it’s their peers teaching it, whether it’s society in generally that’s teaching it, you know? so I think, I know a lot of people are, are going to probably be mad, mad at me for saying this, but I think that teaching the child racism is a form of child abuse.
And I think that if you are going to poison a child’s mind like that, Dan, I think you need parents in classes. I think you need therapy. I think that child needs therapy, but I think that child first and foremost needs to be protected. From that environment. Cause that’s going to cause that child a whole lot of problems, you know, either they’re going to hurt somebody or somebody going to hurt them depending onpond, how deep their racism is, how committed they are to practicing racism, but in terms of institutional racism.
And so when we say institutional racism, we’re talking about a courthouse. We’re talking about a human services building. We’re talking about government institutions. That’s what institutional racism is. A school is an institution. And so how do we eliminate? Because people call the system racist and they call it a system of white supremacy.
I do not believe it’s a system of white supremacy. Again, look up the definition of a system. The system that we have of government in this country is a, it has three branches. It has the legislative excuse me a legislative branch, a legal branch or judicial branch. And it has an executive branch what’s racist about that set up.
There’s nothing racist. How you get institutional racism is when, when racist work in the institution. So then what, what is, what is then, how do we eliminate that then? That’s when you say something, when you see something, just like they say that when we fighting terrorism, well, racism is a form of terrorism.
So if you see something, whether, you know, then you say something, if you see something incorrect that’s being done to another person, then it is on you to report. Whoever it is, that’s doing the wrong. Okay. That’s how, when racists feel that that their behavior that’s affecting other people is no longer going to be tolerated, then they’ll cease to be racist in my opinion, or they’ll just be unemployed.
Are choice, you know? So does that make any sense to you guys?
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:49] One of the things Scotty, I’m hearing you talk about that makes me, was one of our, intro of references to an episode. Do you remember when we talked about moral courage, what do you remember about that? Craig?
Craig Graves: [00:07:59] He’s doing the right thing, even when it’s hard, you know, speaking out.
Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:08:04] And I remember when we were doing that show, you were kind of like, you know, surprised a little bit. And I think I understood by the end of that episode, it was very early on Scotty, maybe episode four or so, because it was one of those ones that I really wanted to get a mental health topic, man, you were like, yeah, somebody said to him, I would say something easy.
You know, somebody, you know, but by the end of the day, Scott and Craig realized you correct me if I’m wrong. If you recall. You know, you realized really no, you really flat out might not in fact,
Craig Graves: [00:08:35] right? Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:08:36] You remember that transformation a little bit.
Craig Graves: [00:08:38] Yeah. Yeah. But I do believe is tough and I do believe people do the right thing.
If I’m not mistaken. When George Floyd was going through that situation, people were telling him, you gotta get off of it, but they, but he didn’t. And I guess maybe because the other cops were there, they didn’t actually physically get involved, but
Scotty Reid: [00:08:54] people do the right thing to do. Goes back to what I was saying earlier.
See, that was institutional. Now we can say, let’s just call it institutional police brutality. We less than I call it racism. Cause I haven’t seen any evidence that that cop was a racist. Okay. So I don’t like calling people’s stuff without any evidence, but he definitely was engaged in an act of police brutality.
So let’s call it institutional police brutality.
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:21] You are a stickler for words. Aren’t you?
Scotty Reid: [00:09:24] It was all one of those officers. Stop him. Okay. Yeah, no, no citizens wasn’t there. Nobody was there. It was on the other officers to stop him and say, that’s not correct. That’s not how we were trained to do that. That’s an illegal choke hold.
So again, like y’all was saying moral courage, you know, William J Gaston. And I don’t want to take it back there, but this County is named after William J Gaston. Who was appointed to the North Carolina Supreme court, who also was at one time held political office in the U S government as a representative from North Carolina.
And he was also a very religious man and he was a slavery abolitionist, but I came across a speech. He is where he talks about moral courage. He was talking about the politicians of his day, and he was saying that you have to have the moral courage. To do what is right as an, and I’m paraphrasing as an official, instead of doing what’s wrong that the mob is calling you to do.
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:10:35] But, and the point I want to make to you, Scotty, and I, and I really do want, I think I want to really ask that you listened to our episode I think four Neil, will you check if that’s correct? The episode we did on moral courage because
Neil will you, will you shoot that to him? You know, I’m going to make it, I’m going to make a crazy statement right here to both of you. I’m going to miss something, right. Even in that George Floyd event, just to demonstrate this. And I mean, it’s genuinely, I don’t know if I was one of those other police officers stopped it.
I hate saying that. I mean, to my core, I would like to think that I would have jumped on that guy. Took him out. Sitting right here. That’s what I would want to do. And that’s what I think I would do. But when I’m thinking about the emotions of that, that’s my superior officer. That’s my guy. That’s something that would be wow.
Like, am I, you know, well, I lose my job. I’m fearful of what the public will think of me. I don’t know Chris Gazdik I would have done something on that day if I was one of those three. And I hate to be honest about that.
Scotty Reid: [00:11:42] Well, I mean, you gotta be honest with yourself. I was put in that position, I lost the job because I said something cause I saw something.
And so I was contacted by a female employee. I’m not going to say my former employer’s name. and, but anyway, I was a third shift supervisor. I ran a shift for a dying company. So anyway, the vice president. Would I will always see him acting inappropriately with females on the job, especially those temp workers.
And then that, you know, you know how we talk off office gossip and then I’m hearing about he’s taking them out on his boat and all of that. And then I’m hearing him even saying inappropriate things to me, like. Like, I’m going to help him get some of these young girls or what have you. He said it in a vague way, but I knew what he was asking.
Chris Gazdik: [00:12:37] Yeah. You know what he’s saying?
Scotty Reid: [00:12:38] Wait, I’ll play it at all. So then I get a phone call one day from an attorney who asked me without, would I give a deposition on for this young woman who was the subject of his unwanted advances? Would I give a deposition? Now, I don’t know everybody know me on that job.
No, me and my mother on that job is being Christians, not just the kind of Christians that, Oh, I just, I just say I’m a Christian because I was raised that way, but no, we try to practice it as much as possible. How could I not get at deposition? When I saw what I saw. Right. I had to, and I gave an honest accounting of what I saw now.
I didn’t get fired right away. Of course not. But things started to happen to make my job more difficult. And what have you, and it got to a point to where I had to leave.
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:38] Yeah, no, I get that. And, and I too have been in, you know, difficult situations. I, I had to, participate in reporting someone to my state board.
That’s a colleague, you know, I did not enjoy doing that. That was a hard step to make. I’ve had to say hard things to people, you know, in confronting, you know, behavior that I was concerned about. You know, I, I will tell you and admit to you know, as far as moral courage and even the emotional things that we talked about, Oh, no, I need to cut this short.
yeah, we’re running up on your time, Scotty. And, I’m a totally switches gears. Cause we didn’t talk about some of the thoughts that I had about, solutions to racism. I want to, let me see,
Craig Graves: [00:14:17] did you finish your answer on the, on what the answer is to racism?
Scotty Reid: [00:14:22] yeah. Yeah. You see something, you say something and we had to protect these children from being brainwashed with racism.
Chris Gazdik: [00:14:31] So the last thing that I want to go to is what I think is a big factor. So I’m just going to blow through Craig these other ones and we’ll have them posted audience on, on our website. You can check them out, studying a little bit more, but you know, love some would say, right? The golden rule. You mentioned Christianity, Scotty.
I mean, do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. I don’t think there’s going to be racism. If you follow that period. Period. The wisdom of the serenity to prayer used extensively in the AA community. You know, we talk about having the courage to change the things that I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference.
That’s going to take us a long way. Assume you have, and challenge internal prejudice, listen and ask. You know, you have to root that stuff out. You’re not going to know you even have him. If you don’t. Route that stuff out and spend internal time looking at that personal strength with self view, when someone puts a prejudice and it’s hard to refuse the negative belief in oneself.
So you, you know, if somebody puts something on you, like I’m a toothless hick from West Virginia, it ain’t got no smarts. I need to have the personal strength to refuse to accept that, whatever 50, how about some common sense? I wrote down in my little. Brainstorm stop being mean. Can it be that simple, you know, like just stop being mean resolving issues of personal trauma?
Well, probably we need to put a highlight next to that one and a humor, Craig, laugh. It’s a great healing tool. Those were some of the things that I thought through, but the biggest one that I wanted to, to end on and Scotty, I’m really curious about your view on this, and we’re going to wrap your time up on this one to make sure you don’t have anything else you want to kind of say, but I have thought a lot about it and probably need to do a whole show on, and we will actually something called the apology and forgiveness cycle, and we’ll probably cover it in a, in a marriage show in time to come.
But if you think of a conflict you have between one person and the next person, there’s probably culpability on both sides of the conflict. Okay. That’s an assumption I have here. So that being the assumption, there needs to be the person who was the offending person apologizing, and the person that is receiving the offense, a forgiveness.
Now, when we have a larger scale conflict. You probably have both sides needing to exercise an apology and a forgiveness. So you have four keyword, independent tasks, right? So an apology just means I take responsible ability for being a little bit off my bad. Yo, you know, I take responsibility. You don’t even do that for the person you’ve offended or what not.
You do that too, to better yourself. It might benefit the other person, but it’s about you. So is a forgiveness. You should not forgive somebody for being mean to you for their benefit. You forgive to let go of anger against that’s the definition. So when there’s a conflict and apology forgiveness cycle needs to be in place where the apology has nothing to do with the forgiveness and the forgiveness has nothing to do with the apology.
And I think in a large scale, I know I’m trying to condense this pretty quick. But if you think of a large scale conflict, like racism can be, there is an apology and a forgiveness cycle that needs to go on on all sides. Probably apology, forgiveness, apology, forgiveness, all four completely actually unrelated.
I know that’s a lot. That’s pretty deep. If you follow that, what do you, what do you take from that, sir?
Scotty Reid: [00:18:26] Okay, let me, let me give a quick example of something I already mentioned on the show. So I mentioned the Neo-Confederates tried to get this black man to debate me, right? So I didn’t say anything to the black men, but I said something to the Neo Confederates.
I said, don’t send your house boy to do a man’s job. You come over here and debate me. Now I thought about that. That night when I went home and I said, I shouldn’t have, I shouldn’t have said that I shouldn’t have called it. That like me in a house boy, even though that was the most accurate term I could come up with at the time.
Oh, that’s what they was, you know, in the historical sense of slavery, that’s what they were doing. Okay. Instead of doing the work for themselves, they gonna send this back person to come out in debate me. So I’ve made a full Facebook post. And I said that I apologize for calling him a house boy. And if anybody knows him to contact me, because I should not have used that reference towards him, even though I wasn’t speaking to him directly, I still was calling him a house boy.
And so, turns out, you know, my daughter knows him and all that, but he has then started trolling me. On Facebook. So anyway, I told him, look, I apologize man I ain’t mean to call you this, that and the other. He didn’t say he accepted it. He just kept trolling me politics and on debating that Confederate history.
And then he started calling me a racist who hate white people. So now he’s in his prejudice, you know? So I just said, I hear too that if there’s no contact, there’s no conflict. So I apologize to this man. He still wants conflict. I got work to do, and I don’t have no time to be given to an energy vampire.
And I don’t mean that as a derogatory term or another name call, but that’s what trolls do. They use up your energy, getting you going back and forth with them. So I apologize to him and it’s like you said, I didn’t do it. For him really? I did it for me because I knew what I did was wrong.
Chris Gazdik: [00:20:41] And I had hugely important thing that people do not realize.
We, we think that I’m supposed to make the other person right when we apologize and you can, you’re apologizing to take responsibility. And the same thing goes with forgiveness. When you’re really in forgiveness, you’re living a peaceful heart and you’re letting go of anger against it. Doesn’t matter if somebody takes responsibility for it or not.
It’s about your heart and your internal.
Scotty Reid: [00:21:05] My ex wife still has not taken any responsibility, but I have forgiven her. Yes, sir. For my peace.
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:16] Right? When we bring as a bottom line, I think I want to respect your time, but we need to wrap up and I want you to have, you know, minute or whatever time did say whatever. If we get internal with ourselves and really get genuine and real with ourselves inside.
We, I would maintain that we will have a whole lot less problem as a society. What is your last thoughts? And I want to respect your time.
Scotty Reid: [00:21:43] Well, I just want to thank you all for inviting me on to this onto your podcast and having this conversation, you know, because we live in the same community and we ought to know each other, you know, and I just think that what you’re doing in the area of mental health is a very, very critical.
Field, and we really need that, man. I’ve been seeing a lot of people in trauma out there in the streets. And so I just really appreciate the work that you’re doing as a health, a health professional, mental health professional, but also because of this piece of media, this podcast that you’re doing, because I believe like Malcolm X believe that media is the most powerful entity on the face of the planet.
You can control the minds of the masses. It can make the innocent look guilty. It can make the guilty look innocent, but he also said it can be, it can be used to teach something to people so that they can learn how to do things for themselves or recognize things in themselves. And I think that’s what you’re doing with this podcast.
So I just want to thank you guys for inviting me once again. I love to come back,
Craig Graves: [00:22:53] man. I’d love you to have, I’d love you to come back sky Scottie. It’s been a great conversation. Pleasure, pleasure to meet you, man.
Scotty Reid: [00:22:59] Pleasure to meet you too.
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:01] We will chat again. Okay. All right, man. That was a Mr. Scotty reed, and I guess we’re still on episode two, here we cut and diced and all that man now used to all this splice and we’re doing on this episode.
So I think we have a, I think we have a whole lot more to talk about, Craig on all of the things that we just talked about this evening. Let me just maybe start. So I guess we’re going to go on and sort of re-go through some of the things we talked about. we had, we had, I think come up that he had to kind of bail out and, and get with some, I shouldn’t say bail out.
He had, he had some things he had tend to is what I mean. And then he was, he was gracious with his time, pushed a little bit limits and stayed with us as long as he could. So we had to kind of reverse engineer and gear ourselves in a different way. So let me just check in with you, Craig, like. what do you thinking man?
And now, you know what, let me, let me ask you the therapy question. Right? What are you feeling when it comes to all the things we’ve talked about this evening? You know, the prejudice and. You know, you use this term Neo Nazi stuff and
Craig Graves: [00:24:07] no, he, he, he used the term Neo Confederate.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:09] Okay. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:24:10] I should ask him to elaborate on that.
I don’t know what that means. I think it means that he said all the Confederates were gone. So these, I guess, I don’t know what the, I don’t know what that term means. I guess we could look it up.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:24] You’re going to look it up Neo Confederate, but tell me what you’re feeling.
Craig Graves: [00:24:29] You know, I feel, I feel, I feel good about the conversation.
I think it was a good conversation. I think I have a better understanding of, at least some of the protests that are going on, you know, he, know, again, I was, I don’t want to say impressed or whatever, but I was, I was new to me that he wanted to move it and not tear it down, which I thought was interesting.
And I thought the goal of all the protests was to, was to tear these things down completely, you know, and. And so I thought that was kind of a fascinating thing and
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:57] Defund the police,
Craig Graves: [00:24:59] you know, when we start talking about it, I’m sure you’ll get it this in a minute. But the answer to racism that he gave was, was very interesting to me.
And it also kind of solidified some thoughts that I’ve had on that topic. So. I feel like it was a great conversation. I’m happy to have met, met him on here tonight.
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:18] You know, I don’t want to out you. And, suggested that you say something you said off the air, want to respect that, but, remember when you were saying how you felt before and how you felt now and whatnot.
Do you, do you recall that?
Craig Graves: [00:25:31] Oh, and when you first came in, when you first came in? Oh yeah. Yeah. I think that, you know, sometimes if you say things that don’t line up with, Some, some lines of thinking you get labeled and I know the cancel, cancel culture’s big and things like that. And so, you know, but I didn’t get that.
I felt comfortable talking to Scotty. I didn’t feel like that would, that was an issue. You know, the things he said, I thought were interesting. I agreed with a lot of the things that you said too. So that was refreshing, you know, to say that he and I were on the same page out of a man is talking to people and learning about their perspectives and.
And where they stand on issues. And I think once you can do that and you understand the person, and then when you understand the person you begin to see beyond the color of people’s skin. And that’s what I believe, believe about, about, about race.
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:22] You know, Yeah, it did this. This is something that if we’re being honest and we’re talking about it is it is uncomfortable to start because it’s so emotional.
And, we can edit this out. What, what stuck out with me? It’s not why I asked you the question, how you feel. It was just to tune us into what we’re talking about, but you were, you were comforted is what you, what you had said to me, you know, it was, it was comforting and soothing, I think. Is, was your word you said soothing
it might have been.
Craig Graves: [00:26:50] I don’t remember.
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:50] Yeah. He said soothing. And I think that’s something that, that is, that is very poignant. When you look at the mental health aspects, Of talking about something that is emotional,
you know,
people don’t like talking about emotion. Yeah. We don’t like talking about difficult things and I made the joke in the intro or one, I think, right?
Like you said, when we, when we took a publishing break, we’re going to come back. When we talk about some easier topics, we’re going to kind of take it easy and chill and all that. And I’ve been kind of making jokes in preparation of these episodes, you know, with some of my clients that I talk about the shows with them.
No personally, family friends, I’ve been making those jokes. And then I followed up by saying, we’re going to talk about racism. Like that’s prickly, it’s uncomfortable, it’s scary. It’s emotional, it’s poignant. And it’s powerful. And I think when you just have the conversations and talk in a respectful tone and with kindness and compassion towards people, because we’re all in this together isn’t that the phrase.
Craig Graves: [00:27:54] We are, we are in one of the things he said that I respected really in a big way too, is he said he invites people to talk to him about this stuff.
Chris Gazdik: [00:28:03] And that’s why we’re talking to him.
Craig Graves: [00:28:04] Yeah. And I think that’s awesome, man. I mean, if you sit down, he said, nobody nobody’s taken him up on it. And I’m kind of disappointed in that.
But I am, when he talked about prejudice, prejudice, and racism. you know, I know he was short on time, but I wanted to go deeper there and ask him when does prejudice become racism and does breaking down the prejudice, ultimately break down the racism? You know what I mean?
Chris Gazdik: [00:28:29] I think it does.
Craig Graves: [00:28:30] I think it does to
Chris Gazdik: [00:28:31] absolutely does. That’s some of the points I made strong to review at which I want to say again, listen, anyone listening to this show right here, here in our voice that thinks they don’t have prejudice. I’m going to maintain to you cause you just flat, straight wrong. We have preconceived notions about things.
And when people are in operation on those preconceived notions, particularly when they don’t know it it’s dangerous in a silly sort of way. Like I said, as a West Virginia, I’m a proud West Virginia. And I like saying that because West Virginians get picked on as hillbillies and dumb and yeah, your joke toothless.
And I like having fun with it. Because humor heals, but that can really be a source of hurt, deep hurt. When people intimate things about you, such as you are stupid, you are inferior. You are fill in the blank.
Craig Graves: [00:29:28] Well, it, it definitely can. It definitely can. And, and anybody who listens to the show and hears me tell that joke, Chris is a friend of mine and we, you know, we, we joke, we take jabs at each other and joke around.
So. You know, I tell him that joke to kind of rip him, but I wouldn’t say that somebody I just met from West Virginia. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. It’s a, it’s a thing like that,
Chris Gazdik: [00:29:49] but we deal with that. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:29:51] And Chris and Chris is one of the smartest guys. I know. So, I mean, I’m not questioning his intelligence because he’s West from West Virginia, you know, at all.
And I know some, I know some brilliant people from that state.
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:03] They rocket man watch the movie. He was from West Virginia.
Craig Graves: [00:30:06] Yeah. So it’s not about that at all. It’s just a, it’s just a fun thing between he and I, but yeah, you’re right. You know, and then the, I kinda lost my train of thought on the prejudice, but it was interesting to hear Scotty say.
The people on the other side were definitely prejudiced. He suspected they could be racist, but he wasn’t totally sure that that was the case, you know? And, and I just, that, that was, that was interesting too, because I think a lot of, things you hear these days, Oh, that’s racist. You’re, you know, you’re a racist right, right away.
And he even made the point that he didn’t know if the police officer. Was racist.
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:42] Yeah, he did. That suprised me
Craig Graves: [00:30:44] me. Yeah. I agree. I’m surprised at that too.
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:46] I agree. I was like, wow. You know, that’s pretty, that’s pretty controlled.
Craig Graves: [00:30:48] Right? Absolutely pretty controlled.
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:51] And I like that he uses words purposely because I like words too, you know, I guess I’m a bonafide author now.
Right? Like to me, you’ll notice on the show. I oftentimes go from a definition. And he was glad that I read the definition. Prejudice.
Craig Graves: [00:31:06] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:07] Because people don’t know what they’re saying a lot of times. Yeah. By simple definitions. And you, and I just admitted, we don’t know what NeoCon Confederate is. I don’t know.
Right now I’m going to read it. But when you, when you have those things going on, you don’t even realize it. That’s why I’m making the point. That prejudice is so dangerous, whether you’re talking about prejudice against mental health prejudice, about groups of people, you know, I, I think there’s even some prejudice about people’s political aspirations right now in this country, because we’re so divisive and so screwed up about it.
Craig Graves: [00:31:38] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:39] You know, you could probably ask 10 people. What, what a conservative means. And you’re going to get a lot of answers. I bet you can ask what, what is a liberal mean? And I think you’re probably going to get different answers about that. And I don’t know for sure. That’d be a fun, little experiment to do.
Craig Graves: [00:31:52] Yeah. And you might, you might get, you might get a, you might be surprised because I think there are a lot of preconceived thoughts or notions on what being a Republican or a conservative or a Democrat or a liberal are. Yeah. And that might not be necessarily the truth. You know what I mean?
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:12] I couldn’t tell you what, what a progressive Democrat necessarily means.
I mean, I know what they say. Yeah. You know, give money to everybody and give free college education and socialism and whatever, you know what I mean? That’s a new term. Right. People even, that’s another thing we’ll create terms to meet their own needs with this confirmation bias stuff.
Yeah. That happens psychologically.
Craig Graves: [00:32:34] Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:35] Okay, Neo Confederate, by the way, we’re
Craig Graves: [00:32:38] going back to the prejudice thing. Almost think that Being prejudiced, and, maybe I made this point earlier in our conversation, but being prejudice can lead you to be racist, right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:47] Yes.
Craig Graves: [00:32:47] I would say then as you break down the prejudice, as you learn more about the other person more about the other race and that racism may go away.
So my lack of understanding about somebody or some race of people. May make me think that I’m superior to them from a racial standpoint. But then as I learned more about them and I learn, that’s not the case and the racism would go away,
Chris Gazdik: [00:33:09] I believe that you’re really onto something. I really believe you’re onto something neo Confederates or Southern nationalists are groups and individuals who portray the Confederate States of America and its actions during the American civil war in a positive light.
That’s what a Neo Confederate is.
Craig Graves: [00:33:27] Read it, read it one more time.
Chris Gazdik: [00:33:28] Okay. Or Southern nationalists. So those are analogists Neo Confederates or Southern nationalists are groups of individuals who portray the Confederate States of America and its actions during the American civil war in a positive light, some Neo Confederate organizations, such as the league of the South, continue to advocate for the succession of the former Confederate States.
So it’s basically. Talking positively about the Confederates guys, right? Racism, by the way, if you look at that, Google tells us, yeah. Person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another. Yeah. So there’s an, and or they’re your superior and you believe that in some way, that’s definitely racist.
A person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice. Against people of other races. Now that’s dangerous. If you think about it… what I just said about prejudice.
Yeah.
You can be racist and not know it because you have prejudice. You don’t know it.
Craig Graves: [00:34:30] Yeah. Yeah know. Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:32] Those are real things. If we’re looking at it, right.
Craig Graves: [00:34:35] Absolutely. Absolutely
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:37] person who shows up or feels discrimination. You might not realize it. I mean, that’s what makes this stuff so emotionally tricky and charged because you can, you can begin to diminish. The sanctity of an individual without realizing it.
Craig Graves: [00:34:55] Yeah. Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:57] You know, in, in, in close intimate relationships with the abandonment and engulfment cycles, you know, we, we, we really.
Can can, can appear controlling from the abandonment side of things and not want to be controlling or just wanting to be intimate and close. And so to be close abandonment people, oftentimes they’ll squeeze their partner and, and, and. In very destructive ways and not know it,
yeah, that makes sense.
Craig Graves: [00:35:26] Yeah, it does.
But I’m not sure how you’re tying that back into racism,
because if I’m feeling showing discrimination or prejudice against people, that’s presumed to be by definition racist, but you can do that and not know it as my point.
Oh, okay. I see what you’re saying. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:42] I’m not going to hire a black coach because not because I just white people are better coaches.
Right. That’s just, isn’t that true? No, it’s not, that’s not what I’m saying. Right. What I’m saying is you could believe that and operate on that in just want to have a good football team.
Craig Graves: [00:36:02] Yeah. And that would be the definition of racism. Right, right. That’s it, bro. That’s a racist statement, right?
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:36:08] Yeah.
So I do want to spend, and a little bit of time, I was, I was way too quick on it and, and Craig, if you can help me remember what he said when we talked about, you know, kind of solutions there and how we, how we go about things. I really believe that it’s very, important this apology and forgiveness cycle.
Do you remember what I said about that?
Craig Graves: [00:36:29] You did talk about that. And I, and I have questions that I didn’t bring up during the conversation. Cause I knew that, Scotty was short on time, but you know, if, if I think that’s a good point, that apologies are, but are you looking at as part of a solution? Yes.
Okay.
Chris Gazdik: [00:36:47] Absolutely. Okay. I think it’s a big part of the solution. Let me go into it a little bit and get your thoughts about it. Because I think this is really,
Craig Graves: [00:36:55] yeah. I want you to dig a little deeper because I’m not sure I’m following it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:36:59] Yeah. And I’m sure a lot of people weren’t, I think Scotty did and he kind of appreciated it.
Craig Graves: [00:37:04] He did. He definitely
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:05] did. And, and he was agreement with the idea that he, you know, he apologized when he called that dude, you know, a, a boy, what was it? A homeboy or stable boy or whatever. And, so w look just in a simple term, If you and I have a conflict, you can make an assumption that we’re in conflict.
And probably more than likely both of us have culpability in that conflict. And all that means is I get hot. I get irritated and I have to take responsibility for that. So I generally, when you’re in a conflict, you, you owe an apology. Unless you’re really self-actualized and holding yourself completely together and being more than appropriate, which is impossible to do when you’re all worked up.
Right. So when you’re in conflict, there’s probably an apology on both sides and there’s probably also forgiveness that you have to offer.
Craig Graves: [00:37:54] Yeah, absolutely. Excuse me. But, you know, okay.
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:58] Yeah, I get choked up with water
Craig Graves: [00:38:00] interrupt you.
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:01] And so, and so forgiveness is just letting go of anger against if we’re in conflict, we probably both have anger and irritability, and we need to forgive that by just simply defined by letting go of anger against.
So we make the mistake of thinking, well, I’ve been wronged and I can’t forgive. Unless that person apologized to me, I’m waiting, I’m waiting, I’m waiting, I’m waiting and you don’t have to wait. You, you, you feel like, you know, I gotta do this right thing and you know, I’m not going to apologize because they, they, you know, they need to apologize to me first.
No, listen, if you and I are in conflict, and this is a simple in and out of this, nobody has to wait for anything. Any one of those actions can happen first. I can forgive you first. I’m going to be, I’m not going to be angry about our conflict. Or I can apologize first. I could just take responsibility in this conversation for the conflict that we have, or you can forgive me first, first action.
And then there’s three other actions. The first action is possibly you can forgive me, let go of your anger against me, or you can apologize to me first and take responsibility for your part in our conflict. Any one of those four are going to be followed by any one of the three others. And when you do any of those actions, you’re really benefiting the person who’s taking the action you benefit when you apologize, you’re taking responsibility and you benefit when you forgive.
Craig Graves: [00:39:34] True. Right. I got that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:36] It’s kind of complicated. Does that make sense
Craig Graves: [00:39:38] yeah, I’m all about apologies, man. I think that, you know, if you have wrong somebody, you should apologize. I mean, I think that’s. The foundation of the Christian faith is forgiveness. So there has to be forgiveness
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:49] when it’s a small part of a conflict just is still a small part of the process to reheat, to heal.
Craig Graves: [00:39:54] Yeah. As a work, let’s just say, I’m not so sure that apology is a component of getting over, being racist one way or the other. And what I mean by that is, you know, let’s just say I grew up, like, let’s say I grew up like, and I didn’t, but let’s just say for the example that I grew up, like Scotty said, I grew up in a home where I was taught racism, you know, all that sort of stuff.
Well, I grew up in a, become a man. And I have a moment of clarity or a revelation or whatever it is. And I say, wow, I don’t want to be this person anymore.
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:24] You get, well,
Craig Graves: [00:40:25] I’m going to get, well, I’m going to go out and make some friends of different races and I’m going to be a good human being. I mean, do I go out and apologize to the first.
Person that I’m made of, of, of color. I mean, or do I just go out and be that person’s friend and, and try to get to know that person and then develop a relationship.
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:41] Okay. We just got a little bit more complicated and the reason why we got a little bit more complicated is because my example of an apology forgiveness cycle is on an individual ized conflict.
Right? Okay. Now let’s complicate it by saying we have a cultural level conflict, many people. On one side, many people on the other side.
Craig Graves: [00:41:03] Okay.
Chris Gazdik: [00:41:04] Now you have many people taking responsibility for their actions and owning their own prejudice. Many people forgiving and letting go of anger against the other group of people, many people on the other side, taking responsibility for their.
Part in the conflict and many people on the other side forgiving and so far is letting go of their anger against. So if you’re a part of the family that you grew up in hypothetically, and you need to take responsibility, all that means is you’re owning the fact that you have had prejudice, you’re owning and understanding.
I don’t live that way anymore. Right, right. You don’t have to necessarily go and. You know, I’m sorry, kneel down in front of somebody randomly. And I saw I’m saying that because I saw a picture of something that just turned me over. It was like weird in, in some of them were, were, were white woman was, you know, apologizing for her, white privilege and all of this.
It was like scary, weird. You know, it was scary, weird. Yeah. No apologizing. He’s just sort of owning, Hey, you know, what, what kind of like how I said to Scotty, I’ve never been a part of discrimination. It’s not, it happened to me in the intense way that other people have experienced it. Other than my simple West Virginia example and ageism.
I mean, I’ve experienced things like that, you know, where people look down on me for various reasons, you know, but on a bigger scale, You just taking responsibility for, you know what? I don’t understand. Asian people. I’d like to know more. That’s kind of apologizing. I’m taking responsibility for my ignorance.
I don’t know.
Craig Graves: [00:42:50] So you’re not outwardly expressing apologize into an Asian person. You’re just,
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:53] you’re taking responsibility
Craig Graves: [00:42:55] for them. Yeah. I think we’re on the same page. I think I’m all about personal responsibility, so yeah. You know?
Chris Gazdik: [00:43:01] Yeah. People don’t look at it that way in this big thing. People don’t look at it that way.
Again, remember? Now, we’re on a complicated cultural many people on one side, many people on another side, apology, forgiveness cycle. If I’m a part of a people that have been oppressed, let’s just say I’m in one of the original forms of slavery. I mean, Israel light, and I’m coming out of Egypt. I could be pissed with those Egyptians for all of eternity.
And I could be in the promised land and I can be in freedom. Then I can be into having my sheep and farmland and all this stuff. God gave me in Israel, lights promised land, and I can remain unforgiven art pissed off with those Egyptians for having enslaved me and my generations of family before me and never let go of that.
I’m going to submit to you that that’s a serious mental health problem.
Craig Graves: [00:43:55] Well, how would you diagnose that? I mean, wouldn’t that be called?
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:04] How to respond to that? I don’t know that that’s a diagnosis. I think that that’s a, that’s a part of the human condition. I think that’s a part of a hardened heart. I think that’s a part of having unforgiveness and maintaining anger. That’s the salty people that just can’t be free from their own self.
Craig Graves: [00:44:16] I mean, just, just anger in general.
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:19] It’s hate. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you offend me, Craig, and I just keep onto this and I’ve ruined our friendship and I say to hell with this guy, I ain’t talking to him no more. I have unforgiveness. And that hurts me because we got a great friendship. You and I. Ah, yeah. And we, and we can get through tough times, but not if I’m not taking responsibility for my part, not if I’m not forgiving you and let go of my anger.
Yeah.
We don’t look at things that way.
Craig Graves: [00:44:48] Right. No, you brought up a good point there, and that might lead us into the topic of the solution. But the thing that, that thing that bothers me kinda scares me to me. If you will, about racism, man is, you know, I I’d like to see this world that some of these guys like Martin Luther King and talked about, you know, there’s a quote by Bob Marley.
Yeah, he says, I just have one ambition. I want to see you by live together. Black, white, Chinese, you know, everybody together. But man racism goes back to the beginning of recorded history. You brought up the Israelites and the Egyptians. I mean,
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:25] slavery was a regular part of life.
Craig Graves: [00:45:27] Yeah. Yeah. The Jews and the Samaritans.
That’s why in the Bible, when Jesus was talking to the woman at the, well, it was a big deal because first of all, she was a woman in that society, but she was also a Samaritan and Jews and Samaritans. It was racist.
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:41] They are not, they are, they’re not, I was gonna say superior. They are, they’re not worthy of us.
Craig Graves: [00:45:46] Right. Yeah. So Jesus, Jesus talking to her was a big deal on many accounts, you know, but he was Jesus and he loved everybody. So, but, the, the, the, the Germans and the Jews, you know, and now race relations in our country are, so the fact that it’s been with us for so many years, I don’t think there’s really an easy solution if you will, to that’s the problem,
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:06] because it’s a part of group dynamics and human behavior, unfortunately,
Craig Graves: [00:46:11] tribalism or whatever.
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:13] Yes. It’s why you say it he’ll have to didn’t know how to respond. What would you diagnose? I mean, it’s, it’s a part of the human condition. It’s insecurities and hurts and hang ups and feelings and emotions. That’s why I say mental health is directly in the center of this topic, you know, and it comes in many, many forms.
Not on our show, but on the show that Scotty and I did together with Gaston community talks, I encourage you to check his stuff out because I
think he does a good job,
you know, and that one’s only on Facebook. And I think there was a problem on that recording. Hopefully he fixed. But one of the things I talked about on that show is the fact of the matter is, and Craig, we did a show on him.
Remember when Tom was on our show, the present day example that happens all around us of slavery. It’s not similar. It’s right, exactly what it is. It’s human sex trafficking.
Craig Graves: [00:47:03] Yeah. I think that’s a whole lot bigger than we think it is. Even when we talk about, on our show, I think it’s
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:08] Oh, so bad.
Craig Graves: [00:47:09] There’s some rumblings you hear on the internet about how bad it might be
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:15] is taken into custody and farmed out for sex with people they don’t know over and over and over again, they are owned.
Craig Graves: [00:47:25] Yeah. This, this Maxwell thing could good. If she lives long enough. I
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:29] don’t know who that is.
Craig Graves: [00:47:31] Oh yeah. Yeah. I could blow the lid off of a lot of stuff, but
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:34] that’s slavery right now. And, you know, Scotty makes the point of, of saying, you know, prison is modern day slavery. I’ve heard him talk about it and you know, your rights are taken.
Maybe you did something, maybe unfairly gut crimed. You know, I don’t know that says there are arguments that people make, but it it’s, it’s a big in boy. I tell you when, when you have something going on like that in your generational family, We didn’t get to talk about that a lot either. Intergenerational realities.
I mean, when your grandma is sitting there and talking about, so and so cousin, Bob was lynched from a tree in 1918 nine, and she remembers it like, like this man visceral. And she’s relaying that experience. I mean, this is my great cousins cousin, man. That’s my blood. Holy cow. You feel that that’s a part of your experience?
I can’t even imagine. What that might be like. And I don’t want to imagine that it’s it’s pain.
Craig Graves: [00:48:33] That’s a good point.
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:34] It’s trauma. And, and you’re hearing that on Christmas meals, hanging out with a whiskey on the porch, talking to your uncles, you feel that. That’s a part of what people’s experiences to the point.
I, again, I can’t even imagine can’t even imagine. I know what some of the traumas I’ve been through in my family with addiction and whatnot, that’s bad enough stories. People tell things they went through those need to be talked about, and those need to be healed forgiveness. How do you do that? How do you let go your anger against that?
Craig Graves: [00:49:12] That’s tough. That’s tough. That’s very tough
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:15] for a little while.
Craig Graves: [00:49:16] It’s tough. Yeah, I do get that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:21] So some of the other things we talked about and we didn’t give a chance, I think now’s a good time to jump in. You know, Craig, if you heard my list a little bit, what did we get a good job with the apology forgiveness does that?
Cause I think that’s
Craig Graves: [00:49:34] yeah, I think then I think we had good there. Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:38] let’s move on to them. I really feel like that’s a big deal. The golden rule, you know, love conquers all. Can we apply love to racism?
Craig Graves: [00:49:48] Not, not to racism itself, but I think that’s how you get out of it. Yeah. You know, honestly, do,
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:54] it’s just loving people, caring and being compassionate.
And, and I think that that goes a long way,
Craig Graves: [00:50:01] you know? Good. I think it does too. And I think, I think getting to know people, man, the success stories I hear and are when people sit down and talk to each other about whatever, just get to know each other. And then they realize they’re both just human beings.
There’s a guy named Daryl Davis, you know, Daryl Davis is.
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:25] Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:50:25] Yeah. Darrell Davis has an awesome story. So Dale Davis is an African American musician and a, I think his first experience with racism when he was like 10 and he was in a boy scout parade. And so people were throwing rocks at the boy Scouts and you realize that they were only throwing them at him.
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:42] Oh, really? Yeah. I don’t know this story then. I thought you were talking to something else.
Craig Graves: [00:50:47] They got home. And in his parents explained to him what was going on. You know, that the scout masters got him out of there real quick and he couldn’t believe that somebody would hate him just because of the color of his skin.
So he’s playing, he’s playing, he’s playing music in a bar one night and he goes up to the bar after in between sets or whatever starts talking to this guy. And the guy’s like. You know what, man, you’re the first black man I’ve ever had a beer with. I was like, what are you talking about? Yeah. It turns out the guy was in the clan, but he had a drink with, he continued to have a drink with Darryl.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:20] And it’s a true story. You’re telling.
Craig Graves: [00:51:22] Oh, absolutely. Yeah. He’s got a Ted talk and he was on Joe Rogan’s podcast and there’s some other YouTube videos. Anyway, man, he ended up setting up a meeting to interview this Gran, this grand wizard or whatever it was and the clan. And the guy came in and met and met with him and he actually sat down and talked to him.
He had his garden. What do you mean now? And after that initial meeting, they kept getting back together for coffee or, or whatever. And, I kept doing these meetings and pretty soon the guy quit bringing the guard, you know, so it was just he and he and Darryl. And, he would come and watch Daryl play music.
You know, Darrell would go to the clan meetings with him. 60 minutes did a segment and there’s there’s there let the Klan meeting, Oh my God. And eventually the guy came out of the clan and he gave Daryl his robe. And, and to this day, they’re all Davis has taken like 60 people between, I think he said between 60 and 80 directly from, from, from white supremacy neoNazis and whatever.
And indirectly, he thinks he’s got about 200, but the way he did that, Chris has just a friend of these guys after they got to know him, realized he was a man just like them. Then they came out
of that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:30] What timeframe are you talking about?
Craig Graves: [00:52:32] This? This is fairly Joe Rogan about, I dunno, four or five months ago.
Wow. Great story.
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:38] Yeah, that is, that is really cool.
Craig Graves: [00:52:40] I think that’s how we get over this thing. We just have to get to know each other. Like we, we, we talked to Scotty tonight, you know, it was interesting to hear his perspective and what he wants. And I think if more people sat down with each other, then things might be different.
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:54] I really think you’re onto something. And I appreciate you spending a little bit of time telling us about that, because I think that that has a lot of positive mental health aspects to it, you know? you, you deescalate yourself so that you can really have conversations. And whenever you’re talking to a family member or a friend and you feel that elevated state Craig, you can feel, you know, it’s there stop and tend to that inside you so that you can continue trying to connect with the person because people don’t do that.
Well.
Craig Graves: [00:53:24] Yeah. And Scott, you brought up another point too. He’s I think, and he can Scotty, if you’re out there listening and I get this wrong and please, please call me and correct me. But I believe he said that the, the people inside of the institutions, no, it made the
institution. Then we went back here because I know your eyes popped up.
Yeah. And I definitely, I believe that in what I’m saying about getting to know each other and tearing down those barriers, I think if you tear down those barriers and people’s hearts, then it’ll solve the institutional problems. At least that’s my opinion.
Chris Gazdik: [00:53:55] I think that has some, some merit, you know, I really do because you’re right.
Interestingly enough, in Scotty off the air, when you said that I knew it, I knew, I knew your eyes popped Craig on that one, because we had had a conversation like that a few weeks ago, you know, where you were kind of frustrated, I think is, is a good, that’s a good word. You know, with the claims that our constitution, this and our institutions that and whatnot.
And you’re like, look, man, this is set up in a good way. But, but, but as with most things, religion set up in a good way, people screw it up.
Craig Graves: [00:54:29] Yeah. Unfortunately, true.
Chris Gazdik: [00:54:31] You know, we, we misinterpret, we have confirmation bias. We have insecurities, we have fear. We have shame-based feelings. We have guilt. We have unforgiveness hearts.
We have an unrelenting, willingness to take responsibility for our part in this, you know, and it goes on man. Again, that’s why I say, I think mental health is right square in the middle of this racism issue, race relations and racism is equivalent to poor mental health. I mean, how’s that first statement
Craig Graves: [00:55:03] I agree.
Makes a lot of sense. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:08] Personal strength is something that we didn’t get a lot too. You know, when somebody puts a prejudice on you, it’s hard to refuse the negative belief in oneself. You know, we didn’t get to talk a lot about that as part of the solution. That’s where I led add, added our show on, on unbeatable mind, you know, You have to have a strong sense of self.
You have to have a belief, a comfort with yourself. And a lot of people were going to be like, Oh yeah, I’m comfortable with myself. I know myself. I know myself. Well, I’m a 67 year old man and I’ve been living my life. And I’m good with what I do. I have no problem with stuff. Come on. Well, I’m pretty sure you have insecurities when you’re 77.
Just as much as when you’re seven, that’s just human. Emotion.
Craig Graves: [00:55:49] Yeah. Self, self mastery is a never ending process.
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:53] What do they say? It’s the journey is the
Craig Graves: [00:55:55] journey. Yeah, the destination. Yeah, there is, there is my destiny, you know?
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:59] And so if we, if we look at that, you know, when somebody puts some prejudice on us, part of getting well, and part of healing is I know I’m not a dumb West Virginia.
You just called me dumb, but the dangerous reality of it is if you call me dumb to somebody else calls me dumb, somebody else calls me dumb, fourth person, fifth person, 10th person, 25th person calls me and says, I’m a dumb West, Virginia. And you know what? I might start believing, leaving that and start believing
Craig Graves: [00:56:25] it.
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:25] It’s, it’s very powerful.
Craig Graves: [00:56:26] It is. It is.
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:27] And that’s why media is dangerous because when that gets taken over with somebody with an agenda, which we have a lot,
Craig Graves: [00:56:35] all have, you know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:37] that people start believing it.
Craig Graves: [00:56:39] That’s right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:41] All liberals are socialists in their evil for our country. Yeah. All conservatives just want to be power hungry and all about money.
Craig Graves: [00:56:50] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:52] You believe it when you hear it. And so it takes a lot of personal strength to say, wait a minute, I am not a bad person. I am not a subservient to you just because I’m a native American. That doesn’t fit my knowledge, my clear understanding of my myself. See a lot of this issue with racism in, in any mental health is internal.
Do an internal job here. You don’t do necessarily an external job. I think Scotty made that point too. Didn’t he he’s like, you know, you can’t change, you know, what’s in somebody else’s heart, you disempowered there in certain another one of my solutions, the serenity prayer, understand what you cannot control.
Cannot control somebody. Who’s going to be mean to you. You can try, you can be pissed off. You could force them to say something nice. How’s that going to work?
Craig Graves: [00:57:45] Yeah. Yeah. Not too good,
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:47] but have courage too. Do the things that you can control the wisdom of the serenity prayers, understanding the, knowing the difference between the two
Craig Graves: [00:57:55] that’s right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:57] You know, another thing honestly, was moral courage. I think that people misunderstand how difficult that really is. To speak up. I think I made that point a little bit during part one, you know, resolving personal trauma, I think is an absolute must as a family. When you have been a victim of these types of things, you have an unfortunate task to forgive, to heal, to get through that trauma.
You have to deescalate your emotions. When you think about something, when you go through remembrances of that, I mean, you remember trauma stuff triggers it. What happens when you’ve been traumatized and you’re in grocery store and someone says something mean that makes you remember that stuff
Craig Graves: [00:58:42] comes back
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:43] hard, fast.
It ain’t pretty cause my cousin. Shouldn’t have been treated that way. And you’re treating me that way in bowl whammo. It’s on if you’re carrying an unforgiveness and if you haven’t taken responsibility for anything, you’re just going to perpetrate it over and over and over and over again and never even know it.
what else did I get that I wanted to kind of get into? How about humor? You know, one of the things that helps us heal with all of this stuff is comedians mr. Graves, and they do it. You ever been to comedy shows much.
Craig Graves: [00:59:21] Yeah. Oh man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:59:22] This is just so awesome.
Yeah.
You know, intense situations. I I’m known in therapy office crack jokes.
Craig Graves: [00:59:30] Yeah. Laughter’s good for the heart. And it is,
Chris Gazdik: [00:59:33] that’s like a serious statement.
Craig Graves: [00:59:35] Yeah. Yeah. I’m not joking. It really is.
Chris Gazdik: [00:59:37] You know, and, and I laugh in therapy. I try to have fun with people. I’m going to try to do it appropriately. I try to be careful about, about what I’m, what I’m doing when I do that, but I’m not perfect with it.
As a matter of fact, I did see a review one time on the, Oh man, I felt horrible. Oh, absolutely horrible. And anybody’s ever listened to this and you’re the person that was in therapy that gave that feedback. I, I apologize that it made me feel horrible because you know, what they said is like, yeah, session went on and it was, it was, he was easy to talk to.
It was a really good session. We started out really well. And then he laughed at me. I mean the audience. Can you see my face? But I mean, can you see my face? I was like, man, and that is not what I ever would want to have somebody think. And so I’m even more careful I read that probably three years ago or something, you know?
so I didn’t catch that. What you go ahead. You’ve given me a cue on something. So. humor. We need a laugh. We need to have fun. We need to get comedy shows and make jokes and goof off. And it’s, it’s cathartic. It’s fun. And we can just not take things so
Craig Graves: [01:00:50] seriously.
Chris Gazdik: [01:00:51] Well, I get a different one. I probably get a different one.
You know, that’d be, that’d be good. So, let’s, let’s set myself a here a little bit, man. How do we, do you think we did a good job in managing the mental health factors of racism? Such a difficult topic?
Craig Graves: [01:01:08] It’s a difficult topic. I think we did a good job. I hope so. I guess our audience can tell us
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:13] and please do you know, this is, this is one that I think is going to be one of our more listened to shows over the months to come.
And we want your feedback. Let’s get dialogue about it as part of the premise of what we’re talking about. That leads me being well.
Craig Graves: [01:01:26] Yeah, it would be good. Scotty Skye said he’d come back. So having some audience feedback, maybe some questions we could, we could go over when he does come back would be awesome.
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:35] So, you know, maybe we’ll think of a topic, you know, after we get through, because times are going to be better. Guys. Listen, we are all stressed out with a pandemic. We’re all frustrated and quarantining court, Connor court sorta quarantining or not gaurunteeing. I mean, Wearing masks, not wearing masks and trying to figure out what social distancing means and loneliness and, you know, fear for our elderly family members and, you know, race relations and getting pissed off at people, rioting and acting out of anger.
You just world seems like a tough place right now, but it’s, it’s going to get better. We are going to get through this. I have no doubt about that. And, and when you, when you hurt the most grow the most, Greg you’ve heard me say that before. I think in a lot of ways, our country’s hurting right now, we bleedin really in really in a lot of ways, economically and spiritually and emotionally, for sure.
You know, and, and maybe we have Scotty back after a lot of this stuff blows down, you know, and kind of where are we at now?
Craig Graves: [01:02:37] Hope so. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [01:02:38] You know, and let’s, let’s have that conversation continue. Because as much as we’re going to be better off for the things that we’re going through now. And I do believe that that’s not just blowing smoke at you.
I believe that we continue to improve as a people. we take an inventory and, and, and, and continue to grow several months from now with this stuff after it’s kind of calmed down, you know, people have a tendency to forget people. People don’t really remember history very well. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll deal with this issue.
Some more. So I have no idea where we’re going next to don’t don’t ask me. I got a lot of really good guests coming up. Yeah. Some
Craig Graves: [01:03:13] previews of that book, man.
Chris Gazdik: [01:03:14] I know, right? Yeah. Yeah. I planned on doing some of that when it’s a little bit more available while we’re finishing up production and doing all that,
Craig Graves: [01:03:22] do some solo casts and just.
Give us some wisdom from that book or something.
Chris Gazdik: [01:03:25] You know, I also, am excited. I’m not ready to announce guests and whatever, but I feel very confident just to give you an idea of some of the cool guests we got coming up. We’re going to be able to talk about ketamine treatment. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.
Craig Graves: [01:03:37] That’s the psychedelics. That’s going to be a fun
Chris Gazdik: [01:03:40] one. Yeah. We’re going to have that.
Craig Graves: [01:03:41] I’m hearing more and more about that. And I think it’s very interesting.
Chris Gazdik: [01:03:46] I’m going to tell you on the skeptic.
Craig Graves: [01:03:48] Well, I heard a lot of stuff about it, John Hopkins, man. I think that’s the real deal. They’ve got the largest, psychedelic research center in the
Chris Gazdik: [01:03:57] world.
Are there any smart people from West Virginia there?
Craig Graves: [01:04:00] I’m sure there are.
Chris Gazdik: [01:04:01] I’m sure there are man. Take us out of here, sir,
Craig Graves: [01:04:04] throughatherapistseyes.com. We we’ve kind of done some stuff. We’ve got a new logo. We’re trying to categorize the shows so you can find certain topics easier. Chris is going to be doing some Facebook live videos,
Chris Gazdik: [01:04:17] Mondays
Craig Graves: [01:04:18] and stuff like that.
So we got a lot of good stuff going on throughatherapisteyes.com, links to the Facebook. the Instagram, the LinkedIn, we’ve got a LinkedIn page now, YouTube, we’re going to be looking at video soon. We’ve got Neil help us out with stuff like that. So lots of good stuff going on, make sure you get plugged in
anything else, dude?
Chris Gazdik: [01:04:40] I think that’s a wrap.
Craig Graves: [01:04:41] We’re out.