How A Police Mental Health Unit De-Escalates Chaos

A “mental health call” rarely looks like a calm conversation in a quiet office. It looks like uncertainty, pressure, split-second decisions, and a room full of risk factors that do not fit neatly into a checklist. I sit down with Joe Smarro, former Marine and former San Antonio Police Department officer who spent 11 years full-time on a mental health unit, to unpack what actually works when the goal is simple and urgent: keep everyone safe and lower the temperature fast. 

Joe shares how Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) changed the way he saw policing, why de-escalation and communication skills matter as much as tactics, and what happens when departments move from a small voluntary approach to broader training expectations. We also talk about the real stigma that shows up inside agencies, including the “hug-a-thug” pushback that often greets jail diversion and mental health initiatives, and why many of the loudest critics have personal stories they have never been given space to name. 

We go deeper into the intersection of public safety and behavioral health care. Joe explains why sending clinicians alone to volatile crises can create safety problems when scenes involve drugs, co-occurring disorders, and unpredictable behavior, and why the better answer is collaboration with clear lanes. Along the way, we connect this work to leadership in the private sector, challenging belief systems, and Joe’s core principle of radical ownership, because resilience is not just about surviving hard moments, it is about choosing what you do next. 

If you care about first responder mental health, police de-escalation, crisis response, and practical leadership under stress, hit play, then subscribe, share this with someone on your team, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

To follow or reach Joe, here are his links: 

https://solutionpointplus.com/
https://joesmarro.com/
https://www.instagram.com/joesmarro
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joesmarro/

His book can be purchased here: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=joe+smarro+book&adgrpid=189489075594&hvadid=779590058605&hvdev=c&hvexpln=0&hvlocphy=9001838&hvnetw=g&hvocijid=11939440335994543591--&hvqmt=e&hvrand=11939440335994543591&hvtargid=kwd-2672616687752&hydadcr=22534_13730692_8442&mcid=210f362e2b1a34d4afd3b1dab807f421&tag=googhydr-20&ref=pd_sl_1i3b43osek_e

DeemedFit: First Responder Owned
We are a first responder owned company looking to get first responders in the best mental shape.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome

Welcome And Mission

SPEAKER_00 0:02

to Resilience Development in Action with Steve Bisson. This is the podcast dedicated to first responder mental health, helping police, fire, EMS, dispatchers, and paramedics create better growth environments for themselves and their teams. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Well, hi everyone, and welcome to Resilience Development in Action. I'm so happy to have you here, but more importantly, I've got someone I heard speak. And of course, you know, we start interviews and we start chatting and chatting. I'm like, this is all good stuff. I've got to record it. But when you really are personable, and I really jo enjoyed him presenting, what, about a month ago, a month and a half ago around here? And I was happy to have him on. So, and of course, now I'm gonna I'm putting you on the spot. I'm gonna pronounce your last name properly. I'm gonna screw it up anyway, but that's okay. I always say to people, it's my second language, I'll live with myself. Joe Smorrow. Perfect, Steve. You nailed it. Welcome to Resilience Development in Action.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Thank you, brother. Super stoked to be here, and I appreciate you sharing your audience with me. So yeah, I can't I can't wait to dive in and see what we we're gonna talk about.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

I I think that we're we're two P's in a pot in some way. I know I'm come from the civilian side, but I I definitely felt that we had a good connection because we're gonna talk about a lot of stuff that's very interesting to me and working on the stigma, not only from the mental health perspective, but the stigma within a police department and talking about mental health, particularly units. I can't wait to talk about that. But before we go there, I know that you know we we kind of met. I didn't go see bother you because I knew you had a lot on your plate, but I text you and we we we exchanged a few times. But how about you tell my audience a little bit more about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Yeah,

Joe’s Path From Marines To SAPD

SPEAKER_01 1:55

so from New York originally, I joined the Marine Corps straight out of high school for a specific reason that maybe will come up later, and did two combat tours to Afghanistan and Iraq, and then got out, moved to South Texas, where I currently reside still, and joined the San Antonio Police Department, spent uh 15 years with SAPD, and my last 11 were full time on the mental health unit. And then I voluntarily resigned in 2020 because I started my company back in 2017, but it really was just as a side hustle. You know, a lot of cops work a lot of overtime to make some money, and in my case, it was to pay a lot of child support. And so, yeah, I wanted to make money doing something I actually enjoyed. And so training and teaching around mental health was something I'm very passionate about. And so my business partner, Jesse, best friend, and I started this, and we had three years of traction and it was going well. And then 2020 happened, COVID shuts down the world, but I'm miserable as a cop. I love policing, I love the profession, I love mental health unit, like it truly saved my life. And I really don't enjoy working under just horrible leadership. And so I fought it for about 18 months and realized like the system is too big, can't do anything about it. And so instead of just showing up and complaining every day, uh, my therapist encouraged me to resign and focus on my business full time. And I was terrified, but I did it. And it was very scary, but it was one of the greatest professional decisions I've ever made. And now we're coming up on six years full time with no safety net of running a business that's been thriving and doing really well, and super stoked. So, Solution Point Plus, current CEO of that. And we are, we say international because we work in Canada as well as the US, but we're a training and consulting firm that operates at the intersection of public safety and behavioral health care. And it has expanded beyond that as well to where now we're in public transit, the private sector. We really work with people who work with people, and uh it's been great. And so super blessed to be in the position I'm in. Wrote a couple books, featured in a documentary, gave a TEDx talk, and now I do a bunch of keynotes and conference seminars around the country. So that's the high-level introduction, Steve. And we can go as deep as you want in any of that, but yeah, pretty diverse experience and a hopeful optimist.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Well, let me start with the same thing. There's a couple of things that I want to mention. Thank you for serving. I appreciate it. As a Canadian who's never served, I truly respect that. My dad was a huge armed forces guy, and I always joke around that you can serve in Canada or the US, but we work so hand in hand most of the time that it might as well be the same exact people. Um thank you for serving, really appreciate it. And two tours is in Iran and Afghanistan. I have 400 questions just on that. I Iraq. You said Iran. I have not been to Iran. Iraq, sorry, but sorry, sorry, that's the times, the times.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

That's current events. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, well, we might might be there soon enough, but let's not go into politicizing that. One of the things that you mentioned that you said you're, you know, you started off in the law enforcement, the mental health world, and a little bit of what you've done. I I want

Why Crisis Skills Fit Leadership

SPEAKER_02 5:11

to, I we can go chronologically if you wish, but the first thing I want to mention is that when you said the private sector, one of the things I find is I I work what 70, 75% of the time with first responders, police, fire, empty dispatch. And I have a lot of army, air force, marines right now. That's what I have. But yeah, I've worked with the Coast Guard and I worked with the Navy. But I find that people in the private sector, particularly in the C suite, and I don't like that word, but I'm gonna use it, they definitely need this type of truthfulness that comes from you. I mean, if I will link the TED Talk, the X talk, and everything else, and definitely the book. But what I think that you just said was important because I think that the private sector actually needs the type of brutal honesty for lack of a better word that we offer because of our experience with the mental health field and particularly in your case with the law enforcement and the military.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Yeah, and it's it's it's taken me a while to, I think, understand or realize this, and probably rooted from a place of insecurity when, you know, my experience from the military into policing, I didn't really understand how it was going to translate into the private sector. And so when I started, I didn't go to college until I was already in my early 30s, but I was still a cop and I thought that I was gonna stay a cop and do 35 years. And so I got my bachelor's in criminal justice, but then became curious and so started my master's degree in organizational psychology. And so then I was like, all right, well, I want to understand this better. Well, then I started the business and stopped going to school. And my goal is like any good entrepreneur is to never finish formal education. And it's kind of just our like, ah, to the system. Because again, I don't want people to mistake that. If you are a social worker, yes, for sure, go to school and do all the things. But I just think that a lot of the universities in our country, it's it's a it's just a money grab for things that people are never going to use. And you're not really gaining the experience you need unless you're a specialty doctor, nurse, lawyer, something like that. So I realized for me, it was it was how can I get real world experience? And learning from the fact of like, how, how do the lessons that I learned in policing, specifically on a mental health unit, going to people's homes, going into the street, going into the community, and really having to learn how to effectively navigate this, you know, crisis that's a pretty chaotic, complex situation, and doing that over and over and over and getting really good at it, to then saying, like, okay, well, there are a lot of people running these businesses and these companies that feel stress and that are making difficult decisions, usually to deal with margins, numbers, people, staff processes, policies, things like that. And for them, not to minimize it, but it feels very stressful. But then you take somebody that has a lot of real world experience of life and death levels of stress, and you recognize that like there's a lot of patterns and behavior, and there's a way to kind of calm that very chaotic situation. And so the skills developed really do transfer and translate really well into the corporate side. And so honestly, that's why I wrote the second book. So my first book is is titled Unarmed, and it's de-escalation techniques to cultivate courage, compassion, and connection. So, with that book, it was more for the public safety side, although non-first responders have read it and gotten a lot out of it because it's a lot about communication and like negotiation tactics. The second book, which is right here, boom, 12 laws of maximizing the human experience. This was more of like the leadership series, and it's slow and low is the tagline. And then someone once referred to me as a mental maverick, and I was like, that's kind of sexy. And so I just took that title and I called this the Mental Mavericks playbook. And it really is just leadership techniques cultivated from like real-world experience in the streets of San Antonio and doing this job for over a decade, you know, thousands and over 8,000 contacts of people and various levels of crises and effectively navigating and de-escalating those without using force. And so I turned that into like a 12 laws leadership principles book to get traction in the corporate side. And so it's it's been exciting, man. But yes, your points are spot on, and my narrow-mindedness needed to be expanded, believing that people everywhere could benefit from the skills that I've developed.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

I'm going to go back to when you spoke, and I think I care I'm going to paraphrase what you said. Sure. But what you said is I never want to be the smartest person in the room. Not quite good words, but something to that effect. And I think that that's what you know, people in the private sector, particularly in the C-suite, what I explain is that they're used to being the smartest person in the room, and they're usually used to having people say yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, as a therapist, I come in as an experience of like, nah, that's kind of screwed up, or no, this is wrong. And that raw honesty that you talk about that we need in the streets as a police officer, as a mental health counselor, whatever the case may be, is very beneficial in the corporate world because they're not used to having someone going, Really? That's what your best idea is. Or and I I can't think of an example right now, but the point is, I think that that's why it transforms. I'm a child and family specialist. If you told me I'd be working with cops and firefighters, I would have said you're crazy 20 years ago. And today I can't see myself doing anything else. But that doesn't mean in 10 years I'm not working with the elderly or something because I've developed passion. I always think that opportunities come from our situations, and you had faced a lot of the mental health stuff in the community, and I think that that plays a huge factor. I think the also the you know, a little bit of what I we talked about pre-interview, but I'm gonna kind of ask you more information. You know, when I started 2006, the jail diversion program in Framingham, Massachusetts, about half those cops would call me the hug a thug program. And I know you did kind of the same thing down in San Antonio. I'm comparing apples to different types of apples, so I think it's very similar, but I know you face similar issues. How did that come from a mental health perspective? I was under turf, so I can kind of back off and I'll personalize that. Well, you're a cop, and other cops saying that you're the thug hug a thug program probably has a different meaning to you.

Sponsor Break Deemed Fit

SPEAKER_02 11:33

Just a quick break, guys. I'm gonna talk about a new product that I really like. I actually bought one of their hoodies, it was amazing, and I really enjoyed wearing it. Uh, it this episode is gonna be supported by Deemed Fit. Deemed Fit is a first responder-owned activewear and a leisure brand. And one thing that I genuinely like about them is that they support different causes. I actually gave a few people I know who work with first responders and our nonprofits their name to uh DEMFit, and I know they're talking to them. They do a lot of initiatives and collections that are based on mental health for first responders. And if you go there right now and you buy anything, including the mental health support stuff, uh use the code RDA15. That's right, R D A 15, to get 15% off on any products that you get. Again, it's called RDA 15. Go to deanfit.com, D-E-E, M-E-D-F-I-T.com and enjoy 15% off at checkout to save. Now, right back to the episode.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Yeah.

Building CIT And A Mental Health Unit

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Yeah, the the challenges are the same. And San Antonio started their crisis intervention training program before I was even on the job. So I didn't get on until 2005. In 2002, is when they really started their first like jail diversion initiative. And Houston kind of spearheaded for all of Texas. They're they're the largest city in Texas, they're twice of everything of San Antonio. And so they really pioneered what was happening. Then San Antonio learned from Houston and then was like, all right, we're gonna adopt the model and change it a bit to fit our community here. And when I got on in 2005, it still wasn't part of the training academy. And so our police academy was eight months long. There's no discussion of mental health, no CIT program. And then it wasn't, I went through the CIT training in 2007. And I will tell you that it was one of those trainings where I went in, like, you know, a little skeptical, unsure, like, what is this about? And I left there, like, whoa, this to me is really exciting because it gave me like a new perspective on what was possible in policing. And it wasn't just about, you know, like the us versus them, the bad guys. It was like, no, here's a real opportunity where we can connect with people and maybe, you know, kind of get them back on their feet or introduce them into a resource they didn't know existed before. Maybe we could, you know, improve their continuity of care and give them a chance post-discharge instead of just a revolving door. And so CIT really opened my eyes. And then we started a pilot program in 2009, and it was a six-month trial of let's see if this mental health unit can get stood up. Uh, Nami was a big advocate. The two original officers, Ernie and Willie, presented it with the chief's approval, and they just did a whole bunch of like proof, proof of concept, data, data, data, relieving officers back to uh in duty, not using force, a bunch of touch points and contacts, working closely with the stakeholders and the community, and the proof was there. And then when it actually became a unit, is when they opened it up to the department. And this is a department of 2,460 officers. And so I'm not gonna say it was competitive as in 2,000 cops wanted to do it. That would be a massive embellishment. But there were definitely a handful of people that wanted it. Well, several. I mean, there's probably 50 to 100 cops that were like, I'm interested in that. I was very fortunate to get selected. And so when we actually became, well, they called it a detail because there was only four of us, but we were actually a full-time unit and full-time not as in 24-7, but full-time in that, that's all we did. We don't take robbery calls. I'm not taking, you know, shoplifter calls. 100% of my case, my call outs were mental health related. So that was interesting. Then from CIT international, this standard of like, you know, 15 to 25% of your of every department should be CIT trained and it should be voluntary. We we hit that mark and that was pretty easy. But then the chief was like, nope, we're gonna do 100%. That was when we saw a huge shift. So I am a I am uh advocate of 100% training and CIT international is not. And so uh for me, it's I get the idea that this should be for people that want to do it, but I also push back on the fact that unless you're a cop, that when a dispatch calls your number, you can say no thanks. What else do you have on the menu? Which is not a reality anywhere. You have to respond to the calls you're dispatched to. And so you should not get to choose how trained you are. And if we know that there's varying degrees of research out there, but let's just go conservative and say 35% of every 911 call has like a mental health nexus to it. Officers need to be trained. And all it really is, is a 40-hour CIT program, if it's done well, it's advanced communication techniques, helping you understand the resources that exist in your community, and then having you giving you a better understanding of what various mental illness and serious mental illnesses are out there and how to interact with those people. Why is that such a bad thing to me? And so for me, I thought it was a great idea. The problem was we were cranking. And so now we're having to do like two 40-hour schools a month for two years. And I heard all these officers come in, you know, the older officers, the salty, come in just really pissed off. And they would say things on Monday morning like, Joe, I don't believe in this hug-a-thug crap. This is not police work. I'd rather retire than come here. And I'm like, all right, cool, man. Like, I think your name tent's right over there. Like, go find your seat. I'm glad you're here. And, you know, they were really pissed off about it. But what was super interesting to me, and again, I don't want to, you know, try to embellish anything. I I really believe that I'll go seven out of ten. The the officers that came in most pissed off about being forced to be there, right? Because cops don't like to be mandated to do anything. Seven out of ten times the ones that were vocal on Monday, angry about it on Friday, would like sneak up to us and make sure no one's looking, and they'd be like, hey man, that was actually really good. Or, hey, I gotta be honest, the reason that I was so frustrated is because my son has bipolar, or my wife is diagnosed with this, or my family. So they had some type of personal connection and the system and their mind let them down. So now they're like anti-all things mental health, plus their stigma. I don't want people to know I have mental health in my family. But then you get people like me and other officers up there just like, yeah, and I'm diagnosed with mental illness, and I'm in treatment. And, you know, and so when you become an internal champion and start really sharing your own story, people start to buy into it. And so our program really was great. And we we converted a lot of people that, if we left it voluntary, would have never came to the training in the first place. And so now that, you know, through our company, it's one of the it's the least training we offer now because CIT is just so like you can grab it off a tree, you can download PowerPoints offline, it's free everywhere. And so we don't get hired to do that as much anymore, which is unfortunate, but also it's just the way of the world. But when we do, I love it because I love we still get those naysayers that are like, I don't want to do this. And I'm like, love it. We'll talk on Friday. And they're like, Will you be my best friend? Oh my God, this is amazing. I'm like, yeah, man, like it's if you could just stay open-minded, you'd be amazed at what would happen. So we went through those growing pains. And now that the units like fully running. I mean, they've got over 40, it's 24-7, you know, embedded clinicians. It's it's a full operation at this point. But yeah, it's it's been a great ride.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

You talk about open-mindedness, I think that that's part of it. I'm part of a CIT training program myself. I do the mental health arch, surprise, surprise. And what what I find, I even asked the guys, I'm like, how many of you really are here? Because you had to. And sometimes people have the br the you know, the ball stuff or the ovarian fortitude to put their hands up. But when I do that, I'm like, look, I'm not gonna promise I'm gonna change your life, but I'm gonna give you real life examples that I faced. And hopefully you can relate to one or two. And even if you think I'm crazy, come afterwards and tell me, hey, you know what? You're crazy. You know how many times people came in and told me I was crazy afterwards? Zero.

unknown 19:49

No.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

They're like, Oh man, I didn't know you guys understood that part. And I'm like, look, you're gonna face a mental health call, whether you like it or not. If you think that you're not, then you should give up policing right away and you know go do something else. But you're gonna face mental health problems there too, no matter where you end up. So either you learn about this or you look like an idiot. And I didn't say that in front of everyone, I privately said that, and they all related to that because it was a direct statement, but it was also true. I think the open-mindedness comes not only because of lived experience, but when you call about a call XYZ, oh shoot, that was like the call I went to, or this happened at this call, but I relate to that. And then I think that that's what opened a whole lot of minds. I don't know if that's your experience. And I know I was seen as the mental health guy who's a civilian who doesn't know anything, which is fine. I'm okay with that role. But when you come from a police perspective, so a veteran who served and brings that stuff, I think that's what opens a lot of people's minds, especially on the CIT stuff.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Yeah, yeah. I've been very fortunate to be able to convert a lot of people, a lot of naysayers. And

Training Clinicians For Real Crisis Work

SPEAKER_01 20:52

it's, you know, one of our company slogans is facts tell and story sell. Yes, our training is evidence-based. Yes, it's trauma-informed, yes, we understand all the nuance. Yes, we are familiar with the DSM five and diagnostics. No, we are not diagnosing anybody. And this is why, like in the last three years, our largest revenue driver has actually been training clinicians and behavior health workers and social workers and licensed therapists if they're doing crisis work. Because you can have the greatest social work degree from the greatest social work university, but you're you're you're probably, and some are starting to do this, but it's still very rare. But you're not learning about crisis work and you're not learning about safety and tactics, and you're not learning about how to go into someone's home. And you're not like these aren't people that are making appointments to come into your office in a controlled environment to talk to you about, you know, their trauma. These are very, very complex situations. And this is the problem with community a lot, not a lot, but many advocates that are anti police responding to mental health is like we need police to stop going to mental health calls because they bring a gun to the call. And this is how shootings are happening. We just need therapy. To respond to calls. And it's like, yeah, you could try that until you realize that a lot of these calls have a drug-induced component to it. They're, they've got co-occurring disorders. They're very complex. And I'm not saying that social workers and therapists aren't capable. I'm just saying they're not equipped to keep themselves safe. And so it's an and both from my point of view, and my opinion is that like both can be really effective and both should be working together. You know, and everyone has their lane to stay in. But there's no therapist that's responding to a community call where someone's in crisis and they're going to show up there and start running through an assessment protocol doing a questionnaire to diagnose somebody. That's not the time and place for it. We're just trying to minimize the situation.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

I'm not doing that in a crisis. I'm trying to solve it in five to ten minutes.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Yes. How can I keep everyone safe? How can I navigate you to the next level of care? Is that hospitalization? Is that a referral and make sure no one's going to get hurt when I leave? Like that's really what it is. And do I have the skills and the confidence and the competence to know what I'm looking at, know what I'm dealing with, and then know how to adapt to the environment so that I'm not escalating the situation and making it worse. And that's where a lot of that's where a lot of our training sits is look, I get you went to a lot of school and paid money and you understand diagnostic criteria. That's not what you're going to do in crisis context. So we're here to teach you about human behavior. And when someone is irate, when someone is punching holes in cheatrock, when someone's throwing things, how can we de-escalate that without threatening them and screaming and barking orders and running away? So that's that's the kind of the nuance between those two things. And again, we've been super blessed, even with them. You know, not all. I don't like general statements, but I get that that's how the world kind of operates sometimes. But a lot of therapists, social workers, behavior health types tend to lean a certain way. And when we come in as former Marines, combat deployed, former police officers, and we're going to talk to you about mental health. There's a lot of people that have bias just from our introduction of like, what the heck are these dudes going to talk to me about when they're in the military and they were cops? They're going to teach me about mental health. And we've had people like they'll tell us or they'll put it in the survey feedback of just when I saw your bios, I was kind of tuned out because I don't like you guys. Like, I don't like the police. I don't, I don't like the military. I don't, and and but then I what I do appreciate is the ones that are willing to own that they have their own bias, that they were falling into the stereotypes of things, and that by the end of it, they were like, you know what? This was actually really good. And you guys opened my mind and taught me things that I didn't realize or know. And so thank you. But there's some that are just so closed off because it's like, oh, you guys were cops, I'm not gonna listen to anything. And that's an unfortunate way to exist, in my opinion.

Bias, Curiosity, And Nonjudgment

SPEAKER_01 24:57

With love.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

Yeah, well, I agree. Oh, come on, man, don't do that. I'm gonna lose my audience now. If you didn't see you, if you're not on on video, he just made a heart with his fingers. So just why I make sure everyone knows that would happen. I'll tell you what I said in a training with a very I'm not gonna share. I people have heard this. So on uh I was doing a training for a hospital around here webinar, and they asked me, What's the one thing you should know about police officers? What should we know about their tr how to treat them? This is how I say so. If I see a person who's breaking into a car who happens to be black, and I say, All black people scare steal cars, you would be up my uh my butt in two and a half seconds. How difficult, how this and that, and and you would be right. So if a cop shoots someone in a very wrong way in Minnesota, for example, why is the cop in San Antonio, Texas, or Medway, Massachusetts, suddenly a jerk? Is that fair? But that's how you treat it. So you want us to treat you as individuals and want to treat everyone like individuals, you gotta do the same thing with the law enforcement people. Yeah, there's gonna be jerks, but guess what? There's jerk therapists, there's jerk uh everything that you can think of in a job. So stop saying that you're not doing exactly what you tell us not to do. And that's usually that's kind of the important message there.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

But well, yeah, and and cops are not immune from that either, Steve, of what you just said. And it's frustrating for me when the same because we they'll do the same thing, right? Like, I remember it was several years ago, but like it was in in Denver, and there were two officers in a Starbucks getting a coffee, and one of the customers was like, Oh my god, they're scaring me. And the Starbucks employee asked the officers to leave because they were scaring the patrons. There were cops in Texas that are like, I'm not never going to Starbucks again. And I'm like, why? Like, just because one employee at that place of business in Denver did something stupid, now you're boycotting all of Starbucks. Like, do you realize how stupid this is? Like, we complain about the same thing, but yet we're gonna take part in it. And it's like, to me, that's where I get really curious about human behavior and how we what how we become the sheep, as they say, and we follow the crowd and we follow, you know, you become what you consume. And you know, it's but this is where again for me, it just becomes so fascinating. People will often say, like, well, it's judgment. I'm like, no, it really isn't judgment. It really, I'm fascinated and I'm curious of why we believe the things we believe, why we do the things we do, why we consume what we consume, all of it, like every level, because it drives all of our behavior and our beliefs. And but yeah, no one's really immune from that until they're aware that they do it, and then they become, okay, I don't want to do that anymore. Which is why for me, truly, zero judgment. Like, yeah, if you did some horrible thing in your past, cool, I think you're redeemable. And if you're willing to work on it and learn to forgive yourself and do the hard work, because I realize my life, the things I've done, the choices I've made, the mistakes I've made, where I came from, those are all excuses. I could use that and wear a flavor of flavor size clock of victim badge of woe is me. Or I can be like, wait a minute, I think I am the one that continues to make these stupid choices. I should probably address why I keep doing this. Why do I sabotage so much? I'm gonna go get a therapist and then never leave. Um, and 15 years later, here we are. So, yeah, shout out to all the therapists doing the good work out there. But yeah, it's it's just to me, it's I've learned so much through my own treatment and healing journey that that has allowed me to project out a whole bunch of you know open space and and non-judgment for for anyone that I come in contact with.

SPEAKER_02 28:26

There's two things I want to say on that. The client, literally before our interview, is a younger police officer. And that person said to me, Everything's going good, Steve, but I want to continue therapy until you know either one of us dies. And I'm like, You get it, you get it. And younger, right? I feel that the younger generation gets that mental health is not stigmatized as much. There's still a stigma. I'd like to go and talk about that too. But the other part, too, you were asking a good question. This is how I explain it. You can call it profiling, you can call them compartmentalization, call it whatever you want. I don't care. But you know, if you think of a Canadian and which one of the major sports will be his favorite sports, most people will say hockey. And in 90% of the time, you'll be accurate. And for me, obviously, that falls in that. But I have two of my best friends, they don't even know the Montreal Canadians are in the playoffs. And they're from Canada, born and raised, they're my best friends, and they have no interest whatsoever. I tell people that these compartmentalization, profiling, whatever you want to call it, I don't care. You're allowed to have those as long as you're willing to question it. And if you're not questioning it, that's where the problem lies. If I say that we had this pre pre-interview, and I'm just gonna go with a little bit of our conversation. Oh, everyone in Texas is gun happy and they're carrying everywhere and they're shooting everything that moves. You're allowed to have that compartmentalization. Maybe you go to West Texas, maybe that's a little true, maybe not, right? But you go to I've been uh I've been my my girlfriend's family's from around Austin. I've been to Houston, I'm going to Dallas, hopefully very soon. That's not true, and I know that, but it's okay to have that compartmentalization as long as you're willing to challenge it. And that's how I explain it to people. Mentally ill people are all crazy. Okay, have that compartment. How are you gonna challenge it? Make sure that you can challenge those compartments. So I don't know if I guess my PSA based on what you just said, but that's how I explain human behavior is that to make life simple, I need to have a stereotype about whatever, and I get that, or compartment. As long as I'm willing to challenge it, that's okay. If I'm not willing to challenge it, that's where the problem lies.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Right on. Yeah.

Challenging Beliefs And Radical Ownership

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Yeah. But if you remember the beginning of my talk, is you know, the BS, and it's just challenge your belief system. And again, why do you believe what you believe? And it's usually inherited or adopted from somebody else. And even that, like if you read my book and you're like, oh, well, Joe, who the hell's Joe? Like, just because it's in my book doesn't give me any authority or credibility. It's you deciding I have authority and credibility. And so I think it's important that we spend more time challenging and questioning ourselves as to why we believe and do the things we do and the things we don't do. But sadly, not enough people do that. It's because it's easier to just think the world is happening to you instead of realizing the amount of agency that you actually have and taking ownership. In fact, law number one in the 12 laws is the law, the law of radical ownership. And it's about taking full ownership of your life, not and and accepting that it, yes, things are going to happen for sure. But your life 100% is a byproduct of all of your choices. And you can fight that all day long, but it's just the reality. And so when you realize how much actual agency and power you have in your own life, there's a lot of freedom on the other side of that suffering.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

Well, speaking of that suffering, I bet if you suffer for a half hour, you're willing to suffer another half hour. I would love it, Steve. Let's do another half hour for sure.

Part Two Tease And Closing

SPEAKER_02 31:52

Well, you guys, and we're gonna end up this episode. We're gonna put a lot of the links in there, but we're gonna go come in the other side, come and listen to the next episode. I just want to complete this one now. And I appreciate you time, your time, Joe. And I know people come in for the second part, so thank you.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

Right on. Thank you, brother.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Please like, subscribe, and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful. And as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational, and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States and Canada.