The Practice of Therapy

Gordon: Well, hello everyone. And welcome again to the podcast. And I'm so glad for you to get to know Jason Freeshman today. So thanks for joining us, Jason. I know that Jason you're located in Vermont, but as a start with everyone, why don't you tell folks a little bit more about yourself and how you've landed where you've landed?
Jason: Absolutely. You know, one thing I will, I'll start by saying is I planned on, I'm from New York originally via a lot of different places, including Georgia and New Hampshire and Massachusetts. But I've always wanted to be in Vermont. I, I was 12 years old and knew I wanted to live here. And so you know, many of my life's dreams have, have, have come to fruition.
I say, I live in Shangri La. I'm a father of two boys, 15 and 12. I'm a partner of you know, my wife Shana, who's also a therapist actually, and we, yeah, we live in rural Vermont outside of Burlington. And It's been a, certainly a long journey to get here, but it's been wonderful knowing everywhere I've ever trained or worked, I knew I was going to be here at some point.
So it's really been lovely to live and set up my work and practice out of a place that I dreamed of becoming when I was a kid. Right,
Gordon: right. It's a, it is a beautiful part of the country. It's been a, been a while since I've been up that way. It's on my bucket list to get back to New England and Vermont and that whole area.
So, yeah.
Jason: So come on up. I'll,
Gordon: I'll cook you a meal. Okay. I'd love that. I'd love that. So, so I know one of the, one of the topics we wanted to try to hit on today is really your niche and working with men and fatherhood and that sort of thing. So tell us how you kind of landed on that particular niche and kind of the work you do.
Jason: Yeah, absolutely. You know, and it's interesting. I, I started out most of my career. I were, or actually I don't want to say most anymore because I've been doing it longer than I, I like to think about, but the beginning of my career, I worked with kids. And I worked with generally boys, almost exclusively residential treatment centers school based work.
And I'm embarrassed to say it slightly, that when I was younger and doing this kid work with kids, I said, you know, I'm only going to work with children. If you're an adult and you're still a jerk, it's too late for you. You know, and I didn't, I didn't always use that clean language either. And then of course, As most therapists or anybody who works with kids knows, the more you work with kids, the more you have to work with adults, and then ultimately, and I, and I loved working with boys.
I really have a passion for sensitive boys smart, you know, sort of smart and sensitive kids who, you know, as boys were socialized out of. social connections, loving connections, sensitive, you know, connections. And so when I had my own sons, I made a real intentional switch because I wanted to save my sort of kid energy for our community here my kids and, and our friends and their kids.
And so joyfully moved towards working with. You know, sort of older teenagers, younger men, and then ultimately men and fathers became really the specialty that I love and and it's been, it's really been a powerful experience because for me. Knowing how much our social, our society, our culture forces, essentially bullies and systemically pushes sensitivity, emotions, caring out of the male experience.
I really feel, you know, I say a lot, but unfortunately damaged men and boys become damaging men and boys. Yeah. And so in addition to helping the individuals. I really feel like the work that I'm doing is social action and social justice, which has always been a really important part of my own values and the work I do.
And so working with men, I can really live that. And that's really how I found that.
Gordon: Right, right. You know, it's interesting. You know in some ways, as you describe it, I kind of have a parallel journey in that. When I first went into this profession, I worked for a nonprofit that worked with at risk children and youth.
And we did, we did intensive in home therapy. We were using a model called multi systemic therapy back at the time. And, you know, I thought you know, kind of like you maybe a little bit opposite of you. And that, you know, I knew I'd be working with some kids primarily. And I figured out at that time, I really didn't enjoy working with kids as much as I thought I would.
But I did know that, you know, just through that work that really, where you make the biggest impact for kids is by working with the adults. In other words, you can, you can spend time teaching. kids skills and teaching them how to cope with things. But if the system around them, the adults around them are not doing their work, it really gets undone very quickly.
And I think you're exactly right. Is that that we, I think for those of us that are fortunate enough to have been raised in stable environments and have good parents and all of that sort of thing, we don't realize the damage it does down the road for, like you said, with the men that are trying to learn how to be fathers and really had none of it modeled for them, you know, really, you know, they're dealing with their own trauma.
Jason: Absolutely. And what's interesting is because now I work both as a psychotherapist and a men's coach. And so I'm really seeing men along the entire spectrum of sort of, we'd say clinical. Issues, right? And even men who had grown up with loving intact families are finding because our culture and, and, you know, sort of like the, the social narratives for men is, is damaging in and of itself.
So if you grew up with an intact, loving family, you know, you maybe have a couple steps up on things, but even, even men who grew up with loving fathers had messages. That really pushed them from, from school, from media, from, from everywhere. That pushes us out of these loving connections that we, we so need as human beings.
Right,
Gordon: right. You know, I was listening to a podcast this morning. I can't remember the title of it, but the guest on there was Esther Perel. All of us in this you know, field know about her and she was just talking about. You know, what makes people happiest are those relationships and connections we have.
And if we don't have good connections modeled for us, it really makes it difficult. And she was talking about to the, you might find this interesting Jason, she was talking about how the culture has changed. From the, you know, like the early 1900s and even the 1800s, how men intentionally got together and had kind of like communities, either through clubs or, you know, different societies and that sort of thing.
And we don't have that as much anymore. It's and so we just don't,
Jason: yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, not only do we not have that, we're actively discouraged from it. You know, there are, I mean, I sort of joke about it, but. There's an entire genre of film called a bromance where it makes fun of men wanting to have friends, right?
Like, you wouldn't ever find that about women, you know, women, the stereotype of getting together with your, your female friends and having a glass of wine or whatever it is, book clubs. But if I'm, you know, I ran a men's group once where there was a father who came in and he was distraught. And he said, you know, whenever I take my kids to the playground, I'm usually the only dad.
Finally, there was another dad there. And for some reason he looked interesting, but it was so uncomfortable to go and talk to him. I felt like I had to get his digits. I felt like I was dating. And yet it was just talking to another guy. And so we're, you know, not only are there not those kinds of social groups and social intentional kind of camaraderie, brotherhood, whatever we want to call it, but it's actually, and there's been research that's shown it's actually, it's intentionally and systematically being pushed away.
You know, we, we've seen research where boys as young as two and three will say, yeah, no, I, I like the, I, I'm friends with the girls, but don't tell the boys, because if that's the case, they won't let me play with them. And then teenagers who have had close male friends, the research shows that most of many teenage boys.
Actively this separate and, and, you know, distance themselves from other close male friendships. This isn't natural. This isn't biological. This is social.
Gordon: Yeah. How do you think how do you think that, how that's come to be? Why is that? You think that we've kind of developed that mentality and that kind of way of seeing things in our culture.
I
Jason: mean, that's a huge question. And, and, you know, we could talk for a long time on that. The, the piece, the take that I, I really think is important about that are, or the, the one explanatory piece that I think is really important is we have a real dearth of social narratives that are models for us. So, you know, have you heard of, I imagine, yes, but you know, have the, the hero's journey.
Yes. Yes. Right. So, so most therapists, most people, you know, have heard of it and I love it. I, you know, I wrote my dissertation from the metaphor of the hero's journey and I love it. And I, and I would say that probably the first 15 years of my career, I designed interventions based on it, right? Joseph Campbell called it the monomyth, right?
The one story. And yet I also am trained in narrative therapy. And narrative therapy, one of our foremost sort of tenets is to question, take in for granted stories. So even though I love Joseph Campbell, I love the hero's journey, I had to question it. I had to say like, okay, why is this? And in the last, let's say 15 years of my career, I've really come full surface and this is to answer your question.
I think the omnipresence of the hero's journey is incredibly damaging to boys and men. Interesting. Because we don't have any other stories and what, you know, in, in many ways the essence of the hero's journey is about might makes right, to the victor goes the spoils, black and white thinking you know, the, the history is written by the winners.
There's a, you know, in many ways the hero's journey. is a teaching tale for the patriarchy. And I don't think in and of itself, it's evil or bad. It's just not the whole story. It's not. And we do. And we, when we have only one teaching story, then we're missing all of the other breadth and depth of human experience.
And when in doing research, I have found that in other cultures and other times, there have been other stories, you know, there have been fairy tales that aren't just princes and kings and villains, right for, you know, and so I, I, again, I don't think that is the only reason we've come to this place in the culture.
But I, I do think when I think about. Our social narratives, we have a paucity of them that it makes me sad, and I think that we are such a creative people, humanity, and we can, we can build better, better stories, we can tell better stories, and that can help us to, to create a more connected, partnered world.
masculinity, fatherhood, you know, partnership. So, so I don't know if that answers your question completely, but I do think that has a big part of
Gordon: it. Yeah. That's a, it's an, it's an interesting, interesting thing to think about because, you know, I guess I'm always curious as to how we get to where we are and just thinking about, okay, what, you know, and then what directions can we go from there?
So in your work with men and particularly maybe the groups, what What sort of themes do you find people struggle with the most with their,
Jason: you know? Yeah. I think, you know, the first, the first thing that comes to mind really is presence and reactivity instead of responsiveness. I think those are the two that most men bring to me is they are You know, out in the world, doing what men do at work, doing all those things, and then they come home, and it's been incredibly hard for them to be present with their kids, with their partners, with their families, and then they're holding them.
You know, stress and irritability and all of these things and then they wind up being reactive and that begins a shame or a guilt cycle and, you know, then it goes to some depth. But I really think that there's this, you know, difficulty of being present. And of mindfully responding as opposed to reacting.
And in many ways, you know, I, I, I'm sort of I, I, I think in, in, in stories a lot. So that brings it back again to the hero's journey. Again, what's the hero's journey is to be epic and legendary, right? And so if men don't see them, you know, not everyone is a hero. Not everybody is off battling dragons.
Some of us are slogging away, some of us. And so. If we have minimized and stigmatized the magic of everyday mundane life, then we always feel lacking, and we always feel less than, and we always feel not good enough. And, and so I think that this experience within my groups and in, in the working with fathers and men that I, that I do, there's this allow this encouragement in, in the community that we have of.
Finding meaning and value in the most mundane everyday things and and so they're, they're sort of exploring that we do a lot of also the, what gets in the way of that. So what are our patterns and what are our own stories that, you know, for struggle. So those are, you know, irritability, anxiety, you know, those, a lot of the typical things that, that I think a lot of men bring to therapy, but we get to do it a little more
Gordon: creatively.
Right. Right. Yeah. So what are the, what are some of the, the, I guess maybe for lack of a better word techniques or, or gills or, um, methods that you use in teaching all of this?
Jason: Yeah, well you know, to go back, you know, so again, I, like I've said, I think the, so the program that I use is that I, that I have is called journeyman.
And it is, I often say it's the answer or the other half to the hero's journey. And so what we're doing is we're building and writing foundational adventures, right? And so new stories that are not big and legendary, they're foundational. So for example. The, you know, as you probably know, therapists and coaches, we like acronyms.
And so the four sort of pillars or foundations of the work that I do with men, it actually spells men's, you know, and that's, that's been really nice. I talk a lot about the in and the out breath of men's work. Right. The in breath is, is taking, it's looking at myself and really understanding me. The out breath is the social relational component.
And so, M E N S. M is mindfulness. So we do, I teach a lot of mindfulness practices. And not just meditation, mindfulness meditation, but really mind. fullness, right? The awareness of one's own mind and experience. I have one technique that I, that I actually built with my 12 year old son, which was really lovely.
And I share with all my clients. So the first M is mindfulness. E is experiences or experiential. So the idea of taking action, right? Like know where you're at and then do something. Right. The N is nourishment. You know, I'm also, in other parts of my life, I'm a cook and a food educator, and, and so a lot of food metaphors show up, but nourishment, not just food, but whatever nourishes and fills us up, both in and out breath.
And then, fortunately, men's is spelled with an S at the end, because you couldn't get to this S without doing the first three, you know, mindful experiences, nourishment. And the last S, as I alluded to before, is social action, social responsibility. And so the idea of, if I know myself, if I know what to do, and I can fill myself up, I have a responsibility as a man to go do something.
And and to work to make the world a better place and, and so I even start where I say connected fathers are social activists, even if you're doing it just at home, right because we're helping our kids be better humans and so So, everything is around those four pillars, mindful experience, nourishment, and, and social action.
And then we'll do you know, for my narrative work, we do a lot of externalization, right? And so it's all within the metaphor of a journey and an adventure. And so but it's a, it's a smaller, it's a foundational journey. So instead of dragons, we work on imps. And so, we externalize our inner imps.
And get to know them and, you know, rather than the medical model of killing, cutting out or banishing from the kingdom, we're going to educate, we're going to join, we're going to tame or train, we're going to help the men with their imps understand how maybe they could actually join us. And maybe they could be in service to the work we're doing.
And then the last, or not the last, but the other thing I would add is, in addition to the imps, since we're on a journey. I have each of our guys, they build what I call a values compass and knowing that we've got lots of values and we have values are often very vague and ethereal and big. I have them really look at what are active specific values for the goals they're working on in this particular journey.
And they pick four like a compass. Right. And we do a lot of practice with the compass. I, I tell them like a real compass, it only works if three things happen. You have to have correctly labeled, you know, or points of, you know, the points on the compass. If they're not labeled well, you're lost. You have to know how to use it, which is what we teach.
And you have to take it out of your pocket and look at it more often. Yeah. Right. If you don't. You're lost. And so, with their values compass, with their trusted, you know, imps now in a new relationship, they, the men that I work with, traverse this, this adventure of home, where they get to practice, and they get to, you know, work on their connections with themselves, with other men, with their children, with their partners.
And, the, the last thing I would say about it is, it turns a lot of the model on its head. Most men's work uses the hero's journey, right? Let's get together. Let's go do something. We get the treasure. We go home and we're better for it. Well, for me, your adventure is at home. Yeah, your adventure is with your family.
So the metaphor for journeyman is that I get to host a virtual inn. I get to be an innkeeper. It's what I've always wanted to be anyway. And what is with an inn is men get to come in and drop their shoulders and be real. And say, Oh my gosh, you got to hear what happened on the trail today. Or, you know, and why do people go to an inn?
They go to share stories, get nourishment. To fix their equipment or get a new quest or find a new map or, you know, get information from the shady guy in the corner. And this is the, the, you know, we allow a space that is a warm and cozy in for men to gather. Similar to what you were mentioning, you know, in days of old is, is they can gather and be safe and connect, and then they go off into the dangers of their world, the adventure and come back and reconnect.
And, and so that's that in an, in a very big nutshell, that's a lot of what we do and it's been powerful.
Gordon: Yeah, I love that. I love that. And you know, as you were describing all of this one, one thing that came to mind for me, I guess, well, two things. One, it's being able to teach people the difference between an internal locus of control versus an external locus of control, which goes back to what you were saying about teaching people to respond to things rather than to react to things.
And I think that's, that's a huge, that's a huge game changer for people. And in, in that sense, the other thing I was reminded of, Jason, is that there's a little bit of story about, about myself. I can remember in my I guess I was in maybe my forties or, you know, late thirties, early forties. And I remember being together with our family was with another.
Another couple of families and we were in someone, one of them's living room and the kids were young enough to where, you know, they were kids, you know, they were probably, you know, 9, 10, 11, somewhere in there, but we were We were playing music together and, you know, singing and the kids had gotten out there, you know, their band instruments and their, you know, all their stuff.
And we were just cutting up and having fun. And I just had this overwhelming feeling of emotion in that and recognizing, okay, life just doesn't get any better than this. In other words, that. Being, being what, however I did, I'm not sure, but I was totally present in that moment. And I think when we can do that, that's when.
When, when it's a whole game changer for people. That's the treasure. Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason: Yeah. That's a beauty. That's beautiful. And yeah, I think that is, you know, as I, you know, we're working with men to be able to find that and see that, know that, and you know, they're little things, you know, I, I share with a lot of the guys, I have a PDF of the 10 fastest ways to connect with your kids and all of them.
Our long term, but if you did all 10 of them in one day, it would take less than 10 minutes. Right. Right. And, and it's about being present about really knowing that like, we're, we're in this for the longterm together. Like we're in this.
Gordon: Yeah. Right. Right. Well, Jason, this is great stuff and I've got to be respectful of your time.
Any parting thoughts and also tell folks how they can get in touch with you and learn more about your work.
Jason: Yeah, sure. I guess the the parting thought that I would say is, is that, you know, while I focus on men and fathers, I really think we all can can benefit from seeing life as stories and actively seeking to tell our own stories and challenging the ones that come that are just sort of foisted upon us.
And so, you know, I think that's a really like whomever you are, if you can notice the stories that are being put upon you, and challenge them and really, you know, To be, you know, an agent in your own story. There's nothing better than that. And in terms of reaching out, I, you know, the first thing I would say is at this point, journeyman is just me.
So if anyone reached out, you'll hear from me directly. I'm on. Most active on LinkedIn, but I'm on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. I can give you all those links. So that can be there. And the simplest, the simplest would be Jason at nourished connections. com. You know, that's my direct email and.
We'd love
Gordon: to hear from people. Well, Jason, this has been a fun topic and I appreciate you being on the podcast and hopefully we'll be able to have more conversations in the future.
Jason: Oh, that would, that would be lovely.
Gordon. I'd love to hear to do more. That'd be great.