Latest / The Virtual Couch / Taking the Scenic Route to Connection: Steph and Craig Salazar on How to Heal Individually Together

Transcript

Taking the Scenic Route to Connection: Steph and Craig Salazar on How to Heal Individually Together · The Virtual Couch

• 0:20
  Hey everybody.
• 0:20
  Welcome to another episode of The Virtual Couch.
• 0:22
  I'm your host, Tony Over Bay.
• 0:24
  I am a licensed marriage and family therapist and I would love
• 0:27
  it if you would go check out my new website, tony over bay.com.
• 0:30
  There you can sign up for the newsletter send me a question or a
• 0:33
  comment or a story idea or if you have relationship questions, especially.
• 0:38
  I'm looking for those of people who are navigating maybe a
• 0:41
  bit of a faith deconstruction.
• 0:42
  I've got a lot of content that is coming about that, and I would love it if
• 0:45
  you'll follow me on Instagram at virtual couch or on TikTok at Virtual Couch.
• 0:50
  or on Facebook, Tony, overweight, licensed Marriage and Family
• 0:52
  Therapist, or my YouTube channel.
• 0:55
  Let's get to today's episode.
• 0:56
  I'm, I am, I know I say this all the time.
• 0:58
  I wouldn't interview somebody that if I really didn't, I.
• 1:00
  Think it would be very good.
• 1:01
  But today's episode I think is really special to me and I've
• 1:04
  been looking forward to this conversation for quite a while.
• 1:07
  I'm thrilled to welcome Step and Craig to the show and if their
• 1:10
  names sound familiar at all.
• 1:11
  That's because I was a guest on their podcast not too long ago and, dare I say
• 1:16
  that interview was a bit transformative.
• 1:17
  We had such a, a positive vibe.
• 1:20
  What started out is just, uh, it's a professional exchange and I think
• 1:23
  it, it just so quickly evolved into something so much deeper.
• 1:26
  We had these incredible moments of connection.
• 1:28
  It felt like there were those aha epiphanies that just clicked by the
• 1:31
  end of the conversation, I really, felt like I found some kindred spirits in,
• 1:35
  in this space of relationship work.
• 1:37
  And we covered.
• 1:38
  Emotional immaturity, differentiation, narcissistic traits and tendencies.
• 1:42
  , acceptance and commitment therapy.
• 1:43
  You showing up as the only version of yourself and even, , attachment
• 1:47
  issues that straight from the womb.
• 1:49
  . I. I'll include the link to that in the show notes, the reason I think that
• 1:53
  I have felt this connection to them also is I've been recommending that
• 1:57
  interview , of me going on the Step and Craig show to my therapy clients ever
• 2:01
  since because I'll tell 'em, you have to listen to this conversation that I
• 2:04
  had with my friends, step and Craig.
• 2:06
  Yes, friends, because all of a sudden that's how naturally
• 2:09
  our connection formed.
• 2:10
  And, , even after just one meeting, I started feeling like I had this parasocial
• 2:13
  relationship with Steph and Craig.
• 2:15
  We'd only talked one time, but, , I would see their content and I would think,
• 2:18
  oh, yeah, as if I know exactly what they're going through or talking about.
• 2:22
  And the more I stepped back and thought about it, it's their
• 2:24
  authenticity, their vulnerability, the way that they work together.
• 2:28
  They process life together as a couple, and it really resonated with me so
• 2:32
  deeply that I couldn't wait to then have them on to continue the conversation.
• 2:35
  And this will not be the last time I have them on the show.
• 2:39
  And if we're talking about social media, they put out good content.. So they
• 2:42
  have become fixtures in my feed, and it is because of their honest, , unfiltered
• 2:46
  take on relationships and growth and the messy and the beautiful, and the
• 2:51
  whole journey of healing together.
• 2:53
  , plus there's a video there where Craig is on a riding lawnmower, , shirt off just.
• 2:58
  Doing his thing, it looks so liberating.
• 3:00
  , here's a confession.
• 3:02
  I did also deliberately avoid researching their backstory before this interview.
• 3:08
  And it's just this thing.
• 3:09
  I like it.
• 3:09
  Sometimes I'll go to see a movie, I'll know absolutely nothing about it, just
• 3:12
  for a pure, unfiltered experience.
• 3:14
  So I wanted to approach this conversation fresh, even though
• 3:17
  I've created all sorts of narratives in my head about their journey.
• 3:21
  And, , I can't wait for you to get to hear the real story unfold.
• 3:24
  I think really what makes them.
• 3:27
  Unique in, in today's episode, compelling it is , you'll hear the
• 3:31
  raw vulnerability that they bring into their relationship journey.
• 3:34
  And it is a journey.
• 3:35
  We dive into their backgrounds from how they met while working in law enforcement.
• 3:39
  Steph is a 9 1 1 dispatcher.
• 3:41
  Craig is a police officer to these crisis points that transform
• 3:45
  their entire relationship.
• 3:47
  , they share with remarkable honesty, and that is an understatement, how they
• 3:50
  navigated everything, career changes.
• 3:53
  Mental health struggles and the challenging work of healing both
• 3:56
  individually and as a couple.
• 3:58
  And we are gonna talk today about some pretty pivotal moments that shifted their
• 4:01
  whole trajectory of their relationship.
• 4:03
  Craig attending a men's retreat that Steph secretly feared might end the
• 4:06
  relationship, , Steph's breaking point in dispatch work and her, I would call it a
• 4:11
  courageous pivot to go to massage therapy.
• 4:14
  That's quite a jump sometimes I think about my 10 years in the
• 4:17
  computer industry to now go into.
• 4:19
  Marriage and family therapy, , it can be quite a jump.
• 4:22
  . But Craig and Steph both found their way through therapy.
• 4:25
  , they changed up their spiritual practices and they even, , talk a bit
• 4:28
  about psychedelic assisted healing.
• 4:31
  What I really do love the most about this conversation is that Steph and Craig
• 4:34
  don't position themselves as relationship experts who have everything figured out.
• 4:39
  , they candidly share how they have taken the scenic route through
• 4:41
  all of life's challenges, hitting every obstacle, every pothole along
• 4:46
  the way, but then finding healing
• 4:48
  through their own mistakes and their growth.
• 4:49
  And so now their mission is simply to share their journey authentically.
• 4:54
  It is definitely a them thing, and they are, they're okay with it.
• 4:57
  And so they're creating a mirror, I think, where other people might
• 5:00
  see themselves and then feel less alone in their own struggles.
• 5:03
  Whether it's Your relationship is facing challenges, navigating a career
• 5:07
  transition, , a faith journey, doing your own healing, or if you're just
• 5:10
  interested in authentic human connection, I promise that this episode, delivers it.
• 5:15
  It will.
• 5:16
  Provide you with profound insight and it's wrapped in genuine heartfelt conversation.
• 5:20
  So without further delay, please join me in welcoming my friends,
• 5:24
  Steph and Craig to the virtual couch.
• 5:26
  I.
• 5:30
  Yeah.
• 5:31
  Um, okay.
• 5:31
  Let me tell you why I'm so excited about this interview.
• 5:34
  , little do you guys know that we're very good friends now, even though
• 5:37
  I was just on your podcast one time.
• 5:39
  Cause I feel that way.
• 5:39
  So now when I'm referring, and so I send our video out and I don't like watching
• 5:43
  me on anything, but I really enjoyed that interview , it seemed like we had a lot
• 5:48
  of, ahas and epiphanies and connections.
• 5:51
  And so when I'm meeting with a new client now, you guys are in my, in my mind.
• 5:55
  Hey, , you have to watch this one and you have to watch, one
• 5:57
  of these, you have to do this.
• 5:58
  It just went from, I think it's a good interview to my friends, Steph and Craig
• 6:02
  so,
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  That's so awesome, dude.
• 6:03
  I love that.
• 6:04
  Yeah.
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  Yes.
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  And then, and so now I just see you guys pop up everywhere on
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  Tik TOK and reels and YouTube.
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  You're very much on my feed.
• 6:11
  And then my daughter, , Sydney,
• 6:13
  Hello, Sydney.
• 6:14
  all right.
• 6:15
  She loves your guys vibe as well.
• 6:16
  And so when I was telling her that I was interviewing you
• 6:18
  guys, she was really excited.
• 6:19
  And so she wants us to say lots of clever things so make sure no
• 6:22
  pressure, but I want to hear like,
• 6:23
  We're bringing the clever.
• 6:25
  Yes.
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  We'll do our
• 6:25
  best here.
• 6:26
  We got this.
• 6:27
  , and then, okay.
• 6:28
  And the last like confession is that the thing I've been waiting for for a long
• 6:31
  time to interview you guys as well as I don't know anything about your story.
• 6:34
  And I've thought about doing a good cyber stock, Google search of
• 6:37
  you guys , but I just told myself.
• 6:39
  I love movies.
• 6:40
  And once in a blue moon, I'll go to one that I know nothing about.
• 6:43
  And I really enjoy that experience.
• 6:45
  So I've created narratives in my head of you guys and your story , and I
• 6:49
  don't think they're probably correct.
• 6:50
  I don't know anything really about you guys other than it was a great
• 6:54
  interview and you guys are processing things really well as a couple
• 6:57
  and my couples therapist opinion.
• 6:59
  I can't wait to just, I'm going to sit
• 7:00
  five, babe.
• 7:01
  We got
• 7:01
  it.
• 7:01
  There you go and I'm going to share with you it wasn't that was yeah I
• 7:07
  don't even know where to start I just want to hear tell us tell me your story
• 7:10
  Where what got you to where you're at?
• 7:12
  And what are you doing?
• 7:13
  Yeah.
• 7:14
  It's a big, long story.
• 7:15
  First off, we're really excited to be here, excited to
• 7:18
  connect with you again, Tony.
• 7:19
  We had such a good time last year, and it's been something that it's
• 7:21
  like, when do we get to talk?
• 7:23
  I've been really excited to talk to you again, and I know Steph has as well,
• 7:25
  too, but it's I'm grateful that we're finally here and that we get a chance to
• 7:29
  connect again and all that kind of stuff.
• 7:30
  So
• 7:30
  I probably appreciate hey and you are you doing do you do card tricks?
• 7:33
  Is that what you have the cards in your hand?
• 7:34
  I do have card tricks.
• 7:36
  , cards are one of the things that helped me.
• 7:38
  I was a magician.
• 7:42
  He was like, okay, I was gonna say street musician, yeah.
• 7:45
  Okay.
• 7:46
  No, I've always loved magic growing up when I was a kid.
• 7:50
  I grew up during the era of David Copperfield when he was really big.
• 7:53
  And I remember going and seeing him in Salt Lake city, like at Capitol theater
• 7:57
  because it was like at The height of david copperfield when he was the man, right?
• 8:00
  It's during that time period where he vanished the statue of liberty and
• 8:04
  I remember this.
• 8:05
  . yeah So magic has always been a like from afar, right?
• 8:09
  Just something that I always loved watching always seen and close up magic
• 8:13
  Like when david blaine came on the scene watching his cardistry and what he
• 8:17
  was doing with cards So it was always something that I really enjoyed You And
• 8:20
  then I had a job once when I was in a casino, when I lived in Minnesota for a
• 8:25
  brief time, and I worked at a casino.
• 8:28
  And during my off time, I would sit and stare at one of these slot
• 8:31
  machines that had these fake Mickey Mouse hands and the big white
• 8:35
  gloves that would deal the cards.
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  And when nobody was playing the machine, that the hands would do
• 8:41
  things , because it would just be a screensaver essentially.
• 8:44
  And it had this one handed cut.
• 8:47
  And so I would sit and just study the one handed cut until I could
• 8:50
  you doing it.
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  Yes.
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  . And and then over the years it would come and go.
• 8:54
  And when we quit smoking back in 2018 or 2019, we always get it wrong.
• 8:59
  Yeah.
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  It was one of those,
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  right?
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  One of those.
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  I think it was 2018.
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  Yeah.
• 9:05
  But I picked it up then and it became the thing that I could do with my hands.
• 9:09
  And so I've got cards all over the house and in the band and everything like that.
• 9:13
  And.
• 9:14
  Then I went really deep down the rabbit hole with cardistry and learning different
• 9:17
  things and different card tricks.
• 9:19
  And now it's my ADHD fidget spinner as well.
• 9:22
  That's what I was thinking about , can you do online card
• 9:24
  tricks or could you amaze me now or
• 9:26
  here we go.
• 9:27
  Here we go.
• 9:27
  Here's my, this one, you'll see the setup for it, but it's a snap change.
• 9:32
  So if we watch the card, right, this one's kind of hard to do on camera.
• 9:39
  Okay, that was good.
• 9:40
  That's a
• 9:40
  That's not too bad.
• 9:41
  That was pretty good.
• 9:42
  Yeah.
• 9:43
  So
• 9:44
  that was pretty good.
• 9:44
  Yeah.
• 9:45
  okay that's funny Steph, are you
• 9:46
  a good night.
• 9:47
  Do I, we appreciate it, Tony.
• 9:48
  Thanks for having us on the podcast.
• 9:49
  We'll see you guys later.
• 9:50
  That's right.
• 9:51
  Hey, where's my wallet?
• 9:52
  Like, I don't know how you did that.
• 9:52
  Like that,
• 9:54
  And look in your back pocket.
• 9:55
  It's the ace of
• 9:56
  Oh, it's okay.
• 9:58
  And it has Steph's name on it.
• 9:59
  That's incredible.
• 10:00
  Okay.
• 10:00
  So magic . Back to you guys.
• 10:02
  , , this is fun.
• 10:04
  grew up in the same county area, the same part of Utah.
• 10:09
  Stephanie grew up in this small town in the top of this mountain.
• 10:14
  And I grew up at a small town at the base of the mountain.
• 10:17
  Really?
• 10:17
  Okay.
• 10:17
  So I actually grew up in Utah as well.
• 10:19
  So where were you?
• 10:20
  Where was that at?
• 10:20
  grew up in Tooele County.
• 10:22
  So it was out West.
• 10:23
  Yeah.
• 10:24
  Yeah.
• 10:24
  Where did you grow
• 10:25
  I was an Alta Hawk in Sandy, Utah.
• 10:28
  . We played some baseball in Tooele one time around the mountain
• 10:30
  . . . So we both grew up out there, but we didn't meet or know each other
• 10:34
  until We were in our, well, it's, we've been together 13 years now.
• 10:39
  And when we met, it was during a time period in our life where we had
• 10:43
  both transitioned into new careers.
• 10:45
  I had just become a police officer in Tula and it was about, I think I started
• 10:52
  in March and then Stephanie started in,
• 10:55
  I started in June,
• 10:56
  June.
• 10:57
  So it was a couple of months apart
• 10:59
  What was your career, Steph?
• 11:00
  , . I was a dispatcher.
• 11:02
  A 9 1 1 dispatcher, yeah.
• 11:03
  Wow.
• 11:04
  Okay.
• 11:04
  And that's how we met.
• 11:06
  . Where she was the dispatcher and I was the cop and then we magically fell in love.
• 11:09
  Until his oldest time.
• 11:11
  Right.
• 11:12
  Exactly.
• 11:13
  Steph, do you have a lot of stories from that?
• 11:14
  , I feel like I've worked with almost every profession doing therapy for 20 years,
• 11:18
  but a dispatcher and I, so it's very it's really interesting either you guys
• 11:22
  are so mentally stable and healthy that no one needs therapy, or I just, that's
• 11:27
  a profession I just haven't run into.
• 11:29
  That's yeah, that's not accurate.
• 11:31
  Okay.
• 11:33
  Yeah, there's a it's a lot of chaos.
• 11:35
  A lot of trauma that's coming through.
• 11:36
  A lot of secondhand trauma that's coming through.
• 11:38
  . How you deal with it comes out in different ways.
• 11:41
  So a lot of people just shove a lot down.
• 11:43
  I would like to think that it's a really healthy environment, but
• 11:46
  unfortunately, the way that industry is handled and how these things would
• 11:52
  obviously affect you is handled.
• 11:54
  It's not a healthy environment.
• 11:55
  And so they could use a lot of support.
• 11:57
  Wow.
• 11:58
  How long did you do that career?
• 11:59
  Almost six years.
• 12:01
  Wow.
• 12:01
  That's a long time.
• 12:02
  . Well, when we met, we were both at the phase of our, cause we both were married
• 12:07
  at the time to our previous partners.
• 12:10
  And so it was one of those things where we met and then life happens
• 12:14
  and transitions change, and we ended up getting divorced from those
• 12:18
  people and ended up getting together.
• 12:21
  And initially it was just kind of like, neither one of us were
• 12:24
  super, I don't think either of us were really excited about the whole
• 12:28
  concept of getting married again.
• 12:30
  Yeah, I think we were both like I remember communicating That I would not get married
• 12:37
  and you weren't responding with oh shucks.
• 12:40
  You were like good.
• 12:41
  Yeah.
• 12:41
  Yeah, we're not doing that
• 12:42
  Yeah, so we just did the whole we shacked up together bought a house together.
• 12:46
  We completely blended our families We each have two kids So we just crammed
• 12:50
  everybody into this house thinking that it was going to be, it did.
• 12:54
  Yeah.
• 12:56
  We met
• 12:57
  one afternoon and then we moved in three weeks later.
• 12:59
  I think this is good.
• 13:02
  Let's just go for it now.
• 13:03
  Yeah.
• 13:03
  There was a couple of years of dating and everything like that before we
• 13:06
  decided to actually buy a home together.
• 13:08
  And then when that happened, I think we bought our house in
• 13:11
  2014 or something like that.
• 13:13
  Was it 14 or 13?
• 13:14
  Again, we don't remember.
• 13:16
  Times very well.
• 13:17
  Yeah.
• 13:18
  I was back
• 13:19
  right there, that interaction you just had is one of the, I'll
• 13:22
  throw the couple's therapist card.
• 13:24
  I've got these four pillars.
• 13:25
  I think maybe I'd gone over them with you guys.
• 13:26
  The COVID connected conversation.
• 13:28
  There's that assuming good intentions and then you can't tell you the person
• 13:30
  they're wrong, even if you think they are.
• 13:32
  And the argument that couples have on dates and places that then cause the
• 13:36
  conversation to go out in the weeds.
• 13:38
  Yeah.
• 13:40
  It's just so silly.
• 13:41
  So I love the way you just did that.
• 13:43
  I dunno, 13, 14, they added a number to it.
• 13:46
  And then, right.
• 13:47
  we gave up on trying to keep track of all of it a long time ago.
• 13:50
  I'm terrible at it.
• 13:51
  I can't remember every time.
• 13:52
  I can't remember what happened last month.
• 13:55
  I kind of let go of time this year because I realized I had this
• 13:58
  epiphany, Tony, where it was like, I would be like, what's today?
• 14:02
  Oh, shoot.
• 14:02
  I can't remember what today is.
• 14:03
  Is it Monday?
• 14:04
  Is it Tuesday?
• 14:05
  Is it January 10th?
• 14:06
  And then I would shame myself and I'd get all caught up in oh, I'm
• 14:09
  such a worthless person because I can't remember what day it is.
• 14:11
  And I'm not, , participating in society appropriately.
• 14:15
  And then I had the awareness of wait a minute.
• 14:17
  I live such a life where I don't have to worry about what day it is or what
• 14:21
  time it is and how free that feels.
• 14:23
  So now I just embrace it and I'm like, yeah, I let go of time.
• 14:25
  I'm not worried about those things.
• 14:27
  But at some point we bought a house together.
• 14:30
  And to be fair, we've always struggled with dates.
• 14:33
  Yeah.
• 14:33
  Okay.
• 14:34
  It's been when we're like, Oh when was that?
• 14:36
  What year was that?
• 14:37
  How old?
• 14:37
  Yeah.
• 14:38
  It's
• 14:38
  definitely not a new thing for us.
• 14:40
  It would be nice.
• 14:41
  Sometimes it's frustrating that we can't remember, but we also just let it go.
• 14:45
  Yeah.
• 14:45
  If it's important, we'll get it.
• 14:47
  Yeah.
• 14:47
  Yeah.
• 14:48
  If we're lucky, we'll remember it when it's important, but we bought the house.
• 14:52
  . , did you stay in the careers ? So stuff six years as a dispatcher
• 14:54
  and then what happened?
• 14:56
  . We still were.
• 14:57
  So what happened?
• 14:58
  Yeah.
• 14:58
  We were in that field together for quite a long time.
• 15:03
  And.
• 15:04
  Truthfully, it was, we basically works together because she was dispatcher for
• 15:09
  that county, which meant she covered all the different agencies, right?
• 15:13
  It wasn't just 1 agency that she was covering.
• 15:15
  And so to a city was 1 of the agencies that she covered.
• 15:18
  So, oftentimes, if we were on the same shifts and things like that, if I was
• 15:22
  queuing up on the radio, talking to somebody, it was usually Stephanie in
• 15:25
  dispatch doing her job and vice versa.
• 15:28
  Right.
• 15:28
  She would send me out to calls and different things like that as well.
• 15:32
  And then.
• 15:33
  We got married in 2015 and we were still both in that same career.
• 15:40
  And then it was literally, we got married in April of 2015, went on our honeymoon.
• 15:45
  So I took time off for the wedding and everything like that.
• 15:47
  And we went on our honeymoon.
• 15:49
  And then when I got back, I ended up getting fired from being a police
• 15:52
  officer through a random series of events where it culminated in.
• 15:57
  being put on admin leave and all of those kind of things.
• 16:00
  And it's one of those things where I think a lot of people hear you get fired from
• 16:03
  being a cop, and then they assume all of these worst case scenarios of why, people
• 16:07
  get fired from being a police officer.
• 16:09
  And it wasn't really that it was a culmination of a
• 16:11
  couple of different things.
• 16:13
  And truthfully looking back over it, because it's been over 10
• 16:16
  years now, Looking back at it.
• 16:18
  It was one of those things where obviously it was something that I'm grateful that
• 16:22
  I had the experience It was a challenging thing to go through being fired and
• 16:26
  going through all of that But it was really for the best because my mental
• 16:30
  health was completely in the gutter.
• 16:32
  It was such a incredibly challenging job for me for a myriad of reasons.
• 16:38
  And so I think that led to it at the end of the day, where
• 16:42
  it was just compounding upon.
• 16:45
  Trauma and things and experiences that I had gone through and sat through and
• 16:49
  witnessed and watched and participated in from the perspective of you know being
• 16:54
  a first responder and having to deal with a lot of death and a lot of the
• 16:57
  imagine that Craig.
• 16:58
  . And is there anything that could have prepared you for that?
• 17:00
  I worked with several clients in law enforcement and that is one of the
• 17:03
  things I think that comes up so often.
• 17:05
  I think I did you know, we joke about it sometimes but I think I had a unique
• 17:09
  set of skills actually that Set me up to be a police officer And looking
• 17:13
  back, it is a lot of the trauma that I experienced as a child and being
• 17:18
  brought up in a very chaotic environment.
• 17:21
  So I was really tuned to be able to operate at a high level when that fight or
• 17:27
  flight kicked in is when I really turned on and was able to really, I was a really
• 17:32
  good police officer when it mattered.
• 17:33
  And I was a really good police officer when it didn't matter as well, but that
• 17:36
  meant that oftentimes I was the first person on the scene for a lot of really.
• 17:42
  intense situations and a lot of really intense things.
• 17:45
  And over time that just became a lot to deal
• 17:48
  A lot to
• 17:48
  that was that chaos the familiar, did it just feel like at that point
• 17:53
  Yeah, it definitely did.
• 17:55
  You know, I definitely got in you as a police officer.
• 17:58
  It was that and it's not just me, right?
• 18:00
  It's the thing where I look at it now from the lens of the nervous system, and
• 18:04
  you're always in an activated state as a police officer, even when you're off
• 18:08
  duty, very rarely would I ever have times of like complete, calm, relaxed, in this
• 18:15
  really level kind of place that I move through life now, because even when you're
• 18:19
  off duty, you're still doing, you're still in that mindset and that frame of
• 18:23
  of hypervigilant, right?
• 18:24
  I mean, I
• 18:24
  Very much so.
• 18:25
  And I was like, I was all in, I was like the guy that had, off duty.
• 18:29
  I was carrying everything all the time.
• 18:30
  I was always prepared for all the worst case scenarios.
• 18:33
  Every time we went anywhere, it was always like prepping everybody that,
• 18:37
  Steph and the kids and everything like that, in some degree where it was like,
• 18:41
  okay, if this happens, then you just have to do what dad says and follow dad
• 18:44
  and all these kinds of different things.
• 18:46
  And,
• 18:47
  yeah.
• 18:47
  Steph, what was that like for you during that time?
• 18:49
  Yeah.
• 18:53
  indoctrinated into that field and into that environment.
• 18:57
  So it was kind of, I guess, in a unhealthy way, it was reassuring
• 19:02
  that I knew that he had it.
• 19:05
  And it felt like for once I didn't have to be on, I didn't have to be
• 19:09
  looking out for all of the things.
• 19:11
  So in a really unhealthy codependent way, I was like, yes, I'll follow.
• 19:16
  Let's do that.
• 19:17
  You show us where to go.
• 19:19
  And it got to where.
• 19:22
  It became a difficult thing.
• 19:25
  It became a difficult thing, but
• 19:28
  why, why do you think it did?
• 19:29
  Or what was that like?
• 19:31
  It switched to a part of where it was like, it was Craig knew what to do.
• 19:36
  And it was always like that way.
• 19:38
  And so I stopped believing what I knew what to do.
• 19:41
  And again, That wasn't his, it was like, we have the trauma
• 19:44
  that goes into that space.
• 19:46
  And so like my family up until that point, I had been in this
• 19:49
  environment my entire life.
• 19:51
  So I knew how to be in this environment, but when I started growing and starting
• 19:57
  to shift out of things and being like, wait a minute, I have thoughts here.
• 20:00
  I have perspective.
• 20:01
  Then there became some conflict there as well as Craig going through his
• 20:04
  healing and trying to figure out, it's like, I don't want to make all
• 20:07
  these choices I don't want to do.
• 20:08
  So it was a unique shift.
• 20:11
  Of where we started realizing this doesn't actually work.
• 20:14
  This isn't healthy.
• 20:15
  And we can't keep going like this.
• 20:17
  That didn't unfold in a beautiful, calm way.
• 20:21
  It unfolded in chaos.
• 20:22
  And we had to really, I like to say we take the long way around.
• 20:27
  We didn't, we,
• 20:28
  route.
• 20:29
  yeah, we take the scenic route.
• 20:30
  We take the long way.
• 20:31
  We don't want to miss anything.
• 20:32
  Yeah.
• 20:32
  So we made sure we hit every obstacle along the way.
• 20:36
  And until we found our way, cause neither of us had a, we didn't have a
• 20:40
  demonstration of what that looked like.
• 20:42
  We didn't have anyone in our life showing us the healthy way.
• 20:45
  So we were, hitting every bump along the way till we found ourselves in a way
• 20:51
  that started openly communicating with each other and being able to Just show
• 20:58
  up as individuals and respect the other person in a way that they're choosing
• 21:01
  for them and not they're choosing for them and they're choosing for us.
• 21:03
  I'm saying that wrong.
• 21:05
  hear you though.
• 21:05
  I've chosen me and now I'm going to choose you.
• 21:08
  I'm whole.
• 21:08
  So now I can, I want to know you.
• 21:10
  , I can be more curious or is that fair?
• 21:13
  Yeah, that is.
• 21:14
  It's like really the journey of getting to know ourselves along
• 21:18
  the journey as opposed to who we are with the other person.
• 21:22
  , . I love when something.
• 21:23
  Yeah.
• 21:23
  You think you know it and then it means something else, the more experience
• 21:26
  you get in life and the simple cliche of, if I do not love myself,
• 21:30
  I cannot fully love someone else.
• 21:32
  I've said that, but I feel it the last couple of years where I'm
• 21:36
  okay, I'm good, solid sense of self.
• 21:39
  So now I can love somebody because they can have all their feelings and emotions.
• 21:43
  And I'm okay.
• 21:44
  My, my home base is okay.
• 21:46
  So, Hey, I want to know you.
• 21:47
  I want to know what's going on.
• 21:48
  But if I don't love myself, then it brings up all that anxiety or fear
• 21:52
  that what if they don't love me?
• 21:54
  I must not be lovable.
• 21:55
  And how can I get them to love me?
• 21:57
  And that is not having a true sense of self.
• 22:00
  So I love that.
• 22:01
  I think when I see your guys content, that vulnerability of you
• 22:04
  guys just say , how you're feeling.
• 22:06
  Like craig's out there mowing the lawn with his shirt off,
• 22:08
  you guys are having emotional, experiences I think of bojangles.
• 22:11
  I saw one of those.
• 22:12
  I mean, I love it.
• 22:13
  The vulnerability is it's real I can feel it in all of those all
• 22:17
  of a sudden i'm wanting bojangles.
• 22:18
  We don't even have one around here.
• 22:20
  Yeah
• 22:21
  It's delicious.
• 22:22
  Okay But that but I appreciate that vulnerability it shines through and again
• 22:26
  what I love about today's interview.
• 22:28
  I don't even know What your angle is, I mean, I just love watching
• 22:32
  you guys are you doing retreats?
• 22:33
  Are you offering courses or, you know, it's are you just
• 22:36
  wanting to put things out there?
• 22:38
  I'm so curious.
• 22:40
  Yeah, it's It's been a lot of different things over the years for us.
• 22:44
  Where we had to figure it out.
• 22:46
  The catalyst of getting fired was something that really just
• 22:49
  mixed up everything in our life.
• 22:50
  And it sent me down a spiral of depression and,.
• 22:53
  It was a real kind of oh shit moment in life that required a lot of time.
• 23:00
  Yeah, I don't even know.
• 23:00
  I don't even know how we got through a lot of those time periods because,
• 23:03
  I decided after that, that I didn't, I had other offers to go work at other
• 23:07
  police departments and it would have been really easy for me to stay working
• 23:11
  in the same field and doing the same thing just at a different department.
• 23:14
  And I didn't want to, cause I could see how badly it had affected me.
• 23:18
  And it was one of those things that I just didn't want to go back into,
• 23:22
  but at the time I didn't have anything else in a sense, it wasn't like I was
• 23:25
  going to go work a nine to five job.
• 23:27
  Some warehouse or something like that.
• 23:29
  So I was doing in conjunction during that time period as well.
• 23:32
  When I was a police officer, I had this spiritual awakening where it was learning
• 23:36
  about energy and learning about, energy healing and all the different modalities
• 23:41
  and all these kinds of different things.
• 23:42
  And it was something else that kind of like.
• 23:45
  Stephanie and I shared together in our relationship because we
• 23:50
  had these beautiful spiritual experiences through meditation
• 23:53
  through all sorts of different things.
• 23:55
  I mean, the myriad of things that we experienced over that course of our life
• 23:58
  at the very beginning of our relationship was really impactful for building a
• 24:02
  true connection to each other that felt like it was deeper than just the
• 24:06
  surface of meeting, person to person.
• 24:08
  , So I went in that direction initially where I was like, okay, I'm going to,
• 24:12
  cause I was doing like readings at events and things like that on the weekends.
• 24:16
  And so I was like, I'm just going to do this now.
• 24:17
  I'm just going to be the guy that does.
• 24:19
  Energy healing and readings and help people this way.
• 24:22
  And that didn't really work for a bunch of different reasons, mostly because I
• 24:26
  just don't think I was ready for that.
• 24:28
  And I ended up working for this company called dream pod that
• 24:32
  manufacturers sensory deprivation tanks.
• 24:34
  , how was that?
• 24:35
  yeah, it's, it was crazy.
• 24:36
  That was another thing that just came out of left field.
• 24:38
  I was really into the concept of floating and I had tried it a couple
• 24:42
  of times at a place in salt Lake.
• 24:43
  And I was looking for deeper meditation.
• 24:46
  I was looking for a deeper way to connect to that source and do all
• 24:49
  those kinds of different things.
• 24:50
  And then somebody opened up a float center, 20 minutes from our house.
• 24:54
  And through that connection, I ended up working for this company
• 24:58
  and DreamPod manufacturers pods.
• 24:59
  And they're based over in Asia, but they ship all over the world.
• 25:02
  And they're the biggest float tank manufacturer right now.
• 25:06
  So for the past, I don't know, I did that for like eight years where I was traveling
• 25:10
  and setting up those and training people and doing all the support for DreamPod.
• 25:16
  And that gave us financial stability to some extent.
• 25:20
  But outside of that, we were also doing, we started the first podcast
• 25:25
  back in 2016 called Energy is Love.
• 25:28
  And I did that for a hundred plus episodes.
• 25:31
  And then Stephanie came on as co host.
• 25:33
  And then we did I think we ended at 382 or 385 episodes of that podcast.
• 25:39
  And along the way, Steph ended up quitting dispatch and.
• 25:44
  You went to massage school, she chased her dreams in a sense, too, and left
• 25:48
  that field because of all the stress and everything associated with it.
• 25:52
  And that's a whole other big, like monumental shift and change in our
• 25:56
  life that I'm sure, do you want to, of course, baby speak to it.
• 26:00
  Like it was huge.
• 26:02
  The therapist notes that Craig won't let Stephanie talk.
• 26:05
  Right.
• 26:05
  Hold on.
• 26:06
  Anyways, let me tell you more about Stephanie's experience
• 26:08
  of what that was like, right?
• 26:10
  Okay.
• 26:15
  I stayed working dispatch for a few years after that So it's about two years
• 26:20
  or so and just yeah after I got fired.
• 26:22
  Yeah, it became increasingly I feel like I changed on that because I had to, it
• 26:28
  was a bunch of different rules that were coming up and it was, as I was moving
• 26:32
  up in that area, it became increasingly, it was a really toxic environment and my
• 26:39
  nervous system was getting less and less.
• 26:43
  resilient in that space.
• 26:45
  And it was just taking the life out of me and it was turning
• 26:48
  me into a really ugly person.
• 26:51
  I wasn't, I was very tired all the time.
• 26:54
  I was overstressed, overworked, and that's not really a fun,
• 26:59
  it's not a fun mom to have.
• 27:00
  It's not a fun wife to have.
• 27:01
  It just was too much.
• 27:04
  And I was building a lot of resentments for a lot of
• 27:07
  different things, including Craig.
• 27:10
  traveling all the time.
• 27:12
  And it was like, it felt like everything was just on
• 27:14
  me.
• 27:16
  And at one point, I just I had this snap and I, it's a really beautiful story.
• 27:22
  It sounds very sad, but I was in the shower and I was literally
• 27:26
  on the floor in the shower, just sobbing and had nothing left and
• 27:31
  was, I was so empty, just so empty.
• 27:36
  And then this thing came over me and it's why it's so beautiful because
• 27:41
  it was just like this moment where I stood up and like physically stood up.
• 27:45
  It was like, I'm quitting this job.
• 27:47
  I'm going to massage school, which is something that I had
• 27:49
  wanted to do for a very long time.
• 27:52
  I wanted another way that I could incorporate energy work
• 27:56
  instead of just saying, I'm, we will work with energy here.
• 27:59
  It was massage and bringing it all together.
• 28:02
  And I was always too afraid to, I had a lot of.
• 28:05
  issues about, I wasn't nervous about giving massages, but I heard a massage
• 28:09
  school that you also get massages.
• 28:12
  And so people are touching you.
• 28:13
  And I was like, no, no.
• 28:15
  okay.
• 28:17
  . So that silly little thing held me back until this moment.
• 28:20
  And I stood up, I put in my two weeks notice.
• 28:24
  And before I even got accepted to massage school.
• 28:28
  It was like, I got out of the shower, found a school, applied, put in my two
• 28:32
  weeks notice when I went to work the next day, and then heard that I got accepted.
• 28:37
  And we started to figure out financial aid and how we were going to pay for
• 28:41
  it because I was taking out our income.
• 28:43
  We had the study, Craig had dreamed,
• 28:45
  had his dream pod, but yeah.
• 28:46
  You feel like you had to, were you the provider for a while?
• 28:49
  Well, one of the things I want to explore a lot in 2025, maybe
• 28:52
  you guys can help be my muse.
• 28:53
  My guide is the concepts around like that masculine, feminine energy, the
• 28:57
  polarity, the Shiva and Shakti, , so were you in a healthy masculine space?
• 29:02
  . No, no,
• 29:05
  Imbalanced then?
• 29:06
  They were really imbalanced.
• 29:08
  And, I didn't have the thing that I felt like I had the hardest time with
• 29:14
  was it wasn't that I was working.
• 29:18
  It wasn't that it was that like is obviously Craig went through
• 29:21
  a big transformation when all of this happened and it felt
• 29:25
  like that it was the home life.
• 29:28
  That everything fell on that part.
• 29:31
  It felt like that the imbalance there was really crappy.
• 29:35
  And so I had to step up in a very unhealthy, masculine way,
• 29:39
  trying to fill these roles.
• 29:42
  And it just was, it was a mess.
• 29:45
  It was a real big mess.
• 29:48
  I didn't know what I was doing other than trying to control.
• 29:52
  be uncontrollable, trying to put patches on, a dam that
• 29:56
  was like bursting everywhere.
• 29:58
  , it was really hard.
• 30:00
  I would love both of your thoughts, on this.
• 30:02
  The more , that I'm really trying to understand the role of my wife,
• 30:07
  of maybe the feminine and as I'm out there slaying the dragon, I'm,
• 30:11
  that's what I'm thinking about.
• 30:13
  And sometimes I recognize, I don't realize all that that puts on my wife.
• 30:17
  Not that she isn't capable, , and even in little ways where I thought about
• 30:21
  the cliched story of when the kids are sick, , the mom's going to take care of
• 30:24
  them when the dad's sick, the mom's going to take care of the dad when mom's sick,
• 30:28
  dad's still got to go to work and the kids have to go to school, and that so
• 30:31
  many things are just left for, you know, the mom, the wife in that scenario that I
• 30:36
  think the husband doesn't even recognize.
• 30:37
  So when there are things where I really feel like I'm expressing myself and
• 30:40
  I don't have time for that, or I'll get to it, that, What I'm really doing
• 30:44
  is offloading my discomfort onto her.
• 30:47
  And my wife shared with me at one point, and I thought it was so brilliant.
• 30:51
  I said, I will take care of like car registration, which with ADHD, of course,
• 30:55
  we always paid them, I paid them late, but then I thought I was doing a great
• 30:58
  thing by taking ownership of that.
• 30:59
  Hey, that's, that's a me thing.
• 31:01
  But not realizing that the whole time that she's worried about a kid getting pulled
• 31:04
  over with the out of date registration and the stress that that would cause them.
• 31:08
  And I'm saying, I'll take care of it, but then I'm not taking care of it.
• 31:11
  And then I'm even telling her, Hey, it's okay.
• 31:12
  You can remind me.
• 31:13
  I won't be a jerk when I respond, but I didn't even realize I'm
• 31:17
  still putting that on her.
• 31:18
  And so then it's, at some point she just feels like, well, I could
• 31:21
  just do this, but then I'm going to get angry and my immature state of
• 31:24
  saying, but I said I would do it.
• 31:25
  But not realizing just how many things are just put on the feminine.
• 31:28
  Would you feel that, Steph?
• 31:33
  I'm trying to really look back,
• 31:35
  Yeah.
• 31:36
  I don't know, like that relates in different ways.
• 31:40
  Our dynamics were , I don't know that we could have done it any
• 31:43
  differently , and it goes both ways.
• 31:45
  There's things that I had to handle that I did not have room for, and
• 31:50
  I shouldn't have had on my plate
• 31:53
  and vice versa with Craig.
• 31:54
  He wasn't over here just dumping it.
• 31:56
  I also had my unhealthy ways that I was like, here you go.
• 32:01
  Now you can figure this out.
• 32:02
  It went both ways.
• 32:04
  It, I feel like that's
• 32:06
  No,
• 32:06
  I appreciate you're not needing to just say, Oh yeah, that resonates
• 32:10
  Tony, I really I love that about what you're saying there, because even as
• 32:12
  you're saying that, it gives me an opportunity to take a look at that.
• 32:15
  And, and when I'm thinking about more of maybe when there's that
• 32:17
  really deeply entrenched, anxious and avoidant pattern, often that avoidant
• 32:22
  person doesn't want to ask for help.
• 32:24
  And so I think that they're just taking on burden after burden.
• 32:26
  So I appreciate when you're saying, Oh, I was trying to offload those as well.
• 32:31
  Did the time period where all of this was going down.
• 32:33
  So it was literally after we got married in 2015 and then for the next.
• 32:38
  Probably four or five years of our life.
• 32:41
  It was a lot of chaos.
• 32:42
  All of our kids were, we had three daughters and then our son is the
• 32:47
  youngest, but they were all teenage girls.
• 32:48
  And this isn't about the chaos of children and everything like that.
• 32:52
  But it's just context for all the different dynamics that we were trying
• 32:55
  to control and deal with and face as a team together at the same time.
• 32:59
  And, you know, It was just too much.
• 33:01
  So we were very much in a state of survival for that whole entire, probably
• 33:06
  first decade of our relationship and not having any awareness of it, right?
• 33:11
  Not really recognizing that that was what even was taking place.
• 33:15
  And there were a couple of different things that happened for us that
• 33:18
  really made a big difference.
• 33:19
  One of them was I went on this men's retreat in 2017.
• 33:23
  That was like a week long backpacking trip into Yellowstone with this
• 33:26
  organization called every man.
• 33:28
  And that was a really big shifting moment for me.
• 33:32
  The organization is all based around, not just masculinity and things like
• 33:36
  that, but, I, what really drew me to it was the connection to the emotional
• 33:39
  side of stuff and it was learning how to tap in and connect to your
• 33:42
  emotions as a man and doing it within the context and the framework and the
• 33:46
  safety of, that container of other men supporting you in that space.
• 33:50
  And I got back from that.
• 33:52
  Week long trip, all sorts of fired up, just ready to go with emotional work
• 33:58
  and ready to talk about emotions and ready to do all these different things.
• 34:01
  And she told me after the fact, I don't, I didn't know this at the time,
• 34:04
  but it was the kind of thing where I was out in the yard, mowing the lawn.
• 34:07
  And I was listening to a podcast, again, podcasting, saved our
• 34:10
  life in so many different ways.
• 34:12
  But I was listening to the founder of that organization.
• 34:14
  His name's Dan Doty.
• 34:16
  And he was on Joe Rogan.
• 34:17
  And he was talking about this.
• 34:19
  Thing that he had started every man and I was like, Oh my gosh,
• 34:22
  this would be amazing to go on.
• 34:24
  And I told Steph about it in passing, but at the time it was like, I mean, money
• 34:28
  for us has always been this struggle back and forth between, feast or famine.
• 34:33
  And we were very much in the famine phase of that relationship with money.
• 34:38
  So the idea that I was going to be able to go on some week long backpacking
• 34:41
  trip to Yellowstone and the costs associated with it was a pipe dream.
• 34:45
  And an hour later, Stephanie comes back out and she's Hey, I made some phone
• 34:50
  calls and did what, we can do financially and you can go if you want to go.
• 34:55
  And I was like, holy cow.
• 34:57
  I couldn't believe it.
• 34:58
  So I went on that, had an amazing experience, but come to find out,
• 35:04
  she thought that that was going to be basically a goodbye in a sense
• 35:09
  where I She was under the impression that I wasn't going to want to be
• 35:13
  with her after coming back from that.
• 35:15
  So it was this real leap of faith on her part.
• 35:19
  And truthfully, it was the thing in some capacity.
• 35:23
  And in some ways, sometimes I think I, I like to, I make everything, So much
• 35:28
  grander than it is at times, but it was a really life saving experience for me
• 35:32
  because it was such a trajectory shift and it put me in the space of connecting
• 35:37
  to emotions, connecting to my body.
• 35:39
  I came back from that and started a men's group in Salt Lake that met every week
• 35:44
  for like 4 years up until COVID when it kind of all started to fall apart because
• 35:47
  of COVID and that became like a real.
• 35:51
  It was just a space to practice connecting to my emotions, connecting to the
• 35:55
  ability to communicate those things.
• 35:58
  And I did it clumsily.
• 35:59
  I did it wrong.
• 36:00
  I did it, and all this confusion and chaos.
• 36:02
  And I would try to like, cram this type of communication and
• 36:06
  connection into our relationship.
• 36:08
  And we tell the, we had a funny podcast we did.
• 36:11
  I don't remember what episode it was, but it was a while
• 36:13
  back where we told this story.
• 36:14
  We were coming home from California and , Because I was in this men's group
• 36:20
  space, like I was balls deep in it.
• 36:22
  Tony.
• 36:22
  I was like, every week I was at the group that in Salt Lake, I was traveling
• 36:26
  to all these different events and helping facilitate different things.
• 36:29
  And I had gone back to Yellowstone like twice to help support their expedition.
• 36:34
  So it was like, Very much in my space.
• 36:37
  And we're coming back from California and Stephanie's going
• 36:40
  through some emotional things.
• 36:41
  And I'm like, this is it, baby.
• 36:43
  We're going to pull over on the side of the road and we're
• 36:44
  going to have an anger ceremony.
• 36:46
  And I'm going to help facilitate this whole experience where you're going to
• 36:49
  tap into that deep seated anger that's in you that needs to be released.
• 36:53
  And of course it did not just
• 36:54
  like getting back with that.
• 36:55
  The one I was getting back from my first woman's retreat, which
• 36:57
  was like a major thing for me.
• 36:59
  And I was learning how to like really tap in and feel my
• 37:02
  Bringing all of this connection.
• 37:04
  The
• 37:04
  It was so much.
• 37:05
  Just the side of I 15, like in the middle of nowhere.
• 37:09
  And I'm like, baby, you just got to let it out.
• 37:11
  You could just yell.
• 37:12
  It's okay.
• 37:13
  And she's like, too scared.
• 37:14
  I didn't say Peg him with a rock or something . , I love
• 37:17
  that . . Craig, tell me what I can't.
• 37:19
  Uh, say, tell me what Steph was thinking though, back when she thought that
• 37:23
  retreat, where you were going to that and it was over, or, I'll ask you
• 37:26
  Steph, but what, yeah, what, what where were you at where you thought that that
• 37:29
  was And then even now I want to make another joke, which I, that's what I
• 37:34
  do with my discomfort and say, Oh, was getting the money together for him to go
• 37:38
  to the retreat, the way to, to rid him.
• 37:41
  But then when he came back, you're saying, Oh, I thought
• 37:43
  you were going to go.
• 37:45
  there's a deep layer.
• 37:46
  Tony, I'm excited now.
• 37:47
  Let's look at that, baby.
• 37:48
  Let's look at that.
• 37:49
  Maybe you're getting rid of the guy that you wanted to get rid of by
• 37:52
  sending him off to this retreat in
• 37:53
  then he comes
• 37:54
  You
• 37:55
  He's there.
• 37:56
  I'm, I've never had that question posed to me.
• 37:59
  And I honestly, I'm going to have to think about that.
• 38:05
  It's okay.
• 38:06
  Because I feel like as soon as you said it, there was a part of me
• 38:09
  that was like, so there's a little thing in there that I hadn't really
• 38:13
  given a voice to on that part.
• 38:15
  I mean, I've, that part of me has had a voice throughout a relationship.
• 38:18
  Don't get me wrong.
• 38:19
  I wasn't like, I've never considered that, but had that having a role
• 38:23
  and it wasn't on the surface.
• 38:25
  It wasn't anywhere near the surface and what was carrying
• 38:28
  the weight, what was carrying the weight, not that it wasn't there.
• 38:31
  Now I have to look at that, but what was carrying the weight is.
• 38:36
  It was really an unhealthy dynamic for us.
• 38:39
  And.
• 38:41
  It was really hard.
• 38:43
  It was really, really hard.
• 38:45
  what we have come through and how we are able to show up for other people.
• 38:49
  Isn't because we just happened to stumble across it and get it right.
• 38:52
  It's because we've done it all the way wrong.
• 38:55
  We've gone through all the steps, all the steps of getting it wrong.
• 38:58
  And I could see where Craig was , I was really worried about him and I did think
• 39:07
  that it was going to change him to the point of where we weren't going to be
• 39:11
  together, but that didn't matter because I thought that where he was going, he
• 39:16
  wasn't going to be around I was that was our relationship was not what was coming.
• 39:21
  I was sending him on this so he could be okay and saying goodbye.
• 39:27
  Was worth it.
• 39:28
  I didn't want that to happen.
• 39:30
  You pose that question.
• 39:31
  I'm like, there might be part of me that wanted that.
• 39:34
  There might be part of me that, there had to have been,
• 39:37
  I think like the subconscious part that was just so overwhelmed and so
• 39:41
  much fear surround, just being stuck in so much chaos and fear that just the
• 39:45
  relief maybe of to say to have me out of your life, but just to not have to
• 39:49
  carry all of those different things.
• 39:51
  I think that might be a component of it.
• 39:52
  I don't know.
• 39:55
  Switch the camera
• 39:55
  back to me.
• 39:56
  I'm talking for a moment.
• 39:59
  I love it.
• 40:00
  No, it was I was really, I couldn't show him how scared I was that our relationship
• 40:06
  was gonna end because I wanted him to go.
• 40:08
  He didn't know that going off.
• 40:10
  He didn't know that I had any of those.
• 40:11
  Cause I was just like excited for him and letting him go have this experience.
• 40:16
  And when he came home and wanted to , start to really look at himself and all
• 40:21
  this emotional, and he had this light and wanted to work on a relationship.
• 40:24
  I was very, very happy.
• 40:26
  So I think what I would look at from that is.
• 40:30
  I didn't want a relationship to be done, but I did really
• 40:38
  as much as he needed to go.
• 40:40
  I didn't need the relationship the way it was to be done.
• 40:43
  That relationship had to end.
• 40:44
  I couldn't do that relationship anymore.
• 40:47
  Even if it was to let him go.
• 40:50
  even if it was
• 40:50
  to let him go,
• 40:51
  . . So then that was when he comes back and he's this new man, let me
• 40:54
  ask you the I call it shelf life.
• 40:57
  Where when somebody goes and does something, a kid goes to a summer
• 41:00
  camp or as adults, we read a book or something and all of a sudden that's
• 41:04
  going to, that changes my life and often the shelf life is a week or two.
• 41:07
  And then we default back to our home base.
• 41:09
  No, nothing wrong with that part of the human experience.
• 41:12
  When he came back, did it feel like this is a completely different shift or had you
• 41:16
  seen these shelf lives before from other things that maybe really invigorated him?
• 41:23
  definitely seen the shelf life and other things.
• 41:26
  But when he came back, it was a completely different experience.
• 41:29
  So both of those are true in that we have reinvented and recreated in this
• 41:34
  new thing that comes in several times.
• 41:36
  And it does like things are going to be this way now, this way, this
• 41:39
  way there's that shelf life that does happen, but he was different.
• 41:43
  When he came back, it wasn't all better.
• 41:45
  Things didn't magically just start working from that point, but there
• 41:48
  was something that was very different
• 41:51
  Oh, I appreciate that.
• 41:52
  And I think that, back to the, even the masculine feminine, the polarity
• 41:55
  concept in general is, I think one does have to know what the shelf life
• 41:58
  looks like to then know what something else feels like from, and maybe it
• 42:03
  is an energetic standpoint or, and I wonder at that point, is that where
• 42:07
  Craig, where you starting to feel like, okay, there's a change in my core
• 42:11
  Yeah.
• 42:11
  I definitely felt different, it took a long time to totally understand it
• 42:16
  and for the change to fully manifest in myself and be, behaviors to change for
• 42:22
  actions, to change for accountability, to really start to show up.
• 42:27
  And it's still something that, I feel like today I'm the most
• 42:32
  accountable that I've ever been.
• 42:33
  I definitely, It set me on a path that was a hundred percent a shift.
• 42:39
  And it wasn't even just like the shelf life thing.
• 42:41
  I chuckle about that, but, cause there's a lot of those, but
• 42:45
  yeah, yeah.
• 42:46
  this was something that I was bound and determined to go towards
• 42:51
  because it, It was like finally giving me space to feel things.
• 42:55
  It was giving me an opportunity to express things.
• 42:58
  It was giving me that space to really connect to the things
• 43:01
  inside that needed to come out.
• 43:03
  I needed to have, Capacity to express and connect and do all of
• 43:08
  those kinds of different things.
• 43:10
  And it took us to all these beautiful places, Steph went
• 43:13
  on her woman's retreat in.
• 43:16
  2018, 2019, that put her down this path and trajectory towards different
• 43:21
  things along the way, we always had the podcast that we were doing together.
• 43:27
  And that was a beautiful thing.
• 43:29
  We were always like tinkering around how to work with each other in the
• 43:33
  context of what that would look like.
• 43:36
  And then we had another life changing experience after COVID
• 43:43
  because that took me off the road.
• 43:44
  I was traveling all the time for that job that I had where it was like out several
• 43:49
  times a month and was all over the country and international and things like that.
• 43:53
  So when COVID happened, all of that shifted and I no longer was on the road,
• 43:58
  which meant I was home all the time.
• 44:00
  And that was really, really.
• 44:03
  It was something that I was burning myself completely out.
• 44:06
  Our relationship again was getting really, really stretched thin
• 44:09
  simply because I was gone so much.
• 44:12
  And then we found some therapists that really showed up for us during
• 44:18
  that time period and during lockdown.
• 44:20
  And we went through this massive.
• 44:22
  experience over the course of about two years through therapy,
• 44:25
  both individually and together.
• 44:28
  And it was in conjunction, we did MDMA assisted therapy with these guys, and
• 44:33
  they came out to the house actually.
• 44:35
  And we took turns having our sessions and it's a whole thing that we
• 44:41
  both went through that just really cracked everything open even deeper.
• 44:46
  So it was like we did all the prep work to get to this spot in life because we were
• 44:50
  connected emotionally with each other.
• 44:52
  I look at it much different now, but I think what the really key thing
• 44:56
  was, , before we could truthfully start healing together, We had
• 45:00
  to feel safe with each other.
• 45:02
  And in order for us to feel safe with each other, it's like we had to do
• 45:06
  our own amount of healing individually and understanding and processing and
• 45:11
  getting to the, shadow parts of all these different things from childhood
• 45:15
  and all this other kind of stuff.
• 45:17
  And once we did that, it gave us the foundation to really
• 45:21
  feel safe with each other.
• 45:22
  To it's not even necessarily work on our relationship.
• 45:26
  A lot of this stuff that we thought was going to be a big deal in our
• 45:29
  relationship and was going to require a lot of healing in our relationship.
• 45:33
  Some of it's definitely did and it's some stuff we're still processing
• 45:37
  and healing through, but the vast majority of it was our own stuff.
• 45:41
  It was all of this stuff from our pasts before we ever met.
• 45:45
  And that was the stuff that once we felt safe enough in our relationship to
• 45:49
  support each other as each one of us.
• 45:52
  Got into that stuff and we're able to really process and start healing
• 45:56
  all of that inner child stuff.
• 45:58
  And that was the real big, significant shift for us, both in our relationship,
• 46:03
  our individual as people, as our, just everything, it changed everything.
• 46:08
  It was a big shift going from.
• 46:10
  You need to fix this so we can be okay.
• 46:13
  Yeah, that was my rhetoric for a really long time.
• 46:14
  We did that for quite a while until we dove into that individual work
• 46:19
  that was like, Oh, I need to fix this.
• 46:22
  I need to look at here.
• 46:23
  I have some things I have to look at here that have nothing to do with you.
• 46:26
  And so it was a really long individual journey of getting real familiar and
• 46:32
  accountable for our own individual shit.
• 46:35
  Steph, was that a relief to you?
• 46:37
  Were you when Craig would say, you need to fix this, or were you the,
• 46:41
  sometimes I deemed the pathologically kind where, okay, I will go figure
• 46:45
  out how to fix it, even though.
• 46:46
  It was a him thing?
• 46:48
  Was that ever the case?
• 46:49
  Oh, it was both.
• 46:51
  It was both.
• 46:51
  He definitely projected a bunch onto me.
• 46:55
  And what I did with a lot of that was like, I'm garbage.
• 46:59
  I do need to fix this.. And I then flew it back at Craig and was like, you know,
• 47:05
  I could fix this if you would fix this.
• 47:08
  And so it was we found really, our shadows are really clever.
• 47:12
  They're really good.
• 47:13
  They're
• 47:15
  We joke now they're like Bonnie and Clyde or Joker and Harley Quinn.
• 47:19
  Like they just, they blend together so beautifully and
• 47:22
  burn everything to the ground.
• 47:23
  Yeah, mine was like, Oh no.
• 47:25
  Yeah.
• 47:31
  for almost 50 minutes.
• 47:32
  So maybe we do say, stay tuned.
• 47:34
  We're, we'll do a part two.
• 47:35
  I have so many more questions now and you guys are everything that I was
• 47:39
  hoping this would be, but even now I want to do an episode and we talk about
• 47:43
  psychedelic assisted therapy and let's talk about, there's so many things
• 47:45
  I mean, it was like, we didn't even just do MDMA.
• 47:48
  We did we also did a bunch of psilocybin and microdosing
• 47:53
  psilocybin for about a year.
• 47:55
  And.
• 47:55
  The conjunction of all of that work, because it wasn't just, we definitely,
• 47:59
  I definitely did way more psychedelic experimentation than Stephanie did.
• 48:05
  We also did it in a very conscious way.
• 48:08
  And when we micro
• 48:09
  and setting, right?
• 48:10
  Yeah.
• 48:10
  yeah.
• 48:11
  And that changed so many different things too.
• 48:14
  We're big proponents of it under the context of,
• 48:17
  you know,
• 48:18
  And that's what I've been following that movement.
• 48:20
  And so I've had experiences with ketamine and even the now microdosing
• 48:25
  ketamine and just the benefits of hitting that default mode network
• 48:28
  of the brain when you're being intentional is just, it's phenomenal.
• 48:31
  So I think there's so much there that we could, I would love
• 48:33
  to talk to you about as well.
• 48:34
  So then maybe I know maybe in a minute or so.
• 48:37
  Again, I still don't even know.
• 48:38
  Are you guys just putting content out there to change the
• 48:41
  world or do you offer things?
• 48:43
  Or what is that like?
• 48:45
  it's evolved what it looks like today.
• 48:47
  And we say today, cause we're in this state where who knows
• 48:50
  what's going to happen tomorrow.
• 48:51
  But currently what it is, is we had that podcast that we did
• 48:54
  for a long time, energy is love.
• 48:56
  And at the end of 2023, I got this big nudge to change that and then
• 49:01
  it was like, Well, we're just going to rebrand the show and do a new set.
• 49:06
  And eventually it got to the point where it's well, we're going to end that show
• 49:09
  and start this new show, which meant we built this and had to do all of this
• 49:14
  stuff and start this stuff and Craig show.
• 49:16
  And at the time we were also doing couples coaching and working with couples
• 49:21
  and doing all sorts of different, we had plans for retreats and all sorts of
• 49:24
  different programs and things like that.
• 49:27
  And really what happened was we just got.
• 49:29
  Pushed and nudged in the direction of being content
• 49:33
  creators and being podcasters.
• 49:35
  And so now we don't work one on one with people anymore.
• 49:38
  We don't do any sort of like coaching or anything like that.
• 49:41
  We literally just, we think, podcasts have the capacity to change the world.
• 49:45
  I think they have the capacity to really help people in a magnificent way.
• 49:49
  So our goal now is just to share our journey with people through social media.
• 49:54
  \ in hopes of helping people, it's the tagline of we're all healing together,
• 49:58
  not just Steph and I, but like all of us together are on this massive healing
• 50:02
  journey, trying to figure shit out.
• 50:04
  And we're just sharing our journeys and trying to hold up the biggest
• 50:07
  mirror that we possibly can.
• 50:09
  So that people can see themselves reflected off of us through all the
• 50:13
  different things that we've gone through, because that's what we learned is it's
• 50:16
  like everything that we experienced or when we talk to people or when we'd
• 50:19
  have people on the podcast or when we were coaching people, I mean, we're
• 50:23
  all going through the same stuff.
• 50:25
  We're all navigating the same experiences.
• 50:27
  And so we just try to really share those as much as we can and as vulnerably
• 50:31
  as we can so that people can see themselves in it and not feel so alone.
• 50:35
  Well, and I think you nailed it.
• 50:36
  That's the vibe I feel when I see your content.
• 50:39
  It just feels real I resonate with it Whether it's with myself or a
• 50:43
  client, I've sent clips, I send the interview that we did together.
• 50:47
  Uh, mission accomplished there.
• 50:48
  I would love to have you maybe be regular, come on more often, or we jump on and do
• 50:53
  a TikTok live or something like that and
• 50:55
  Yeah.
• 50:55
  We would
• 50:56
  would you be up for that?
• 50:57
  Okay.
• 50:57
  Absolutely.
• 50:58
  , that's funny because I think I was texting Craig and talking about where you guys
• 51:02
  live and I have relatives somewhat close, but I was saying we'll come out there
• 51:05
  and do a retreat and because, I mean, on the map, there was a Piggly Wiggly.
• 51:09
  We could get all the
• 51:10
  Right.
• 51:11
  Yeah.
• 51:12
  It's just a really
• 51:13
  We love the Piggly Wiggly.
• 51:14
  Yeah.
• 51:14
  Yeah.
• 51:15
  Context.
• 51:15
  I'm looking at where they live and there's the town and a little
• 51:19
  dot that says Piggly Wiggly.
• 51:20
  I mean, is that it made it look like.
• 51:22
  That's all you guys have, but is there
• 51:23
  kind of all that's in the small town that we,
• 51:26
  It is.
• 51:27
  Okay.
• 51:27
  It's the hub of the town that we live in for sure.
• 51:30
  It's directions come
• 51:31
  from like, okay, so if you're at the pig.
• 51:33
  Yeah.
• 51:36
  Even the pig.
• 51:36
  I love it.
• 51:37
  Stephen Craig, thank you so much for coming on.
• 51:39
  I can't wait to have you back on.
• 51:40
  Let's do this again.
• 51:42
  Yes, we would love to Tony.
• 51:43
  Thank you so much.
• 51:44
  Perfect.
• 51:44
  Perfect.
• 51:44
  Sounds
• 51:45
  great.
• 51:45
  Thank
• 51:45
  you so much.
• 51:46
  Yeah, it's great.