Richard Jacobs: Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius podcast, now part of the Finding Genius Foundation. A quick note about the foundation. We’ve embarked upon our project to assemble several thousand sources of information about anxiety and depression. The goal is to create a guide that will be a no-cost or low-cost resource for people that suffer from anxiety and depression. To find out more about the project, go to findinggeniusfoundation.org and today my guest is Theo Fleury. He is a previous ice hockey player and he has become an expert in the field of relational trauma, which we’ll get into. So, Theo, thank you for coming.

Theo Fleury: My pleasure, man.

Richard Jacobs: If you would tell me, okay, so you played hockey for a while; what’s your background? How did it turn into, unfortunately, working with people that have trauma. I would guess that you experienced it yourself, unfortunately. But what’s your background?

Theo Fleury: Yeah, so I grew up very poor as a kid and both my parents struggled with their own trauma which manifested itself into addiction as a coping mechanism. So, I grew up in that environment and then, as a way for me to cope, I discovered hockey at a very early age, which allowed me not to be at home. It allowed me to be in an environment where I was getting some nurturing and being instilled with some great values and then, as a phenom adolescent hockey player, I ran into a coach that basically promised me a one-way ticket to NHL and over a two and half year period, I was raped b this man over 150 times which obviously caused me to have a lot of shame, a lot of guilt, a lot of anger, a lot of resentment and that turned into mental illness.

Richard Jacobs: So tell me, what was the progression of feelings like? Did you feel shame at first? How did this progress to become what you are saying is mental illness? What happened first and then next, what was the experience?

Theo Fleury: I believe that every single person on the planet who has experienced trauma and trauma doesn’t have to be as extreme as my trauma but trauma is what brings us into the mental health space and into the addiction space, because when we are traumatized, what happens is our nervous system basically gets thrown out of whack because of the amount of cortisol and adrenaline that is attached with experiencing whatever trauma that is and what I know about cortisol is cortisol is like acid in your body. So, what I was left with was dealing with the aftermath which was terror, which was fear, which was questioning a lot of things about myself and so I lived in a high stress environment, my body lived in a high stress environment and so cortisol which is a chemical in our body, when we are in fear or we are in stress, it produces this chemical which is not good for our body. So, this is where I lived. The majority of my life was in that state of fight or flight response.

Richard Jacobs: My wife has had a very difficult childhood and they had made her hyper-vigilant.

Theo Fleury: Yup! One of the gifts of experiencing trauma is you have this built in radar now to protect yourself. I can walk into a room and within a millisecond know who all the safe people are and know who all the unsafe people are.

Richard Jacobs: Really? What kinds of feelings do you get from people that correlates with that?

Theo Fleury: It’s just hyper-vigilant, it’s part of my system. It’s just involuntary reaction because when you grow up and you don’t feel safe, you develop this innate ability to know how to be safe.

Richard Jacobs: I know it makes sense but I don’t have this ability. It sounds like you do. So what happens when you walk into a room? What cues would tell you that someone is safe or not?

Theo Fleury:  I just know. I don’t know how it happens but I just know.

Richard Jacobs: Oh really? Okay. There’s a few people I’ve met where I literally sensed evil emanating from them which is really weird. Thank God, it is incredibly rare but I guess I don’t have the ability that you’ve developed.

Theo Fleury: It’s a survival mechanism, right?

Richard Jacobs: Yeah, it makes total sense.

Theo Fleury: I think all of us have that ability. Mine is just a little more defined than everybody else because of my experience.

Richard Jacobs: What happened when a guy traumatized you X number of times? When it was about to happen again, what was different about your reaction? What was the breaking point?

Theo Fleury: Any kind of sexual deviance is all related to power. So, this guy had power over me. I had a dream from probably the first time that I ever put on a pair of skates that I wanted to eventually some day play in the National Hockey League. So, this guy held my whole entire career in the palm of his hands and so there was a certain amount of power that was involved in this situation. So, I either go along with it or I create a conflict where 30 some odd years ago, when it happened, nobody was talking about sexual abuse. So, first and foremost, I knew I wouldn’t be believed and then secondly I knew that it would be the end of my hockey career because I would be branded as a trouble maker, a liar and all this stuff.

So I just kept it inside and it wasn’t too long after that I discovered alcohol and drugs as a coping mechanism to suppress the emotional pain and suffering that I was experiencing. Like I said, 30 years ago, nobody was talking about mental illness and so what do you do? I grew up in the sock it up era. So, there was no place to put this.

Richard Jacobs: Were you done with hockey or was this person still running your life essentially or were you finished?

Theo Fleury: No, he left after 2 years. I was with him for two and a half years. He got fired by the team that I was playing on and then I didn’t have any contact with him after that. But what I was left with was a lot of fucking bullshit that wasn’t my fault that I had to deal with and 16, 17 years ago, I had a fully loaded pistol in my mouth, ready to pull the trigger, end my life not because I wanted to die but I was exhausted for living with emotional pain for the majority of my life. But that was the catalyst that pushed me into the place of finally taking a look at it and finally putting it into it’s rightful place which is the past and move on and live life on life’s terms without substance, without addiction, all those things.

Richard Jacobs: I’d gone to an office to do ketamine infusions. So, on the wall they have anxiety, depression and PTSD and they say everyone is kind of a mix of those 3 and some people seem to have more of one than another. Are you able to characterize what your particular vent was and what does that mean for you? Were you more anxious than depressed? Were you stressed and anxious?

Theo Fleury: I have all 3. I have depression, I have anxiety panic disorder and PTSD. All 3.

Richard Jacobs: What kind of techniques have you figured out over the years to help yourself?

Theo Fleury: I have tried absolutely every single therapy known to mankind.

Richard Jacobs: So, what did it take for you to heal yourself or to feel better? Are you just managing these problems still or do you feel like you have truly overcome them?

Theo Fleury: The way I coped before was I had a toolbox full of addiction. Alcohol, drugs, food, sex, gambling, work, all of it and basically what I’ve done is I’ve taken out the addiction and I’ve replaced it with holistic practices. So, meditation, yoga, breathing exercises, ENBR, Aquion therapy, you name it because I’m a curious guy, I like to learn and obviously being an advocate and an activist in the space of mental health or trauma or addiction, I need to be educated and the only way I know how to be educated is to actually try as many things as possible so that when people come to me, I can say hey, have you tried this, have you tried that. So, when you are talking the talk, you need to walk the walk as well. But what has come out of it is healing, right? It’s a three-pronged thing. It’s emotional, it’s physical and it’s spiritual healing. If you do something every day for your emotional health, your physical health and your spiritual health, you are going to be okay.

Richard Jacobs: So, did all of these methodologies and treatments, did all of them work or did none of them work?

Theo Fleury: All of them worked, all together, they all worked. What it allowed me to do is to fill up my tool box.

Richard Jacobs: Well, because usually people say, I’ve tried it all and nothing works. But I don’t know if this is the right characterization, so each thing helped you maybe a few percent and all of them together got you back to health?

Theo Fleury: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Some modalities were better than others but I think all of them together, yeah, definitely. It made a difference but I don’t understand the comment I’ve tried everything and I’m not better.

Richard Jacobs: What do people mean when they say that versus you? Again, you mean something different but what do people mean when they say that?

Theo Fleury: Well, trying and actually doing the work are two different things and with me, I do the work which means I get to a place of vulnerability where I actually talk about it. It  doesn’t bother me that I tell people that I was raped 150 times. It doesn’t bother me, it doesn’t have any trigger or emotion, nothing is attached to that. That means I’ve done the work that you need to do.

Richard Jacobs: What if I were to say some people try everything, other people work at everything and the people that work at everything are the ones that get results.

Theo Fleury: Yeah, absolutely. It’s the old saying, the harder I work, the luckier I get. Therapy is hard work, it’s hard work, it’s uncomfortable, it’s not fun but it’s necessary in the process if you want to heal.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah, it makes sense. If you were to go back in time to when you first started looking into all these modalities, would you rearrange them? Would you not do certain ones or do certain ones first?

Theo Fleury: No, because my spirituality tells me that God has a plan for me and has always had a plan for me and these things present themselves when I am ready to do the work.

Richard Jacobs: So, in your journey back to mental and physical health, what were the bumps along the way that maybe looking back, in hindsight, would you have cleared them away or did you do it in exactly the right way that you should have done it?

Theo Fleury: There is no perfect way to do this but there are also 10,000 different ways to heal. Are you willing to try everything possible to heal? Yeah, I’m one of those people. But yeah, you always go into new experiences with a certain amount of fear but how do you get through fear? You walk through it and when you get to the other side, you go, that wasn’t as bad as my head made it out to be which tells me that there has to be a certain amount of willingness on people’s part and part of the process of healing is you are going to sit in negative emotions and negative feelings and it’s not going to feel great but it’s part of the process. I think that’s why people go into therapeutic processes and they stop because they are uncomfortable sitting in those uncomfortable emotions. My experience is, just go the distance, go the distance.

I guarantee at the end of the experience of sitting in your negative emotions and that’s why addiction is a part of mental illness because when we can’t cope with the emotions and the negative feelings and negative emotions, we are going to go to our coping mechanism so that we don’t have to sit with our uncomfortable feelings but true healing happens when you sit in negative emotions and negative feelings.

Richard Jacobs: What is an example of that, sitting in them as you described them?

Theo Fleury: Sadness, frustration, anger.

Richard Jacobs: Let’s say I felt really sad and hopeless. What would I do normally versus what would I do to sit in it and to help myself through it? Like what would I do? Can you put words to that on how someone would do it the right way versus the wrong way?

Theo Fleury: The right way is to pick up the phone and talk to somebody. That’s the right way to do it and say I am really sad today and you talk it out. That’s the only way you are going to release that emotion is by talking about it and the longer you sit in it, the harder it is because who wants to sit in sadness. But everybody does, why? Because there is stigma attached to negative emotions, I can’t talk about this stuff because people don’t want to hear it and therein lies why illness or why mental health challenges is the biggest epidemic on the planet is because we haven’t created safe spaces for people to talk about negative emotions or negative events that happen in our life. People don’t want to hear it.

Richard Jacobs: I can say I went through it many years ago. It was over a relationship which was what it was but I was depressed for a bit and I could see it pretty quickly that people don’t want to be around you because they just don’t want to  hear it after a certain point. So, how do you help yourself and reach out to people and not burden them and constantly be like I’m depressed, I’m anxious and just kind of suck the life out of them. How do you still be a father, mother, lover, friend, whatever to people but deal with this as well?

Theo Fleury: Yeah, well relationships are hard. There has to be a certain amount of vulnerability and there also has to be compassion, there also has to be empathy and there also has to be forgiveness and those are things we are not taught. We are taught to suppress emotions, suppress feelings all the time because it’s just part of sort of the world that we live in. But the people who get vulnerable, get honest are the people that make the biggest strides because if you don’t release that stuff, it ends up getting stored in your body.

Richard Jacobs: If I met you years ago, when you were in the middle of this

Theo Fleury: You would have met the angriest guy on the planet.

Richard Jacobs: Wow. What would you have said to me, if I’d said come on Theo, you are alright. What if I tried to help you either in a good way or

Theo Fleury: I wasn’t ready for help.

Richard Jacobs: How would you have reacted? Would you have pushed me away?

Theo Fleury: Yeah, I would have blown you off because I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to deal with what I needed to deal with, right?

Richard Jacobs: So, what do you do with someone you care about and you can se that the are having a problem with something and they are suffering but they are saying leave me alone. I don’t want to talk about it or they are pushing you out. What can you do?

Theo Fleury: I think the first thing I would say is I see that you are struggling and I just want you to know that when you are ready to get some help then I’m going to be here for you. That’s all you can do. Here is a great example, so addicts and alcoholics and sex addicts and you name it, gamblers, we are really good at collecting enablers because the more enablers we have, the longer our behavior can last. But eventually we make all the enablers sick because of our behavior and so they end up having to go get help for themselves and then eventually we are left with no enablers and we are left to our own defenses and then, it helps us hit the proverbial rock bottom.

Richard Jacobs: So, people will push away the healthier people and they’ll hang out with the ones that don’t push them and don’t question them. But those people themselves fall out and then at some point you are alone and you are at rock bottom.

Theo Fleury: Yup, that’s how it works. I see it almost everyday in my practice and what I do is the people that eventually come to me are at a rock bottom place or families of enablers call me and we do an intervention. We do an intervention on the addict but also, I am also suggesting to the enablers that they need to go get help too so that everybody can go their separate ways, go get healthy and then come back, repair their relationship.

Richard Jacobs: So, you have to wait before someone hits rock bottom before they are willing to listen to you or because you have had problems yourself?

Theo Fleury: I know people that are ready for help and I know people that aren’t ready for help.

Richard Jacobs: What do you do if you are in a relation with someone and you know that they are not ready for help but they are really making it difficult for you to do what you do?

Theo Fleury: Then I put boundaries because if I have boundaries, I’m not going to get hurt.

Richard Jacobs: What are some examples of good boundaries that you have hurt yourself or other people?

Theo Fleury: Everybody’s boundaries are different.

Richard Jacobs: I know they are different but any examples of boundaries that worked well?

Theo Fleury: If you continue to do this, I will do this. I won’t have anything to do with you, which is harsh but I am the one that continually gets hurt because of your behavior. So, I need to put in healthy boundaries so I don’t get hurt. That’s basically what boundaries are and it’s all based on behavior.

Richard Jacobs: Earlier on, in a way you are like a superhero because you went through a terrible thing and you now have enhanced abilities, like you said, the hyper vigilance. Do you think that’s instrumental in you knowing when someone needs help or not?

Theo Fleury: yeah, I think that there is a certain amount of intuitiveness that I have. There is a certain amount of hyper vigilance I have, there’s things that are unexplainable, that sort of makes me a great helper in this space is I can see stuff but the bottom line is if the person doesn’t want help, there is nothing you can do to change that. They have to experience it, the proverbial rock bottom, whatever that looks like on their own and that’s the frustrating part of doing this work. It is meeting with people who I know need help but they are just not ready.

Richard Jacobs: So, what does your practice look like? When do you help people? How do you help them? What’s the nuance of it?

Theo Fleury: Well, I am an author, so I write books on this subject. I am a speaker, I am a facilitator, I am a life coach all those things. So, I would say most of their requests that come in are not from the actual people who need help but they are from parents and grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles who see their loved one going down the wrong path.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah, it must be incredibly hard when the person is not ready to receive help

Theo Fleury: But I tell them, I just tell them straight out. you are not ready for help and when you are ready, I’ll be right here, I’m no going anywhere.

Richard Jacobs: How do people react when you say that? Do they say okay or does it stop them in their tracks?

Theo Fleury: yeah, it stops them in their tracks because it’s the first realization that my time is valuable and I am not interested in trying to convince you that you need help.

Richard Jacobs: What does your practice look like though when someone comes to you? What are some of the activities that you do in your practice?

Theo Fleury: I’ll so an assessment to see if they actually want help and if there is even a little bit of willingness, then yeah, I’ll work with them and then it’s just getting them to come up with their own plan, not my plan, their plan and then me holding them to account for the plan that they made themselves.

Richard Jacobs: Are there certain traumas that are much more difficult to treat than others?

Theo Fleury: No, trauma is trauma. Emotional pain is emotional pain. There is no bar. Everybody feels emotional pain exactly the same way. It’s not about the experience, it’s about finding the gift in the trauma that allows them to overcome the emotional damage that they’ve experienced. A lot of people don’t see it as a gift. I see my struggle as a gift because without the experience, I’m not talking to Richard Jacobs on Zoom right now. You wouldn’t have a clue as to who I was if I didn’t talk about my experience.

Richard Jacobs: I thought that the gift was hyper vigilance, the gift was being able to read situations and people better.

Theo Fleury: The gift is resilience. Adversity teaches us and gives us resilience and then once we have resilience, there isn’t anything we can’t get through.

Richard Jacobs: Okay, so do you tell that to people?

Theo Fleury: Yeah, absolutely.

Richard Jacobs: You’ve been through hell and you made it, so therefore you’ve been more resilient than most folks, so celebrate that, I guess or at least take comfort in that.

Theo Fleury: that’s the gift. That’s why God gives us these challenges because he needs us to have resilience.

Richard Jacobs: That’s’ a pretty cool way of looking at it.

Theo Fleury: The people right now are struggling the most with COVID and lockdowns and all those people don’t have resilience and that’s why they are struggling. If you’ve experienced trauma and you are still here, you have resilience because if you didn’t have resilience, you wouldn’t be here.

Richard Jacobs: That’s really cool, that I can see someone stopping in their tracks early on too.

Theo Fleury: I also tell people, do you have a time machine and they look at me like why does this guy ask me if I have a time machine and I go, because you can’t change the past but you can certainly change the future.

Richard Jacobs: I think that it’s a very empowering thing to tell people like you are here because you have resilience. That’s really cool.

Theo Fleury: Yeah, this stuff isn’t rocket science. We pretend to make it like that but it’s just simple relationships, it’s connecting with somebody on a spiritual level that can take you through the process of healing.

Richard Jacobs: You mentioned a couple of times that you have faith but what happens when you are dealing with an atheist or they haven’t even considered that or they are mad at God?

Theo Fleury: Oh yeah. Everybody gets triggered by God. I don’t subscribe to the white bearded guy in the sky, I don’t subscribe to that theory but what is spirituality? To me, spirituality is relationship. The relationship I have with myself is the most important one and also the one that I neglected the most at the beginning of this process. So, if I have a great relationship with myself, I love myself, take care of myself, eat well, sleep well, exercise, go to therapy, do meditation, then if I have a relationship with myself, how do you think all of my other relationships are going to be? Great. They are going to be the same. But if I am angry, resentful, pissed off, that’s what I am going to project and who wants to have a relationship with a guy who is fucking angry and pissed off all the time.

Richard Jacobs: yeah, I know that’s true. There’s days when I’ve been agitated in every. I go to the coffee shop, I think the person is a jerk but it’s probably me being a jerk and I try not to bring it home and days when I feel really good, all my relationships are better. So, I realize that I affect everyone around me and I have to be careful not to affect them negatively.

Theo Fleury: It always comes back to you. All this stuff always comes back to you. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything else other than am I spiritually well, am I emotionally well, am I physically well? That’s what it’s all about and you control that, not anybody else, you control it. You control how you feel and you get to choose to be nice, kind, compassionate and pathetic or you choose to be an asshole. It has nothing to do with anybody other than yourself.

Richard Jacobs: But what if somebody feels totally out of control and their emotions are in control of them? when you say that to them, wouldn’t they push that idea away like how can it be? I feel this, I feel that, I’m filled with anxiety, filled with this, what do you say to someone like that?

Theo Fleury: You need to do more work. You need to figure out why you feel this way.

Richard Jacobs: Okay, makes sense. What kind of emotional problems are you seeing lately from people? Has it changed over the time you’ve been doing therapy with people or what are the things you see?

Theo Fleury: It’s just basic stuff. It’s either depression or anxiety. The more extreme people, PTSD, OCD, personality disorder, those need a little bit more compassion and empathy but general anxiety and general depression, it’s a choice. You need to acquire tools that will help you out of it and they are simple things. It’s not sit down and do a breathing meditation for 10 minutes. I guarantee you will feel better. Same with anxiety and with PTSD, you need to find modalities that are going to help you get rid of the movie that continually play in your head. That’s what PTSD is.

Richard Jacobs: I don’t know much about PTSD, what movie is playing in people’s heads?

Theo Fleury: It’s trauma. The trauma movie.

Richard Jacobs: Oh, like someone they know was blown up in a war and they keep seeing it over and over?

Theo Fleury: For me, it was laying in the cot in a dark room waiting to be molested. That was my post traumatic stress, which happened every night, because I’ve got to go to sleep every night. So how do you get that image out of your head? Well, it takes work, it takes special therapy to get rid of them. But I also know that the brain is neuro-plastic which means I can change, I can re-wire my brain.

Richard Jacobs: I guess people have to hit rock bottom in order to seek help or have you seen some people will seek it before it gets that bad?

Theo Fleury: No, it’s not necessary that everybody needs to hit rock bottom. I think we put too much emphasis on that. But like I said, that’s something that is part of our control. I wish if I could go  out and get people not to hit rock bottom then I’d be a billionaire. Everybody has their own path, everybody has their own plan and the interesting thing about lessons is the universe will keep putting a lesson in front of us till we get it. Sometimes we are not ready for the lesson and it goes but it comes back.

Richard Jacobs: So, do people, is there any resistance in your practice or do people just say I’m ready and they come to you? Do you have to do any convincing and if you have to, does that mean they are not ready? What’s it like for a new person to work with you?

Theo Fleury: Everybody is different in their process. Some people get it right away, some people are slow or are afraid and other people are resistant to it. That’s where I have to be willing and I have to be patient, I have to be more loving or I have to be firm. It all depends on the person. But I guarantee you when the light bulb goes off, you’ve got them forever. They are not going to leave.

Richard Jacobs: What advice do you have for someone that is living wit someone that has significant depression or anxiety or PTSD and life is not easy, it is really difficult living with this person or knowing this person. What are some techniques to help fix things?

Theo Fleury: The bottom line is the only person you can change is yourself. Like I said, if the person doesn’t want help, you can jump up and down and fucking scream and yell and do everything you can. If that person doesn’t want help, they don’t want help and there is nothing you can do. I know it’s a harsh way to put it but it’s the most honest way of putting it as well. Go look after yourself.

Richard Jacobs: So, what do you do? You are married to someone for a few years and now you see that they are just incredibly depressed and anxious and they are just needing you everyday and they are just down all the time and you never know who you are going to get. It’s like Jekyll and Hyde, what do you do in that situation?

Theo Fleury: I see that you are struggling, I see that you are having trouble with life right now. I just want you to know that I am here to help. I am not here to enable, I’m here to help and I suggest that you maybe should go talk to somebody because I don’t have the skill to be able to help you through whatever you need help with. But I am also going to go get some help so that I can better manage your illness. It’s as simple as that. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink and that’s what I see in the mental health space is first of all, there is so much stigma attached to mental health that prevents people from getting the help that they need because they are afraid of judgment, they are afraid of ridicule, they are afraid of the fingers being pointed at them, they are getting messages like why don’t you just get over it.

So, that’s the stigma attached to wanting help and so I am an advocate and an activist in this space. That’s what I do all day long. I fight stigma. That’s the biggest challenge I have, it’s fighting stigma.

Richard Jacobs: Stigma from what? The people in that person’s life

Theo Fleury: No, the space of mental illness has the worst stigma attached to it and that’s what causes people not to get help.

Richard Jacobs: What are some of the reasons that people say that they don’t want to get help? Do they feel embarrassed or what is it?

Theo Fleury: They are embarrassed, they are afraid of judgment, it’s all fear based stuff and we have not created a space in society where mental health is 100% fully accepted as the biggest epidemic on the planet. It’s not acknowledged that way and we’ve done a really poor job creating safe spaces and safe environments, right? To be honest with you, there is not enough skill on the planet to be able to deal with the amount of mental illness. There is not enough skill.

Richard Jacobs: What have you seen since the corona stuff happened? Has it accelerated and got worse or

Theo Fleury: Yeah, 100 times worse. Why? Because you locked us down. You’ve limited my movement, you’ve taken away church, you’ve taken away community, you’ve taken away all those things. So, what am I left with? I’m left with sitting in my house inside my own head and in the mental health space, that’s the worst space you can be, inside your head. That’s why suicide is spiking, that’s why opioid addiction is spiking, that’s why mental illness is spiking because the basic thing that we need is relationship. If you don’t have relationship, you are going to struggle. It’s just as simple as that.

Richard Jacobs: have you worked with people in different countr9es that have been locked down for different periods of time or just in general? Is there a point where for someone, this is a new source of trauma for them or is it always a new source of trauma?

Theo Fleury: Everybody has trauma and now COVID has added another layer of trauma. So, yeah that’s why it is at a crisis level because like I said the mental health system in the whole planet has been run over because like I said, there is not enough skill, there is not enough people for the amount of work that needs to happen and I don’t know if that’s by design but for example, I live in a province in Canada called Alberta and they gave $100 million to mental illness and we have 4 million people that live in this province, divide that by 100 million and basically that’s $4 per person to go get help. Can you get help for your mental illness for $4? Will a therapist see you for $4?

Richard Jacobs: No, and I don’t mean to laugh at it.

Theo Fleury: It’s fucking ridiculous right? It’s ridiculous. But we are giving $100 million to mental health. It’s not going to do anything.

Richard Jacobs: yeah, it sounds good, right but it’s spread out over nothing. Theo, where can you help people? Does it have to be in Alberta or in Canada or can it be worldwide?

Theo Fleury: Yeah, worldwide. So, during COVID, I created a program called Trauma Transformation which is on my website theofleury.life  is my website and people who take my course, I run a therapy group online twice a month. As soon as you sign up for the program, it automatically gives you access to our group that we do. So, we have 200 members and we meet twice a month and it’s an amazing group of people who, we are all healing together, we are all sharing, we are all vulnerable, we are all working on our stuff and it’s amazing to be a part of it and I am honored that I get to co-facilitate a bunch of people who are really looking to overcome whatever they need to overcome.

Richard Jacobs: I know that’s really cool. Do you think that this group therapy helps people to heal a lot faster than just one on one type situations?

Theo Fleury: Its’ the most effective cheapest kind of therapy on the planet because it doesn’t cost anything,. All it costs you is your time, show up.

Richard Jacobs: Do you charge for this or is it free?

Theo Fleury: It’s a very small nominal fee just for registration but other than that, it doesn’t cost much.

Richard Jacobs: One more time, that URL again, please

Theo Fleury: theofleury.life

Richard Jacobs: Okay Fleury is F L E U R Y.

Theo Fleury: Then I have a foundation here in Calgary too where we do group therapy twice a month as well and I co-facilitate that as well.

Richard Jacobs: Excellent. Very good, Theo , thank you for coming and for your raw brutal honesty and your tough love. I like it too.

Theo Fleury: It’s tough love with a lot of compassion and empathy in it, right? I grew up in the tough love era and as much as it caused some damage in my life, I think it can be effective too if done properly. But it is love, it is connection, Sometimes you need tough love, other times, you don’t need it. You need more compassion, more empathy, these kinds of things. So, I’ve had a lot of experience and I know what works and I know what doesn’t work. So, I stick with what works and 9 times out of 10, it is just conversation and connection. What’s the opposite of addiction? Connection.

Richard Jacobs: The opposite of addiction is connection?

Theo Fleury: Yeah. Get connected.

Richard Jacobs: Very good, Theo, a lot of wisdom here. I’m not saying as much as I normally would because you’ve given me a lot of good bumper sticker type things to think about and I appreciate it.

Theo Fleury: Like I said, I’ve been in this space a long time and I know what works and I know what doesn’t work and it’s the people that I Work with that have educated me. The people that I am trying to help have helped me more than I’ve helped them and I think that’s important too.

Richard Jacobs: Theo, very good. Thank you for coming on the podcast, I really appreciate it.

Theo Fleury: You’re welcome.