Outer Circle Inner Stillness

More monastic wisdom, more stories, more Abbot Tryphon! In the 2nd of 3 interviews, I continue asking Abbot Tryphon about the Orthodox faith, the inner life, and what people in recovery can learn from people in monasteries. We talk about continual learning and why we need mentors, sponsors, and spiritual fathers. We talk about why we need to read and permeate our lives in spiritual wisdom. We talk about icon, but also by “being pushy” is the worst thing we can do as Orthodox Christians. Above all, we talk about how Christianity, like sobriety, cannot be an “add-on” to life - it can’t be done part-time; it has to be the central focus. 

Listen along, and let us know what you think!

The Outer Circle Inner Stillness is made possible by support from listeners, patrons, likes, and shares. To learn more about how to support the podcast, visit www.patreon.com/outercircle. 

Rhys Pasimio can be found through www.patreon.com/outercircle and on instagram at @newpattrencounseling and through New Pattern Counseling at www.newpatterncounseling.com, and is always happy to dialogue with listeners bringing honest questions!

Abbot Tryphon can be found at abbottryphon.com. There you’ll find links to his Facebook, Youtube, Telegram, and other platforms. And if you can, try to visit him in person at the monastery! - https://vashonmonks.com/

#abbottryphon #monk #monks #monastic #monastery #orthodox #orthodoxy #orthodoxchristianity #christianity #easternorthodoxy #vashonisland #spirituality #religion #sobriety #community #relationships #healing #psychology #mentalhealth #innerlife #technology #church #family #sobriety #reading #spiritual wisdom

What can we learn about the inner life from Orthodox Christian Monasticism? I wanted to find out, so one beautiful day in November, I made my way up to All Merciful Savior Monastery on Vashon Island, Washington, there to speak with Abbot Tryphon.

From the Lutheran tradition, to secular universities, to the field of psychology, to chaplaincy, to Orthodox Christanity, and from Portland, Oregon to San Francisco to Southern Oregon to the Puget Sound, Abbot Tryphon has seen many things, learned many more, and has a story for all of them. In our series of interviews, he tells of his life growing up, his education, the power of love, the power of the home life, major challenges facing today’s youth, what he’s learned through physical fitness, through psychology, what ultimately brought him to the Orthodox Faith, why reading about the faith isn’t enough, and why we need community. Some of his ideas are extreme(which is normal from the monastic world) but his bearing is gentle. Sit with him a while and you see that he deeply cares about people and wants to see them growing and thriving in the faith.

Listen along, and let us know what you think!

The Outer Circle Inner Stillness is made possible by support from listeners, patrons, likes, and shares. To learn more about how to support the podcast, visit www.patreon.com/outercircle. 

Rhys Pasimio can be found through www.patreon.com/outercircle and on instagram at @newpattrencounseling and through New Pattern Counseling at www.newpatterncounseling.com, and is always happy to dialogue with listeners bringing honest questions!

Abbot Tryphon can be found at abbottryphon.com. There you’ll find links to his Facebook, Youtube, Telegram, and other platforms. And if you can, try to visit him in person at the monastery! - https://vashonmonks.com/

#abbottryphon #monk #monks #monastic #monastery #orthodox #orthodoxy #orthodoxchristianity #christianity #easternorthodoxy #vashonisland #spirituality #religion #sobriety #community #relationships #healing #psychology #technology #church

In recovery circles, we often hear that "Rigorous Honesty" is a good thing...but why is this?

What's a Firefighter Part?

In recovery circles, we often hear that "Rigorous Honesty" is a good thing...but why is this?

How is recovery like Barbecue Sauce, and what does this have to do with 9th century Church Fathers? And what’s the deal with the first 3-5 years of recovery anyway?

In today’s episode, Rhys Pasimio and Shea Layton team up to interview CSAT counselor Dan Stephens, the founder of Restored Life Counseling, and developer of the long term Recovery Outcomes research project.

A traditionally held understanding within addictions recovery work is that a good, solid, successful recovery process takes 3-5 years. While many can intuitively and anecdotally say this is true, empirical research is limited…so Dan is working to supply it.

Rhys, Dan, and Shea take an hour to unpack questions like what is recovery anyway? How long does it take? What are the essential priorities to address within the first three years? How is early recovery like and unlike spiritual growth? 

All coming from different Christian traditions, we conceptualize addiction as coming out of deep desires that can only ultimately be fulfilled by God…but get turned towards other things, often with devastating results. We talk about how desire itself is not bad, , and many of the things we desire are good…but we desire them in wrong ways. 

Shea says, “We see everything according to our cravings.”

As we conceive of recovery as a whole-life transformation to be more in the likeness of Christ, Dan says we can measure sobriety success by asking, “What is the measurable participation in restoration?”

Shea reflects on wisdom of the church fathers like St. Maximus the Confessor, and reminds us that, “You can’t over come [sin or addiction] just by hating it. You have to see the beauty, like Christ [would].” 

We talk about how mere abstinence is a good start, but a very incomplete process. True transformation and healing happen when we struggle to attain the good and the beautiful, to find our purpose, and live our values, and fill our lives with good things, the ultimate of which is God.

This podcast relies on the partnership of listeners - especially with dollars! Please visit www.patreon.com/outercircle to learn how to partner with the vision of this show!

Rhys Pasimio can be found through www.patreon.com/outercircle and on instagram at @newpattrencounseling and is always happy to dialogue with listeners bringing honest questions!

Dan Stephens can be found at https://restored.life/dan-stephens/. You can sign up for the Recover Outcomes Study here - https://restored.life/recovery-outcomes-study/! 

Shea Layton can be found at https://thaddeusthought.com/, on Youtube at Thaddeus Creative at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7dOEppqqpE1_5u4vjNmrLA, and on various social media platforms as @jacfalcon. 

Please do reach out! We’d love to hear from you!

So you got clean and sober - great! …Now what?

How does a person transition from the excitement and upheaval of early recovery into a more stable long-term recovery? What do you do in long term sobriety when the comfort of stability starts to feel like the tortures of boredom? How does a person find their most important values, and the community to support them?

Stephen Grant is a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist, and a Relational Therapist, at Gracefall Counseling in Vancouver, Washington. He draws on his experiences as a counselor, and many more experiences in recovery, to share stories and insights into how to survive - and thrive - through the many seasons of sobriety life.

Stephen and Rhys talk about what Relational Therapy is, and how the basics of emotional attunement and active listening never get old. We talk about how sobriety is much more than just stopping an unhealthy behavior; sobriety is all about finding new things to do, new purpose, and living into a marvelous vision for our lives. 

This podcast relies on the partnership of listeners - especially with dollars! Please visit www.patreon.com/outercircle to learn how to partner with the vision of this show!

Rhys Pasimio can be found through www.patreon.com/outercircle and on instagram at @newpattrencounseling and is always happy to dialogue with listeners bringing honest questions!

Stephen Grant can be found at https://www.gracefallcounseling.com/ and would be happy to share more stories!

#counseling #therapy #recovery #recoverywork #addiction #addictionrecovery #sobriety #longtermsobriety #sex #sexaddiction #sexuality #relationaltherapy #relationship #attachment #attunement #boredom #purpose #shame #guilt #trauma #attachment #spirituality #orthodoxy #orthodoxchristianity #12steps #meetings #groups #community #men #stephengrant #gracefallcounseling #rhyspasimio #outercircleinnerstillness #newpatterncounseling

What does a person need most in order to heal from addiction and trauma?

Do they need to act differently?

Think better thoughts?

Use a fancy technology to monitor brain waves?

All these things are good and useful, but they falter in the absence of love.

Love, in a clinical sense, is a secure attachment, marked by full attention, unconditional welcome, curiosity, courage and patience. In the presence of this kind of energy, a person finds belonging and safety. In that environment, they become able to do things like think about their thoughts, and begin to think different thoughts, and eventually do different behaviors. 

Zach Guzman is a counselor and neurofeedback specialist in Colorado Spring, CO, and the founder of Mind Reneural, a healing clinic in his town with specialties in neurofeedback. In our conversation, Zach provides a succinct introduction to neurofeedback, how it works, and how it can help us heal.

Neurofeedback works in an adjacent realm to attachment and co-regulation. When a person feels truly safe, truly welcomed, and truly connected, there is nearly limitless potential to the insight and healing that can be accomplished. In order for this process to take place, though, we need a trusted other. That trusted other may include the neurofeedback setup, but even without the technology, the experience of fully encountering another human being is always remarkable.

From there, we dive into concepts ranging from recovery and sobriety, the vital importance of community and attachment, practices of spirituality, and how we have respectively come to understand what it means to be loved by Christ. 

We discuss how our thoughts become our realities. But when our thoughts are driven by fear, and black and white thinking, our thinking is limited, thus our reality is skewed. When our thoughts are driven by love, by courage, and supported by trustworthy connections, we are much more likely to have a true sense of the world. 

This podcast relies on the partnership of listeners - especially with dollars! Please visit www.patreon.com/outercircle to learn how to partner with the vision of this show!

Rhys Pasimio can be found through www.patreon.com/outercircle and on instagram at @newpattrencounseling and is always happy to dialogue with listeners bringing honest questions!

For more information about Zach Guzman, you can find him by googling “Mind Reneural Colorado” or by going to https://www.mindreneural.com/. He is also on Facebook and Instagram at @mindreneural. 

#neurofeedback #neurology #mind #brain #healing #hope #recovery #sobriety #addiction #compulsion #compulsivebehavior #trauma #focus #counseling #therapy #spirituality #mentalhealth #spiritualdisciplines #community #relationship #attachment #christianity #orthodox #orthodoxchristianity #easternorthodoxy #quietlife #simplicity

When a person is recovering from alcohol abuse, we generally advise them to avoid the beer and wine aisles in the markets. When a person is recovering from cocaine or meth use, or other drugs, we generally advise them to avoid that one street corner or back alley, or few blocks of downtown. When a person is in recovery from problem gambling, we’d find it wise for them to avoid casinos.

If the pattern holds, then when a person is in recovery from problematic pornography use, we should advise them to avoid the internet…

…but for younger folks, millennials, Gen-Z, and tech natives, we might as well ask them to pluck out their eyes. 

Tech natives are those people who have never known a world without the internet. Much if not all of their social lives, jobs, dating, and recreation takes place online. To a large degree, they experience their world through a screen, not as an aberration or a novelty or some new-fangled thing, but as the norm.

When this norm also becomes a vehicle to compulsive use of pornography, what do we do with this?

The problem isn’t limited to younger people. There are older folks as well who, may have had internet-less childhoods, but in adult hood, have built their lives around the internet. Minimally, we have people working entirely from home - through a computer screen. Often these individuals are alone in a room, alone in a house, or sometimes even alone in an office building for many hours a day. The nature of their livelihoods drives them away from in-person connections.

Isolation like this is prime breeding ground for addictive and compulsive behaviors. 

If the job is stressful, the drive to seek escape through digital self-soothing is even greater.

So then for these folks who are driven to isolation, day after day, who also struggle with compulsive pornography use, what is the solution?

Is the problem the internet? A hyper-object offering both a person’s basic needs, and their primary vices?

Or is the problem with the young people? A whole generation conditioned to see this level of technology as normal?

Or is the problem with the older people? Folks who knew the world before the internet and can have an instinctive appreciation for simply enjoying non-screen peace and quiet. 

Or is the problem the current, capitalist job market that demands people compromise any number of personal values to capture the sustaining dollar?

Sako Barbarian is a counselor at the Begin Again Institute in Colorado who specializes in recovery from compulsive sexual behaviors and problematic pornography use. He works closely with internet culture and the people trying to make their way in it, especially the Millenial and generations and those who have never known a world without the internet. He and I discuss the challenges facing today’s “Tech Natives,” the role of technology in our lives, and why compassion and connection are the things that save us and our sobriety.

This podcast relies on the partnership of listeners - especially with dollars! Please visit www.patreon.com/outercircle to learn how to partner with the vision of this show!

Rhys Pasimio can be found through www.patreon.com/outercircle and on instagram at @newpattrencounseling and is always happy to dialogue with listeners bringing honest questions!

Sako Barbarian can be found through the Begin Again Institute at www.beginagaininstitute.com. The Begin Again Institute is one program in the Integrative Life Network, a “Family of Trauma Focused Treatment Centers,” in Colorado - https://integrativelifenetwork.com.

#addiction #addictionrecovery #recovery #sobriety #sex #porn #pornography #compulsivesexualbehavior #trauma #relationships #attachment #community #technology #technatives #genz #millennial #online #internet #digital #digitalage

People tend towards two errors. They think they have to be SO unique and special…or they think they have to conform to all the standards around them. Hyper-individualism, uniqueness taken to its extreme, will leave people feeling isolated, burdened, and vulnerable to relapse. Hyper-conformity, especially to unhealthy group and society expectations, can also steer a person towards all sorts of unhealthy, burdensome life narratives that can also leave them vulnerable to relapse.

Jeremy Jones is a therapist, community builder, and DND gamemaster in New Mexico, with years of experience facilitating recovery groups. He and I have a delightful dialogue about uniqueness, normality, and the human balance between them.

Some notable notes - 

“What does it mean to experience uniqueness to the point of isolated suffering, that we are too unique and do not feel that there is either a place where we can be accepted, or where we can belong?” - Jeremy poses a really good question.

We further ponder, Where does uniqueness act as a barrier to recovery? What is the cost of an attitude expressed as, “Why do I need to hear from others about their experiences when I know exactly what I’ve experienced?”

Jeremy points out, when we experience mutual vulnerability, or a willingness to put ourselves on the line, it’s the full acknowledgement or acceptance that we can be hurt or healed simultaneously.

Rhys observes that focusing on differences tends to prevent a relationship. Focusing on what is held in common, tends to bind people together. He further reflects that, “When I hold on to my uniqueness, I feel like I’m holding onto something special, even if it’s my badness. I feel reticent to let anyone be as bad as me, because that’s the thing I have to hold on to that makes me special, or gives me worth, or makes me memorable.” 

And when we consider growth in general, “Getting through a thing, rather than just past it, emphasizes that we are on a journey, and we are on it together.”

Jeremy reminds us, “We have all lived and survived the worst day in our lives so far. How might we recognize that in every single person that we meet? That this person has already survived the worst day in their lives so far?”

We often carry the burdens of uniqueness because we like the idea of being in control of our lives…until we are then also entirely responsible for all the consequences of our actions. Rhys reflects on his journey into the Orthodox faith and the relief and freedom he found when he was no longer tasked with inventing and reinventing his own worldview and value system from scratch.

The challenge with uniqueness is that saying, “I’m unique,” usually also means having to say, “I’m special! I’m extraordinary!” The reality is that if you actually are extraordinary, then that will be readily obvious, without you trying hard to show it. 

“When we think we are special, we don’t want to learn from other people, because what do they have to offer? And that’s such a limitation that we put on ourselves, to not believe we can learn from anyone.”

But to be perpetually a learner…means we can always learn!

This podcast relies on the partnership of listeners - especially with dollars! Please visit www.patreon.com/outercircle to learn how to partner with the vision of this show!

Rhys Pasimio can be found through www.patreon.com/outercircle and on instagram at @newpattrencounseling and is always happy to dialogue with listeners bringing honest questions!

Jeremy Jones can be found at www.thinkingaboutthoughtscounseling.com and on instagram @tatcounseling   

#recovery #recoverywork #sobriety #sobrietywork #addiction #addictionrecovery #thinkingerrors #cognitivedistortions #automaticnegativethoughts #imunique #normal #individual #hyperindividual #hyperindividuality #conformity #hyperconformity #relationships #community #tradition #orthodoxy #orthodoxchristianity #orthodoxchurch #easternorthodxchurch #easternorthodoxy #learning #growth