Chris Bruno & Tracy Johnson - Wisdom, Thoughts and Resources for Mental Health Care

This episode was recorded in Dec 20, 2021.

Tracy Johnson – Lives in Austin, Tx. Works with and for Chris Bruno at Restoration Counseling in Fort Collins, Colorado. She is the founder and Chief editor of Red Tent Living Magazine, online space for women around the world. She works in the virtual world with story work and spiritual direction, seeing people from all over the world.

Chris Bruno – Founded Restoration Counseling 12 years ago after living overseas doing missions. He is a licensed professional counselor and works locally with folks as well as online. He has been doing a lot more Intensives and group intensives – the opportunity to spend more focused time. He loves that work. He also founded Restoration Project, which is focused on men, fathering and brother-ing, exploring what it means to be a son.

Danielle has had an increase in requests for support, coaching and counseling. Where can we plug people in? What’s available?

Tracy has had similar experiences – there was a lull in the summer when people were out enjoying the sun but she too is experiencing an uptick with people needing help. Tracy believes that COVID, the pandemic and isolation has shrunk space that used to be expansive inside of people, and people are noticing they are less well. Before there may have been pockets of anxiety or depression before but now is it more prevalent and feels like it doesn’t go away.

She says the same is true for spirituality—before the pandemic people may have masked a struggle with their spirituality by continuing to go to church and bible study, but as that went away, the questions have surfaced and there is more disruption between their relationship with God and their relationship with the Church.

Chris agrees with both. The way he conceptualizes where we’ve been is by looking back to 2020-2021 New Years when there was an emotional rally. As a world, we said “2020 sucked! It sucked the life out of us” and yet mentally and emotionally there was this thought that “2021” will be different. But this year, as we realized that the pandemic is not going away, and the coping mechanisms aren’t going to help us any more than they did before. This are not shifting. “Deferred Hope.” 2021 was a thinning of this hope. The last little bit of hope in relationships, marriages, etc. has eroded. He’s seen this too in their Thrive Marriage Lab online – relationships seem more tense, thin and desperate. Like it could move to crisis if it’s not dealt with.

Tracy says we’re set up for the same this year looking at 2022. We can make no plans; everything is subject to cancelation. We’re not okay again.

Chris wants to invite people to do something different in 2022. There isn’t a going back to normal—the normal that we know is now different and therefore the internal work we do needs to be different. The mental, emotional and relationship work needs to look different than what it was and what we assumed. There is a shift in how we need to work on and expand “the space inside” that is no longer spacious. This is the important work that needs to be done in 2022.

Tracy said those can be part of what comes in the New Year—it is just a fact that we will never go back to where we were before. She thinks what we’re learning to do now is about tending to ourselves in ways that we’ve never had to do that before. There was so much noise pre-pandemic with traveling and parties, gatherings and going to the office… It’s kept us from having to listen to our internal selves. How do we learn to tend to this internal space? What does that mean and what does it look like for me? For some people, that tending needs to be done with a therapist or licensed counselors. For others that looks like tending to the stories that our bodies and souls hold; To listen and care for those stories. Now is the time to do this work. “Our world has changed and so that we’re going to be in our world has to change, like it or not.”

Danielle said she has been paying a trainer to work out twice a week because first she doesn’t want to get COVID in a gym class but secondly because she likes the attention on her—that there is someone who it watching and attending to her body. A few days before this recording, her trainer told her that the average human uses between 50-70% of the air in their lungs. That means we’re only breathing at 50-70% our capacity. Danielle was un-attentive to her breathe, and as her heart rate get high her trainer said, “you’re not in your body!” Danielle was thinking, “hey I’m the therapist!” But her trainer replied, “If you want to push yourself, you have to be present. You have to pay attention to your body.” Danielle said this interaction with her trainer in a sense is like what Chris is doing with intensives—it is expanding someone’s capacity to stay present in themselves and their relationships.

Chris loves that image of how much space is your lungs and in your body and the invitation to pay attention to it. Some of the work around story is about being aware of and staying in your body. “How present are you to what’s happening inside of you?”

Restoration Counseling’s logo is a cross-section of a tree. The outside, Chris says, is the adult part of us. The inside are all the rings of the life of the tree. Those rings are still inside the tree, marking the dry years, the years with a lot of sun, the shade of another tree. You can read the story of how that tree was shaped by the rings. All you see from the outside is just the outside, but all the stories of all the days that tree has ever lived are still inside that tree. Humans are the same—we have all those parts of us that live inside of us. And what he believes Tracy is saying is do we have enough space to attend to those parts that are living with us.

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