Episode Transcript
Bob Lynn (00:11)
I love what you've been doing so far. I like the first person candid way that you write. And I like it because I think that it's very different than giving lectures. You're really just saying, hey, you know, here's some thoughts about life that I think are worth talking about. It’s a conversation; it has a conversational tone to it, and I think it's engaging. So I like what you're doing.
Diana Oehrli
Oh, thank you so much. I do have a small coaching group with four people in it. It's people in long-term recovery. It's not replacing a 12-step group. It's not replacing the sponsor-sponsee relationship. It's bringing the coaching tools that I have, including Tiny Habits and Designing Your Life stuff, and the ICF coaching method to help participants reconnect with the tools of their spiritual journey so that they can bring those tools into their daily life in a way that they want.
Bob Lynn (01:32)
I like that very much. I like coaching very much and I'll tell you why. I like the departure from seeing everything through a purely clinical lens. It's much more rewarding for me to get advice from a friend than it is from a therapist. So the coach is kind of the bridge. You don't feel like you're a patient in the clinical sense, yet you feel like you're getting advice from a friend. And it has that informed advice as opposed to advice which is not based on anything. It has a flavor of being informed. I really think it's the future. One of the reasons is that the clinical folks have really shot themselves in the foot by not having standards of care. You never know what you're gonna get. Coaches have much more clarity in what they do than most therapists.
You ask a coach what they do, they'll tell you exactly what they do. They know what they do; they know what their standards are; they know their scope of practice. Ask a therapist what they do. Fifty different therapists will tell you 50 different things. I think we've come the full circle on this.
Diana Oehrli
Interesting. Part of my exam for the ICF coaching was, if I sound too therapeutic, it could be a strike against me and I wouldn't pass the test.
Bob Lynn (03:16)
Yeah. I think even in my own work these days, Diana, I try not to be clinical. I work from what's called the one down informed position. In other words, honor people, respect people, be there for them, but follow them. They don't need to follow you. I really reject a lot of the old school clinical stuff: “Sit down, how do you feel today?” You go on for 22 years, and you're still where you started from. The other thing about coaching is, which is really powerful, is that coaching often has a more of a contextual perspective to it. It talks about life. You know, it talks about how you're living your life. Rather than just how you're feeling, which is important, but also how can you do life better? And I think that's really the essence of coaching is how do you do life better? I understand that I have challenges. I understand that there are roadblocks. Given all that, how can I make a better life? Which is really, if you think about it… I'll stop lecturing because I'm a
professor, but if you think about it, it's the essence of the serenity prayer. That's what the serenity prayer says.
The serenity prayer says: Look, life is gonna throw you stuff. You can't always control it. When you kind of figure out what you can control and not control, you can always do life better. And I think that's the essence of a journey. It's the essence of being who you are, because that's what it's about. If you get stuck in things you can't control, you know what happens. We just whine, and we rev ourselves up and get sicker and sicker.
We have to let go of that crap. We have to move forward. We have to think about what we can do and we can make today better. We can do something different. We don't need to start beating ourselves up over things we can't control. I think that's more coaching than it is using some clinical protocol. But I'll stop there.
Diana Oehrli
When I invited you to come speak to me, you wrote back that you were involved in music, antique cars,(I’m reading the list here), your Rubicon, you're going in nature, your orchard, the salmon fishing, the sailboat racing.. that's living life, right? Wow.
Bob Lynn
Tomorrow, we have a pretty large farm concert here. So what we do on the farm, we built a pavilion off the back of our house for the band, and that's where the band is. Then the background is all the mountains and stuff, and we have some pretty well-known performers, singers, mostly folk songs and folk singers and that kind of music coming. We'll have… I don't know how many people, you never know 30, 40 people will show up tomorrow. The other thing about it's 95% sober. If someone comes in and they have a cooler item, I don't really care. But we don't put out any [booze]. You know, so it's pretty good. You know, it's a nice way to have a… we do that three times a year. You're right. We'd have a lot going on. Maybe too much, you know. It's what's keeping me alive, Diana.
Diana Oehrli
Well, it sounds awesome because if you listen to the news and you read what's online, the current global trend is not talking about having music in their backyard. They're talking about things that are quite serious. Is this how you are able to balance out the serious work that you do by giving yourself energy with this kind of stuff?
Bob Lynn (07:53)
I think so. The serious work that we do is also in the same way. For instance, when we go on the reservation, we're really just bringing people together. We're privileging local expertise.
We're not coming in as the experts. We've got a grant to do that. We've got a foundation grant and we were asked to do this. I've worked with Jilly before on these things. We've worked in Beirut, Palestine… all over the world. We don't come in with a model or anything like that. We just come in with resources and try to get people together to empower the local people. You always find some real gems right on the ground. As long as you respect people. So we've been
doing that for a couple of years. There's one more year left on the grant. I don't think I'm going to continue, but I always say that. I never know.
I'm also the chairperson of two boards. One is a community music board. It's a 501C3 for community music, and the other one has to do with antique cars. I'm the president of both of them. I don't ask for those things. I don't campaign for them. Somehow people come to me, and I just don't say no. And maybe I should. I don't know. But I'm happy.
I’m still with Jilly as you saw. She kicks my butt seven times a day because I'm really high maintenance, Diana. You know, I'm really not easy to live with. I mean, because I'm so go, go, go. You know my addiction… My friend Wayne says this to me all the time. He says, you took your addiction and made it something positive for you, and you live it. He said he was never able to do that. He just got rid of his addiction, but there was nothing there. His life became kind of blasé.
I was a stimulant speed guy. So I still speed, but I'm able to channel it and achieve. I got lucky that way, and it's been a long time. It's been quite a few years. I think as you get older, by the way, watching all my older friends… The ones that were serious drinkers are the ones that are really falling like flies. I think it gets you. I think, after a number of years, it just really knocks you out. I've been watching the ones who continued to drink and continued to relapse. Not the ones who stopped; the ones who continued. I have one now who's just waiting for him to get the bad news.
Diana Oehrli
How do you see the evolution of alcoholism, drug addiction since you started your work in this field?
11:29 Bob Lynn
I think we haven't come real far. I don't think there's been much of an evolution. I think that the money is being put in the wrong place. It's all being put in things like access to care, policy… “hey, we have an opioid crisis.” We have all this money going into defining what the problem is, but very little goes into investing in better care. Nobody is saying, “we need to spend a million bucks to figure out how to treat people better.” Nobody's doing that. It's hard to find a study, but you can find lots of research on how people get sick, why they get sick.
I was just at a two-day event with a bunch of emergency room doctors, because that's what my son does, and I hang out with his friends. They were all talking about hearing all this stuff about trauma, and we don't know what to do about it. And I said, that's exactly right. I said, you just continue to treat the people who come in. When you walk into the examining room, you treat what's in front of you. There are things you can do. You know, there are things communities can do. For instance, don't shoot off firecrackers if there are Vietnam vets around. That's not a good thing. You know, there are things you can do. You can be sensitive. You can be kind. You want to create an environment that is caring and welcoming, not one that gets people back to where they were in the battlefield, as an example. I think there's a lot we can do. I don't think drug
treatment has gotten very far… And as you know, it’s a billion dollar business. It's a multi-billion dollar business, because all the money is being put into access to care. People are building bigger centers to create greater access, but nobody's asking, “what happens to the patient when they get there?”
Diana Oehrli
Going into bricks and mortar, but not into staff? Is that what you're saying?
Bob Lynn (13:56)
It's not being put into quality of care. It's not going into innovation. For instance, we're trying to cure cancer, right? So we're spending a lot of money doing research. For instance, someone said, “well, we don't need to do any more research. Let's just give people access to what we have.” Well, that's not good enough. We need to do what we do better. And not too many people are investing in doing what we do better. I don't know if you know the VISTA people, Joanna Conte? You remind me of her, and she reminds me of you in some ways, because you're both really bright, dynamic women who have lead ership qualities. She's invested a lot of her own money and time in building research and outcome systems, which she offers to the field at a very reasonable price. If she's doing something,I support her. I want to be really clear—I think you know me so well at this point— I don't have any financial … I'm at the point in life, Diana, I'm just involved with paying it forward. I'm not looking for any kind of career at this point.
Anybody would call me, I would just help them. I don’t really care if they have funds or not. She’s really doing a good job. The folks at Pavillion in North Carolina are really good people. A lot of the smaller centers have been bought by some of these big guys.
Diana Oehrli
So what works?
Bob Lynn (15:38)
I don’t know. The only thing that really works is people getting what they need when they need it. So, you figure out, hey, this person needs to be sober. What can we do to help this person get sober? This person needs to find a place to live, because they're homeless and they need a job. Let's start there, because that's what they need. So I think we start with the individual. And if you're doing cultural work, you really get into that really strongly, because you respect the culture. I don't think we've made a whole lot of progress, Diana. I think there's a real crisis of credibility.
There aren't even standards of care. Think about that. You can go to five different rehabs and you'll get five different ideas about what it is to be in recovery. They use the word recovery now to mean everything from athlete’s feet to dandruff and then nobody really knows what they mean by it. So as an example: recovery communities! “Let's invest in recovery communities.” Great! What does that mean? Well, it means whatever you want it to mean. Well, that means it means nothing. That’s the thing, we're investing in philosophy, theory and policy… but nobody's investing in, “hey can we come into a community and empower people to treat people better?”
Nope. I mean, I don't know a single place in the United States, at least, where that's happening. I stay pretty much on top of…
Where some people read fiction, I read research. That's what I love. I don't read fiction at all. I read studies. That's what I do for fun. I love science, and I don't know any place that's really doing…
You see them on LinkedIn all the time writing, “we're saving lives.” “How do you know?”
“Well, we're good people and we see a lot of patients.” “How do you know you're saving lives?”
“Well, well, we think we are.” “How do you know?”
They all call me and I'm very kind when they call me. I always give them my phone number. They'll send me a private message and I'll give them my phone number. I'll say, I really respect what you're doing. And I'm always kind to people.
But I said, well, how do you know? Do you really want to know? Would you like to improve what you're doing? Would you like to learn from your patients? I said, that's what you need to start thinking about.
The really honest CEOs will say to me, “yeah, but nobody's paying me for that.”
And I get it. A really cool guy who came the other day said to me, “Bob, I get it. And I agree with everything you're saying to me, b ut nobody's paying me for doing better work. They're paying me by how long I keep people in treatment.”
And I said, that's pretty honest… but not refreshing.
Diana Oehrli
How would you be able to have standards?
Bob Lynn (19:04)
I think that we need research. We need to know what works and doesn’t work and for whom. If we have a 28-year old woman who has this history and that, and we should know that in the past, we've treated people like that with this kind of therapy, and this is what's worked. We need to learn from our patients. I don't think we need research to inform care. I don't think that's what
we need. I think we need practice-informed research. In other words, I think the practice needs to inform the care, not some theoretical thing that comes from a university.
Diana Oehrli
A pragmatic approach!
Bob Lynn (19:54)
Exactly! See we’ve tried that for years. We get all these studies, and they have no clinical application and they don’t inform care. But if I have data on the last 50 people who were treated, and I look at all the variables, like severity, kind of drug they were using, family intactness, all of these things, I can create an algorithm that's based on the fact that when you come before me and you say you need care, I'll say, well, listen, Diana, here's the deal. If we do this, you have a really good chance of getting well. If we do this … that's what happens when you have a better chance or worse chance. It's just like when you go to your doctor, and she says, “well, if we put you inpatient, this is the outcome that we get. If you want to try outpatient, we're willing to do that, but we don't get as good an outcome. But I understand you have a job or whatever, or you have children to take care of.”
We can be honest with people. It's called informed consent. You've had medical procedures. The doctor always tells you: “Well, this is what we're going to do. This is what the probable outcome is. These are the possible things that can go wrong. You know that and your doctor says, “I think you should do this, but that's up to you always.” But we don't have that. We don't have that in our field. We just have these mills still.
And God bless you! The thing that you helped us put together a few years ago. We’ve gotten a really big following!
Diana Oehrli
The Alliance!
Bob Lynn (21:35)
Yes, the Alliance! I am looking now for a younger person now to run with it. We keep it alive. Mainly people use it to get to me for consultation. That’s okay, because I dont charge, so it doesn’t matter. It’s been a really good vehicle for engaging people in conversations about better care. It’s worked out really well. The board we’ve put together is a diverse, good board and really good people. They are also willing to help people.
Once people realized we’re not a business. At first, they suspect “here’s another business,” and because we didn’t go the NGO the 501 route, people assumed we were a business. But once they realized that we weren’t, then we got a lot more participation. That’s worked out well too. I don’t give it as much time as I should. If I find the right person to run this, I would mentor them. Someone could build a career around it, easily, as an advocacy agency. They could turn it into a 501 really easily. It wouldn’t be hard, because it’s got a good reputation. Since it opened, I haven't had one negative issue.
Diana Oehrli
You are a little controversial on LinkedIn with your stance on trauma I've noticed.
Bob Lynn (23:07)
Well, I'm controversial and I'm not. So I'm controversial for the people who've made a cottage industry out of trauma. They really hurt me, as you can see.
They get on and they say, “well, you know, everything is trauma. And if you hire me, I will teach you how to deal with it. I will teach you how to make your workplace trauma informed. I will teach you.”
And they come up with these brain models, on how trauma changes the brain. Well, the truth of the matter is music changes the brain the same way. Basketball changes the brain the same way. Trauma doesn't have the market cornered on changing the brain. Everything changes the brain. It's dosage over time. Anything you repeat over time. That's why AA works. You go to meetings. What do you do? You keep going. Keep coming back. You keep coming. Why do you come back? Because you're learning a new way to live your life, but you're also changing your brain whether you know it or not. And you're also beginning to think differently.
I had a very traumatic youth, incredibly traumatic. What was the outcome? Empathy, resiliency, overachieving. Yes, I did have addiction too. I don't want to lose that, but I think I would’ve had that anyway. But I had all those. It wasn’t all negative. I survived that way. Obviously, I have some resiliency.
So there's a whole bunch of people now who…people smarter than me who have now gotten on this whole idea that trauma is important, but we can't see everything through a single lens, and we have to treat people as they present, and that we should not assume that every challenge that someone has is trauma related. Bradshaw did that with shame 100 years ago. We've gone through more than one of these things. We went through the codependency thing for a while. It's all about enabling. It’s all about codependency. And now, we’re in the trauma game. We'll be there for a while and then we'll get out of that. We'll go to the next one. Somebody else will come up with something else. I think trauma is important. I don't want to trivialize it in any possible way. I don't want to say that understanding what trauma can do to someone. But we all know that it’s intensity and duration; it’s not just an experience.
Diana Oehrli
How did you heal what happened to you when you were a child? If you don't mind me asking you, or if you don't mind answering.
Bob Lynn (25:56)
I did. I had some mentors and I had some really good luck. I was a street kid in Brooklyn, New York. I skipped high school; went to an all-boys crazy school, and some friends went to a community college in upstate New York and invited me to a party.
So I went to the party. They just opened, and I was in the hallway, and some big burly dean came up and said, “what are you doing here?” Because he knew everybody.
I said, “I came to see my friends.”
He said, “Do you want to go to college?”
I laughed, and I said, “Yeah, I don't even have a real diploma or a high school diploma. How could I go?”
“Come to my office.”
“How about if I brought you up here on probation, and we'll see what happens. And I'll pick your courses. I'll see how you're doing. I'll mentor you and monitor you. And if you can't do it, fine, we'll shake hands and nothing ventured, nothing gained. If you can…”
Well, I came up, I started to take these classes and I was always told I was an underachiever and I should try harder. I went to take those. I found out I was smart. I said, holy shit, this stuff is easy. Damn! I said, this is nuts. Everybody was cheating off of me and asking me to write their papers and stuff. I didn't even go to high school. So I went to a vocational high school. I learned how to use some tools and fix some plumbing and stuff, but I didn't know anything about what a verb or an adverb was, but I found out that I was smart. And so I went straight through several colleges. I wanted to be a researcher, so I got a degree in sociology, and then I decided to be a clinician. So I got a degree in counseling.
So I went all the way through to my doctorate, and there was a lot of mentoring along the way. But once I found out that I can achieve, my philosophy of life became, if anybody else can do it, I can; there's nothing I can't do. What makes me different? If Sally or Sam can do it, why can't Bob do it? Why not? What's stopping me? The only thing that's stopping me is between the ears. It's my brain that's stopping me. I can be anything I want to be. I just need to put my focus on it. So I realized at some point that that's all I had to do.
I figured I could be whatever I want to be. So I became a sailor. I did a lot of offshore racing and stuff. I did whatever I wanted to do, and I found passion in life.
Like everybody else who went through addictions had 14 different counselors and therapists and psychiatrists like the rest of us. We all go through that. I mean, I don't know anybody who has an addiction, who hasn't gone through some of that. And none of them really helped me. I can’t think back on one clinical experience where I was the patient that really made a difference in my life. But what made a difference was friends, mentors, caring people, people who cared about me, people like yourself. And that's why I think it's important that we bring people in our lives who we know genuinely care about us. I think it's important, but that's what did it for me.
And that's why I go back to coaching again. That's why I think coaching is powerful because it's not about looking at me like I'm a sick person. So it's figuring out how I can get well, how I can be well and achieve, not how I can put some clinical label on me, not to tell me I'm borderline or something. I don't need to have that label. All I need is somebody who believes in me on some level or helps me to believe in myself. This is not what coaching does?
Diana Oehrli
Totally. We come from the belief that that person is whole. And, that's where we start.
Bob Lynn (30:08)
I'd much rather work with someone who's never had a clinical course. I'd rather train those folks, than folks who have clinical courses and believe that everything has to be seen through this narrow lens.I think coaching is where you go first, not last.
Diana Oehrli
What are some effective coping strategies when you have triggers?
Bob Lynn (30:28)
So we all have triggers, and there's all kinds of cognitive work for dealing with triggers, but the only thing that will change a trigger is practice over time. We could talk about hair triggers, ones that are read on the surface. I came from the streets of Brooklyn. If you push me in my chest or you got in my face too close, you’d probably wouldn't walk away at some point in life because that was survival. That was my trigger. You got in my space, and man, that was a dangerous thing to do. Because I grew up in a volatile, crazy survival situation. So if you got in my space, I had to bite your ear off. Because if I didn't, you were going to kill me or shoot me or do something or beat me up. So over time, becoming desensitized to that trigger where I was able to trust people, and now when someone's in my space rather than wanting to beat 'em up, I want to give them a hug. But I think that happens over time. So I really think it takes work.
You know that. Program doesn't work unless you work your program. And I think it sounds like rhetoric. It sounds like parable, but it's true. It works. It works, if you work it. There's no doubt about it. And I think whatever your triggers are triggers, triggers are. Then you need to really kind of work on that. And I think it's…
Diana Oehrli
Like a fourth step kind of thing.
36:44 Bob Lynn
Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly. I think that's what you do. And I think those inventories that we talk about are really…
Diana Oehrli
It's hard to tell somebody who's maybe the victim of sexual abuse or some kind of parental abuse when they were a child. Where is their role? Where is there a part in it? That's very hard to tell someone that.
Bob Lynn (32:39)
Exactly. I mean it is. You might've read this in one of my blogs. Then there's the woman who came into my office who was sexually abused, and she called me up and she said, I want to see you. And I said, why do you want to see me? She said, because my insurance company said they would pay and you're close to my house. That's how I picked you. I said, fine. I said, what's your issue? Why do you want to come in? And she said, well, I need to talk about some trauma as a child from my father. And I said, well, what have you done? She said, I've been to several therapists, but it's not working because I live with my husband, but we're not living as husband and wife. We haven't been together in a long time. We don't touch; we're not intimate even not just physically, but in any way. I said, well, bring him in. And she got shocked and she said, I can't bring him in. I said, you need to bring them in if you want to see me, but then I'll refer you to somebody else. She brought him in. And I said to her, I said, what is it that you really are concerned about? She says, I'm concerned about if he knows about what my father did to me, he won't love me.
And he turned to her and said, “I don't care what your father did to you. I'll always love you.”
And all of a sudden, these two who haven't been close in years, were hugging in my office. And so she asked me, she said to me, “do you want me to tell my story?”
I said, “well, have you done that in the past?” She said several times.
I said, “How's that worked for you?”
She said, “I'm in your office. I guess it hasn't worked real well.”
I said, “I don't need to hear your story. No one needs to hear it. You don't even need to hear it again, because every time you hear it, it just retraumatizes you. And that's what it does. You don't need to relive it. Sometimes it hurts more coming up than it did going down. Let it go. Live your life with this guy who you love, who loves you.”
And they were hugging in my office and crying and all this, and they said, “when do we come back?”
I said, “you don't.”
I said, “you don't need to come back. Talk to each other.” I said, if you want to come back for a checkup and in six months come by, you'll call me up and I'll see you no charge.”
And they did come back in six months and they were doing great. But for some people, it's not like that. For some people, they really do need to work through the trauma. It's up to a smart therapist, a well-trained, well supervised therapist to know the difference. And there are people I have worked with who had those triggers who were totally traumatized and needed to work through it in some way. But often, even with those folks, I typically do it with context with somebody else there if they have a trusted person. You don't always have that. You know that. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't.
I think it's just a matter of treating the patient or the client. I use both words, but the reason I still had to use patient because someone pointed out to me that hookers have clients. So I figured, I just kind of figured, well, maybe I should say patient.
I just treat people as they present, and I don't have a regular practice anymore. What I do is I have a supervision group for clinicians. I do that. I do a lot of mentoring. A lot of mentoring and things like that. I think at some point you got to talk about paying it forward. I don't think you can live your whole life and think that you're really an achiever if you can't pay it forward. I think it's just not right. So anyway, that's what I do. But I hear it.
But I think triggers in all of that, I mean, I think it's all part of who we are, and certain triggers are really important. Let me give you an example. If someone cuts you off while you're driving your car, what do you do? You hit the brake, but that's a trigger. You see, you don't think about it. You don't stop and say, well, this guy or this woman just cut me off. Maybe I should hit my brake. No, you don't think about it. It's part of your brain.
Diana Oehrli
Yeah. Followed by some swearing, right?
Bob Lynn
Right, exactly. Or some hand waving, but that's a trigger. So some triggers are really powerful and needed because we can't relearn our life every day. There are certain things in life that are survival that help us to be okay, and we don't even think about them. We have all of these things. We go through our life every single day where we, I mean, I know sometimes if something's coming at me, I automatically duck. I don't think about ducking. So those are the triggers that really help us to survive. Then they're the triggers that do us in; the ones where I really wish I didn't say that to that person.
Diana Oehrli
Yeah! Those kinds of triggers.
42:55 Bob Lynn
I really wish I didn't react so strongly. I could have been kind. I really wish I didn't… And that's what I think about a lot. My question is always, how can I be a better person? What can I do to live my life at a higher… how can I take the high road? Oh, right. So he pissed me off. He got
me angry. He said things I don't like. How can I not attack him and still be okay? How can I not have the need to punch him in the nose? How can I say, “Ron, we can agree to disagree, and I think you probably have some ideas that you believe in that gets you through life, and they're different than mine, but that's okay.” How do you get to that point rather than say, “Hey, you're such an ass for not believing what I believe.” Well, it's okay for me.
Diana Oehrli
How do you get to that point, Dr. Bob?
Bob Lynn
I think practice, you have to practice. I mean, it's dosage over time. You need to practice, you need to say, and so you kind of say to yourself, you get the feeling what you want to do, and then you say, “Whoa, alright. I recognize that feeling. I'm not going to do that right now.”
I've gotten— as an example—emails. I would send emails I was sorry I sent all the time, and I would just say, if I know I'm writing an email emotionally, I'll write it and let it sit for a day and then I'll get back to it. And so it's just training. It's putting it on hold. You can't do life differently unless you do life differently. You can't walk the same path and expect a different outcome.
Doesn't make sense. You got to do something different if you want a different outcome. I don't want to be in fights all the time. Well then don't hit people.
I think we need to be kinder much more. We need to be kind. We need to be open-minded, we need to be careful with that first impression that we get about someone. Because so often it's wrong. You're right. Triggers, they're part of life. It was funny when the founders of AA did their work, they knew what they were doing. They knew what they were doing. Sure, things have changed. What hasn't changed… Someone said to me, how can people get benefit out of a
50-year-old—a little older now—program? I said, it's not the program, The big book is just words. The process has always been the same. The brain hasn't changed. It still works the same way. So if you kind of get through some of the words which you don't agree with or you think needs to be modernized, that's okay. Look for the pearls. Don't read for what's wrong. There's the one passage on “those unfortunates.” I read that over and over again because I think that there are folks who really have such significant struggles that they really need more, but that was recognized early on. So I have fun with that.
Diana Oehrli
Who would those folks be in terms of a diagnosis or do you want to stay away from that?
Bob Lynn (41:45)
Yeah, I don't diagnose. For me, it is about people who are living destructive lives, not only destructive for themselves, but for others. And for some reason or whatever that is, because I can't read in people's minds any better than anyone else, you've not found the chink in their armor where you can. You struggle with that because, and then you realize it's not about you. It's not about you finding, it's about them finding their own. But there are people who just…,
My grandmother was like that on my father's side. When she got older, she just got miserable. She lived a miserable life. And I feel, and I look back and I feel so bad for her, she's obviously not around. It was my father's mother. But there are people who get into these ruts and they just can't get out of them. And the way they try and get out is by digging in deeper rather than trying building ladders to get out. They just dig deeper and deeper and deeper, and it just gets darker and darker.
Diana Oehrli
How do you handle people like that?
Bob Lynn
I just give them unconditional love.
Diana Oehrli
What if they were the ones who hurt you?
Bob Lynn
Even those. You have to learn how to do that. You have to be able to say, you know what? Who's really good at that? I shouldn't talk about it. Jilly's great at that. She's taught me a lot. This guy was really ripping her off. I mean, really badly, almost dangerously. He said he was fixing something in her car or something. Anyway, I finally convinced her over time that this guy, and she said, I get it, but maybe he's a good father. So you're right. That's a pretty high plane. I'm not anywhere near that. She's on a much higher plane than I am.
Diana Oehrli
It reminds me of that Epictetus quote, “if your brother's done you wrong, pick him up with the other handle.”
Bob Lynn (45:57)
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's a process. Like I said, I just try. I want to be a better friend, better partner, better father, better whatever. I'm learning a lot from the Lakota because they have this whole family thing where you could become my family, but you don't need to be my blood family. They have this circle that is very, very powerful, and they have a lot of words for it in Lakota, and I've learned a lot from them. They really express their relationships in very, very strong ways, and they really believe in the extended family concept. And they even use words like uncle or aunt or whatever for people who are not blood relatives. And so I think we could learn to be better people. We all can. I think it's a good thing, and I just want to be as kind as I can be. That's all I want to be. I have a cheater, and my cheater is this. I've gotten to a point in life, and this is really very extravagant, and it really means, I know it's not an easy place to be and it takes a lot of different variables, but there's very little you can do that can really hurt me. You can't fire me. You can't take away whatever I have.
What are you going to do? It's okay if you don't like me. It's okay not to like me. If you don't want to, that's fine. It's great. I mean, you have a right to see things differently than I do, because I am
no longer invested in being right. I'm not building any career or anything like that. I've already been there, done that. So I'm just kind of happy in my space.
Some kid, two weeks ago, comes out and he hits me. I have a Jeep like yours except it's got the big wheels and all that stuff. And he ripped my front bumper and then he ran, and then he took off and I chased him, and he was really… standing in front of his license plate, so I couldn't see it, but I saw it, and then the police called me.
They found out who he was, and they said, “Well, we need you to press charges for this hit and run and it's really serious and you need to press charges so we can go arrest him.”
And I just thought about it, and I said, “Well, why would I want to do that?” “Well, then this way you'll get your truck, get your front bumper fixed.”
I said, “Yeah, I'll get it fixed anyway and then I'll be hurting this kid.”
They said, “But we need to pick him up, but we can't do it until you press charges.” I said, “Well, I'm not.”
They said, “What do you mean you're not going to press charges?”
I said, “Well, why? He's probably 17, 18, 19. I don't know how old he is. He screwed up. It's not my job to teach him a lesson. That's not my role in life to teach him a lesson.”
And the cops couldn't believe me.
“And I said, I'm not picking him up.” I said, “I'm not pressing charges. So if you guys… why don't you call him up and tell him that I'm not pressing charges and that next time he should be more careful. I said, if you want to say something to him, he could have been in deep trouble or whatever. I don't really care. That's your job, but it's not my job.”
So I think he learned things like that. I can afford to fix my bumper. I'll fix it. Actually, I wanted to get a more aggressive one anyway, because I go up in the mountains. So I wanted a big steel bumper anyway. But you see what I'm saying? You don't need to hurt people to be, for you to be okay. Does that make sense?
Diana Oehrli
And I'm also learning that it's not up to us to teach them a lesson.
Bob Lynn (48:31)
Yeah, that's not my job. I didn't need that in my chi. I didn’t need that inside of me to be okay that I screwed up this kid. Okay, he was wrong. He hit me and all that. But that's irrelevant. That's just life.
Diana Oehrli
So I have one last question for you. What advice would you give that young man or anyone who's currently facing a mental health challenge?
Bob Lynn (49:04)
It depends on the severity. If it's a matter of self preservation, then I would certainly get them the intervention that they need. But if it's not, and most of the time it's not, most of the time it's malaise, it's anxiety, it's sadness, it's not, I'm going to die. If it's that severe, obviously you get them to the psychiatrist, whoever they need to get to put, because safety comes first. That's not your decision. You need to get them. That's your job. Other than that, I tell them to find a friend because I think that's where you start. I have a few friends who I love and trust, and when I get anxious or I'm feeling off track, I don't want to pay. I don't need to pay somebody 200 bucks an hour to tell me that I need to love myself. What I need to do is find a friend who really cares about me, who can give me advice that's honest and caring, and that's where I start. So that's where I tell people to start with putting people around you who are positive, who care about you, who make you feel good, not bad.
It was funny, Maslow, he's the one who did the hierarchy of needs. He was this Jewish guy living in the Midwest, and during that time that he was in the Midwest, he wasn't being invited to parties because he was living in an antisemitic environment. And someone came to him and said to him, how do you feel about that? How do you feel about living in this place where you're not invited to everything and you're being discriminated against? And he said, he says, I feel okay about it. He said, there's a semi-permeable membrane around me that screens out the jerks. And he says, I think we need to all put a semi-permeable membrane around us. We need to be something around us that screens out the people that bring us down. And if that's what this does, that's fine. I don't need those people in my life. If I can find people around me who build me up, don't bring me down, who care about me, and screen out those who don't, because life's too short. I really don't need to spend time with those folks that bring me down. I'm not going to do that.
And I think that's my advice is to surround yourself with positive people who care about you, who give you the old unconditional support kind of thing. And I think that that's the most important, and that's what I try and do. Here in the northwest, I’ve developed… I have so many good friends out here that I really, if I have a party or something at the farm, I got to cut it off at 30 or 40 because I just don't have the room. And I have just all these great people, and they come and we play music, and we have fun together. And that's the kind of people that I want around me. So that's my advice. I don't start with a therapist; start with a friend. You might end up with a therapist, because I think we need therapists. I'm not saying we don't need therapists. We really do. I don't think that's your starting point. I think that's your ending point. But too many
people start there. And that's not the place I would start unless, like I said, unless it's clinically for your safety.
Diana Oehrli
Where would you tell somebody who's, let's say, got a little minor depression and they feel like they're a failure? I know a guy like that who feels like they have very low self-esteem, low
self-worth. How do you help this person define a friend or encourage them?
Bob Lynn (53:22)
Well, I think that, again, it's really individual. I have a friend like that too right now, and I was just talking to him recently, and he said the same thing to me. I told him, you need to be around some people who really.. He said, “but I live here and I stay on my porch and smoke cigars and I don't find anybody.” I said, “well, nobody's going to cut to your porch number one.” But I said, “number two.” I said, “what are your interests?”
“Well, I like to play with my guitar every so often.”
I said, “why don't you join a music group? And this way you'll meet people who also play the guitar, and maybe you'll even find a friend among them. Maybe you won't, but there's a good chance you will. And then if you do, that's good. But if you don't, then you could still play guitar together. So start with that way. Build some interest, make life worthwhile. Where's the feedback that makes you, okay? What is that?”
We all have something that makes us, because I really believe, and I know this sounds a little Pollyanna-ish, I don't really mean to be so, but I think all people are special. I think the real question is finding what that is, and that part of you that is special and meaningful is there, you just got to find it.
I don't dismiss anyone as not having some great things about them. They just haven't taken the time to get to 'em. But I think we all have 'em. I think they're all there. Just need to get to them.
Diana Oehrli
So what would you like to discuss that we haven't touched on, including who would be an ideal candidate to help take over the Alliance?
Bob Lynn
Oh, what I'm looking for is somebody who wants to build a career, but that should not be the motivation. The only motivation. The motivation should be someone who is really interested in the idea that we can do things better, that life can be better for more people, that there are places we haven't explored yet that make sense. That we really can put more effort into building quality systems. And I call 'em quality systems because I really believe that what we're really talking about is building community, not simply probing inside of someone. I really think we need to build healthy communities, so someone who's willing to invest in that. I still have a few people on my board, quite a few good people who would help mentoring and are willing to do that. And
we've had this discussion with the board. Every time I try, I think there's somebody who can do that. It hasn't worked out so far, but someone who's willing to invest some time and energy into it. A therapist might work. A coach might work. Somebody might work. Somebody who's, who wants to do that. I am keeping it alive. That's about it. And they can change it completely, or they can redo it in another state, or they can make it. Could help them make it a 501c3, if they want or something. The other thing is there's so many good singers who never get on stage.
This helps people to get on stage a little bit to get some exposure. And that's how I come to as mentor. Because I sit on a lot of committees and stuff. So I'll invite, I'll say, I'm bringing along this person and let them learn. So I mean, something like that.
Diana Oehrli
I just love your spirit, Dr. Bob.
Bob Lynn
I love your spirit too. And I really, as you know, I treasure, really treasure our friendship. I think it's really a gift. I really always enjoy being with you, Diana.
Diana Oehrli
Yeah, me too.
