The Connection between Jiu-Jitsu and Counselling
Welcome back to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m going to ask you this. What do you think’s the connection between Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu professional counseling and substance abuse prevention and recovery? The answer is my guest today, John Danaher or Josh Danaher. And, we actually crossed paths in a jujitsu room. I don’t know if that’s you call it. Dojo. You can correct me on it, Josh, but he beat me up. His kids beat me up and now he’s on my podcast. So what’s up, Josh? How’s it going, man? Good to see. It’s good. Yeah. can, can you tell me a little bit about, just give me the good old intro college intro, who are you, where you’re from, all that good stuff. And then we’ll, we’ll dive.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. First of all, thank you for having me on the podcast. Appreciate it. I am from Arizona. I’m an Arizona native born and raised and I have been a college professor at Grand Canyon University for the last 13 years. This past school year was actually my last year at GCU. For the last four years, I’ve been transitioning to studying to become a counselor, a mental health counselor.
And in that same time, I started to practice jiu -jitsu kind of accidentally. My wife and I were remodeling our house and our friend Greg was going to be starting just after COVID was going to be starting his own certified training center, which is connected with the Henner and Huron Gracie in Torrance, California, Gracie University. And we were staying at his house to get out of our construction zone while they were on vacation or something and I saw Matt’s in his house and I thought, hey, what are the Matt’s about? And he told me and he said he’d been training for a long time. so I’m definitely a relational person. I’m a connector. I thought, well, I’ll try it. If Greg sees something in it, might as well try it. Never been into UFC, never been into any kind of wrestling or anything like that. So, but when I tried it, I absolutely loved it. And I think it was all about timing for me.
The part of my story is that for I’m 38 now for for my whole 20s basically even starting earlier than that my teens I I really got attracted to alcohol and I struggle with problematic alcohol use for my the entirety of my 20s and I became sober when I was 30, 2016 and When I became sober kind of accidentally again My my father-in-law had a Nike Nike plus watch, they don’t make those anymore. Apple got him out of the business apparently the competition, I don’t know. But he didn’t like it. He didn’t like how it felt. He didn’t like running with it. And so he offered it to me and I and I thought, okay, yeah, I’ll try it. And then I got into long distance running. And I trained for a couple marathons, I did an ultra marathon. And what I realized is there were certain aspects of the way that I was created the my very being that was really, really attracted to certain kinds of activities. But I didn’t quite know what the good ones were yet. I didn’t know what the good ones were. And so there was a reason why I was attracted to alcohol as I came to find out later and through sobriety, learning more about myself and why I had that proclivity. And as I as I got into long distance running, as I got into high intensity workouts with CrossFit in sobriety, I realized, there’s other things that I can be attracted to that can play a role in my life that can help me be healthier. And so I had one of those moments with jujitsu too. And I think it’s connected with how immersive it is. It’s something that takes your whole mind and your whole body to be able to functionally do and include it in mind as intellect and emotions.
I’ve never been a touchy feely guy. My family’s like, you know, you love each other when you’re sarcastic and you, you know, you play back and forth with wit. But we weren’t a very touchy feely family. And so when I first got into jujitsu, that was weird to me. Like, like being up in people’s business. It took, it took a while to get used to. But once I realized that it’s, it’s basically like a physical chess match and your, your mind is in it and your emotions are in it, your body’s in that’s this immersive experience, I thought, wow, there’s just something to this. And so I’m sure we’ll talk more about how that relates to kind of substance use and recovery. But to me, that’s kind of that story of studying counseling and getting into jujitsu and doing those at the same time really started to impact how I started to make connections between the two.
Trauma-Informed Therapy and EMDR
Yeah, that’s cool. And it’s neat how you talked about it’s an immersive experience using your mind, your body, your emotions. and that, that did something for you and the, even learning later that your use of alcohol, like that was doing something for you in your twenties. You know, whether it was the right thing, it was doing something for you, right? There’s a reason why people use. And now since you are educated on this and you’re immersed in, being a part of that solution for other people as well. It’s, I think that’s just a good thing to acknowledge whenever we talk to students and stuff like that. It’s, it’s important to show them, Hey, there’s, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to have fun or to get a dopamine rush or to be a part of a group. But it’s the way that we do that. And you’re finding all these places now in your story without substances with athletics, jujitsu running crossfit. Like it’s so cool.
Yeah, for me, when I when I’ve mentored people since I’ve become sober, or sponsored people, one question I always ask is, is it working? Is it working? Does it actually do what it what it kind of offers? And does it accomplish that? And to me, that was a big deal. Like being raised as a Christian. One of the things that’s a constant temptation is to is to do the right things and follow kind of God’s law or God’s way without understanding it. And that was a big deal for me growing up. Like I wanted to do the right thing, but sometimes the right thing didn’t seem fun. didn’t seem like it was actually fulfilling to me until I ran in quite the opposite direction. And I think in part, I was allured by the temptation. This actually works. This thing works. It actually helps you hope with these emotions that are overwhelming, it actually helps you to do you know, all x, y and z. And, and I had to run in that direction and kind of run myself into the ground before it became less of a legalistic thing. Like I need to do the right thing and more like, the right thing is the good thing. It is good for me. And so I had to find those I started to think in that way. Like how was I created?
How does my brain work and and how what is an actual effective? Dopamine hit you have to have limbic friction you also have to have Discipline in your life and what I realized in sobriety, especially, you know, Jaco is known for that kind of discipline equals freedom Line and that to me was a big part of sobriety. It was realizing. no, that’s that’s very this thing that I thought would help me manage my emotions, help me manage negative thoughts was temporarily good, but it actually always made it worse. And so as I came to ask that question, is this work? Is this even working? I realized, no, it’s not working. And then I started to find these things that though they have a lot of discipline connected with them, though there’s like pain and suffering in some ways, right? I’m choosing you know, like, like you said, get beat up in some ways. It actually has a much longer lasting reward. And not just a longer lasting reward. But like I said, with jujitsu being an immersive experience, the reward is also immersive. The reward is intellectual, the reward is emotional, the reward reward is physical, the reward is relational, and all of the interactions between those it’s just it’s just super fulfilling and holistic.
Yes, that’s incredible. I would love to learn more about what, what it is you’re building. leverage counseling is your program. And when, when our friend Garrett was telling me about it, I got so excited because I mean, all the things that you’re talking about, but when people hear a different approach, something where you can combine something that you think you understand, like counseling.
And everyone assumes counseling is like, Hey, sit down and tell me about your feelings. And you’re somehow incorporating jujitsu into it. so I would love to hear your dreams and what you’re building, anything to kind of get an idea of it. And yeah, let’s, let’s get inspired by what you’re building.
Building Leverage Counselling
Absolutely, I’m gonna try to do it in a succinct way. I feel like I talk about this forever So and go in so many different directions, so I’ll try to stay disciplined in it So I’m I started a company leverage counseling and leverage counts. I’ve been working with Christian counseling services So it’s an affiliate model and so we have counselors that are affiliated with Christian counseling services And so I started PLLC professional limited liability company called leverage counseling and the reason why is because a lot of what I’ve learned at Christian Counseling Services, I’m gonna continue to work with them. Right now I have my application in for a licensed associate counselor with the Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners. So I don’t see clients right now, but when I do, I’m gonna be with Christian Counseling Services. I kind of stumbled upon Christian Counseling Services. I stumbled upon trauma informed therapy. So I do what’s called EMDR. It’s eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.
Basically, it’s a trauma informed therapy, evidence based therapy that really focuses on memory reconsolidation. And the idea is that when we go through experiences that are traumatic, that are overwhelming, our memory storage system gets kind of wonky and it gets out of whack. And so some of the disturbing elements of that, disturbing thoughts, images, body sensations even, get kind of housed in our brain, housed in our way of responding so that when happen in our current life that remind us, even when we’re not really conscious of it, we have certain kinds of bodily reactions, emotional reactions, even negative thoughts that just kind of automatically come up. And so I got trained in EMDR and it floored me. It rocked my world as a professor, highly intellectual, right? I love ideas. I love talking about things, but this whole idea of the body having a role in trauma and memory, re consolidation, focusing on memories and noticing how memories get kind of expressed in ways that are, we’re maybe not conscious of as I, as I got trained in that. And as I’m doing jujitsu, I’m realizing, yes, this is so true. and I’ve seen it like in my, in my intern year, this past year with Christian counseling services, I’ve seen it help people dramatically.
And so as I, like I said, as I go through this process of seeing how they connect together, realize in kind of when I went to training for EMDR, one of the EMDR trainers said that hiking is kind of like backdoor EMDR because EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, right and left brain, right and left hemisphere connection to access memory networks and to kind of break up the negative disturbing elements of or symptoms.
And so when she went this trainer said that I thought, yeah, of course. That’s what long distance running did for me. Long distance running was its bilateral stimulation. And that that’s how I processed through stuff. I hopefully it takes other people a lot easier activities. But for me, it took like let’s run 26 miles and just like let the thoughts let the disturbing images let the memories kind of process through. And I love that she called that backdoor EMDR.
So that started to get me to think about jujitsu because in jujitsu, if you’re on the bottom of side mount or you’re on the bottom of mount, it’s a pretty stressful situation. And like I had said before, I even had beliefs that I didn’t realize that were really kind of stored in my body. I’m uncomfortable with touch. I’m uncomfortable with being next to someone like this. It makes me feel awkward. And coupled with, okay, now we’re in fight simulation and they’re trying to punch me in the face. Like this, this is really stressful. And it the stress gets expressed in your body. I was really agitated. I was really frenetic kind of in my pace. And then as I’ve trained over the last four years, I’ve gotten a lot calmer in those in those activities.
And so it’s been really cool to see. And so I want to, I’m working on developing a curriculum, developing even how I think about a therapeutic mechanism in EMDR. Sorry, I have notifications on that. No worries, that’s real life. So next time it comes up, I’ll turn it off. But yeah, it’s just, it’s something that I wanna create more, but I’m like this week I’m going out to Gracie University to recertify because every two years I have to recertify as a Gracie instructor. And I’m hopeful to get in conversations with people out there to see if anyone else is kind of developing stuff out there as well.
Yeah. Okay. That’s so interesting. And so right now you’re jujitsu training. you’re have your counseling degree and you’re getting certified by the state. by the time this episode airs, in September, you like, yeah, it’s summer now, but so who knows where you’ll be in that, in that journey. I’m excited to follow you and see, you know, what’s happening yeah. Just all the great ideas that come about because it seems like there’s this consistent theme of when, movement and body and mind are coming together and why you were explaining EMDR is if you had to explain why EMDR works to a third grader. How would you do that?
The Power of EMDR Therapy
Yeah, basically, excellent question. There’s really two components to it. There’s memory reconsolidation. So I’ll talk, I’ll put that in simpler terms. And just, there’s another part of traumatic experiences or therapy after trauma, where there’s, there’s a need to experience self efficacy, which is basically like the, the belief I can do something successfully, right? Because in a traumatic experience, it’s quite the opposite, right? It’s overwhelming. I can’t master this experience. The experience is mastering me. And so that’s a big part of it. So I’ll kind of table that for now. The memory reconsolidation piece is the piece that’s super important. And basically what happens is the midbrain, the kind of the emotional brain, when it’s in a traumatic experience, is also the part of the brain that’s connected with memory storage.
And so like if you think about it as a file cabinet, if you’re trying to file papers and each paper is a memory, you can put it in its spot if you’re calm, right? Just put it in the right spot. But if you’re not calm, if you’re under that pressure of that traumatic experience, then papers are flying everywhere. The chemicals in your brain, the receptors in your brain are sending messages that are like alert, alert, alert and you’re not able to do that kind of memory source. So it gets all jumbled. And part of that jumble is you start to believe things like I’m a failure or I’m worthless. And those get connected with emotions, negative emotions, anger, resentment, hostility, anxiety, but they also get connected with body sensations like I always experienced this tight chest when I’m or I feel at my shoulders or whatever it may be. So all of those get connected in bad ways that aren’t helpful for us in our normal functioning in our day to day life. And so basically the reason why EMDR is helpful is it kind of, it goes back into those memory networks where the jumbling has happened and it goes back into them in a way that’s manageable.
So that you can bring all the good things you know, like especially for Christians is, know all these things about God. I know that God loves me, but man, when I get in those experiences, it feels overwhelming and that belief, couldn’t be further from my experience. And so that’s why EMDR is helpful, because it goes back into that experience and it does it in a way that’s manageable, where you don’t get too over-activated, where you can bring in that adaptive information and get that connected so you clear out that disturbance.
Applying Jujitsu Principles
And that’s kind of, it’s interesting. That’s kind of what jujitsu does too, where you like, no one wants to get in a street fight. Are you kidding me? That’s one of the things that was hard for me at the beginning. I do not have a really aggressive bone in my body. So the idea of like going after someone and submitting that, it just really isn’t in me. And so when I, when I started training at Gracie, I realized that’s actually not what it’s about at all. In fact, that’s not a good way of approaching jujitsu. It’s about energy efficiency.
It’s about being calm. It’s about being smart and using leverage. And so I thought that’s pretty amazing. But what happens when you train, you learn techniques, you repeat those techniques over and over and over again to get that vocabulary, which is the self-efficacy part. I can do something. I know something. And then you get small amounts of sparring with partners that care about you that aren’t trying to destroy you. Right? So it’s enough of that friction that you some aspect of it so you can learn and get better. But it’s it’s not too much that it’s overwhelming. So like I said, when I’m doing that in jujitsu, and I’m doing this EMDR, and that’s why EMDR works is it goes back in and manageable doses, and has a has a structure to reprocess those memories. I’m thinking to myself, well, for people who wouldn’t necessarily come into the counseling office, but might be interested in jujitsu, can we accomplish something similar?
And so I hope to have like a pretty traditional group counseling session that I can kind of create where we do a little bit of jujitsu and then we do talk therapy because there are principles of jujitsu like the river principle, know, flowing around obstacles instead of trying to butt up against obstacles. You can show that, do it with your body with a jujitsu technique and then talk about it. That’s different than just talking about it, But I hope to create something that’s individually focused as well, where it might be more of a kind of memory processing EMDR focus with the jujitsu techniques as well.
Hey, okay. I have two thoughts I want to share with you. The first one is when you were sharing, um, about the EMDR and that it kind of brings you back to this memory so that you can bring the knowledge you have now and how you changed. It’s almost like, know, that question, Hey, what would I do if I could talk to myself 10 years ago? The reality is you’re probably carrying around the trauma from 10 years ago, or you’re carrying around those maybe false beliefs. Uh, there’s reactions that are stored in and this seems like a really cool way to kind of talk to yourself as if you were 10 years ago, because you have this, you have this new stuff that you’ve learned through life, these new skills, and you can unpack what’s, what’s maybe holding you back. That’s just stored in there. So that came to my mind. think that that’s really cool. It sounds exciting.
Talking to Yourself 10 Year Ago
Yeah, that’s a that’s a big part of EMDR is kind of noticing the different parts and there’s different parts of who we are. And some of them in traumatic experiences get frozen in time. So if there’s like a traumatic experience for Josh, when he’s eight, there’s an eight year old part of Josh that’s frozen there, that learns to escape that learns to numb that learns to get away from stressful experiences. And then when when that eight year old version of Josh then is 21 and learns about alcohol or like 20 and learns about alcohol and it’s like, oh, wow, this is a very powerful numbing agent. that you can see how that part that’s frozen in time that learns this lesson about how to respond to stress. Yeah, it kind of gets stuck in a very immature version of who I am. A version that has beliefs about stress, that stress is bad, that conflict’s bad that I don’t have the ability to handle it, that emotions are overwhelming and you can’t work through emotions in any other way than stuffing them. Like, yeah, those things get, they come up for sure.
Yeah. The other thing was when you were explaining, you know, all these different elements of jujitsu and even something as facing obstacles where you’re learning a move and action, a strategy in jujitsu. And it’s physical, it’s kinesthetic and that helps you learn. And what, what I love about it too, is you talked about self-efficacy. So yeah, telling someone you are valuable, you’re capable, Wow. I mean, great. I’m glad you think so, but you don’t know my life. You don’t know me. Like, I don’t know. There’s so many objections you could say to that, but it’s by teaching someone something like making them feel that is really powerful. And there is usually some sort of activity. Like, so we have this curriculum and it’s a drug prevention curriculum, but we understand teaching students about drugs is not going to prevent them from using. They’re not using because they just don’t know about it. They’re using because, you know, they didn’t feel good enough or they don’t know how to cope with stress in a better way. they want to fit in, but they don’t know a better way to do it or, or that they don’t need the approval of others because they are, they are enough, you know, and have that confidence. so in stealing all those things.
I’m now imagining being in one of your classes, right? Is man, it feels good when you go into the gym and they’re saying like, okay, yes, it was scary, but they’re just teaching you a small move. If someone comes at you like this, which may or may not happen this year, but what a confidence builder, what I can do it. If you know I’m strong, I’m capable, that if someone were to do this to I have this counter move now that I learned. And for me as someone who’s, I joke about this in my presentations of being like the scrawny kid, you know, since middle school on is I love that about jujitsu. was like, no, that doesn’t mean that you’re weak or you’re incapable of defending yourself. No, jujitsu is about, about being calm, learning the right move and any, you leverage other people’s moves to what you would do.
Teaching and Confidence Building
Which I just can imagine all the life lessons, all the growth from doing an activity. And, there’s a lot of things that I. Stereotypes I had in my head growing up where I would think like, kids in karate are kind of like weird. They were the only confident kid out there. They were confident. Like I, I had the wrong judgment about it. And even homeschool.
Students, they get a bad rap. say home kids, schools, school kids are awkward. Most of the time I’m learning they’re not. They’re actually super sociable with students their age and with adults and they’re involved in more activities. so yeah, just, just thoughts.
Yeah, yeah, the first thing you talked about about just kind of the difference between telling someone and then orchestrating experience where you don’t have to tell them, just organically comes up. Yeah, if you told white belt Josh, calm down, calm down, calm down. It doesn’t work, right? That calm under pressure took time. And we have these classes called reflex development classes, where you start to put the techniques together. You don’t just learn individual techniques.
You start to put them together in kind of real time. And it wasn’t until I was a blue belt and then I came back to an RD class, a reflex development class. And it’s not that I felt like it was boring. It was just weird for me not to have anxious energy when I realized, wow, I’m calm. This is amazing. And that that was so persuasive to me, because someone didn’t tell me calm down. I was calm. And it was because of process that it went through so that was really cool the other thing that you were talking about was the idea of Learning maybe the right ways to have fun or to connect I think about that with like the the idea of like idol worship that the idol worship is in Israel like in the in the Bible It’s always trying to to set something up as like the good life Whether it be whether it be money whether it be that you know pleasure whatever it may be power but it just, was always a cheap replacement for the enjoyment of the God who created the universe, right? And so it’s interesting that when the people, it seems to me that when the people came back from or out of that idol worship, a fundamental part of it was just learning how to know and enjoy God in full ways, not in cheap legalistic ways. And so I really, yeah, that’s really impacted me. I talked to someone about crutches.
I was talking to them about all the things I do in my life now. I still work out, I do CrossFit style workouts, I do jujitsu and I still run. And they were talking about, well, aren’t those crutches? And I just kind of chuckled, because I said, call them what you want. Like, yeah, maybe they are crutches, but I’d much rather have these crutches than alcohol, because it was tearing apart my life and my relationship. some people think about relationships as crutches too. And there is a there is an unhealthy co dependence in relationships that people can have. But there’s definitely a healthy interdependence. And if someone tries to be a lone wolf, good luck, right. And so the idea of leveraging is so fundamental. And that’s why I really chose that as my business’s name, because it really is important to see that in order to have power in life or health in life and relationships, you have to know what are, we’re gonna be dependent on something. On what am I depending? Is it actually working long -term? And that’s the key idea. And so I’m not gonna be crutch less in my life. I just need the right ones.
Idol Worship and Enjoyment
That’s so good. That makes me, that makes me think of, kind of counting the cost of, yes, if I use this, I can use this to get this outcome. What’s it going to cost me? It’s going to cost me my health. It’s going to cost me my money. Wait, but this other one you’re doing that actually benefits my health. It benefits my wallet or like benefits my mind. Like we make these decisions and there’s this activity that I like doing.
Where you think about coping skills, right? And each, each coping skill has long term and short term either benefits or drawbacks. And we don’t think that we kind of map it out and write it out. Like when I do it as an activity with students, it’s like, we have thought about this before, maybe not as deep as I’m asking you to do it right now, where if you’re using THC to cope with something or using nicotine and vaping products.
What is it actually doing for you short term? What is it potentially doing for you long -term for you or against you? but the activity of doing it maybe is more helpful because then you get to experience, you know what you’re right. I always ignored that other stuff and I never saw it on paper, but there’s like a lot of stuff. If I choose this quote crutch or, we call them a skillset or a shortcut. If I choose a shortcut or am going to develop a skill set? but it’s so, it’s so true. And we do make decisions like that every day. Like we, we decide, is this going to be pleasurable or painful? And if it feels painful, I’m not going to do it. It feels like it’s going to be pleasurable. And you can learn what you decide is pain or pleasure. And you’ve learned to enjoy the pain of getting better at a you know, that hurts a little bit and by making yourself better physically and mentally. And that’s the cool thing about working with young people is usually they’re willing to try. Like, jujitsu instead of, you know, quote counseling or like what I think would be a therapy session. All right, cool. I choose that now I’m going to experience the growth and learn it. it just sounds more fun.
100%. Yeah. And that’s, that’s kind of the idea is that there, there has been a movement in counseling over the last couple of decades, let’s say, where the, the role, the body has been more influential. And that’s always been the case with jujitsu, right? Very physical sport, right? But what I started to see was though the, the physical benefits of jujitsu are obvious.
The mental and emotional benefits of jujitsu are just as strong, they’re not as obvious. Similarly with counseling, the mental and emotional benefits are obvious. There are physical benefits that are substantial, but they’re just not as obvious. And you have different audiences too. You have preconceptions, like you said, about counseling, you have preconceptions about jujitsu. And so anytime you can kind of blend two, you can kind of respond a little bit to those misconceptions and maybe just give people an opportunity to get a foot in the door to try it. I had someone come into a jujitsu class the other day that I was teaching and it was his first time there and it’s pretty normal to see you start to learn how to pick up on people’s anxious energy when you, it’s a hard thing to do to walk in the jujitsu door and of the school and when and and so you you feel that as an instructor and so the whole experience is to be welcoming to introduce them to jujitsu and get them excited about it well it was funny because and not at all unexpected at the end this guy was changing and he was putting stuff back in his bag and he saying you know i have a lunch meeting and i was nervous about it before but now i feel pumped and i just kind of chuckled i said you know what that’s been my experience with jujitsu jujitsu too.
Proclivity to Shortcuts
It has this kind of confidence building element to it that’s just pretty contagious. It itself is pretty addictive. Yeah, because you realize it works. But you were also talking about the, I like that idea of talking about it, the skill set versus the shortcuts. And I think part of sobriety to me has, an important part of it has been noticing how I do have a proclivity to shortcuts. And so I have to work that into my skill to be able to respond to my own proclivity toward and temptation toward those shortcuts. And so much of leveraging relationships with people. And it’s so cool that Vibe 18 does this is it gives you that sense of community that it’s a normal thing to be tempted toward that shortcut. There’s a reason why they’re appealing. And I think some approaches to drug prevention or some approaches to addiction and responding to it either is very shaming.
Or it’s like trying to hide the fact that they’re pleasurable. That doesn’t work, right? Like you couldn’t convince me that what I felt when I drank wasn’t pleasurable. It was just short -sighted. It was just temporary. And so what I needed to be convinced of is that it was only a short term solution and that in the long term it had diminishing returns. It was pretty destructive. So being accurate about that is super.
The Pleasure and Pain of Substance Use
Yeah. absolutely. one of our past guests and friends said it like, it’s like chocolate coated glass. It tastes good in your mouth and it hurts on the way down. I was like, that is such a good visual. like, yeah, being on the other side, right. But of course, yeah, when you’re, when you’re in it, there’s, there’s different strategies and things that we do to help, but it does feel that way.
To lie to students or to try to scare them or mislead them. It’s like, well, as soon as somebody around me tries that and they don’t die or they don’t get hurt, it feels like you lose trust with that person. Like I can’t trust what you told me though, because you said this would happen and it didn’t. And unfortunately today living in a world with fentanyl in it. It’s like, it is scary. Like it’s just scary to say the truth that if you use a substance.
You could die immediately right then. yeah. And, but then that saying that though, is not a great prevention strategy. we also need to build them up, show them how great their life can be without these. So they have reasons to protect those good decisions with those skill sets and learn them. So let’s do this, Josh. let’s end the episode before I ask you how people can stay in touch and learn about leverage and all that good stuff. Is there any parting, tip or guidance you could give our listeners that are doing drug prevention around the country, just from your experience or your passion?
Getting Connected on Different Levels
Yeah. I would just say, connected with that immersive idea. Think about ways, if you’re helping others, think about ways that you can get them connected on all different kinds of levels. I really do think in a lot of counseling, substance abuse counseling, like this is already the case and this has been, it’s just something I, I want to point out that I really like that it’s intellectual, that it’s emotional, that it’s physical, that it’s relational.
So thinking about if you’re treatment planning or if you’re mentoring someone, just thinking about what are there all the opportunities in their life to get them connected with things that can be those crutches, can be can be those connections. That’s, like the term connections, can be those positive connectors for them that can replace and be truly fulfilling. Think that’s and then partner with people. That’s what I’m hopeful to do is I’m hopeful to be a resource for people who are, it’s not gonna replace EMDR, it’s not gonna replace substance abuse counseling, but it’s going to be something, hopefully that in the course of treatment planning, people can get plugged in, people can continue their growth process. And so that would be my parting thoughts.
Perfect, thanks for that. And finally, how can people stay in touch with you if you like using LinkedIn or a social media page and then what your website is or will be?
Yeah, I definitely direct people for the counseling side of things to Christian Counseling Services of Arizona. There’s a website there and that’s a good place to go to get that Christ Center Trauma Informed Counseling. I’m building a website for leverage counseling, but so probably the best way to get connected with me is just through LinkedIn, Joshua Danaher at LinkedIn.
Okay. Perfect. And it’s D-a-n-a-h-e-r for anyone listening, Joshua Danaher. Cool. Well, thank you for being on the show. It is really fun talking with you and we’re so close. Thanks for having me. So yeah, it’s good to connect even when we’re across the country. For sure, for sure. Yeah. And for everyone listening, this has been the Drug Prevention Power Hour Podcast. I hope that you found some encouragement from this episode that you learned a little bit about integrating different learning styles and all the different things, know, physical, emotional, intellectual, and hopefully it inspired you to do or try something different in your approach. And I was fascinated just about learning too about the EMDR and all the benefits of that. So as always, this is for you. It’s a free resource. Please share it with a friend. If there’s something helpful you found on here, don’t keep us a and keep doing the amazing work that you’re doing in your own community, because whether you can see it now, you are changing lives and your effort. It doesn’t go unnoticed to the people around you, even if they don’t tell you about it. So keep up the good work, ask help if you need it. We’re a community and we can do more together. And with that, we’ll see you next Monday for another episode.
