Josh Mortensen (00:00)

Nick Taber, welcome back to the Explorer Poet Podcast.

Nick Taber (00:01)

Welcome

back. Thanks for having me, Josh. Great to be back with you.

Josh Mortensen (00:06)

Yeah, absolutely. Like I was just saying before we started recording, I follow you on X or Twitter and I think it’s a lot of great content. It’s a pretty interesting space that you’re playing in. ⁓ Yeah, maybe it’d be helpful just to, I don’t know, kick it off to kind of, from your perspective, what is, how would you define that space or kind of what is your ⁓ motivation, your objective, what kind of environment are you trying to wrestle with?

Nick Taber (00:35)

Well, I mean, I’m generally interested in some issues that kind of related to my own experience. So I’m interested in this issue, particularly of like young people that are coming out of environments where we were pathologized and coerced, right? I think that’s a super huge phenomenon in our culture. ⁓

I think that you see it in like lot of the labeling of children with mental health ⁓ disorders and things of that nature. And so for me, it really just came from a need of trying to understand that and then trying to kind of advocate for that and sort of sharing a lot of the things that I’ve learned about that, about like how to heal from that, how to kind of develop yourself after that.

And I don’t mean healing in a clinical sense, just healing in like a broad sense of growth and personal development. ⁓ And so there’s a lot of things that, a lot of kind of positions that I’ve arrived at as a result of that. ⁓ So I comment on things like the mental health system, the nature of that field, the nature of the school system, things like that. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re trying to get at, but that’s some answer, yeah.

Josh Mortensen (01:52)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah,

it’s kind of these, ⁓ we grow up in, I think it happens everywhere. It’s probably happened everywhere throughout all of time, but this just happens to be our time and place. And we grow up with all of these institutions and they feel as though they just are supposed to be because they were there before we were born and we’re just born into them. institutions meaning things like

the educational system. ⁓ It could be the, the medical or mental health industry. could be the, for me, even personally, I would say part of these institutions that I had to realize were just institutions was, was things like my church and my religion. And also eventually, when you talk about healing, getting around to addressing kind of the institution of the family that I was born into and raised in. And ⁓

Yeah, I think that ⁓ a lot of people, they never get to the point where they see that these are kind of structured institutions and that they have each one of them has their own form of ideology with rituals and practices and expectations. And I think that’s why it’s interesting, you know, to follow you and kind of see what you’re talking about, especially given that it comes from a personal experience, which is, which makes it more powerful, but then also,

Yeah, maybe that’s an interesting place to start is kind of the on Twitter, I noticed that there are there are other people similar to you who are speaking in a similar way about these institutions. And then there are people who are adamantly defending them. But there seems to be like a broad spectrum of people. I don’t know, have you spent time thinking about how you would maybe categorize these different groups or different kind of ⁓

viewpoints that come up online.

Nick Taber (03:52)

Yeah, yeah, I think I do think about that. I think it’s a really interesting question. ⁓ I think often on the surface, it looks like there’s these like you’re saying these kind of pro versus anti groups. So it’s when it comes to these institutions, you know, whatever it may be, ⁓ there are these kind of pro and anti groups. And I don’t actually see it that way personally, because I don’t for most of the

views say on the other side, I don’t necessarily see what I’m saying as being against them. So for example, like, ⁓ you know, some of the criticisms one could make of the mental health industry, ⁓ then people defend it, you know, they might say, well, people really benefit from it, this that like, don’t, I’m not necessarily disputing any of any of those things. So I don’t, I don’t see it as like, you’re either on this side, or you’re on that side, or you’re in the middle. I just think it’s like here, like, it’s like, what’s the truth?

⁓ So that’s kind how I try to look at these things. But yeah. Well, I had thoughts on your question, on your thing about institutions, you know, it’s an interesting point, but we can come back to that.

Josh Mortensen (04:54)

Yeah, that’s it. ⁓ go ahead if you had something else.

Okay, yeah, would like to come back to that. guess I just, I do appreciate the way you say you would just like to be up here and you’re just asking what is truth. I think that’s one of the most fascinating things that I come across in all aspects of like human interaction in society is that there are, there do seem to be people, from my perspective, there do seem to be people who are taking sides. And the thing with sides is that there’s so many different sides. It’s not like left or right.

or this or that, everybody has like their point of view that they’re pushing for or that they want to defend. But to take a higher view is to me, it’s even more interesting because then you’re just discussing, you know, the psychology of people and the psychology of groups and the psychology that forms around ideas and movements. And I think that’s a much more interesting and honestly, a much more helpful way of dissecting almost anything from

Nick Taber (05:55)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (06:04)

from the mental health industry to politics to economics. It’s much more interesting to look at motivations and psychological factors rather than just jump in and try to pick a side.

Nick Taber (06:18)

Yeah, definitely. And also being clear, it’s like, I definitely still have positions that are my own. I still have an ego that’s involved in all of this. And we all do, right? So it’s like, think that the only way to try to arrive at that higher place where you’re looking at these things in that way, I think it just takes self-awareness. That’s the…

That’s the foundation of all of it. Because we all, wouldn’t we all like to believe, yeah, I’m just looking at the truth, you know, I don’t take sides. mean, you know.

Josh Mortensen (06:58)

Yeah, it would be nice to know that you actually had the truth and that you were, ⁓ you know, your thoughts and opinions were amenable to the truth whenever you received it. But do you think that maybe even just because of the background you come from, what you experienced and just kind of recognizing at some point that you were experiencing something, it seems that people who have the ability to rise above that, there’s usually some kind of, I don’t know,

Nick Taber (07:08)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (07:24)

I don’t think trauma is the right word because I think everybody has some form of trauma, but it’s more like ⁓ there’s like a deep wound that you become aware of. so, know, in a sense, becoming more being able to step back from the fray and just observe it. For a lot of people, they never do that because either the wound isn’t deep enough or they just never acknowledged the wound. And so they just continue in the fray.

Nick Taber (07:46)

Yeah.

That’s a really interesting question. I’ve thought about that as well because it does seem like It makes it almost a necessity then to go down that path, you know, if you don’t have enough pain and You don’t like need to do that. Then why would you you know, it’s like Like if you want to use pain to evolve, which is a great thing for anybody to do I think it’s painful and so

like the only motivation, perhaps the only people that are really gonna be strongly motivated enough to do that are gonna be those that kind of have to in order to get to a place where they feel okay with life. I mean, that’s a generalization, but it’s a hypothesis for sure.

Josh Mortensen (08:39)

Yeah, sometimes I think about that often. I think about why I ended up on this kind of path of wanting to figure things out when other people are perfectly happy to just kind of be. And I think there is some truth to it there. There’s got to be other things related to it. This may be like not at all where I thought the conversation was going to go, but in the recent news, example, Rob Reiner and his wife were killed by their son. And I was just having a really interesting conversation with my wife about it last night where

Again, there are people who pick sides and so it would be really easy to blame the parents and some people will take that side and it would be really easy to blame the son and some people will take that side. But what I was wondering is like, I don’t know anything about these people. Like don’t know anything about their story or their history. I don’t know anything about the way that they raise their children or what their family life looks like. But it is a really interesting question like.

Nick Taber (09:21)

But what I was told was that I don’t know anything about the story of the city. I don’t know anything about the city.

Josh Mortensen (09:36)

Was this the product of somebody who was inherently unwell and inherently sick or broken in some way? Or was this the product of an environment that caused this outcome in some way? Or was it a mixture of both? It’s very difficult to know who’s going to end up on the path of trying to heal and work on their self-development and growth.

Nick Taber (09:53)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (10:05)

and who’s going to end up on the path

that’s just the darkest outcome you can think of.

Nick Taber (10:11)

Yeah, well, in order to explore questions like that, you have to be willing to kind of look at the emotions that might be driving you in it. You know, that’s why like, I think these sides are often so divisive is because, or these conversations are so divisive, because people are like, driven really, it seems like driven really unconsciously by various emotions. And if you’re willing to just

do the internal piece, then you can show up to those conversations in a way where you can actually look for what’s true. I feel like that’s gotta account for, I don’t know, like 20 IQ points or something like that. Like if you’re willing to do that, that’s a real, that’s a really powerful thing.

Josh Mortensen (11:02)

Agreed. Yeah. I don’t think that we are computers, but to using the computer as a metaphor, if we’re running on some software, then we’re just going to operate on that software. But to your 20 IQ point comment, if you can install a software that then goes through and questions the other software, forcing it to update based on new data. Yeah. I think it really does. It like lifts, lifts, I don’t know your overall

ability to navigate all of these difficult situations. Yeah. ⁓ But do you want to? Yeah, just the ability to question your own thoughts, the ability to question your emotions. It’s interesting because like, ⁓ just scanning through your Twitter when I was preparing for this conversation, I saw a back and forth with you and I don’t know who the other guy was, but ⁓ basically,

Nick Taber (11:38)

Yeah. Yeah, your functional intelligence increases, probably.

Josh Mortensen (11:59)

he was putting forth this idea that ⁓ you should not trust your emotions. And ⁓ it’s something obviously that in the Western world, that’s kind of the going dogma in the Western world is like you conquer your emotions, you overcome them, you don’t give in to them, ⁓ but there’s like a more nuanced take on it.

Nick Taber (12:07)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (12:28)

There’s this need to…

feel your emotions and try to understand where they’re coming from, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you act on them in that moment in a way that, you know, may be detrimental to yourself or those around you. There’s like a, there’s a nuance that needs to be, to be had.

Nick Taber (12:50)

Yeah, definitely. Well, that was one of those debates of trust your emotions. Somebody was really saying, ⁓ it’s amazing people don’t trust their emotions and how important it is to trust your emotions. And then the guy I was talking to was saying, no, don’t. ⁓ Or something along those lines.

I thought it was really interesting because I think that when you, mean, a lot of us find that when we start to really listen to our emotions and take them seriously, which is something we’d been trained out of, we find that they are telling us a lot and they’re telling us often really important things or they’re, providing really useful information and they, they can be like a sort of a guide on some level, you know, like,

in my life when things that I’ve been experiencing ⁓ in my environment haven’t felt right. When I look back on it now, it was largely because they weren’t right, right? There was harm taking place and we’d been trained out of that. know, like so many of us had been kind of trained out of that, taught not to trust that. And I think that’s what that original tweet was getting at.

But it also, but yeah, it doesn’t mean you just blindly trust them, blindly listen to them. Oh, I feel like doing this now, I’m gonna do this. No, it needs to be cultivated and it needs to be kind of bounded with a lot of awareness.

Josh Mortensen (14:17)

Absolutely. And there’s plenty of times where your emotions and your thoughts don’t necessarily correlate. those thoughts, I don’t know, your emotions are these things that our bodies have been evolving over millions of years. And so they have a lot of important wisdom in them. But our thoughts, for the most part, our thoughts are kind of a relic of our culture.

They’re kind of, you you get taught how to think and what to think from a very young age and you get taught what thoughts are not supposed to be thought. And so oftentimes your emotions and your thoughts don’t correlate. And so what you’re talking about taking the time to do some inner work, figure out a different way of approaching your emotions such that it may not happen right away. Like let’s say you feel an emotion, you feel anger and you’re not

your initial thought may be that this, you know, somebody you’re interacting with has done you wrong, or has mistreated you. But it may be that you have to spend some time with that emotion and question those thoughts. And eventually, you can actually get to the root of it, which may be more about something like an insecurity that you have. And then it’s more about working on yourself on the inside. Yeah, it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting world we live in, because while

Nick Taber (15:40)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (15:45)

like what you’re saying, while we have been trained

to ignore our emotions, there’s also, and this kind of relates to the mental health industry, there is kind of a big movement for validating emotions. And I actually think that that at some level that is good. These are all nuanced things, right? So like you should validate the fact that you’re having an emotion, but when your emotion and your thoughts don’t…

Nick Taber (15:49)

There’s also this kind of case of a problem. But yes, kind of a big loop in the world.

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (16:13)

when you pair them up too quickly, you can often mistake why you’re feeling the emotion. And then what you’re doing is you’re validating the thought rather than the emotion. You’re validating like some idea that almost gives you, it can give you like this justification for feeling an emotion and then that justification or that emotion can then justify some adverse behavior.

Nick Taber (16:42)

Yeah, it’s an interesting ⁓ issue because I mean, I found that in my own kind of healing journey, like you said, you know, you’ve been on this path as well, right, from your own experience. In my healing journey or whatever you want to call that, ⁓ in my thoughts were kind of the most dangerous thing. Like they were the most, they were really where the peril was, not so much my feelings. ⁓

Because it was my thoughts that I was so identified with. Like I thought that they were the truth, but it was really the most conditioned part of me, right? It was like, you know, when you’re feeling emotional pain, which happens in the body, then you go straight up to the head, right? And so that’s why people just end up spinning over and over in their thoughts. And for me, the key was really about ⁓ getting out of that.

you know, getting out of my head and just being more present with my body. And then from there, over time, something more true emerges and then you can bring the cognitive piece back in. And then your thoughts become more aligned with something that’s more true, right? ⁓ That’s been my experience. I mean, this is all very, you know, fluffy on some level, but that’s definitely what was my experience.

Josh Mortensen (18:06)

Yeah, I think I would say that I had the same experience because I often look at everything through the lens of psychology, but also I think that human psychology is inherently stories. And so we all live these lives based on myths. And if you go all the way back, the two of us being products of the Western world, you go all the way back. The foundational myth of the Western world is Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

And the tree that they partook of in that garden is the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And so what that means is that everybody in the Western world, we’re supposed to know what’s good and what’s wrong, what’s right and what’s incorrect. And in a sense, what we’ve done is we’ve attached ourselves to this identity of that thing that knows right and wrong. And so I would call that the ego. The ego thinks that it’s always right, especially when you’re then also kind of identifying with those thoughts.

And when you’ve identified yourself as the voice in your head, and you think you always know right and wrong, you’re gonna be wrong a lot because ⁓ you’re gonna misinterpret things. Yeah. So for you, for that process of kind of getting out of your head and spending more time with your body, what was the most effective for you in doing that?

Nick Taber (19:25)

⁓

I think it was mostly, I guess, meditation where I’m just like focused on the sensations in my body. ⁓ And then that was kind of the core of it. And then things that supported that, know, like maybe being out in nature, journaling. ⁓

going to, you know, having certain experiences that would bring me into my body. ⁓ So, yeah, it was a process for sure. And then as I did that, after a while, then something that I could only call healing happened, right? It was something like healing. And it’s, you know, it’s a process that I’ve been experiencing for a number of years now.

Josh Mortensen (20:20)

Meditation is an interesting one for me because I guess before I ever meditated or tried to meditate or looked into meditation, you know, just like anything, I wasn’t really sure what that meant or how it was done. And then early on, I learned like a form of meditation and I did that for a long time and I, it was probably helpful. But what I realized later on is that there are actually many different forms of meditation. There’s like different ways that you can go about it.

⁓ This may be a little like in the weeds but I’m curious like for you what form of meditation works? Take me through the process like you sit down and how does it go and what do do?

Nick Taber (21:02)

I basically just ⁓ close my eyes and pay attention to what I’m feeling. And then you notice that that shifts, right? And then I just basically just do that and that’s it. And that’s kind of the core of what’s allowed me to really heal. But it’s this distinction of like…

actually healing and just meditating. Somehow healing is this odd process that I’m trying to wrap my head around. Healing when it comes to what we’re talking about. ⁓ I don’t fully understand that, right? Because it was something that only started maybe a year or so into my journey of really doing these things and really trying to heal. yeah, but that’s basically what… ⁓

What did it?

Josh Mortensen (22:03)

Yeah, so it’s like a focus on the sensations of your body, what you might be touching, what you might be feeling on the inside, the movement of your breath, the emotions that kind of come into your core, these kind of things. And then that also kind of gives you some space from your thoughts, it lets you rest a little bit. It’s interesting because ⁓ if you’ve identified with your thoughts, and you’re like a thinking person,

Nick Taber (22:08)

Yeah

Exactly, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Josh Mortensen (22:32)

This is what Carl Jung would have called an introvert. And so there’s like these, I talk about this every now and then, because this is all interesting to me, but there’s these kind of pop culture definitions of introvert and extrovert. And it’s very shallow. It’s like, you like being around people or you don’t like being around people. But Carl Jung’s the guy who originally coined the phrases introvert and extrovert. And he talks about how introverts are people who associate with their thoughts and they kind of navigate life through thinking, which means that they have like a pretty

Nick Taber (22:35)

So there’s like, can do high time recognition.

Josh Mortensen (23:02)

intricate inner world where they understand the world through themselves and their own thoughts. And then what an extrovert would be then is the opposite, somebody who avoids their thoughts and feels their way through life. like they just, they are kind of the opposite problem of what maybe you and I had of being too attached to our thoughts where, so if thinking about meditation, ⁓ if you’re somebody on the other side of that where you are uncomfortable with your thoughts,

and have never really gotten to know your own inner voice, the meditation may actually be flipped. It may be more worthwhile to spend time not focused on your body, but just letting your mind wander and paying attention to the things that actually come through your mind. Healing is just, it’s so interesting because everybody’s got to go about it in a different way. There is no like one path to getting there. I’m curious though, from your perspective,

Nick Taber (24:00)

Well, for me, is like Well, for me, healing is like…

Josh Mortensen (24:00)

You said it started at about a year into all of this. What was the change? What did you feel or what was like the shift that made you feel like, I’m actually getting somewhere?

Nick Taber (24:15)

at the core of it, it’s literally a physical sensation. It’s like, you know, I experienced it kind of in my stomach, kind of around here. it’s, yeah, it’s a feeling of like maybe releasing or something like that. ⁓ But it’s actually just a specific physical sensation. And it was, when it started, I was like, I know that that’s what this is. This is healing. ⁓ And especially because it happened like very strongly all at once in kind of an episode.

and then it sort of continued in a small trickle after that. ⁓ So yeah, but it’s an odd thing, because I don’t hear too many people talking about it like that.

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (25:00)

Yeah, if the thing you’re holding on to is in your body and you’ve been avoiding your feelings your whole life, kind of like, you got to go spend time with it. Let it process. I would say I had a, I don’t think it happened all at once, but I had a similar experience and it also came through a lot of meditation. ⁓ But I would describe it as like when I was younger and I was afraid to feel my emotions, every time an emotion would come up, I would kind of ignore it or try to

Nick Taber (25:19)

But I would describe it as like when I was younger and I was afraid to do my own

Josh Mortensen (25:30)

you know, ⁓ push it down, suppress it, not show it, not feel it. And so what I ended up doing then was just kind of numbing my entire sensory system, like my emotional sensory system was numbed out. And so then when you say it was like in your core, in your stomach, that’s where I also felt it where rather than feeling emotions, I just felt like a constant knot or pit in my stomach, like a constant discomfort. And ⁓

Nick Taber (25:35)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (25:57)

through this same type of process that you’re describing and eventually getting to the point where I could feel my emotions and I’m not saying I’m perfect at this. I’m not saying I’ve gotten

Nick Taber (25:58)

through this same type of process that you’re describing. The events of getting to the point where I just feel my emotions. And I’m not saying I’m perfect, I’m just saying.

Josh Mortensen (26:09)

there all the way, but once I started to allow myself to just sit in my emotions, I realized, first of all, I realized that it’s not all that bad. You can get through your emotions. You can feel them and survive.

And then also I realized that if you just feel them, then they pass through you and then they’re not there anymore. They’re like, I think of emotions like messengers. And if you don’t open the door, they’re just going to knock on the door forever. But as soon as you open the door, they deliver the message and then they leave. And once I went through that, that thing that I was feeling, that pit in my stomach, it went away. And I really haven’t…

Nick Taber (26:25)

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (26:51)

I sometimes I’m afraid to say it out loud that I haven’t felt it in a long time because I don’t want it to come back, but I really haven’t. I haven’t felt it in a long time and it makes me feel like I’m living a different life. Like I’m a new, like I was literally reborn or something. Like it’s just a completely different experience.

Nick Taber (26:57)

Yeah.

It’s amazing you say that. Yeah, it’s really similar to me. Really similar to me in with everything that you’re describing. Yeah, well, it’s like, ⁓ you know, ⁓ what you resist persists, right?

And so when you stop resisting that, ⁓ I think for me, it’s like, I wasn’t innately somebody who was in my head. It was actually kind of the opposite. I was somebody who was really very much in my body, in my feelings. ⁓ And it was the environment that sort of pushed me out of that and like forced me to disconnect.

Josh Mortensen (27:45)

Yeah. So the environment forced you to constantly be like observing, thinking, even though that maybe wasn’t your natural disposition.

Nick Taber (27:52)

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. In environments that cause a lot of trauma, they cause a lot of pain, and you’re not able to process it there, then you’re going to leave those feelings and then move into your head. Or that can happen, at least.

Josh Mortensen (28:13)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Speaking of environments, much earlier on, you brought up institutions and I thought it would be interesting to circle back around to it. I don’t know if you still have the same thought in your head, but ⁓ yeah, what were you thinking about with institutions? What would be interesting to go down that path?

Nick Taber (28:31)

Well, it’s interesting. It’s just an interesting topic. You were saying that we just, there so many people tend to just take it for granted, you know, and they never get to that place of realizing that ⁓ these are not just, these are not just like facts of nature. These things were not created by God. ⁓ They’re not like, it’s not like, I just making a video related to this the other day. It’s like we, ⁓

Yeah, they can become something that you can question and ⁓ that they can be changed and should be questioned. And, you know, they shouldn’t just be outright thrown out or anything like that, but they should be constantly questioned. We should be seeking how they can evolve, how they can become better. they’re, particularly with things like the school system, the mental health system, our families, there’s just so much inertia. ⁓ And then we also, we also get

like our minds and the way we think about them get shaped as a result of them. I don’t know what word you want to use for that. You you could say indoctrinated. I mean, sometimes these things get kind of ⁓ radioactive, these kind of, this kind of territory, but you know, gets, controversial, but it’s, it’s something like that, right? They shape how we think, and then we just get so used to it. ⁓ And that was kind of, that was a lot of my experience when I was younger of just like,

all the people around me really taking these things for granted. And I was always, you know, I was kind of intuitive. There was always a part of me that was like, sort of ⁓ understood kind of the awareness that you’re talking about. ⁓ So yeah, there’s a lot of threads there, but.

Josh Mortensen (30:18)

Yeah, maybe ⁓ indoctrinated is a tough word. I think it actually is a a probably a like a correct word. ⁓ Because the way that the human mind works and I know I talked to a lot of union psychologists on here. And they they we always kind of go down this rabbit hole. But the way that mainstream psychology thinks is that

religion and psychology are two completely separate things. But the way that I see it actually is that religion is almost the way that our psychology functions. so, ⁓ not necessarily that every group we join has to be a religion, but we almost, if we get indoctrinated the way that you’re saying,

or maybe we get acclimated to it or we get, you know, it’s like the Borg and we get assimilated into it, then the group that we kind of find our place in becomes like a religion to us. I think there’s a reason that every group, family, sports team, job, company, everything uses the word culture. And because everywhere you go in any little group, you’re going to start to form a type of culture.

and the word cult and culture, they come from the same place. And I think that that’s how human psychology works, is that we’re supposed to form into these little groups that have these cohesive thoughts. Because, you know, being a social species and being able to work together and function together is our superpower when it comes to the other species on the planet. It’s this kind of unfortunate ⁓

Nick Taber (32:04)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (32:08)

It’s got its light side and its dark side, where you can, like you’re saying, we shouldn’t throw out every institution, but every institution that’s not self-aware enough will eventually become coercive, become kind of damaging.

Nick Taber (32:09)

Yeah.

Yeah.

It’ll become damaging and it will produce poor results. It’ll be suboptimal in all kinds of different ways. Yeah, there’s the two sides to it. mean, like what you’re saying, this tendency that we have of developing cultures, forming those bonds, I mean, that’s… ⁓

that’s important and that’s good. But then you also need that ability to question what’s going on, that ability to challenge things. Things need to be able to evolve. ⁓ And yeah, think that’s like when it comes to a lot of the issues that I have thought about and have dealt with in my own life, that’s really where the problem comes from is that that’s out of balance, right? It moves too much toward

These cultures become restrictive. They ⁓ get kind of inbred. ⁓ The core logic driving them goes too far. It’s not checked. ⁓ Power imbalances become too extreme. ⁓

Yeah, and there’s a marginalization of that other force that you need, which is to question things and all of that. so, ⁓ yeah, I mean, I think this has a lot to do with the logic behind things like democracy and free and consensual societies. mean, there are great advantages in ⁓ cultures that allow for that other force.

Josh Mortensen (34:01)

Yeah, and honestly, the more that I pay attention, the more I see that the person in the group who tries to call these things out to try to point out the imbalance to try to point out the, you know, the power dynamics who tries to point out that ⁓ maybe that some of the behavior is not appropriate or not fair. That person usually gets ostracized by the group, they get attacked, they get cast out, they become like a

you know, an apostate or something like this. And I’ve experienced it, ⁓ really the only place that I’ve really experienced it is probably with my family, trying to like point out to my family, hey, there’s some problems here. And then you become kind of the problem child. Everybody kind of turns on you because they don’t, you know, again, facing truth is not an easy thing. It’s a painful thing. And so most…

Nick Taber (34:41)

Hmm.

Yeah.

the other place I’ve seen it is in, we should be somebody who sees a lot of visual impact in schools. there’s a lot of people who are teachers who are just working.

Josh Mortensen (34:58)

most people don’t want to be called out for what they’re doing. But the other place I’ve seen it is in, ⁓ just recently, you see a lot of people attacking homeschoolers. And there’s a lot of people who are teachers or who support the education

system or whatever. And rather than address like their own problems within that system, they will somehow find a way to demonize homeschoolers as if homeschoolers, as if people checking out of your system is the problem rather than.

the system having problems being the reason people are checking out.

Nick Taber (35:32)

Yeah, definitely. You see the same thing in the mental health system. ⁓ You see this a lot on Twitter, people that defending the mental health system, taking so much time out of their lives to ⁓ criticize what they call anti-psychiatry, which are people that criticize the mental health system. And it’s the same thing. It’s like, you could be looking at what’s actually driving that, and you could be digging into that. And occasionally, there are people that are really

trying to find the truth and not just being on these different sides. yeah, I ⁓ know what you’re saying about the people who do kind of seek more of the truth in these environments and try to point out what’s going wrong. They are often scapegoated. They become the problem.

⁓ And I think this has a lot to do with, again, like self-awareness, right? It’s ⁓ if you’re really interested in growing as a person, ⁓ then when people point things out to you that maybe you need to look at it yourselves, that you need to look at in the environments that you’re leading, then yeah, that’s not gonna be comfortable. That’s gonna be painful, but it’s ultimately good for you.

and it will help you grow, right? Because it’s like, okay, what is this bringing up inside of me? How can I fully integrate that? And then how can I see what is true here in a way that, ⁓ in a way where like I’m empowered, you know, I’m not just deferring to them, but I’m taking it seriously. And so…

If you can do that, think that’s kind of the sweet spot that maybe would allow these environments, like a family, for example, to really grow and evolve and not turn into a dysfunctional toxic family system, is people are able to pause and look at these things and evolve, I would say. So.

Yeah. And then the other thought that comes to mind for me is, I mean, both can go too far, right? So it’s like on the one hand, yeah, you can get these systems that get really inbred and really authoritarian and really controlling. But then on the other side of things, you can move too much into that kind of questioning and throwing things out and ⁓ trying to tear down systems. Maybe you see this with, I don’t know, maybe some of the…

like communist revolutions in the 20th century were examples of this, know, trying to kind of, ⁓ you know, get rid of all of these things that were perceived as like threats to the revolution. ⁓ And so I don’t know, ⁓ you know, ⁓ maybe it’s just about ⁓ having the right balance of that or something.

Josh Mortensen (38:27)

That’s an interesting point. If you think about it on a large scale like that with the communist movements, ⁓ say in in Russia or in China, what’s really fascinating about it, and it’s kind of scary to because these things could repeat themselves even here in the United States, but there’s there usually is somebody calling out the need for change. And then they get a bunch of people riled up with them and then they go force that change.

Nick Taber (38:30)

If you think about it.

Josh Mortensen (38:54)

But in the case of China and Russia, once that change had occurred and some new leader had usurped power, they then turn around and they’re now in charge and what they don’t need now that they’re in charge is revolutionaries. And so the people in both those societies who led like the kind of the average person who was on the streets and like kind of pushing this change and they were the soldiers in that army, they were the first people to be

Nick Taber (39:05)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (39:24)

sent off to the farms and the prisons and they were the first people to get rid of because when you have when you have too drastic of a change too fast and somebody else who’s you know some kind of nefarious actor takes power the last thing that they’re going to want is people who have a revolutionary bent and that’s like that’s probably like the darkest side of it.

Nick Taber (39:44)

Yeah.

Definitely. Definitely. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (39:49)

Yeah.

When you’re, so I do see you a lot on Twitter, like just talking back and forth with people. I actually, I would commend the way that you do it because you never do seem to be, you never seem to get emotional. You’re never being like angry. I see you disagree with people, but then also say, I could see where you’re coming from, but there’s a little bit of nuance here. And so I think you do it in a great way. But when you’re, yeah, when you’re, there are these people who,

Nick Taber (40:09)

Thank you.

Josh Mortensen (40:18)

you point out something that may be a flaw, and then they immediately just attack

you ⁓ or come back at you, what would you say is like the biggest, I guess the most common way that people want to defend the medical health industry? Do you have an idea about that?

Nick Taber (40:32)

⁓

When it comes to the mental health system, I think it’s usually, what I’ve seen is it’s usually just about like, well, you know, people really need this. I think that’s really what it’s about. And you see that in different…

like when it comes to different aspects, you know, and, ⁓ and that’s why I’m always like, well, I’m not necessarily disputing that. I’m just talking if like, my point is like, well, if what you’re saying is true, let’s just take it at face value, then I’m talking about this dynamic over here. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be one or the other. We don’t have evidence to say that it’s all one thing or the other. So, but we do have enough evidence to say that like these phenomena are real.

We don’t know the scale of them, but we know that they’re real. ⁓ so, yeah, but it usually comes from a very reactive place. It usually comes from like, the other people are not actually taking these points seriously. That’s how it comes off to me. It’s usually more just like, well, like people need this, know, who are you to attack the system, that kind of thing. And I don’t know.

It doesn’t seem all that productive.

Josh Mortensen (42:01)

It seems very much

like trying to address some problems in a family or, you know, in a, if you’re on a sports team and there’s some, obviously some bad things, like some bad dynamics going on, trying to address them. then the, guess what it is, is, ⁓ you would love for everybody to be able to stay within like a bound of some kind of rational nuance conversation about something. But a lot of the times they just come with these.

Nick Taber (42:07)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (42:30)

know, defense mechanisms. And so they’re going to blame, they’re going to get defensive, that, you know, they’re going to gaslight or accuse and none of it’s actually like you’re saying is actually that beneficial. I would say from, it would be interesting to get into some like specific items or like specific points of, because I think we’ve touched on the broad kind of, you know, the, it’s a system and there’s

Nick Taber (42:34)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (42:58)

inherent flaws with it, but when you really dig down into it, are there like one or two or three more kind of very specific issues that you see kind of these, I don’t know, these things that play out in the mental health industry that you could point to specifically?

Nick Taber (43:14)

Well, I think the core of it is the fact that people are experiencing ⁓ real problems in their life that often have to do with a lot of what we’re talking about. They’re in these systems that are dysfunctional, have problems and are dealing with it, don’t want to deal with it, feel threatened by somebody who’s pointing them out. And then the mental health system is saying that maybe they have like a biological problem, like in psychiatry or

or

in the psychology field, they have these individual psychopathology. ⁓ Rather than, no, you’re in a situation where you’re suffering ⁓ in some way that has to do with, I don’t know if you’re around people that are unkind and very unconscious or something like that, you’re in the school. I mean, these are the issues that more related to my own life. You’re in the school system that…

really is suboptimal and is really authoritarian and also painful or people experiencing poverty or they experience sexual abuse or they experience racial oppression and marginalization, all kinds of different issues that are causing real problems for them. So I think that’s kind of the core issue. ⁓

I don’t know if this is 100 % of what’s going on in the mental health field. I don’t know if it’s 90%, but it’s a significant problem. And a lot of people point it out. one of the big issues is that awareness of that gets undermined, right? So there’s like a, you could say like a certain like epistemic injustice that happens where people that experience these things lose touch with awareness of that.

And then they start to believe, right? They get, I don’t know, indoctrinated, I’m not sure the right word there. They get led to believe that the ways that these mental health professionals are characterizing the situation are true. And then there are deeper philosophical issues there as well. So yeah, there’s a lot of threads there, but so I don’t monologue.

Josh Mortensen (45:31)

Yeah,

no, that’s okay. So I agree with all that. I think that I fundamentally believe that we are, whether it’s the way our psychology is constituted, or whether there’s some kind of thing beyond that, thing beyond us, I think that we are inherently spiritual creatures.

and what often happens is exactly what you’re describing where somebody is in an environment that is stifling or that is, it could be outright abusive, it could be overtly abusive, it could be covertly abusive, it could be just negligent, even when it comes to, know, say a child and their emotions, just growing up in a world where your emotions are treated as if they’re problems rather than

Nick Taber (46:27)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (46:28)

just

normal aspects of being a human being. So then you end up with this kid who has these problems. ⁓ And the problems are really just we’re talking about behaviors, right? So they’re behaviors that this person ends up displaying that that environment doesn’t like. And so then they have to be corrected in some way. And if you go into a, like you were saying, you go into a psychiatrist and you get a prescription for some pills,

that’s treating the entire problem as if there’s something biologically amiss in the child or the patient. And if you go into a psychologist and they want you to do all these ⁓ things to kind of work on yourself in a way where they’re not actually getting to the crux of the problem, they’re not actually inviting you to heal. In a sense, they’re just trying to get you to adapt.

or acclimate or just stop resisting the indoctrination. And it’s interesting because I think about all these things in a sense, like if you were to think about them on a spiritual level, these feelings that people come up against, these behaviors that they manifest because of their environment, these are all signals to the environment that the environment has something wrong with it. And in a way, that’s kind of like the hero’s

Nick Taber (47:27)

Yeah.

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (47:56)

myth, the hero’s

journey is to, you have to approach something that the rest of the community or the collective is too afraid to approach. And so maybe this circles all the way back around to you and I talking about how people who actually do it, who actually step outside of it and are willing to look back at it and kind of get outside of it, get above it and look down. Oftentimes it becomes because somebody has suffered from something so severely or so

Nick Taber (48:07)

Hmm

Okay.

Josh Mortensen (48:25)

you know, painfully that they don’t want to,

it’s more pain, it’s like more burdensome. It’s more difficult to just go along with it rather than to just face the thing.

Nick Taber (48:42)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (48:42)

And it just seems like a lot of

the mental health industry isn’t helping people actually do that.

Nick Taber (48:49)

Well, yeah, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, like in so many ways. I think that the mental health industry, at least much of the time, is about adjustment. It’s about getting you to adjust. And they have different ways of doing that, especially when you look at kids, but not only with kids. It’s medication, right? Medication that…

disconnects you from your emotions oftentimes, it numbs your emotions, right? It makes you like just, ⁓ yeah, the things that are pressing on you in that setting don’t feel so pressing anymore, so you adjust, right? And therapy does that in a lot of their own ways, or it can do a lot of that in their own ways. And behavior modification of kids, right? That’s another huge.

piece of the mental health industry that doesn’t get talked about enough, this massive behavior modification industry. ⁓ think social emotional learning in schools, is also part of the broader mental health field, also essentially is a part of this. So so many different things where it’s really about adjustment. They’re not asking big questions about the environment. And there’s this new way now that I think we’re sort of

I think we’re basically gaslit. know that word’s kind of overused, but it seems like that’s what it is where they say like, no, you we use a biopsychosocial model. We’re trained to look at the environment. We examine all the social environmental factors. It’s like, no, you don’t, you know? Then you wouldn’t just be giving these kids medications so that they don’t feel their emotions in a painful family anymore or in the school system. Like you would be operating differently if you actually

did that and took that seriously. So yeah, and this other thing you mentioned of treating emotions as problems, think that’s exactly what happens for a lot of us. That was totally my experience as a kid, which is kind what I was getting at earlier. So yeah, a lot of threads there, but.

Josh Mortensen (50:59)

Well, yeah, just touching on that one, the treating emotions like a problem. yeah, ⁓ so for like, I could just describe the dynamics of my household growing up. And the way it is, is that there’s one person ⁓ at the center of this kind of like emotional solar system, and everybody else orbits that one person. And so anytime, anytime, ⁓

you know, say I have an emotion, say I’m angry and I’m expressing anger. The thing about having parents who can’t handle their own emotions is that when a child expresses emotion, suddenly the parent gets emotional. And so this, you know, if me as a child, if I’m having, if I’m feeling anger, all of a sudden, you know, my parent would be angry at me for having anger. And so

Nick Taber (51:51)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (51:53)

the response then is so, it’s really

interesting, because at this point in my life, I don’t look back on it with any kind of like, I don’t have any kind of bitterness about it, I don’t have any anger, I think I’ve analyzed it enough where can see what’s actually happening. But if you think about, you if you were to watch any documentary about chimpanzees, and you see this happening where there’s like a younger chimpanzee who’s acting up, the other chimpanzee just rushes in and like forces them to stop. And,

Nick Taber (52:16)

other kids can’t use the brush and they will be forced to stop.

And as humans, we have that same great play, the kind of those archaic response that we have. But at the same time, we also have this ability to especially if we’re both in it.

Josh Mortensen (52:22)

As humans, we have that same trait. like this archaic response mechanism. But at the same time, we also have this ability, especially as the adult in the situation,

to look at the child and say, ⁓ they’re having an emotion. Let me help them manage that emotion. And that creates a much more ⁓ healthy kind of harmonious in the long term.

kind of environment, it also builds relationships and it builds bonds. And a lot of the way that these kind of institutions that we’re talking about, where they have this perceived proper way of interacting or behaving, when you step outside of that, then you’re just immediately kind of punished for that behavior. And what it does is it fractures all the relationships. And so even

Yeah, even whether you’re a kid or an adult going to therapy, if the therapist is not helping you kind of solve that issue, then you’re just kind of perpetuating this way of being where you’re isolated and you’re kind of like on an island and just foments a lot of continued mental health issues or emotional issues.

Nick Taber (53:42)

Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting, like the nature of that problem, because, you know, it’s like ⁓ when you’re in a family system, and it’s like you’re saying, right, it’s one person is like the center of gravity, you know, the center of that solar system. When you do eventually start to kind of go on the path that we’ve been talking about, right, of like getting centered in your own body,

you know, integrating your emotions, all of these kinds of things, like you are no longer participating in that solar system. so there’s something very subversive about that. ⁓ And there is something very subversive about, about like really doing inner work and not just doing what a lot of therapists are encouraging, right? And just going down that path, but really like,

like no longer participating in that solar system and finding your own kind of center of gravity within yourself. then hopefully finding relationships where you’re met at that similar level of wholeness. ⁓ So that’s something that’s very subversive and tricky. And I found that, you know, I found a couple therapists who are truly able to help me with that. ⁓ And, you know, I…

valued the small contribution that they made to my life. But most therapists I found just kind of undermined that process ⁓ because they probably haven’t done that themselves and they don’t think about it like that and they weren’t trained to really think about it in, I think, the way that we’ve been talking about.

Josh Mortensen (55:29)

Yeah, that’s actually a really interesting point too. And I’ve talked about, I’ve talked about this with a lot of people I’ve read about it. And ⁓ I talk about it with friends even and my brother about how if, if you’re going to go to, you know, quote unquote, an expert who’s going to help you with something, ⁓ they’re not, there’s nobody out there who can take you farther down your journey than they’ve been themselves. And so that’s like a big challenge, whether it’s in the

Nick Taber (55:48)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (55:59)

like the professional medical, like mental health therapist space, whether it’s a psychologist or whatever, or even in kind of the guru self-help coaching space, it’s gonna be the exact same problem where if you want to get to a certain point in your development, the guide who’s taking you there is only gonna be able to go as far as they’ve gone.

⁓ And then also the of the scary thing about that as well is that once you reach that point and they’re not willing to… So I think that it probably happens on two levels. There’s probably an unconscious level where the therapist themselves or the guide themselves is unconscious of what’s happening. And when they get to that point, they will start resisting, which is going to slow down the patient and maybe even like turn the patient around. But then there’s also the even

Nick Taber (56:26)

Yeah. And then also the kind of the scaling and the fact that once you reach that point, you’re not doing it. So I think that we probably have a couple of things that we need to How do you unconsciously come up with a narrative for the guy who’s

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (56:54)

kind of the scarier thought which is positions of authority or power or the place where you have the ability to control other people ⁓ because of your your job

or your title or your you know your credentials these kind of things also attract people who are conscious of wanting to do that and ⁓ so I would again there’s like there’s nuance in here where some therapists are

are only gonna be able to take you as far as they’ve been, and they’re gonna be unconscious of the fact that they don’t have the ability to keep taking you, and so they’re gonna unconsciously stop you. But then there are gonna be other people who kind of, you these are like the sociopaths and the narcissists who actually enjoy controlling you and kind of spinning your own problems around so that they now have some power or something. That’s gross.

Nick Taber (57:29)

Yeah.

Yeah

Yeah, it’s scary. there are like structural realities about the mental health field that ⁓ I think are really like not well understood or discussed within the field. I think they’re like researchers and philosophers of science that understand them, but there’s a lot of denial around those things and they lead to the kind of problems that you’re talking about. like when, so just…

kind of moving back here on this issue you were talking about of ⁓ like a therapist or a professional can’t, I forget how you put it, but like they can’t help you to go to a place where they haven’t gone to themselves. And the scary thing about that is that ⁓ a lot of times people are going to therapy because they are, they,

They’re not just like, I want to ⁓ grow, I want to heal, I want to do my deeper work. Often it’s because they have problems that are really opened up in their life, right? They’re really suffering. They’re feeling ⁓ very strong and difficult emotions. And so I think that that is often the place from which people get pathologized because the mental health professionals who haven’t really…

gone into their own pain, broken their own dissociation open, really done a lot of their own shadow work, that kind of thing. They then will pathologize the people who are forced to go down that path, right? It’s like we were talking about earlier, who are the people that go down this path, right? Some people end up really doing these things because they’re really suffering and then they’re the ones that…

end up seeking this greater awareness about life and about themselves. And then a lot of people don’t and a lot of mental health professionals fit into the people that don’t category and they haven’t done that or they’ve done it just a little bit. And then they think they’re farther along than they really are. And so that’s a really scary, that’s a really scary thing. And, but, but then it gets to this larger issue of, which is something I’ve, I’ve been talking about for a long time, which is that,

In the mental health field, you have this really odd situation of you have a lot of expert authority, which comes from basically the state, right? The government backs that profession and there’s certain requirements they have to meet, but you don’t have strong technical and scientific foundations for it. So it’s like you have very, very weak epistemology, but you have all this expert authority. And that is a really strange and really weird and really scary

⁓ arrangement and it’s very different from you know medicine from a lot of these fields that are very technical you know we can criticize all these fields but they’re very technical they have strong scientific foundations and then they have the expert authority but in the mental health field you don’t and so you get the situation where it’s it becomes untethered to reality and they can just endlessly evade accountability basically and I think

often it’s that arrangement that it would make sense that you have some really unsavory people that are attracted to that.

Josh Mortensen (1:01:16)

Yeah, absolutely. I consider it like the modern version of priestcraft. like the, yeah, the church who has all authority and so you have to go to them for whatever your treatment is, or your, you know, your guide, the guidance that you’re seeking, you have to go to them. But in reality, it’s just like smoke and mirrors sometimes. And it’s, ⁓ yeah, it’s this group of people who are supposed to be the experts.

Nick Taber (1:01:20)

Yes, exactly.

But in reality, it’s like smoke in the air sometimes. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (1:01:41)

and who have overseen this huge increase in the problem rather than a correction of the problem. It’s pretty indicative of religion in a lot of ways.

Nick Taber (1:01:50)

Yeah.

I think, yeah, I think that’s exactly what it is. ⁓ And so you get situations where, for example, the whole youth mental health treatment industry is like, a lot of people talked about this, the trouble teen industry, it’s pretty horrifying. And so a lot of what happens is these kids are basically psychologically abused at these programs. That’s just…

it seems like kind of the dominant pattern there. That was certainly what I saw and experienced. And so then, you know, these kids develop like PTSD, but then they get brainwashed by the, or they get, you know, gaslit or whatever by the mental health professional into thinking that that is some inherent biological defect in them. remember my therapist there said that I had wonky body chemistry. It’s like, no.

I’m experiencing psychological abuse at your horrifying concentration camp program. And so that’s, again, this problem of you have this field with very weak epistemology, but all of this expert authority. So yeah, it’s just like what you’re saying, ⁓ and it becomes really scary.

Josh Mortensen (1:03:09)

Yeah, so if there’s somebody out there who is kind of seeking help for themselves or if they’re seeking help for somebody that they know, I guess what kind of advice would you give to them in how they go about finding the right person to help them?

Nick Taber (1:03:26)

That’s a really hard question. I don’t know that I have a good answer. ⁓

I think that, I think the first thing is just to realize that it might be a really hard process, you you might not find anybody or you might not find anybody right away. And ⁓ yeah, I don’t know that it’s necessarily easy for us to find the help that we need, which is exactly why you have these people who, you know, and they’re featured prominently in that whole critical mental health space. That’s why you have these people who are like,

like, you know, they’ve been in and out of the mental health system for decades and it’s just a nothing but ruined their life. That’s how you get problems like that. just think, you know, it’s, don’t know that we can reliably find the help that we need. ⁓ I think maybe what I found in my own life is just to kind of take one step at a time, be very careful, see what works, ⁓ be especially careful.

where there’s a big power imbalance and the biggest power imbalances are with the regulated mental health field, right? If you, know, and really just like try to kind of empower yourself on that process. So that’s kind of, that’s sort of what comes to mind for me, but I would say there are people that successfully navigate that journey and heal. So it’s not easy.

But I don’t know, mean, maybe the hero’s journey is a better analogy for it. Maybe it’s not a matter of, I’m sick and I need help. Maybe it’s like, no, you’re on a hero’s journey. That’s gonna be difficult and where outcomes are not, there are no certain outcomes.

Josh Mortensen (1:05:18)

That’s the way that I would probably look at it myself is that ⁓ whatever these difficult things that are coming up in your life, emotions, depression, know, challenges with relationships, whatever it may be, the probably the best way to approach that is to look at that as an invitation to go on your quest, to go on your journey. It’s like you’re at the threshold of something and your psyche wants you to take that step and like you’re saying, take one step at a time and

be patient with it. It is interesting because once you get on the journey and you find a little bit of healing like you’ve experienced, what I’ve experienced, at some point you do realize that it’s not like it’s ever going to end. Meaning like this a lot of the suffering can end but the process of self-development is a lifelong experience and it’s worth doing because it does make life so much better. And ⁓ yeah I would encourage people to step over that threshold and go on that quest or that journey.

Nick Taber (1:05:57)

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (1:06:15)

⁓ Nick, yeah, go ahead if you had something else to say.

Nick Taber (1:06:16)

Yeah, exactly.

I maybe had one quick thought, which is like, I think the really toxic part of that journey can end, right? Like the really toxic layer of pain and suffering and all that. I think that can end ⁓ for sure. That’s been my experience. It sounds like your experience. I’ve known a lot of people like that, but yeah, the broader journey, you know, I don’t know, it takes a thousand lifetimes maybe.

Josh Mortensen (1:06:44)

Yeah, luckily there are a lot of books out there and if you read enough, you can live a thousand lifetimes. So, yeah, it’s really helpful. That’s actually one of the big things for me that’s been helpful is reading, ⁓ bibliotherapy, it’s huge for me. And because it gets you both fiction and nonfiction, you get to experience like knowing that other people have been through similar things and there’s like a path forward. yeah. Yeah, but Nick, I really appreciate you taking the time to visit with me again. This has been.

Nick Taber (1:06:49)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (1:07:13)

really cool. I think we’ve covered a lot of interesting things and ⁓ I think you’re doing good work. I think you’re doing the Lord’s work out there like really helping people out. So if somebody wants to find you and ⁓ your writings, your videos, where would they go looking for you?

Nick Taber (1:07:17)

You

So you can go to ⁓ my personal website, Imaginal-cell.com. ⁓ Yeah, maybe we can put a link in the description, would be great. Also, my YouTube channel, ⁓ you can find under my name, Nick Taber, also Twitter.

Josh Mortensen (1:07:45)

Okay, awesome. Yeah, I’ll for sure put a link in there and then you also do coaching as well, is that right?

Nick Taber (1:07:50)

⁓ Yes, I’m starting to do that a bit, Yeah, helping people around these issues and things like that.

Josh Mortensen (1:07:54)

OK, awesome. Well, thank you again.

Yeah, for sure. And I think it would be ⁓ wiser. I think it’d be very beneficial to speak with somebody like Nick. So thanks again, man. I really appreciate it and ⁓ hope we can talk again sometime.

Nick Taber (1:08:06)

Thank you.

Thank you, Josh, really grateful for the opportunity.

Josh Mortensen (1:08:13)

Yeah, absolutely. Bye.