E.32 A Conversation with Pat Rice About Therapy, Spirituality, and Sobriety

In this episode, I speak to Pat Rice, psychotherapist, about a wide variety of subjects. We explore spirituality, sobriety, therapy, science, and many stories from his work in the past 35 years, including a few touching stories of his mentors in this work. We also discuss how his therapeutic approach has evolved due to life experiences. Pat has a wealth of knowledge and is an amazing story teller and is so open about his life. Pat also had a near death experience which brought him to the work he is currently doing.

You can follow Pat on Instagram at this link.

You can follow Pat on Facebook at this link.

Transcript

Steve Bisson: 0:01

Hi and welcome to finding your way through therapy. I am your host, Steve Bisson. I'm an author and mental health counselor. Are you curious about therapy? Do you feel there is a lot of mystery about there? Do you wonder what your therapist is doing and why? The goal of this podcast is to make therapy and psychology accessible to all by using real language and straight to the point discussions. This podcast wants to remind you to take care of your mental health, just like you would your physical health. therapy should not be intimidating. It should be a great way to better help. I will demystify what happens in counseling, discuss topics related to mental health and discussions you can have what your thoughts I also want to introduce psychology in everyday life. As I feel most of our lives are enmeshed in psychology. I want to introduce the subtle and not so subtle ways psychology plays a factor in our lives. It will be my own mix of thoughts as well as special guests. So join me on this discovery of therapy and psychology. Hi, and welcome to episode 32 of finding your way through therapy. My name is Steve v. So I hope that you got a chance to listen to episode 31. With Robin L. Garrett. It was a great conversation in regards to values leadership, mental health, her book, her tech talks, and and so many other things. So take time to go and listen to episode 31. It's really worth your while if you haven't done so already. But episode 32 will be with Pat rice. Pat rice is someone I've known in the area my mentor talks about him highly. He also is someone that I've really admired and enjoy talking to for many years. Pat Rice is 73 years old. He is clean and sober for 35 years and has been practicing psychotherapy for over 31 years. He works with dual diagnosis and does a lot of mental health treatment. But we're going to talk a lot about spirituality hopefully, because that is the goal and how his near death experience has played a factor in his treatment. And I'm a big fan of Buddhism. I hope we get to talk about that. And I will let you listen to the episode. Hi, and welcome to episode 32 of finding your way through therapy. I am Steve Bisson so I gotta tell you today I am honored and touched by the presence of someone I've known for a long time a history. And the one who you've heard me say on this podcast several times. He's the one I refer to when I say there's only three original ideas in the world. He's the one who told me that and I always remember that. So Pat Rice, welcome to the show.

Patrick Rice: 2:30

Thanks. It's an honor to be here.

Steve Bisson: 2:33

Pat. You know, it's funny, because we've known each other for a while I think it was one of the first this is our first time really sitting one on one with each other I think since I've known you and I've known you for like many years.

Patrick Rice: 2:43

Yeah, formally other than, you know, idle, or consultations and things like that really shared ideas and helped each other. But yeah, so first time, as I said a little earlier, probably the first of many,

Steve Bisson: 2:56

well, I'm hoping is going to be the first of many, because I've known you for a while my what who I consider my mentor is gentleman who talks highly of you. And to this day, now that we've been together for 20 years or so he says I'm not your mentor, we're colleagues and like you're still my mentor. So I'm sure you understand that because we're gonna talk about a little spirituality today. And I think that mentorship has to do it spirituality also and kind of like bringing that in. But before we go down that path, so to speak, maybe you can tell me more about yourself path because I know who you are. But maybe other people don't.

Patrick Rice: 3:28

Well, we know each other. By fact, we're both psychotherapists, and we've been at it a long time. And we were trained by the same guy. Actually, as students and the connections go back for the audience, Steve and I are a part of a Google peer supervision group that has literally been going on for 30 years. And obviously, the cast is shifted with time and people come in when they need it, and exit when they don't require it anymore to keep themselves grounded, but in and of itself has been one of the great grounding agents from my practice. And it's been really important as though is I'll get into it as we go farther. There's now my practice has shifted. But we're a little bit of background on me is that I've been a psychotherapist for 30 some odd years I've been clean and sober, which is what started this journey almost 36 years. I'm 70, almost 74 years old. And I don't see any reason to stop now until the vehicle slows me down. Or as I say a patient says for the second time, you know, you fell asleep again. So but I was I had many jobs and we'll talk about this much but when I got out of school I intended to do this originally. And I get distracted by other work pursuits and self employment as a professional photographer self employed on some of the creative stuff and I did a whole bunch of careers for two years eats until I got bored with it. And then addictions so chemical addictions kind of To the and when I finally needed to deal with those. I chose after some healing, to return to my roots and 20 years after I began, I finished a master's degree, literally 20 years to almost a day, that's really eerie, because it was an August graduation. And as it turned out, what started this journey for me and which I will get into as we go forward and what has shaped my non traditional now, career and focus. But what started this was that I you hear people sometimes in recovery and say I got here the day before I die. I got here, the day after I died, basically was in a two day coma, and gone and I went to I went to another place and the place from which we come and I'll talk more about that. But I had a near death experience of which I was not aware of initially, until I was in treatment. And someone sitting next to me a 17 year old boy, I was 36 just turned 38 a 17 year old young man spoke about this experience. And as he was speaking, I knew exactly what he was going to say next. And so that is certainly shaped my my motivation, shift my focus. And as I have evolved in my own work, to my own healing, and then my own evolution, and the shamanistic work that I have been doing, and really, it's mostly my, what I do now, and more and more people are were led to me. As I've said many times, probably to every student that I've had, I've had grad students the privilege of grad students for about about 20 some odd years, is that seal, if you build it, they will come and people I have never looked for a job and this new incarnation, I have never looked for a job. I've never looked for patients they find and the people I'm supposed to help find, and the ones that are help able to be helped find me. And that's the nature of it. And I would preface I told Steve, you should warn people that this is not a traditional psychodynamic, psychotherapy, kind of dissertation or discourse. I'm the wound guy. And when I worked in a hospital based system, if someone in this actually happened once a woman called up the switchboard and said, I need to talk to someone in psychiatry and the said about why why neither psychic or psychotic and they go pet rates, you need to talk the truth. And she was not she was not psychotic. She was definitely psychic, which is an interesting story I could share at some point.

Steve Bisson: 7:39

But maybe that's why I would like to go pad because told us about I want to get to the near death experience, obviously, and that's not going to change. But you became a psychotherapist and you you don't just get up one day and say, Oh, I'm a psychotherapist, number one. And number two, you don't go from psychotherapist to the evolution that you've become without having a few steps on the way. And I know a little bit about your work in the hospital and all that. But I'd like to hear more about that.

Patrick Rice: 8:07

Okay, well, I'll explain where the seed was planted. The second time around when I was in the last stages mess. And maybe the last few weeks. It was winter. And I'm strolling, I was living in Yarmouth, Maine, a beautiful coastal town in which I lived for quite some time. And I was wandering on a snowy night, like Ebenezer Scrooge and down looking in Windows and people having normal lives. And I stood outside of one window, which was a business it was a psychotherapy practice of an LIC, SW, and Kneisel. And I just felt myself being in that. And so a short time later on, I overdosed and then went into treatment. And I came out of that and I came back to Massachusetts to get help because that's where the family halfway house was. The people that were solver and resources, there were no resources in Maine people had very little. And so I was fortunate and, and when I finally I had always intended to go back to Maine and have have a practice in that office. Honest to goodness, but one thing leads to another and you get people putting your path and a mentor, put my path and extraordinary man, a theologian, a chaplain, someone that became a recovered mentor and a life mentor and probably the smartest man I ever knew. And Steve would probably agree that when I don't know what to do next, I channel him. Instead I just become him. You know? You can become dentists. We all can become dentists. I can do dentists. I won't. But yeah, it was, but we were gifted to be to be trained by people who by giving us their, their expertise and their nuggets. They help keep in mind Moving on, you know, it's the only thing we owe someone that gives freely to us is to pass it on. That's kind of what life is really all about. So, at about the time, I was shifting away from a more traditional psychotherapy practice, I was involved in a shamanistic teacher, who I still have today now lives out west. And thank goodness for zoom. But there was she was helping me to see what the guides were telling me. I'll get into the guides, at some point here, but they were telling me that I needed to be more authentic, that was the word and not get so much in my head and start to do psychotherapy, start to do counseling, start to do this mentoring from the heart. And as we learn now, I have a friend that I work for her she was the Director of Behavioral Health. On one it's been in our, our peer group, Mary. And she actually is, I think she has a PhD in the consciousness of heart that she studied that what she studied and, you know, we know that the heart has its own when people get heart transplants and a student of mine died and to see young woman that ran the marathon and died to pipe into training. Four days after getting a health psychology doctorate, but her heart was in put into a young 15 year old. And when I met this girl, two years later, I said, you know, you have an amazing heart? And she said yes and no. I said, Are you different now? She said, Oh, yes, I am. And when people get an organ, especially at heart, they take on a lot of the personality and the spirit. That was the person that gave them the heart. I mean, God having a heart transplant, that's a spiritual experience, if anything is But absolutely, it was. Yeah, it's that's one of those magic moments when she allowed Cynthia Scintilla Cetera was the girl that died when she let her mother hear her daughter's heart.

Steve Bisson: 12:01

Wow, that must have been a very powerful moment

Patrick Rice: 12:03

It was this was that a fundraising thing? A run, obviously, and about three or 400 people in the room and there was not a dry eye, that it was really very powerful. But this is about the time I was awakening to this and being basically I wouldn't say boarded. That's not how it works, guy that to be more authentic with what I knew, and stop getting with my head, but started leading with my heart. And that's when all of what I realized I had known and most of what I I admire now, I began to mine what I had learned in the near death experience. And I'll speak to that interesting when that woman came into my office that used to have a role in the hospital. I did I train people in Psych triage and in the emergency room. But I did, I had a couple of slots for people who didn't qualify didn't need to be medically cleared didn't need an emergency room. And so every week, someone could just assign these slots. And she showed up on a Tuesday afternoon at 130. This and I said How may I help you? Well, as I told the person on the phone, I made the psychic. My husband thinks I'm psychic. I think I'm psychotic. And in five minutes, I knew she wasn't psychotic. And then she was talking about her mother that everybody called a witch and she just I just know stuff. My whole life is 42 years old, she my whole life. I've just known stuff about people. I don't want to know this stuff about people. It's really annoying. And she says, I think now there's something that is telling me is that it's time to kind of discover this. And she was there. And so what she needed, she was leaving the next day. And two days later, she was moving to the Connecticut area. And she said I need someone that can help me with this. I had the student the live in Connecticut former student and that hooked her up. I said, Come back tomorrow. And I'll have some work for you. And we'll just follow up on this interview. I want to see someone two times before I make a determination that they aren't in some kind of state of internal disarray. So but before she left, she said, Is there any reason there should be a cross floating above your head? I'm thinking Hmm, what I go. I don't think of it. No, she said, that's really okay. Yeah. Anyway, and she kind of went, you know, dissociative on the a bit. And then she left the next day she showed up. I have a therapist named for her. It was a short appointment, which was exactly the same. And she said, Thank you. You've been very helpful. And is there any reason this should be a priest standing next to you? And I looked next to me, I had to look on there and she said, yeah, do you know what I said? Well, my mentor had was gravely ill he was in St. Patrick's manner at the time. He was a Dominican. He was a chaplain who was the field logic in the psychologist. He had more degrees than Gosh, he was amazing. But I said, I mentioned his name and they fleck reflect. And she said, that's him. They stay there next year. I said, Is he gone? She said, No, most of them is on the other side. But he's still there. And he needs you to come see me. And so I said, I can go tomorrow, the next day, and she said, Good. Jen, she left. She said, thank you. And she said, and you go see him. I don't want him bugging me anymore. True story. And the next day I go to St. Patrick's Manor, I hadn't been in quite some time, I had been remiss, it was painful for me to see dick. So Right. So ill. And he had had another series of strokes, he recovered from a bunch of strokes, and oh, God, we he recovered wonderfully. And then you get us 10 years later to get a second that really debilitated him. And so I went in and peppers behind the desk, who I knew said ah, to do, he said, Finally, they're the last one on the list. And everyone else to the wanted to see us come to see him. I said, Okay, so I knew my way I come around, he was asleep. He looked great, really. It was sleeping familiar. I thought it looked like he was basically laid out in the bed, and I knocked on the door, he woke up, and this is what he said. He said, Ah, Patrick, Patrick Patrick. He said, I have been sending a Holy Spirit for days to bring you to me. And that's where it begins. So I pull up a chair. So if that's the case of I got a story for you, I can tell you 100 stories like that. And that's how this kind of original I was, originally, I was studying to be a nuclear physicist. No kidding. I really was. I thought it was a prodigy until I hit a slump in May and advanced calculus and thwarted me into the human services or the lighter sciences. But one by one by one, as he when he first became ill, I took over some of the groups he was running. And one of them was really on. One of them was a young woman who had died 11 times she was only 23 years old, she had a bad heart. And she started talking in this group, and one by one, I realized the group was mostly people that had near death experiences. And that's kind of how it started, I became open. And by watching others, and as patients would come to me and tell me about their experiences and people that they had benefited from mediums and whatever, I get curious. And so I started going through all those people just checking them out. I mean, I won't refer someone to an acupuncturist that I haven't tried. I just kind of, we talk a lot about that. And I really want to have an experience with someone and not just the name. So I started getting really curious. And I think, I think it's someone by the name of I don't know why it's coming to me, Mike Dooley, Mike Dooley, I think he's an author. But the quote that comes to me with this sentiment is that mystery prompts discovery. And I've told more people, I said that my whole job as a psychotherapist or as a as a healer or a health care provider is to get you curious, you know, there's issuer ism to this, to get people curious about know, you want to know more about this, you know, do your own research, this is your journey, don't look for somebody else. To give it to you. That's you know, as you know, the Buddha has said that you have to walk the path.

Steve Bisson: 18:33

And I think that that's the stuff that really, you know, I sharing a little bit of my own story. I grew up in a Catholic family. And as I say, today, I'm a recovering Catholic. And when I started my career as a psychotherapist, mental health counselor, whatever you want to call it, I was scientifically based, I was like, No, this woowoo stuff. And by the way, woowoo does not offend me when people say I'm woowoo some people say that that's diminishing what we do, I really don't care personally. But, you know, eventually I like that can be just that. And I remember having those moments, and one of my favorite moments that I share with someone is I had a client come in, who had was having the hardest time staying sober, and they might have had some legal issues over their head because of that. And I had a little Buddha on my way was exploring Buddhism and I had Buddha on my desk and he's like, who's dead? So that's Buddha, and he talked a little bit about it. He's like, can I take it? I said, we're gonna gonna help you stay sober. And he's like, yeah, like I haven't. And he stayed sober as long as I met with him. So that was a few weeks, so it's not like I know that he's been sober for 27 years or anything magical. But just talking about the spirit of Buddhism and how it works, made him shift and it made me shift. That's one of my stories that I share that it made me shift. Alright, Steve, maybe you got to stop being so damn scientific. And try to think about the things that are more than scientific and spirituality to me if you don't talk about spiritual only as part of your psychotherapy, mental health counseling, whatever you want to call it, I think that you're deserving your clients. I don't force it on anyone. But obviously I, most people who have know me they want if they've walked in my office once there's Buddha all over the place, and there's hockey stuff, but that's just a different religion in Montreal. But I think that when you talk about that, I think that that awakening those moments are what really gets us to the other side, you had your own near death experience. And now that I know a little more about the dick story, because I've known known about that I've never met Dick, obviously, he's no longer of this world, at least physically. It's interesting to hear, because that's all I could think of is that he was a spiritual guide for so many people. And a lot of people like Dennis Sweeney that we know. And sorry, Dennis, to name you by name, and Mary Mulaney. And hope you're enjoying your retirement because she's just retired. How do we connect with, with the spirituality when it's we are so sometimes so based on like, science or doing that stuff.

Patrick Rice: 21:01

Well, the science, it's really quite simple. The science is the head stuff. And the Spirit is the hard stuff. And the three dimensional world in which we live four dimensional world with time, is one where we focus a lot on the head stuff, and not so much on the heart stuff, you know, and where we overthink things. You know, we've heard the paralysis of analysis where people just get stuck. And especially men, I'm okay as these I seem to think this, you know, how, and I know, almost never quote Freud, and Jung and Adler and those folks in my practice, but I quote Einstein almost every, every day, because Einstein said, you can't solve a problem with the same mind that created it. Right? We deal with people that just get stuck in up here with the, forgive me, I think this is original, I call it the itty bitty committee. Wasn't going to use profane language, but it's no one's listening. I know that I know, that is original, but that is the one the mind won't shut down. And it's, as as a matter of fact, this wonderful man, Dick Fleck, he used to say, and I've seen this, as a matter of fact, they gave someone a 25 year anniversary medallions Sunday in a summit, I did an intervention on xa, 25 years ago. But she said, I don't know why I came. I don't know what drew drew me there. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want this i I sort of knew what was going on. But I came anyway. And what he used to say they used to say is that there's a there's a very special form of prayer. It's not the head type of prayer, where we asked for things and you know, just get me out of this mess. And I'll never do it again. type of childlike prayer, which is to ask for something or ask for an outcome. He said, There's a special form of prayer, which is virtual, which is when your heart is actually petitioning the divine, whatever it is the universe, the higher power. In the divine, being a recovering Catholic, I shy away from the male, dominant language of God and all of that. Probably more okay with goddess than God. But why don't we just talk about I talked about a higher power, whatever it is, he said that the heart actually asks for the help. And that's what sustains it because the heart is far more powerful than the head. And it grows and the heart is where the divine energy, that divine power whatever opens, opens it up and over can can overcome all of that stuck thinking, you know that, you know, in the recovery circles, we talked about a higher power and the first sentence in the whole step process is we admit perils. So I always say I didn't come into a recovery program, looking for a theology, I had a similar background to yours. And which I learned early on at least the from the Catechism that I was taught that the higher power, if you will, the God of my understanding was one that taught heaven was essentially unattainable until unavoidable. It didn't seem to make sense to me. But the minute I started reading in a very young age, I learned about karma. And I read something and I actually read an entire encyclopedia. We had an encyclopedia. And that was a physical one. Wikipedia for this. No, no, I actually had the as I recall, it was the Colliers encyclopedia and I read it all. I just would read it. And I was curious and some things wouldn't interest me in other things really did Buddhism dead in the whole idea of karma, reincarnation, but the karma, the fact that things balance out, because I would see people that were not nice people, the pious people coming back You know, the daily church goes or whatever they would steal from Paperboards. These types of people that just that just didn't make sense to my little thoughtful mind, as I was a paperboy and would walk miles and miles pondering the universe and all these things. And so as I, as I get more curious about it, it just made sense to me where other things didn't make sense. I tried a bunch of different disciplines. The other thing is that I hadn't found a formal religion that actually embraced meditation. You know, it was almost always the Eastern philosophies that embraced meditation, chanting and meditation, and all of that which, which seemed to work for me. Certainly, it helped to quiet the wild mind that the chanting and meditation that the breath work. So these are the things that kind of opened me up to being curious and want to explore more about this in which I, which was to explore more about me. I think most of us, most of us go to graduate school to figure out how can a really smart guy like me, and that's so messed up? Oh, that got it. So well,

Steve Bisson: 26:07

well, it might be a good transition. Again, just a reminder to everyone, we're listening and finding your way through therapy. I'm sitting here with Pat rice, my name is Steve B. So maybe a good transition to start talking about the near death experience, because we've just talked about the spiritual stuff. And it might be helpful for people to understand and sometimes we use the acronym nd E for that, as I pondered that question this morning, but maybe you can tell me more because that, you know, when you shift to more of a spiritual side, maybe you understand a little more, or you maybe you're more closer to your heart and what happened with a near death experience. So can you tell me more

Patrick Rice: 26:40

about that? Well, they're very different. If someone is really curious about a really well chronicled one. I've read everything written about near death experiences, which I started after I had realized that I had had one. And these are all came flooding back because it often does and vulnerable people in group psychotherapy, somebody mentioned something and someone else gets flooded. And all of this repressed memory comes back and access we call Yeah, yeah. As they say, as a great master once said, Never underestimate the power of repression. We can talk away because it's just too painful to deal with. But but when it comes flooding back, you really hope it's in a place where there are people to help you from drowning, because it can overwhelm people. But as it's I started getting really curious about this, and I read everything, a lot of books by Ray moody, who was the first physician to really do it a psychologist, psychiatrist, and then Brian Weiss, another psychiatrist who said, I'm going to jeopardize my entire Harvard and Yale career by writing about this. But there's an extraordinary book by No, he's a neuro neuro. His brain surgeon, Eben Alexander, II and Alexander and he wrote several books, but one of them and gosh, I can't remember the title of it, but anybody can Google it. I heard him actually speak in Sudbury.

Steve Bisson: 28:13

Massachusetts. So

Patrick Rice: 28:14

as he's sitting next to Chris Gordon, who was he was a wonderful psychiatrist who just retired as well. And he is poor speaking about his book and I think he actually is to be a member of this synagogue and subway. The synagogue right across from the mosque on route 20 I love that. Yeah. And he spoke about it but he wrote a book literally about this heaven something about heaven. He speaks he remembered every every detail the sounds and everything and it is profound and it's a great read. And if anyone's just curious about it, as I'm always say get curious and just read it and it's this is by a neural, literally a guy that operates on people's brains and you had a bad day and came back. So it has a lot of credibility to it more people like him share the story, the more others to tons of the near death experiences that I was witness to or listen to. happened in a well written a by by a physician so it just witnessed all this er, Doc's ER nurses, they hear this all the time. I'll give you one. Okay, we're really awakened me when I did want to Dix groups early on when he went out for his first operation or whatever. And there was a young woman this woman died 11 times. Okay, in a series of a couple of hearts with a woman you were talking about earlier. earlier? Yes, she was young woman. And she had a captivating story but she's she got angry at one point is telling the story she said because it was a doctor that didn't believe for one of the surgeons, you know, didn't believe that she had and she said, Well, yeah, I was watched. You are what and she started I'm telling him all about the surgery. He said, Who told you that? You know, and she said, Well, I was floating those lay up on the ceiling, other body or what I was just watching your work? And I said, Well, you know, you know, is that talking about brain hypoxia, or any of these hallucinations and all of this, and she said, Listen, we said, if you're really interested about it, when I was up there, I noticed that there was a gold over those pens cross pen, up in the light fixture, some I must have tossed it up there. There's a gold pen up there, if you really, if you don't believe me, go find the pen. And she said, later on, she got a phone call from the doctor. He said, that worked on me for about three weeks, and they got maintenance to go out there. And they retrieved that pen, please forgive me. Because only if you're above the light fixture, the you know, what you see. couldn't see it. Otherwise. Yeah, that's right. So but again, I've hundreds and hundreds of people have come to me and share these stories. And as they do is that happens, we collectively identify and I started and pick up pieces of my own story. And I've done a lot of work in this this, this shamanistic, if you will, for lack of a better term is that my guides have told me a lot of or they've done some aggressive therapy and gone back a number of lifetimes and learned what I needed to learn how to go back to York, England and settle the karmic debt, the thing that made a believer out of my wife, because she was there witnessing this, and she's now a practicing Buddhist at the Zen Center in Ireland. And so it's no one you don't meet anybody by accident. In all of this. I don't believe in synchronicity and everything. As more people started to share these things, and I started to get curious about my own past. And it's funny, there's a certain amount of utility to knowing about that. And then I basically, there was one gap. I didn't know anything about the last lifetime and all I was able to discern, because what I was told, is that all you needed to know from that lifetime if you did not survive your alcohol. So you had to come back and do it again. Repeat what we need to heal. Right. That's it. And then, so this time, and many of these guys, some of whom are actually ancestors of mine said, Yeah, we don't know how hard we work to keep you alive. So you could fulfill yourself and do what you're doing now. And, again, I'm not, this is not self promoting, or whatever, I don't have anything to promote, other than this concept that we're here for a greater good. And most the thing that the template of sensibility about this existence that makes the most sense to me is Buddhism. Because the Buddha, basically the tenet of that is to practice loving kindness. Just be helpful to people and do no harm. That's the whole meaning of it is that give it away. If you share your light, you're like it's more powerful. You know, I'm a Reiki practitioner, which is just an energy healing and a divine energy healing. I don't use it hands on very rarely. It certainly never fit into my clinical practice as it does for some people because I've worked a lot with trauma victims. And that that was just to initially that was just too tricky for me. But I use this energy this ability by car as I see people's energy fields very clearly, to make zoom a challenge for new people. Unless they're with somebody I generally when I do an interview, I want someone that knows him well, because I can sense the energy better when the two of them but it's, it's it's basically all the same stuff. It's how if you if you do Reiki for somebody, you get Reiki your channel, you're just a host and you know, you benefit from it. Not that it isn't, you know that it isn't draining in a way but it is it is enlightening and it is it is enervating in a very powerful way. And

Steve Bisson: 34:09

one of my one of my teachers said to me, I think about Reiki about, you know, healing you but more importantly, it's the energy of the universe, I lose nothing. It's the energy of the universe because I'm a Reiki practitioner, too. So what I've always reminded people, they're like, how are you feeling so well, other than having trouble keeping my arms up for a while sometimes really feeling great. I mean, I always feel great after a Reiki session. And I want to make make sure that everyone knows you're absolutely right. That's not for everyone. And I know for some people Reiki is challenging or difficult. But when you're able to channel Reiki and you talked about zoom, distance Reiki does exist. And I've done that I've done that myself. So

Patrick Rice: 34:53

well, let me tell you an interesting story. Larry Dossey was a physician who's written a bunch about these things. He was a tough sell It tells a story in one of his books about some of those doing with a couple of Doc's a talk. One was in the West Coast, and they were doing a study on heart medication for really, chronically, some kind of congestive heart failure type thing. So they had 500 people in a study. And there's Powell, who was a member of a religious community, or some kind of a prayer community in Texas. And can we do our own experiments, and we pray for half of these people. And this is documented that yeah, they had this group in, everybody get in the prayer group that a name of first name and last initial of someone, that's all and they pray for this person. And at the end of six months, they were crunching the numbers on both studies. One was a double blind medication trial. And then the prayer study. And the results were striking in one regard is that the medication didn't seem to have a whole lot of effect on the outcome of blood versus placebo. But the people who were prayed for had half the mortality rate, and on and on and on, it was so dramatic, that they couldn't they couldn't ethically not pray for everybody. And at the end of the year study, everyone had the same they were prayed for I had the same rate of mortality, blah, blah, blah. So there's a lot of evidence out there. It's one of the first applications of this prayer actually work. Well, you know, I remember a grad student once petition me at UNH petitioned me among many people, through the association to do a shoot her dissertation was on do use the concept of teach the concept of forgiveness in psychotherapy. Many of us when we actually look at it, we actually do because if you hang on to have resentment and all that, and you can't forgive people that have harmed you, or hurt you or wounded you, you can stay in a form of your own victimization. You know, the Buddha said, of resentment is when you pour poison for somebody else, but drinking yourself. Right? Yeah, most of the stuff that rattles around in a halls and 12 step recovery halls is all Buddhist wisdom. You know, we still we still are good stuff. And as my issue is to say, you know, if you steal from one person, that's plagiarism, if you steal from everybody, it's research. And that's the truth is everything here, nothing of this is new. But we're awakening to it. And I remember having literally a rocket scientist in my office, a nice gentleman who was who was sober and he was trying to you could quite get past this. He was essentially believed in atheist because of the scientific training. And he said, I just can't get this higher power stuff. It just doesn't. That's not that it doesn't appeal to me. So I just can't get my mind around it. And I said, Well, okay, it's just energy. It's just power. And I said, How about we call it dark energy? goes, whoa, is it that'll work? I said, you know, two thirds of the universe is dark matter and dark energy, energy, matter. It becomes energy, energy becomes matters. It's all the same stuff. You can call it grace. You can call it prana. You can call it Kundalini, you can call it a brachii. Doesn't chi, it doesn't matter what you call it, it's still there, and we just need to access it. Why? Because most of the people that come into my office are not mentally ill. They're not psychiatric. Over the years. They are dispirited, they are down, they are drained. And very often, and that's what group stuff does is it helps to charge up that that spirit battery. I watched a three year old child walk into a room that had a brain injured Verna keys and supple apathy, wet brain, alcoholic men, between 50 and 65 years old. It was actually a recovery of Amy and she was the daughter of someone that I knew. And it was Grace of the human right this stuff. And little Gracie came in look like pebbles. Now a little arrow pointed to and one by one. And these men were very blunt. It was sitting with a grad students, friend of mine were in grad school together. And watching these men, they were very blunted in their traffic, they just like, didn't know this is what happens when you're very demented. And one by one, Gracie would take the hands of each of these men and they lit up like a lighthouse. To this day, I don't think I've seen something more powerful. And then I think then we had eight men who basically were just dead, who were like animated. The power of the spirit of this little child and spirit is very strong children, which is why they liked the whole room up. Right? It doesn't matter if a child starts to giggle and laugh and belly laugh in a restaurant, the whole restaurants laughing right or an airplane or whatever. So there are various age And so how should I say fonts taps for this type of energy Our job is to find it people you know who really do espouse a useful to them practice of say Roman Catholicism whatever they have the sacraments, the sacred moment sacramental moments which is where an opportunity for Grace if that's your thing. We talked about selfless service in recovery and and other spiritual practices Hindu practices seva selfless service doing for others, every you go to a meditation place and they'll have, it'd be something you have to do, even though you're paying to stay in this retreat or whatever you have service to give. Because that is one of the sacramental ways we give others, we have Habitat for Humanity. Soup Kitchen, people have volunteer volunteers. My wife's an educator and a retired doctor, if you're a dentist and she, she works in Ireland, doing Meals on Wheels and other things, you know, because it, it gives us the energy and it makes a certain relevance and work to our existence and recovery. It's the alchemy of redemption and recovery is you take the I say once piece at once you get into, into working with addictions is about because the 12 years of my life, I don't have to explain it away in a resume. You know, it's we take the darker stuff, and we converted it and it's all light, you know, it's all light energy, whatever. So when I think of Reiki, I think of light. Most of the guided meditations will say think of a golden light, think of a bright white light or a purple light, whatever healing lights. Well, you know,

Steve Bisson: 41:45

it's it's one of those things that when I talk about spirituality, when clients bring it up, I've taken more of a passive approach on spirituality in my practice, but I've had this many times where people say, Well, I don't believe in anything. I'm an agnostic. And I said, Well, that's a belief system. That means that when you're dead, you're dead. And maybe perhaps doing the best you can while you're here is a spiritual practice, instead of thinking when I'm dead, I'm dead is that's not a spiritual practice. In fact, I think it means you can live the moment you can live the present. And it usually makes people light up and say, Oh, I never thought about it that way. I think that once you think about spirituality as not having an you can have one god you can have 50 Gods goddesses as you said, too. I agree with you. If you've ever seen a movie dogma, Atlantis, more sets. nadian is a god, I think that makes sense to me

Patrick Rice: 42:39

to cook.

Steve Bisson: 42:40

But I think that it, I tell people to watch that movie if they're like spiritually done. I think that dogma is probably one of those movies that also woke up my spiritual side. But I just wanted to say that a spiritual practice doesn't have to be meditating for two hours, or going to church service every day, it could be so much more than that. And a spiritual practice is just not what it's cracked up to be in that connection. And I was thinking about the other part, though, you were talking about, rarely do someone do like the meal on wheels or any type of volunteer work that leave there and go grumpy. Because the energy just makes you feel happy. And I think that that's something I want to mention.

Patrick Rice: 43:24

Well, it's the the atheists and agnostics, the literature of a of recovery certainly speaks to that is that it doesn't require when we don't come in there looking for a theology. But that's not what it's about. And, you know, a lot of the arcane literature that, that that that organization has, it was written back when that was more the language. I can remember once when Bishop Sheen had was one of the most popular TV shows on and he was a captivating speaker and an inspiring speaker. It but it's atheism is someone who basically says there is no God, that's a belief. I believe there's no God, you know, that's, you know, the ultimate left brain or, or head philosophy on there. But they do believe that there are things greater that they can't explain again, mystery leads to discovery. And I think there's a chapter or a phrase or a concept that is put forth in that literature or recovery. That speaks to the to the agnostics who are doubt doubters. They don't know they say I just don't know. Is it we're talking about electricity. Now again, I was going to be a nuclear physicist in my mind. And I understand intellectually, the concept of electricity is the electrons running along. I can't really discern between AC and DC Direct current and alternating current, but I have a faith in and I believe even an atheist as a faith and really greater things like electricity. I may not be Leave in electricity, but I plugged my phone in background, I plugged my phone in, I trust that it will light the lamp it will charge my phone. So I have a faith in something greater than a power greater than me which we call electricity. Right and so much like remotely, Nikola Tesla actually invented a way to transmit electricity to the air and not to power lines. He was pretty much a rock star genius. Many of his ideas were co opted by commercial ventures, mostly Thomas Edison, but whatever, you know, there have been people that have been able to think outside of the box. And if we can do that, we don't do it with our head. We align it a little bit with our heart and I believe that the Reiki energy the heart chakra is one of the most powerful that is where a lot of this really connects us to what what we know where we came from, you know, we'll go psych psychiatric here for a second. That certain sound right? To take the meds and I'll be right back. But yeah, it's the day of Britain godfather of recovery and psychiatrically is Carl Jung. And he had a relationship with one of the A founders, Bill Wilson. And Jung's concept was at the collective unconscious, you know, which is we're all part of, we can tap into this, this this compendium of knowledge, conscious knowledge that fuels humanity. And he was a real free thinker like that. And very different than some of the other psychiatrists of his day. Interestingly, they were all neurologists, they were all brain doctors, essentially. And then they got off this other side. Because it was probably of interest to them was interesting. My job is when I when I meet people and people, different people have been led to me, as I said, my practice has shifted from addiction medicine, dual diagnosis, medicine and trauma, work, to wellness, aging, retiring grief and loss. I do a ton of grief work with people and sometimes, and I help people to die. That's been something I've known. I've had a number of people that have come to me, because they know they were dying, things like of ALS, which is such a dreadful disease. Yes. But I watched someone die beautifully. Because he wanted he came to me before he got bad. He said, I need to know more. About what about the spirit business, and I'm about a Presbyterian all my life, which I don't even know what a Presbyterian. But he said and I that all made sense to me. But it doesn't make sense now. And honestly, God, this man blossomed, and he died and beautiful, you know, the physical physicality of those types of degenerative diseases, it's a loss of dignity. And but it takes a tremendous amount of spiritual well being, and or shall I say, spirituality to embrace that, as the vehicle is eroding. Entropy is taking over the, the host vehicle for the spirit. But I still have something that I value here. And for him, that was granddaughters, a little granddaughter who just lit him up, he would just sit often on Zoom and watch her. But she had that energy, you know, he was like another person in the room. So, so, but this is what has been been led me by whatever forces there are. I have theories, but I can remember once when I was a very young man, I said, you know, I don't know much I said, but when I do, die, I have questions. I have a long list of questions. I didn't really think that many of them would get answered before but all it takes is an open mind and a faith in something that a curiosity instincts will start to make sense. The Buddha said don't don't take anything I say at truth simply because of respect for me, figure it out yourself, challenge it, understand it, study it, it has to coincide with truth has to coincide with your core belief in your core sensibility. That was his word sensibility about it. Right. So when we come in here, but also said that, you know, no one can ask for walk your path, you have to walk your own path. And he said that the path is going to be difficult than the Euro school and that some days, all you can do is put one foot in front of another. And if you believe it'd be, this is what the heart does for us. The heart gives us our direction. We follow the heart and then you just keep walking uphill. In the rain, dark, whatever, sliding backwards a little bit, you just keep walking. I think that what I've loved about Buddhism and what embraced me is that even I had the preconception that Buddha was enlightened at every single moment of his life. And if that's exactly what I think when people tell me that I'm like, Well, I had the same preconception. That's the good news. The bad news is, I'm

Steve Bisson: 50:22

going to break your preconception, because Buddha would tell you that that's not true. And Buddha was a man, he was not a god, and does not want to be revered as a God. And he has become a symbol and a figure in the life of Buddhism. But it's realizing that we Buddha says something, I think what really intrigued me says, we all have it within ourselves. And you don't need to be a god, you don't need to be a powerful person, you don't have to be a weak person, you got to be nothing else, but just be in it's all within yourself. And I think that's what really attracted me to that belief system.

Patrick Rice: 50:58

He was a very interesting figure. And then we know actually, quite a bit about him, even though this was like, fifth century, was a fifth century BC was first century, I think, and I want to say fourth, or fifth, yeah, he was, was a prince, a very wealthy, wealthy Prince. And somewhere near his 30th birthday, he got curious about what was beyond the palace walls, you walked out and did not return. And for the rest of his 50 years of existence, after that, he had nothing. All he had was what he had learned and what he knew. And he every single meal he got was at the kindness of others, every shelter he received was that the kindness of others and so by doing that, he opened himself himself up to receive and then inspire people to practice loving kindness toward him. And what they're, you know, you know, same as Muhammad, and Christ, and all of these beings is extraordinary, enlightened beings that have walked, I have only actually Earth, I've only met one enlightened being who was a girl. And she was magic of a discipline, a Hindu based meditation discipline, you know, having been in her presence and felt that energy, it's, the extraordinary thing is that she was, I was one of 5000 people, in the course of a weekend that they were around her and she was totally one revered by most of these people, and adored, and it totally, she was totally unaffected by it. And I again, I could tell stories about how I became a believer that of this extraordinary gift that she had to inspire and the energy field that she had, which was extraordinary. These people that have this capacity, they're they're here by design to assist others, but they, they practice, what they preach, the Buddha did is that he, you know, that he assured all of the trappings that he had. And he got really curious about what, what else is there in life besides this. For people in my generation that you hear Peggy Lee sings that all risk? People, whoever's watching this, you're Peggy hill. But look at Google at Peggy Lee. Peggy Lee. So

Steve Bisson: 53:23

I think that there's gonna be a lot of this, is

Patrick Rice: 53:25

this all there is? Because it's, it's the opportunity to take a chance and learn because the same old, same old No, I think one of the reasons we have this extraordinary thing on the planet were the first billion dollars that some people acquire is not enough, it maybe the next billion will make me happy. And this pursuit of wealth, and I guess now that there's a competition to see who can be the first trillionaire you know, at some point, you're gonna leave and you know, the journey will be over. If, if a billion dollars made people happy, I don't think they need a second billion just saying it's so it is so much more to it. So that's the Buddha taught that is a curious of what there is when you're not distracted by so much wealth, or so much of this world. And I used to do a group actually in a day hospital once on abundance is that abundance wherever you have an abundance of whether it is what we consider positive or negative? There is one thing you're tasked with and that's management. You must manage abundance. I actually just have a briefcase with paper in it, but I would say that everyone thinks here that you know, $100,000 would be perfect, but Oh yeah, yeah. And so I would take this briefcase was $100,000 in cash and put on someone's lap. Who the most enthusiastic that would make I say, Okay, you now have $100,000 And maybe they want the look, I said don't open it. You have to believe me. But what are you gonna do? Now, when I said, you notice the people in the room are looking at that prefix, you know, and then they started riffing on that. It's the what, you know, do you feel safe with it? No, I got to get my $100,000 out of here before someone, and people started saying I could you just spare me 20 grand, right? I just need my kid is sick. And we became this amazing group of something that everyone in the room could have a consensus, it was a wonderful thing that could have suddenly changed their trajectory. It took them out of dream. I know a kid that was in treatment for cocaine, and he needed to be. And he was a young married guy and his his wife hit the lottery for a couple of million dollars. Someone in the town in which you practice, and they begged her not to tell him to quit, she drove right up to the rehab and told, I think the story was this, it didn't take him very long, the two of them to lose that money. And it distracted him from his path. So this kind of capitalistic view that money is good. Money is a tool. Money is is a certain level of power. But power can be very distracting. You know, just a reminder,

Steve Bisson: 56:11

fighting your way through therapy, it's been almost an hour Pat rice sitting with me, I told you this is it's great. I love talking about this. And I think about one of the stories that you don't do the same thing as you I don't do groups. But one of the stories I explained when people are too worried about the future, I said, You know what the problem is with a millionaire, he's already thinking about a second. Never appreciating the first one he got. So learning to appreciate what we have, to me is part of that abundance and spiritual belief system. Because we are, you know, we are lucky in some ways. And yes, we all have tragedies in our own right, you know, in our own lives. But we have the ability to kind of No, literally kind of like be happy. We are not everyone, but a lot of my clients, all my clients have a roof over their heads. They can eat as much as they want, reasonably speaking. And that's a richness that a lot of people on this planet don't

Patrick Rice: 57:12

have. You know, it's that like, it's talking about firstworldproblems it, but it's a real word of why to mention the word earlier. Grace, you know, we that is one of the terms that people use for this divine energy that permeates everything and kind of runs everything. Well. People ask me all the time they did public speaking on addictions and recovery and all of that, and they did tons of it and Grand Rounds and all of that. And it's people the most common question, whether it was clinicians or the general public was how do you know when someone has it, they have that, that they have a chance at changing everything. And I go back to what Jung had talked about, which was the conversion experience. And we call it a spiritual awakening, a 12 step recovery. But it's a it's the moment in which someone stops feeling like they're being deprived of something, and thus missing something positive, where they start feeling grateful. Gratitude, Grace enters, and they started feeling grateful that they're being spared something negative. That's the conversion experience. And that's where it gets people pass the missing the grief off the next million or whatever. I believe it was the I know it was the fabulous, the guy that wrote all of fables, Aesop, Aesop's Fables, yes, which are just another version of a morality play. But he wants said, a wonderful quote that often gets attributed to Buddha, that gratitude is what makes what you have today of not. And we've, we've kind of lost that. And I believe, and I'll pontificate for a minute, or pine is that people keep saying that there's a movement to try to make the national religion of America Christianity. That's not true. We already have a national religions called capitalism. And capitalism is ruthless. It's about it's about making money. It's about it's about the pursuit of that and there's a bait and switch in there and marketing terms is that your capitalist and trans people, if you are successful, you will be happy. They are mutually exclusive very often, is a very, very, very powerfully successful people are not happy often. They're distracted, they have a management problem. They have a I had a fellow that came to me a fabulously successful guy, I won't get too much information, but his problem was as if he had about six houses all over the planet. You know, and he was besieged all the time by the people who are managing this properties and so his strategy in one session was a must have been divinely inspired because I said, Well, who likes these houses? If you don't do so I like to have them and the other five, I have a kid that likes us when the kids are like seven. They said, why don't you just do them all to the kids now let them take care of and you can visit them. You know, it's the objectivity of sitting in the chair. And he looked at me and he goes, That's brilliant. And he did it. And he got his the two houses he liked to live in. And I gave all of us, the kids all their the skier got the lodge or whatever. And it's a simple bit of life coaching in that moment, but he was burdened by all of this success and affluence. He just needed to lighten his load. There's a famous book now making the circus called Drop the rock. Yes, I've heard of that. You know, it's like, you know, we can carry around something all day, again, a gold bar. That's something else kind of carried all day. Right? You know, that's, again, that's probably one of the parables of one of the stories that all of the wise beings tell. And we try to unburden people, they come into our offices and tell us well, this is what I need this what I want. And we ask the magic question, know, what are you willing to do to get it? Right? And then when they please, we often have solutions because not that we invented this stuff, we just paid attention. We watch people fail, doing everything else. And when someone says that, I say, Okay, well, I suggest you that I can't do that. I said, I can help you that was so you know, what if you could get out of the zero sum or if every it's all or nothing, and you can just embrace that there's a little something we don't know. And mystery of the universe, whatever. And I think that that allows people one thing that is the most important thing, everything that you and I do is the people like us is it? My job is to try to relate the hope pilot like relight the hope. Because we see people that come in and life and guide COVID Everything's exhausted people and they get weakened the brightest people the light weakens the battery them's the the oil gets low, whatever it is the source of it. Well, the for the spirit that source is, is to tap into divine energy and you can do it by meditation, spiritual practice, breath, work, breathing. Let me plug somebody else's book. Because some of it is important to me, a counselor suggested I read this. It's a book called Breath by James Nester and he STLR. And really, it's a it's a scientific approach to it. It's kind of like the 50 year upgrade of of her Benson's the relaxation response was part of the Deaconess the public was renamed the Deaconess Mind Body clinic way back in the 70s. And I'd have a keen understanding that the way you change the chemistry of the human body from out of stress and anxiety is breathing. You know,

Steve Bisson: 1:03:06

one of the things that I would say you talked about relate to hope one of the things that I talked about too many clinicians is that all we have to do is make people feel a little better. As a therapist, I learned that as the crisis team. Even though in the crisis team you don't get to know the person you i If people left feeling slightly better whether they went to the hospital or not. And they had that little like relight the hope I like a lot better. We've done our job as a therapist, even if it's just a little bit and I wanted to just put that in. And as we wrap up you had your parting words, I wanted to

Patrick Rice: 1:03:42

hear them, okay. This is what I what I remember Deke Deke used to tell me that flack was the say that he was he was a wordsmith. He loved the origin of words, and enthusiasm, which we talk about when the when that that whole battery is bright again, the light comes on, we haven't doozies and enthusiasm is from the Greek and Theo's from God's divine energy. And he used to always talk about spirituality. And he put up spirituality on a board and divided from Spirit and you ality, and he'd say, a cross out spirit and say, We don't talk about that. We talked about self, our sense of self self help and all of that. So itself you ality, and then he would say, you know, if you take you ality that, just put a queue in front of it, that's quality. And so it's a really dramatic visual is that you know, what spirituality is, is how do I feel about me, based upon what I do my practice, you know, he also said that in from the word spirit spirituality, comes from the Latin word spirits, which is not soul. That's animus or anima. Right? Animation and all of that. The word Spirit just means breath. All right. So literally the most spiritual thing you can do as a human being, by definition is breathing. And when people get stressed and occupied, they hold their breath, they everything's going out, if my computer crashes on me, I sputter and all like this. And so it's a moment is to just learn how to breathe. And most of the spiritual practices focus on breath work, certainly meditation does. So either my my parting shot is, is I've said this 1000 times, if I've said it once is that when you don't know what to do next, breathe, just breathe, and breathe. And if you're really, really, really upset, move your body, not a wise old person said when when when a troubled human being walks, the angels talk to you, whatever that means to you, but when your legs are tired, your mind won't be bothering you. It's just the way I think, to turn the volume down and that anybody should committed.

Steve Bisson: 1:05:55

Well, bad I will finish to finish to by saying that, first of all, thank you for everything. The one thing that I, you know, I've been meaning to talk about is, when you talk about spirituality, if you ever look into the Eightfold Path to Buddhism, and one of them is right livelihood, I think you hit that one out of the park already. And it's one of those things that I tell people that my job, one thing I know is that I'll never regret my job. And I think that path, not only because of everything you've done for everyone else, what other people you've inspired, I know you're gonna inspire people on this podcast, including me, frankly, right livelihood doesn't even do justice on how well you do your job. So I wanted to thank you for your time today.

Patrick Rice: 1:06:40

Well, thank you. I'll just finish with one thing. This was told to me and I've said it to everybody that I've ever worked with is that we were tasked with one reality, one truth. And that is that, as providers and people that want to be helpful to somebody else, we're going to have the authentic energy to inspire others, we must take our own advice. So we're not supposed to put the bumper sticker on the car that says Take my advice. I'm not using it. Right. So is that yeah, we do that I think we're and the other thing is that we're not responsible, and in trying to be helpful to someone else for outcome, just effort.

Steve Bisson: 1:07:16

I think that I'm gonna leave it at that and say, Thank you very much, Pat. And thank you, Steve, oh, we have this conversation, continue offline. And maybe even when they come back and talk a

Patrick Rice: 1:07:27

little bit, I'd be honored. As always, it's great. And I really appreciate what you're doing. This is a you've been a pioneer and a lot of this telehealth and everything in the area. And we've all learned greatly from you. So thank you, I don't think I could have zoomed my way into a different practice modality here doing this without guys like you. So gals. Thanks.

Steve Bisson: 1:07:49

Thank you, and I'll talk to you very soon. I can't wait to reconnect with Thank you. Okay. Well, this concludes episode 32 of finding your way through therapy. Thank you, Pat rice, love talking about Buddhism and spirituality near death experience, and how spirituality is should be a subject in the treatment of mental health. And I've always practiced that personally. And hopefully, you got through the interview, how much me and Pat have a lot of like connection and maybe perhaps even thinking about, you know, long term, bringing him back in to talk about other stuff because we didn't even get to the stuff that we had actually talked about talking about, but we just went with the flow as I typically do, and would love to have him back at some point. Episode 33 will be how we use diagnosis to describe people now. And that's a big pet peeve of mine. It not only does not indicate the mental health status of someone, but it's basically also kind of like diminishing, how clearly people struggle with bipolar or depression or generalized anxiety or trauma, or post traumatic stress disorder. So we're going to talk about that in that episode, and I hope you'll join me on episode 33. About that. Please like, subscribe or follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful. And as a reminder, this podcast is for information, educational, and entertainment purposes. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor or therapist for consultation.