Jiu-Jitsu Isn't Therapy

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, welcome to Fighting Matters. I am Steve Quan from BJJ Mental Models. I got two friends on the line here. I've got Matt Tanzi. Matt, how's it going, man? Speaker 2: Going well. Good to see you, Steve. Speaker 1: Good to see you. And I got Daniel Milstein. Daniel, how's it going? Speaker 3: Good. I'm doing I'm doing well, Steve. Nice to see you. Speaker 1: Good to see you guys too. Well, we're going to have a fun chat here. I think we're going to unpack some of the the do's and don'ts, the the myths and the truths about Jiu-Jitsu and therapy. Of course, anyone who's trained the martial arts for a long time is especially Jiu-Jitsu has probably heard people say something like Jiu-Jitsu is my therapy, um, which is I I understand where that statement comes from, but it's not entirely true and I think we're going to wind up doing some debunking. Maybe first though, we'll do some quick introductions just so that everyone knows who both of you guys are. Um, Matt, why don't we start with you? Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah, um, my name is Matt Tanzi. I'm a clinical mental health counselor. I'm based in Vermont in the US. Um, I have a PhD from the University of Rochester and I work in private practice mostly. I work in Vermont and Connecticut and Colorado. I'm licensed in a few different places. And mostly I work with men, um, around anxiety stuff and sometimes depression related matters. Um, yeah, it's kind of normal private practice life. Speaker 1: Nice. And Daniel, how about you, sir? Speaker 3: Um, yeah, I'm Dan Milstein. Um, am a clinical psychologist, so it means I have research and training in, um, I'm sorry, I have training in research and in clinical practice and a little bit of teaching. So I mostly do clinical work these days, uh, in, uh, in the Boston area at, um, in hospital settings at Mass General. I work more with people with trauma and dissociative disorders, so it's a little bit more specialized. And then I also have a private practice, um, licensed in Massachusetts and, uh, and New York as well. Speaker 1: Nice. Well, I guess the first thing I want to ask you folks about is what are the different classifications of mental health practitioners? Because it's easy to get them confused. I myself, I'm not entirely clear, for example, on what the differences between all of these different types. Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember, um, well, I taught an intro to psychology class and Matt, you've probably you've taught as well. And I think this was like one of the most valuable things I I taught the whole class was just like a uh, a page in the textbook on what all these different specialties are, right? So there's like, um, there's psychiatry, which is a medical specialty focusing on kind of brain mind body health, but especially things like anxiety, depression, substance use, um, psychosis. Um, so that's a degree that a specialty you'd do after four years of medical school. Uh, for clinical psychology, that's, um, a specialty where somebody's trained in assessment and therapy. Um, so all of these people can do psychotherapy. Um, they just have different training backgrounds. So clinical psychologists would have like a PhD, uh, like I do or a PsyD and would focus on administration, uh, therapy, assessment. Um, Matt, do you want to take, um, the others? Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah. So I'm a mental health counselor. Um, we're primarily trained in the the practice of psychotherapy. Um, so what, you know, generally if somebody calls themselves a mental health counselor, it means that they're either working with individuals or couples or families, um, and sitting down and doing psychotherapy, which is a little bit different from the other two that I'll mention. So social workers, many social workers, so, um, many social workers do therapy also, but many social workers also have what's called systems-based training. So that means that they they work on a bigger scale and, um, you know, it it it kind of ranges, it's hard to sum up. Um, and then marriage and family therapists as well, who are, you know, are trained similar to mental health counselors, they're trained to do psychotherapy, but they focus primarily on couples and family work, um, and that doesn't necessarily mean they don't work with individuals, many, many of them do. It just means that they broadly think in terms of relationships versus individual psychopathology as generally speaking, um, psychologists and and mental health counselors might be focused on. Now, there's a lot of overlap, so like there it's kind of hard to make hard and fast rules, um, but, you know, that's that's the broad, um, differentiation between the fields. Am I missing any of them, Dan? Like if I forgot any names? Speaker 3: Yeah, right. I I think, um, no, you did a really nice job. Um, maybe peer support specialist, that's often people who've who've been in recovery from something like alcohol, substance use, you know, codependency or some other condition. It it's a pretty broad category. It's not as like formalized. Um, but some people get a lot of benefit from, uh, so it doesn't involve the same like ethical guidelines necessarily as a as a therapeutic relationship. Um, but it's another kind of, uh, kind of helping relationship. Maybe coaching also, which is is something you might see more in the like performance space like with Jiu-Jitsu, but my experience is some coaches have, uh, kind of very good therapeutic, uh, background, but again, it's not ethically and legally under like the same umbrella as, um, the psychotherapy that would be provided within all these other specialties. Speaker 2: I did leave out, um, alcohol and drug counselors, which are a whole another subset and it's kind of self-explanatory, but Speaker 1: Now, the intersection between martial arts and therapy is a a really interesting one. I think that over the past several years, there has been this growing awareness that therapy is a very helpful tool for martial arts practitioners, especially those who do it professionally and competitively. I I can't imagine many career paths that are, you know, higher stress in many ways than being a pro Jiu-Jitsu competitor. That's not an easy thing to do and I know that many high-performing athletes have been increasingly reliant on mental coaching and mental performance as part of their prep, which I think is awesome. Um, Jiu-Jitsu, of course, also has this cool factor where it attracts a lot of normal people. There's a lot of folks who never really were an athlete and they discovered Jiu-Jitsu and they love it. And so you get a lot of people who already have therapy as part of their existing practice and then they discover something like Jiu-Jitsu and it becomes, um, almost like a movement practice that they incorporate into their lives. One thing that you hear people in Jiu-Jitsu often talk about is how Jiu-Jitsu they'll say things like Jiu-Jitsu is my therapy, which is understandable, but also probably not the greatest mindset to have. My fear is always that people start using Jiu-Jitsu as a supplement or replacement for actual medical assistance that they need. That's my my biggest concern when we advocate for Jiu-Jitsu is not to oversell the benefits. I don't want people to think that, hey, if you're doing Jiu-Jitsu, that means you don't need to take your medication anymore and you don't need to go see the doctor anymore. I really worry sometimes that people go down that road. And a statement I have heard many people say that I agree with is Jiu-Jitsu can be therapeutic, but it is not therapy. I wonder if you guys agree with that assessment or would like to elaborate on that in any way from a a more maybe educated standpoint than mine. Speaker 2: So I I would say that as somebody who's not only is a therapist, but has engaged in my own therapy many times throughout my life, um, I would say that they maybe they hit on different different but related parts of our experience. So I train in the morning a lot. I teach a class, I taught a class this morning and I got some hard rounds in and there's been a freshness about my day. Like I got something off my chest, right? I got so I got something out that was there. Like I maybe I took out the trash in my brain or something like that. Um, but also it it didn't solve anything, right? Like I didn't like I didn't stop overspending money and getting into credit card debt. I didn't stop like losing my temper at my wife, right? I mean, hopefully I don't do that all that often, but you know, like Jiu-Jitsu didn't accomplish those things for me. And so there are other pathways to address those kinds of things. And so I'd say that they they just in that one example of like how I feel today, they they they address a different they address something slightly different, but similarly relevant on some level. Speaker 3: Yeah, I I think even within, um, psychotherapy and and even in spite of what I do, like I never knew what the word psychotherapy meant. I thought it meant psychoanalysis, um, which is, you know, just sort of more historical and it's like one way of approaching things. But I I think of therapy more and psychotherapy more as kind of like PT for our brain mind body, like physical therapy for our brain mind and body connection. And so Jiu-Jitsu can definitely help with things, right? But I don't think any physical therapist would say that going to a Jiu-Jitsu class is physical therapy. Sometimes it's complementary, you learn some of the same movements, you, you know, you might you might strengthen certain muscle groups or build certain connections that are really valuable, right? Like, you know, you might you might learn how to kind of grip the ground with your feet, which is a great skill for, let's say, other other parts of your life. Um, but I don't think a physical therapist would say that like going to a Jiu-Jitsu class is physical therapy. I think they'd say it's good if it's physical, it's it's therapeutic for you, but it it's not going to address the same like specific things that a physical therapist is doing. And I I think it's kind of similar with the the the internal side, the the the brain mind body side, the mental side. It's like there's a lot of common factors there that I think will be really good. Getting to interact with people, getting to have shared experiences, you know, just getting to getting the, um, the the neurochemistry of the, you know, the the sweat and the exercise. But like Matt said, it's not necessarily like a specific approach that's looking at, you know, your history and coping patterns and, you know, how you respond to things. Um, at the same time, it might hit on them, right? So I think I think Matt said it pretty well. Speaker 1: That's that's a really good point. I think with Jiu-Jitsu, the the interesting consideration is that although people get a lot of value out of it, it's ultimately not a tailored experience really. I mean, when you have a coach who's got 30 people in the room, they're not really taking much time to get to know every single person in the class and how can we specifically help and diagnose this person. I mean, just just on the physical side of things, let alone the mental side of things, right? It's very much a group setting. And that does prevent it from getting overly personalized. So although it can be a helpful movement practice, I think that's an important distinction between that and something like therapy or even direct coaching where you're really working one-on-one with someone who is hyper-fixating and unfocusing on your specific problem. Speaker 2: Yeah. I I I think that one one area where it gets kind of fuzzy is well, so I work with mostly male clients and one of the themes that comes up over and over and some with couples too and it similarly plays out in couples sometimes. A a theme that I hear all the time is this like circles around this notion of competence. So like a lot of times I I've worked with younger guys or say early in their adulthood and, you know, they'll say something to me like, how do I become a more self-confident person? And I remember myself at 20 and I wasn't really good at anything yet, right? Like I hadn't experienced enough of life to to develop skills to to be accomplished and feel good about myself because I'm capable. And then as I've aged, I've, you know, started Jiu-Jitsu on one vector is Jiu-Jitsu, but on many other in many other ways, I've started to feel capable in my life. And, you know, it's sort of a gradual process. But I I do think that Jiu-Jitsu has sort of a unique way of getting it of allowing people to feel competent. Now, that's not always an unequivocal good, right? Like like you one can become overly confident in their beliefs about vaccine conspiracies and that's not great, right? Like that's bad for our general public health. But the like Jiu-Jitsu does for me have like a unique way of of of developing a sense that you're competent at something. Um, Speaker 1: You know, I I can see this going in both directions because on one hand, you're right. Some people they they get into Jiu-Jitsu and after training it for a while, maybe for the first time in their life, they feel like, man, I I I feel like I'm getting good at something. That's something I personally love about Jiu-Jitsu. It gives you very direct measurable feedback to what you're doing in a way that the real world often doesn't. The example I often give is that look, if you are working in an office and you're being obnoxious, right? You're maybe irritating your co-workers. Man, you could go your whole life without ever finding out that people feel that way about you. It can be hard to get feedback in a subtle environment like that. Jiu-Jitsu is a lot of things, but it's subtle is not one of them. If you make a mistake in Jiu-Jitsu, you're going to get punished for it in a split second. So there's this quick feedback loop. And what that means is if you start feeling like, hey, I'm getting better at this, for many people, that can become a huge confidence booster. However, um, sometimes it does create almost this halo effect of confidence where people start to feel way overconfident in other things because they're good at Jiu-Jitsu. The example you gave, Matt, is a great one. I mean, I I've talked so many times about how obnoxious it is when Jiu-Jitsu coaches just start opining and being overly confident about things they have no idea about. I mean, you talked about health. God, that is one, right? I mean, I I hear so many bad tips of, um, and health advice from Jiu-Jitsu black belts because they're so confident and they they think like, hey, I'm I'm good at Jiu-Jitsu. I I'm in shape. I've got abs. So clearly I've got I've got a good handle on what mental or on what health is about. And they'll give you all sorts of crazy unfounded advice. I mean, vaccine conspiracy theories are a big one. The other the other one too is supplements. I, um, on BJJ Mental Models, we get a lot of coaches who want to come onto the podcast and share their advice and their quote-unquote wisdom. And one of the biggest problems I have is, man, if I fact-check a lot of these people, it's completely unfounded. And I really find, um, nutritional discussions, uh, to be especially tricky. Because you will get these people who claim to be really high-performing, you know, athletic performance coaches and they'll come on and they'll say, oh yeah, you need to be taking all of these supplements. And I think like, fuck, I like I'm not a doctor, but I my Google-fu game is pretty strong. And I know right off the bat that most of these supplements are, um, either unsupported at best or actively harmful at worst. This is not good advice. But because you've got these young athletic dudes who are good at Jiu-Jitsu and they're in shape, they sort of feel like they're qualified to opine on anything related to fitness. Um, is that a problem that you see where maybe that overconfidence can cause issues because once you start getting success at Jiu-Jitsu, it does kind of make you feel like, hey, I'm just great overall across the board. Is that a real problem? I I'd love to hear you, maybe Matt, continue your thought and then Daniel, I'd love to hear you maybe chime in after. Speaker 2: So in a sense, the Jiu-Jitsu mimics the scientific method in that you can come up with whatever idea you want to, but if it's a bad idea in a grappling sense, it will fail over and over and eventually you'll stop doing the thing, right? And but it's not like you get so used to that that you just go through like a multi-year-long process of of correcting mistakes over and over. It it's almost like you're not almost not even aware of it. You just like I don't think I'm not going to let my arm cross the center line when I'm sitting in someone's guard. That's just a thing that I do. It's just it's just built into me. And and so similarly, people people get this people don't I think because it's a gradual process, people don't realize that that's what's happening and that's why they became good. They just they just equate being good with me. And so then why am I not capable of reading through this this public health article and determining whether or not the COVID vaccine is efficacious or not? I, you know, I choked out five people today. Like of course like I'm good at that. Like how could I not be good at this other thing? And you you don't like you miss out on the part where you understand how this whole community of scientific inquiry that does many studies in many different ways and gradually slowly like arrives at something approximating truth. So essentially, like you go through this years-long process of, um, of learning what to do on the mats to become a good grappler and it's objectively true at some point that you are a good grappler. And so you think, well, it's you equate it with you and your ego sort of gets involved and I I mean, I do this sometimes. And and then you think, well, it it is my mind that is so good and therefore when I read this public health article about the COVID vaccine or whatever other pseudo-scientific nonsense, um, I I might be interested in, I I miss the part where like I miss doing the equivalent thing that I did in Jiu-Jitsu to get good at Jiu-Jitsu, which is I gradually learn how the scientific process works and how the scientific community comes together to gradually painstakingly arrive at something like truth. And but I don't I don't I miss that distinction because I just think I'm good at Jiu-Jitsu, so therefore, why can't I be good at this other thing? And I've I've seen it happen and it's, well, it's hard to watch. Speaker 1: It it is a good point. I have definitely experienced, um, this on the Dunning-Kruger scale myself where I I mean, I having worked in diverse environments in the past, sometimes I get the benefit of being surrounded by a bunch of professionals in completely different areas. And at first, I think I kind of have a a handle on what they do, but then I start learning a bit about it and I start developing some degree of awareness of how these other fields work, like how a a lawyer operates, for example. And then I after doing that for a few years and hanging around these people, I I can then say like, I think I'm finally at the point where I understand how little about this I actually know. Right? Like it took me two years of working with these people to just understand that I'm a complete idiot here and I don't know anything. It's actually funny because at the beginning, you know, when you first get jump into a new field, you can kind of feel like maybe I I I could, you know, I know a bit about this stuff, but the more you learn, the more you realize how how deep the well is. Jiu-Jitsu is a great example of this where at white belt, I think people don't really understand how much there is to learn. And by the time they get to blue belt, I think that's when people start to really understand that, hey, this there's a lot more here than I thought there was. This is going to take longer than I thought. It's harder than I thought. And then by the time you get to black belt, you I think just give up and you realize, I'm never going to know all of this stuff. Um, Daniel, I'd love to get your thoughts on that. The kind of overconfidence that can come from something like this and whether you see a similar pattern. Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I I I do want to speak to the other side of it, which is I I work with a lot of, um, uh, survivors of sexual assault and I think, you know, people who've kind of had their agency kind of taken from them and I I think that's where activities like Jiu-Jitsu in the right hands, which is not always easy, can really give someone back like a healthy sense of agency and self and a healthy sense of their body and their capability. So I think like what Matt talked about is kind of like a continuum of like, uh, our sense of self and how much we want to like kind of pump that up versus kind of help someone maybe be a little bit more, uh, nuanced and about how they see themself. So it's just to say that like the confidence building effects can be really therapeutic in in some settings. Um, and and I think, yeah, I think we all agree on that. Uh, on the side of the what you were describing, Matt, I think that's super well said. Um, I I'm not super well trained like as a psychoanalyst or anything like that, but I think they have this idea of like omnipotence. Sorry, I'm doing the air quotes off screen, that, you know, a lot of us at some point in our life are kind of looking to someone or something else as like having all the answers. It's just very like epistemically comforting and necessary to like get through. You know, a lot of times it's a parent, it could be religious faith, it could be an institution. And that's kind of how we have to make our way in the world. And I think that Jiu-Jitsu can give us, you know, Jiu-Jitsu can be a place we we look to for that sense of like having answers, having a rock to lean on, having, you know, potency, capability. I've certainly done that and I think it's it's served me well in some settings. I think though like anything that we kind of project omnipotence onto, we have to at some point come to terms with like the reality that like nothing has everything for us. And if you're like doing years of analysis, we'd like work that through with our analyst, but most of us don't have that ability. So like we go through our life and eventually, you know, hopefully kind of reset our expectations. But I definitely think something like Jiu-Jitsu is really ripe for that because that sense of invulnerability is is like baked into the the marketing and and to a degree it we really get that sense when you're starting out. It's just like how far do you take that? Speaker 1: With Jiu-Jitsu, I I worry sometimes that the people in our sport oversell the benefits of this. And it's kind of ironic because Jiu-Jitsu coaches will be very skeptical of things like Big Pharma and science and they're you know, you guys talked about vaccine conspiracy theories. People in this sport seem to be very wary of anything that is coming from the scientific or medical community. But on the other hand, they will show no skepticism at all when it comes to recommending Jiu-Jitsu. They'll tell everyone in their dog, you should be training Jiu-Jitsu. You everyone in the world should be training it. And I think that that in itself is a is a harmful take. Um, an example that I can give, I remember listening to Sam Harris's podcast many years ago and he had Henner Gracie on to talk about how cops should all be training Jiu-Jitsu. And I remember thinking like, okay, there there's a lot of things about Jiu-Jitsu that intuitively sound good. Like cops training Jiu-Jitsu, okay, intuitively that sounds like it makes sense. But just because something is intuitive, that doesn't mean it's right. And I remember sitting here thinking, okay, you've got Sam Harris here, a guy whose whole persona is like, I'm the rationalist guy who questions everything. And you're allowing Henner Gracie, like one and I I like Henner, but he is probably one of Jiu-Jitsu's most notorious salesmen. You're allowing this guy to come on by himself and make his whole pitch and present evidence himself, which probably, you know, I I'm not I'm not even sure where this evidence is coming from that he's presenting. You know, it's I'm sure he's cherry-picking things in his favor. This doesn't seem particularly rational to be recommending this just broadly and saying like, oh yeah, all cops should be training Jiu-Jitsu. I'm not saying that's a bad thing necessarily, but I am saying that I don't think there's enough evidence to make that claim. Um, I think it's irresponsible to just blurt that out on a platform that big without having a lot more backing. And I see this a lot in Jiu-Jitsu as well where people will just they will hard sell Jiu-Jitsu to everyone. Like Daniel, you talked about sexual abuse survivors. Oh, you you you know, you're recovering from trauma, you should do Jiu-Jitsu. Okay, cool, that sounds good. But if a woman has just been traumatized, throwing her into an environment where a bunch of randos are going to be, you know, pinning her onto the ground and cross-facing her, I'm not sure that was the best advice to give, right? You can wind up making that worse. So do we feel sometimes that in this sport, we oversell the benefits of Jiu-Jitsu without properly talking about the risks as well? I mean, um, PTSD, for example, is a is a real concern, I think, when you recommend Jiu-Jitsu to people. Yes, Jiu-Jitsu can help, but it also could traumatize you further if you're not onboarded into the environment carefully. I'd love to hear you both talk about that. Um, Daniel, maybe you first since we were just riffing on this already. Speaker 3: Yeah, I can give a pretty good analogy here. Um, so I got into practicing Jiu-Jitsu around the same time I got into practicing meditation. Um, and it was around the same time I I went to grad school for psychology. So all these things were kind of percolating. I don't know if it was maybe, uh, I don't think I listened to Sam Harris then, so he wasn't to blame. I think it might have been all the Steven Seagal movies I watched when I was a kid. Um, so that'll loop us back to some some other some other some other things at the end. Um, but all that is to say, I got into them both at the same time. So I I have a sense for that kind of like omnipotence or that that what I was looking for. But I'll say as someone who did meditation research in graduate school, um, we really saw kind of the same thing happen where, um, mindfulness and meditation was really exciting. It was a great story. It had personally changed a lot of lives. Uh, definitely has changed the lives of a lot of, um, the people who who who, um, who recommend it. Um, and in in the in the space that I was in, which was like mindfulness-based psychotherapies and and meditation research, um, it was really interesting. So the first thing is, you know, nobody could say that that mindfulness or meditation doesn't help some people. It's really helpful set of practices for a lot of people and fits in well as a complement to a lot of people's mental health care and physical health care. And I still practice meditation sometimes and I still find it really helpful. But a couple of things, um, kind of turned out after like 10 years of like really gung-ho research and a lot of popular press articles and podcasts. Um, the first was that as an intervention, you know, it wasn't necessarily more effective than any other interventions. Um, and there's probably a lot of common factors and overlap in what makes meditation as helpful as say, aerobic exercise or, uh, medication or, you know, cognitive behavior therapy. There's probably a lot of overlap there. Another thing was that a lot of the people who were doing the studies were, you know, very seasoned meditators themselves or had a real interest in these treatments. So there's a little bit of a conflict of interest, which everyone has. You know, we talk about Big Pharma, but everyone has conflicts of interest when we're investigating something. Um, the goal of science is to minimize those as much as possible through replication, peer review, meta-analyses. So that's another piece. And then the other thing is exactly what you're saying, Steve, which was that like people who are vulnerable or who are dealing with traumatic stress or who are having adverse effects were kind of not being spoken for in the results of a lot of this research. So, um, studies might screen out people with, uh, risk factors like post-traumatic stress or people might have adverse responses, but there was no place to report them in these studies, right? Like if you were doing a drug trial to get FDA approval for a drug, there's a really rigorous process where people have to report any adverse effects to allow the trial to continue, right? You hear about that every now and again that like a drug trial was stopped. So for all the problems, the FDA and Big Pharma actually have a pretty set, established, rigorous screening process for like adverse effects and, you know, justification and who can be in a trial and and it it's very, very regimented. And we we don't really have that as much with psychotherapy trials. So, you know, after a certain amount of time studying meditation, people started to talk about adverse effects, people having psychotic episodes on retreats or having, you know, panic or anxiety when they were doing a a treatment study or, you know, people who just, you know, found it wasn't helpful. And those voices weren't really being heard in a lot of the research studies. And so now there's a much more nuanced take on, you know, certain people who might benefit from other practices, other approaches, more kind of what's called like trauma-informed meditation or mindfulness that takes the person's individual history and nervous system into account. And also ways to help people who have negative effects, right? Because let's say you have a bad experience, you know, as a practicing meditator and then you go to your teacher and they tell you that's just part of the process or maybe you did something wrong, right? That kind of compounds the the the difficulty. Um, so I'm spending a lot of time talking about meditation, but I think it's a pretty good analogy for Jiu-Jitsu in that there's a lot of benefits. It's something really helpful. A lot of the people who, um, recommended it and who kind of pioneered it are also obviously involved, so it's hard for them to see, um, downsides or or adverse effects. Um, most people don't speak up if something isn't working for them or isn't helping them. Um, so the only people we hear from are usually the people where things are going well. And, um, these practices can be modified with kind of a sensitivity for things like trauma or psychosis or, you know, substance abuse issues, whatever. And and and can still retain a lot of their benefits, but can help more people. Um, so I think that's kind of an an the the way I would analogize Jiu-Jitsu is like there's obviously a lot of benefits and a lot of good that can happen. And at the same time, um, I think we learn more and more, you know, as as these practices, whether it's meditation or Jiu-Jitsu are in the mainstream for longer, we learn more and more about some of the nuances and where it's good to be, uh, thoughtful and have a have, you know, kind of more, uh, more person-centered approaches. Speaker 1: I I love that. I think it's important to always be careful that we don't oversell the benefits of anything. Jiu-Jitsu being one of them. Um, meditation is a great example, right? I mean, I think for for most people, meditation is, you know, worst-case scenario for most people, probably not really too many downsides, although like you said, it can happen. Um, so it but at the same time, it's become this thing that just gets universally recommended. And Jiu-Jitsu kind of runs the risk of being another one of those things where like everyone who trains Jiu-Jitsu says, oh yeah, everyone should train Jiu-Jitsu. Well, I mean, look, if we're being realistic and honest, I mean, yes, for me personally, I love Jiu-Jitsu. It definitely did change my life. I think mostly for the better. Um, but it is also true that within like my first year of training, I had, you know, had my toe destroyed. I got a thumb in my eye so bad that I lost a piece of my cornea and had to go to the hospital, right? So yes, there's benefits, but I don't know if I would also recommend all of these experiences to just randos on the street. Um, it is also the case that I got off relatively lucky. There's people who suffered spinal injuries or blown out knees in their first year. And so can we really say that Jiu-Jitsu is just this blanket good thing that everyone should do without knowing the risks at all? I don't think so. I think we've got to disclose the risks more carefully like we would in a an actual medical field, right? There there's usually risks to anything we do and it makes sense to at least talk about those so people are informed. Um, when I think the the challenge we see in Jiu-Jitsu is there's so much survivorship bias. When you hear people promoting it, you're talking to the 1% of people who actually stuck around and made a life out of this thing. We're not talking to the 99% of people who burned out or suffered injuries or their bodies broke down and they couldn't do it anymore or they had a trauma experience. Those people leave and they don't come back. They don't make podcasts about Jiu-Jitsu where they talk about all of the bad things that happened, right? So you get this echo chamber effect where everyone who who is talking about Jiu-Jitsu does so in a positive lens because they're the survivors. You don't hear people talking about how, hey, I I went into Jiu-Jitsu because I'm a sexual abuse survivor and then I got sexually assaulted at the gym or someone broke my leg in the first two months of training. These people leave and they don't do podcasts like this to share those experiences very often. Um, Matt, maybe over to you. Do you feel like sometimes we we fail to add proper disclosures when we sell physical activities like Jiu-Jitsu? Speaker 2: Well, as I was thinking about having this conversation, one of the, you know, I was kind of identifying what the differences are between therapy and Jiu-Jitsu. And one of the things that really sticks out to me is how, um, how to be a therapist, you have to adhere to a code of ethics, right? Each of the fields we talked about at the beginning of this conversation has a separate code of ethics. And they're they're broadly similar. There might be some subtle differences here and there, but one thing that's enumerated on all of them as far as I can tell is the fact is the notion of of not imposing your value system on your clients, right? And like you could think of really obvious examples like say like saying that everyone should believe in the God you believe in or maybe in my case that I go around proselytizing about how I don't think God is a real thing and how that makes my life better and that will definitely make your life better. Because it it might not, right? Like like I the things that I get genuine value from are very particular to me. And if I assume and I especially with Jiu-Jitsu, like during the pandemic when I was like off the mats and just like craving it, I found that Jiu-Jitsu would like creep into my therapy conversations sometimes in a way that now as I reflect back on it, probably wasn't the best version of me as a professional. And I I'd I try not to do that anymore, right? Right right, like a code of ethics means a thing that you you are mandated to follow, right? I don't get to choose, oh, today I'm going to proselytize about my religion, but tomorrow I'll stop, right? And in Jiu-Jitsu, there like that that same sort of self-reflection isn't always encouraged. You're right. There there is like something a little bit culty about it at times and I, you know, sometimes I like that part of it. Like like when it's when it's tempered and not crazy, right? Like I I'm okay with that. But, um, but it it the the group thing can easily take over and and having your the notion that Jiu-Jitsu is therapy confirmed by all of your friends can lead you to believe that it really is, right? And you can, yeah, like you say, you can hard sell it to everyone around you as if it's an unequivocal good. I'm not proposing an answer to this. I'm just I'm I I I do but I do, you know, it is a a way that therapy is distinct from Jiu-Jitsu and that to be a therapist, you have to be able to look at your own value system and recognize the subtle ways it could be creeping into a conversation you're having with a client. Um, and and try not to, right? And that same thing doesn't necessarily exist in the Jiu-Jitsu world, right? That you don't have to sign on to a code of ethics to open a school. Speaker 3: Right. And I'll just add on that, you know, I think, um, psychotherapy is also kind of like a relational art where the therapist kind of is the instrument and it's also like taking part in the in the process. And so I think that you you get some training there in the relational side of it, like, um, one example that comes to my mind is like idealization. So it's common for someone to kind of idealize their therapist and in in some schools of thought, you really work with that constructively. You know, the therapist kind of recognizes it and kind of helps the person reflect that idealization back on themselves and kind of, um, you know, have the sense that kind of what they're looking for is inside of them and it's it it helps the person kind of uncover that instead of like put it out into someone else in the world. Um, so like, for example, you know, um, I had a Bruce Lee poster on my wall for a long time. I loved Bruce Lee. He influenced a lot of how I think about therapy and martial arts. Um, I've sort of come down off of that in part because I think he was kind of against hero worship anyways. But, um, you know, that's an example of like idealizing someone. Um, and and as a therapist, you're trained to pick up on that. Like I remember the first time someone did it to me. I didn't know what happened and I just thought I was the best therapist in the world and then my supervisor was like, oh, you you believed that, didn't you? And she just kind of like smiled at me like, you poor thing. You know. Um, because it's it's a thing that happens and and and you you you you kind of want to be able to detect that and and and kind of be be careful with it and actually use it to help the person in the kind of the the here and now and the transference and the relationship. But I, you know, if you're not in that space, like if you're a meditation instructor or a martial arts teacher and someone idealizes you, you don't know what's happening. It feels really good and it's easy to kind of get caught up in that and buy into that. And I think that's where you can have these really tricky student teacher relationships and, you know, the person might be getting a lot better a lot out of their Jiu-Jitsu, they might be getting a lot better, but, you know, the side of them that really idealizes people in relationships and gets into difficult positions by kind of, let's say, um, rejecting, you know, their own authority and looking to someone else. That doesn't get touched because it's not it's not really the focus of of someone's training. And I definitely can relate to like having periods in my Jiu-Jitsu where I was looking at all these different aspects of my game, but there were just parts of my life that were going totally unexplored, you know. I was having challenges in relationships and having problems with authority and all this stuff that like that just wasn't getting touched by anything I was doing on the mat because it was it it it was like different compartments. And so I I think that's where like a good psychotherapeutic provider is going to try to look at the whole person and also factor in their own role in the relationship for the benefit of the the client. Speaker 1: Something I've observed about Jiu-Jitsu folks, which I find just fascinating, you know, on the topic of compartmentalization, Daniel, is that people will sometimes act one way in the context of their martial arts persona and act in a completely different way in the context of the rest of their lives. So an example that I I can think of that I thought was quite funny, a while ago, there was some guy, I think he was an MMA fighter who was talking about his like mindset routine for toughening himself and it was basically, it was some total nonsense like getting locked in a dark room for three days straight and having people hit you with sticks or something stupid like that, right? And someone that I know commented and replied and said like, man, dudes will do anything except go to therapy. Like they, you know, they'll they'll talk about like being becoming mentally tough and they'll do all of these crazy things and they'll go and they'll compete and they'll, you know, do these weird humiliation abuse rituals to themselves. But the idea of actually going to a therapist and talking about their feelings is so scary to them. And I find that amazing. Like there's people I know who will they'll go and compete in front of crowds of 10,000 people, but the idea of going to a therapist is way scarier to them. And as a podcaster, I've been told similar things where people will sometimes say like, Steve, doing a podcast with you is like the scariest thing I've ever done because I I felt like I was on the hot seat and I was being asked all these questions and I'm thinking, okay, that's crazy to me. Because as a Jiu-Jitsu hobbyist, you going and competing and this being televised and recorded on FloGrappling and everyone in their mom seeing you get, you know, just smashed by some random person. To me, that's the scariest thing imaginable. And you're telling me that what I do every day, sitting on this fucking chair and talking about Jiu-Jitsu is scary. And I I find that so weird that there is that dichotomy. Why do you guys think that is? Why because it really does feel like there a lot of people in Jiu-Jitsu are are almost afraid of therapy. Any insights into what why that might be, what it is about this particular type of person that makes them so averse to talking about their feelings? I wonder, Matt, um, what do you think on that first? Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's a it leaves out a whole side of being successful in your relationships, right? Like sure, it's good to be tough. It's good to you know, I I have young kids, there are hard moments and it's good to just kind of be able to like hunker down and get the job done. Clean up the diaper, like whatever needs to be done. But there's a whole another side of of of being well in the world that involves being soft and gentle and kind. I it sounds to me like that there's some defense against that side of that side of masculinity, probably. I mean, I'm assuming most of these people are men, um, just based on the sport we're talking about here, right? But that it it's maybe it's there's some comfort that it's simple, right? All you got to do is be tough. You got to have your friends hit you with sticks and be in a dark room for three days and then you will like ascend. But it leaves you ill-prepared for so many facets of your life, um, that, you know, it won't go well if you're if you don't get some comfort there. Speaker 1: Daniel, what do you think? Speaker 3: Well, I guess I have to be careful because I feel like if I say the wrong thing, I'm just going to get beaten on the next time I go into training even even even worse than usual. Um, no, I I will say this is going to sound a little funny. You know, I do think there's a little bit of just from the little I've looked into gender differences. If if we are talking about mostly male, um, martial arts practitioners, there's like a little bit of a gender effect because I do think that like when you think about problem-solving styles, um, and I remember this from the meditation research too, like some of the studies would show that the different meditation practices were maybe more beneficial for people identified as women as opposed to men. And I think the thought was that for some things, you know, men might go towards a more action-oriented style of coping, a more concrete style of coping where something like Jiu-Jitsu kind of fits in well and and also I think like the social hierarchy there can feel kind of comforting just because it's it's maybe more salient for for some men. Um, so whereas like the the style of solving problems by like sitting in one place, talking, exploring emotions, maybe doesn't feel like it comes as easily or it's as as as clear-cut as action-oriented. And I'm speaking in total generalizations, but I I do think, you know, there may be some some research to that. Um, I also would say, you know, I think it can it can be the kind of thing that, uh, maybe to Matt's earlier point, when when certain things feel very clear and make a lot of sense and are straightforward, which, you know, when you've when you've got some sense of mastery on the mats, like it feels really solid and stable. And then something like looking at how you're feeling or looking at challenges in relationships or looking at your life history, um, can feel really vulnerable and really scary. Um, I think particularly for people like where their martial arts practice has been a really important way of like kind of building a sense of self and almost maybe like some some psychological armor if there've been some real vulnerable moments earlier in life, which is which is pretty common, right? Like you hear a lot of fighters who've had some real vulnerable moments early in their life and their their martial arts practice or training really helped them like almost overcome that, you know. And kind of like looking inside can feel really scary because it it it kind of gets underneath the armor a little bit and that can that can be really unsettling and just feel very different. So it's kind of two levels of explanation there. One might be a little more kind of, um, biology and gender roles and one might be just kind of a person's history. Speaker 2: Dan, that's a really I I appreciate the the addition there because you you're right that like there are there might be very understandable reasons why a person would kind of hyper-focus on the toughness, you know, effectively like focus on toughness as a trait that is the only thing that's worth pursuing, right? If anything that if when you're vulnerable, like historically, when you're smaller, when you're younger and you're less powerful, you know, when when there's a lot of pain there that that to to engage then in the softer side of life, to feel empathy for the people in your life and to and, you know, have sort of a softer side of masculinity, it like is a it might be a hard thing to do. And it's probably worth doing, which is, you know, the kind of thing a therapist might point out to you, right? Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, I I I appreciate what you're saying, Steve, and I definitely think there's been some thread of that for a while. You know, even in grad school, we were exposed to coursework on, you know, how emphasizing therapy can deemphasize, you know, it can it can say sort of, go find an go find a solution within yourself to bigger problems that, you know, you need to be looking at that that we're not talking about, whether it's systemic issues, whether it's, you know, uh, economic, educational attainment. So there's definitely a risk of like overemphasizing the individual locus of control and underemphasizing these big picture issues, um, or rather locus of responsibility. Um, I also think that, yeah, not every problem requires therapy. Therapy's not going to be the answer to everything. You know, we don't want to kind of perpetuate this magical idea that you can go into a room and talk about things and and they're going to change. Like it's that sense of agency is really important. And I I've been guilty of that too, like almost using therapy the same way as Jiu-Jitsu or meditation to kind of like bypass things instead of kind of facing them. You know, like, oh, if I just spend a little more more time in therapy, I'll I'll get through this instead of, you know, going out into my life and dealing with a challenging relationship or, you know, coming to terms with something in my work that I I wasn't happy with. So I I think I think that potential is there for a lot of things. And there are certain therapies and certain approaches that that can have adverse effects. So like if someone's seeing a therapist and they're not getting better or they feel like they're getting worse, it's important to talk about that with your provider. Like, don't assume that they know everything or that they know how you're struggling. And don't assume that it's always you. Sometimes certain approaches are contraindicated at certain times. You know, when someone's just come through something really traumatic, having them talk about it a lot and go back over it actually isn't always helpful. Sometimes that can be harmful and can kind of get in the way of the natural healing process, the natural kind of memory consolidation process that happens after something really extreme. So that's just one example where like therapy psychotherapeutic approaches can also have unintended negative effects and it's important to pay attention to those. And I think the broader point that like it's not the solution for everything and, you know, you don't want to deemphasize things people naturally do like in this case, like go to Jiu-Jitsu, hang out with friends, talk to a, you know, a mentor, you know, things like that that are aren't like a professional service that can still be really valuable. Like you don't want to deemphasize those and just say, oh, you know, you need to, you know, do a certain amount of therapy to to move through your life. Speaker 1: Well said, guys. Well, I I thought this was a fascinating conversation and I thank you both for doing this. If people want to connect with you or maybe work with you, how do they go about doing that? Speaker 2: I have a website, um, Matthew Tanzi.com, um, and I work with clients in Vermont, Connecticut and Colorado. I also, uh, am soon going to be licensed in Massachusetts. So that'll be a, you know, a geographic area I could potentially work in too. Um, but yeah, that's that's the best way to find me. Speaker 3: I have no social media presence or anything. Um, I I have an email address. So, uh, I guess they could email you, Steve, and you could give them my email address. Uh, it's probably not very satisfying, but maybe I'll get a website one of these days. Speaker 1: No worries. Well, thank you so much for doing this, both of you. I really appreciate it. Speaker 2: Thank you, Steve. Speaker 3: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks so much. Thanks for what you're doing. Speaker 1: Thanks all.