Chitty Chats with Stacy

Bryan Post
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[00:00:00] Oh, I'm so happy you're here with me today.

Yeah, of course. Thank you for saying yes. Happy to do it. Happy to do it, of course, anytime.

Well, I reached out to you for a lot of reasons, so we're recording, we're here. Okay. I've been doing this podcast called Chitty Chats with Stacey and it's really taking a behind the scenes look at the humans who do this work that we do.

And you're at the top of my list of people to ask. And I also know you're a, you're a busy human. I was contemplating our relationship today. I've known you for over 16 years, Brian. That's crazy. Can you even believe that? I remember you being at my house and we had my son's birthday party and you were there, and, uh, so here [00:01:00] we are.

I'm with Brian Post Friends, so I'm gonna let you introduce yourself and then I'm gonna give you all the accolades that I have to give you.

So, oh, well, I, you know, I'm just a man out in the world trying to make a difference with, uh, adoptive families. I currently, um, run a company in Northern California called The Leaf Company, and we service 22 counties throughout Northern California, providing a service called Wraparound Services for at risk adoptive families.

And I'm just out there with my team every day, there's 150 of us, trying to, trying to make a difference and have impact. That's, that's the, that's the short and, short and narrow of it.

So, so that's what you do, right? I want to know who you are. And so you came into my life through the Post Institute, which has been serving families for A

long

time.

Yeah. How, I mean, when did you even start that? Early?

Um, 20, 23, [00:02:00] 23 years. 23 years. I was 27. So I'm 50 now. Get out of

here. You haven't aged a bit,

Brian. Actually, the videos tell the story. I had the old videos. I had no gray. And here it is.

Yeah, I see you as one of the seasoned people in this field. You came into my life because you wrote the beautiful book, Beyond Consequences, Logic and Control, and I wonder for you if you're still having these conversations about the importance of not having all these consequences.

Yeah, right. So I've been having these conversations with people who are someone new. to this business. And you've been doing this for decades. And I know that it just comes so natural in your, who you are, how you present yourself, what you articulate. And I'm just curious for you what this journey has been like [00:03:00] in the, in the decades of doing this work.

Um, yeah, it's been interesting. It's a, it's a, it's an interestingly painful, uh, journey because it is, um, it requires a lot of self reflection, a lot of growth, and you're constantly faced with, um, stressed out, traumatized, unhappy people. And. You know, you wonder how, how one finds, how, how does one find meaning in that?

And I believe it is, is when you do find meaning in it, it, it kind of defines itself, because I, I always say that I was born to do this. God made me to do what I do and, and that's why I was conceived and, and, and nurtured by a woman out of, who was not married. Um, whose husband was, was in another country in the [00:04:00] military and my father, whose own father was my grandfather, had, had died from a tragic fall from a building when he was 15, which set him on another path.

Then they, the two of them came together and created me. And then from there to foster care to adoption and then my sister and all the things that we went through growing up. I feel like my life was, was perfectly engineered to do what I do. And a part of that is being able to find the hope and the, um.

Just a vision for what families and what kids can have that they don't currently have, and that becomes the thing that is, is bigger for me than anything else. You know, I can have. I can have a hundred families say this work has changed my life, this has been fantastic, but the amount of time that I [00:05:00] spend gaining any, any level of satisfaction from that is not matched by the satisfaction that I get from a day of doing really hard work.

with a family or an hour of doing really hard work with a family that has some, some modicum of hope that things can be different. It's like in the, in the battle is where I get the most. The most reward, even though it's extremely exhausting and just, I have no idea what my heart could possibly look like after this, after this long at this level of doing this work, it's got to be pretty interesting looking.

Yeah,

I think there's so many reasons I've been drawn to you over the years and one of the things I've appreciated about you Brian is I've reached out to you in some extremely vulnerable moments of my own. And you just show up, you show up in the hard and you don't shy away from it. [00:06:00] And you very much are like, I'm here to figure this out with you, not for you.

And I love that. I've had the opportunity to watch you teach. I've had the opportunity to be with that. And there's something about I'd be curious what your heart looks like to when you're when you're holding that space when you're with the people who are in pain, day after day after day after day. I think it has to be your gift to keep you going.

Oh, sure. Yeah, I'm like that old musician who looks really old and frail until they start playing. And as soon as they start playing they just kind of transform, and I'm always kind of in awe by that very experience myself, because I can. I can dread and dread and dread doing something, talking to someone, being in some space, but as soon as I'm in that space, it's game time and it's ready to go.

Yeah, I love that. And for you, this, this whole season of your life, like you have different seasons, you've morphed in a lot of [00:07:00] different ways. Yeah. And so I'm curious now how you've landed on this working with families in California when I, I went to your training in Virginia, you are internationally known, like, how do you make the decision of where you're going to share your gift?

What does that look like for you? Because I don't think, I don't

think I do. I don't think I make that decision. I think God just kind of lays that out for me. And I'm, I like to listen. When I feel like the spirit is, is moving me and calling me, then I just like to listen and, and do what I'm supposed to do.

And I was, had been consulting in California to a group and, um, they had some issues and, and a few years later they brought me back. And while I was there lecturing, I just felt like God said five families and, and literally within two weeks we had six families to go to start our program. And now we've served, um, we're nearing close to 300.

That's amazing. And it's an opportunity. It's an opportunity for [00:08:00] me to do something that I haven't done before, which is, you know, replicate my model and my understanding and to sow seeds of love in people. First, just my team. You know, people who, and this is, I just did a video not too long ago, um, called five, five, the things I've learned in five years of doing wraparound and probably one of the, the first thing I've learned is how freaking hard this is to teach my understanding of what I know to all these other people so they can go teach it to other people.

Oh my gosh. The most overwhelming thing ever.

Yeah, how do you take 40 years, 50 years, I mean you're 50, you started this journey when you were conceived, right? Like we know that your memories are holding all the knowledge. You have 50 years of this journey. And how do you take that and package it in a trainable way?

It's very difficult.

You know, it's, [00:09:00] it's, you have to change your expectations. You have to change your expectations to one of, instead of planting redwood trees, you're just planting seeds. And you, you realize that every redwood started out as a seed and you have to just nurture those seeds until they start growing.

And, and hope that one day they'll become redwoods. Even I'll no longer be on the planet, but that those seeds will become redwoods, which will plant other seeds. And that's that's really, you know, my thing is, and I tell people all the time, I'm talking to you about your child, or I'm talking to you about working with families, but that's really not what we're in the work of.

We're in the work of changing generations. We're in the we're in the legacy work. You know, we're in the, we're in the work of breaking chains that you might not see for for decades and decades. That's what the, that's the real work that we're into.

Love that. You talked about your model. I want to talk about that [00:10:00] because when I met you, I was like, Man, this sounds so simple and it's so not simple and you have, you have planted seeds in me.

I very much, when I am at a crossroads, I say, is this a love based decision or is this a fear based decision? And it's just become part of my own journey. And so I want to talk about your model. Let's

talk about that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's, it's based on, it's called the stress model. And it's, you know, over the years, it has definitely, I, I have, I believe I tried to simplify it.

So it's already simple. It's just not easy. But the stress model says all behavior arises from a state of stress. In between the behavior and the stress is the presence of a primary emotion. There are only two primary emotions, love and fear. It's through the expression processing and understanding of the fear that we calm the stress and diminish the behavior.

And then I believe beyond that is that there's only energy, vibration, and [00:11:00] frequency. So at the end of the day, that's all we're doing all the time is we're just exchanging vibrations and energies and, and turning up and turning down frequencies and in that understanding, everything else has the capacity to resolve itself and become what it's supposed to be and move down whatever path it's supposed to move down.

But just, you know, from the, from the sheer simplicity of the model it's You know, we're in the behavior business. Everyone's focused on the behaviors and, and, um, I have a friend in, in, uh, Canada who, who says, who refers to them as symptoms and symptoms is great. I feel like Americans just talk about behaviors all the time.

And the reality is, All those behaviors that we have a tendency to focus on all arise from stress, and those behaviors trigger stress in us, and that stress immediately turns into an energy of fear, and there are really only two energies. There's a [00:12:00] thriving energy and there's a survival energy. As soon as that amygdala turns on, we move into survival and that survival changes the way our brain operates, changes what we think, changes our ability to remember, you know, I've been citing some, some scientific findings, Stacey, for literally for 25 years, you know, Joseph Ladeau says in times of stress, our thinking becomes confused and distorted and our short term memory is suppressed.

I'm like, hello folks. That says everything. If you're stressed, and the thing is, most people don't know the stress, but if you're stressed, you're not thinking clearly. So until you can remember to breathe, because that's the, that's the linchpin, the ability to breathe in the moment, mindfulness, the ability to slow down, the ability to respond as opposed to react.

Change is everything. Even Bruce Lee said, If there's only one thing you can master, master the ability to remain calm. [00:13:00] It's just, it's everything. So, it's very simple. It's almost impossible to do. In reality, it is just almost impossible to do. When you do it, it is an amazing thing. And when you can master it, it is an amazing thing, but getting to that beginner stage, that mastery stage is a whole lot of messing up and a whole lot of self forgiveness and a whole lot of painful learning.

Yeah,

love that. One of the reasons that I just. I mean, it is simple, but it's not easy. And you are human. You are, you're not just Brian Post, trainer, entrepreneur, author. You're also Brian Post, husband, brother, son, parent. And with those comes this whole emotional. component. And so what happens when you lose your shit, Brian?

I want to know, like, does that happen?

I lose my shit like [00:14:00] everyone else. Um, I probably just don't lose it as often. And when I do, I recover pretty quickly. Because I, I actually don't judge myself for when I fly off the handle. I mean, I have 150 employees in California, and if anyone knows anything about employees in California, it's not always the easiest thing to navigate.

So, I, uh, you know, I can, I can definitely lose it. People, people know I get pretty passionate. When the curse words start flying, the energy, the vibration, and the frequency is definitely dialed up. But I also recover pretty quick, and then my wife and I are in the process of building a house, and I even told my builder one day, I said, if I get sideways, if I ever get sideways with you, just know that in about five minutes, it's all good.

I give myself that five minutes.

I love that. And I think that's why it's important to me to chat with the people who've been doing this work for so long because I don't know about you, but when you sit with families who are just starting to learn all this information [00:15:00] about stress and the brain and calming our amygdala and all that, they're pretty hard on themselves.

Sure, absolutely. And I, I like to remind people, like, we've been at this for, I mean, I discovered all this when my daughter was in my belly and she's about to be 17. So I've been doing this for 17 years, not as long as you, but in it. And there are days I'm like, I can't believe that just fell out of my mouth.

Right? Like, I know better. I know better. But knowing better doesn't always equate to doing better because of that human

response. Yeah, no, you, you know, you have to be willing to embrace the process of growth. It is a process. It is not an outcome. And we're not perfect, so we're going to mess up, but the beauty of messing up is that it's an opportunity and an invitation to grow if you're willing to take responsibility for your behavior and for yourself, then that really gives you permission for everything, as [00:16:00] long as you're willing to acknowledge when you mess up, apologize, and do better the next time.

You know, that's that just changes the trajectory for ourselves and for our children. Transcribed

Yeah, let's talk about that. When you think about the trajectory for your own children. Are you aware of what patterns you're trying to break? Of what generational cycles you're, you're working

on? I can't say 100%, but I will say 98%.

I've got a 15 year old little girl at home. She's our last one at home. And let me tell you that the patterns are activated. I'm constantly talking to my father on my shoulder when she's rolling her eyes and mumbling and walking away. Constantly. So yeah, I have to be, because I know, and that's You know, I've been parenting for, I've been parenting since I was 22 years old, so that's a, that's a long time to be parenting, and [00:17:00] it doesn't get a lot easier, you just get more patient with the process, and this one's given me a run for my money.

I can tell I'm getting older.

I love that though, right? It's also stretching you and and helping you use those pieces that you've been preaching to everyone else, right? 100%. Yeah, I, I think the people that I find that do this work that really land the best with me are the ones who are living this work.

Sure. Right? Yeah. And so, I want to talk about the stress model. Where, where does it apply? Does it apply at home? Does it apply in education? It

applies in life. Yeah, let's talk about that. It is a model for human behavior. There's, there's not an, there's not an experience where it's not applying. You know, in any situation, anytime there's an opportunity, an invitation for a relationship, it applies.

So, it's not, it's not limited to adopted children or foster children or moms or dads. It's in [00:18:00] every relationship.

And educational settings. At the grocery store, in airports, uh. Everywhere there are human beings,

it is, it is appearing. It's relevant. I just really think that's important to

say because, as you know, I'm part time, I'm in the military, and people often are like, Stop it with your hippy dippy bullshit.

And I've got this, I've got this beautiful big man right here sitting in front of me saying it's not just all hippy dippy bullshit, right? There is a piece that it applies to. Every person on the planet,

100%, 100 percent

culturally, racially, gender,

all the, all the barriers. And I tell people I, I have over when I was a young clinician, I was really interested in all the tools and techniques and therapies and all this stuff.

But as the stress model evolved, and as I evolved to kind of, to, to step into, to [00:19:00] what it really is. It's just the foundational principle. It's just the foundation at the very foundation. It's stress and it's love and it's fear and anything, everything else you can look at and you can do this and do that, but you've got to come back to this foundation.

And when it comes to family specifically, that starts with the parents. It starts with the parents. And if, if you, if you miss that, it's starting with the parents. It's like a ship leaving the dock that's off by a degree in no matter, in no short, long period, whatever period of time, it is going to be going in a completely different direction.

It starts with the parents. And if you're not willing. To start at that very personal, very vulnerable level, nothing else is going to make any sense. And I feel like that's, I feel like that's continues to be the [00:20:00] dichotomy that we get ourselves in, in mental health is that we are so quick to look at children.

We are so quick to blame children, to medicate children, to diagnose children, but we are not quick to look at ourselves. And that starts with mental health professionals. And I believe that we don't, we don't look at, we don't look at parents and help them grow in their self awareness because we don't look at ourselves.

Because as soon as we look at ourselves and we explore all those parental messages that we all carry, then it just makes sense that we want to work with, with parents. to understand themselves more so they can understand their children. We just keep moving, moving around that. And that's, that's very unfortunate.

So, are you of the belief that, you know, clinicians should have their own therapists and do their own work?

One hundred percent. Yeah.

I ask that, you know I'm asking that, Facilita. Because I believe that also, however, It's been an interesting journey, right? When [00:21:00] you're a clinician trying to find a clinician and you, you and I, like, one of the reasons I've reached out to you a few times in my own vulnerable moments is because there are very few people on the planet that can hold space for me in the same way that I can with them.

Yeah,

you get very jaded. As to what's available out there as a resource. So when you find it, you really, and this is, this is why it's really important to have mentors that you can connect to and relate to, and that you can respect and appreciate. And, and you don't, you know, you don't have a hundred mentors.

You have a small, a very small group of mentors that you can, can go and be vulnerable with and ask for what you need.

Yeah, and I love that about you. I often think of how scary it was for me to come to Virginia. Uh, my son was just a few months old when I left. And here I am learning about the importance of, you know, being with children in the In the moments of me leaving them and, and you [00:22:00] literally holding me as I'm crying my eyeballs out about my alcoholic dad and my family.

And I just think it's important to really say that because as clinicians, a lot of times. We try to keep our shit together and not act like anything's happening, but there's a reason we're clinicians, right? Like, this journey of ours is given to us very early on and holding that and being vulnerable and healing from that and moving through that and growing.

So important.

So important. It is, it is critical. It is critical that we do self work in order to help other people do their own self work. And if we don't do self work at the deepest level, and I tell my team all the time, I will not ask you to go somewhere or do something that I haven't done a thousand times, and am not willing to do at any point in time.

I won't ask you that, and so it is unfair for us to ask parents, much less ask [00:23:00] kids. To do the same work that we're not willing to do ourselves, and it just, it's just a whole different paradigm, Stacey. It's a whole different paradigm of operating and seeing the world. And it's unfortunate because the other paradigm just leaves so much to be to be appreciated.

When you wipe away these pieces of, it's not the kid's fault, or we don't have to label them, we don't have to diagnose them, we don't have to give them medication, we don't, we don't have to do those things. We might do those things because it might add value, but we don't have to do those things. How much further do you get in your growth with

families?

Oh, it just changes everything. I mean, it, it, I think if like I have families right now that we serve that have generational trauma, generational trauma, and then from that generational trauma, kids who have been medicated and labeled and sent to residential facilities, and then they come home [00:24:00] and all this generational trauma is still sitting there.

And so then we start working with them. And so interesting because I'll have my own. I have my very own trauma support specialist getting frustrated and getting overwhelmed and getting upset with the parents or getting upset with the kids. And I'm just like, look, don't forget where they come from. If you truly understand where they come from, then you understand that this is normal.

They're supposed to act this way. It's the only thing their brain knows until we teach them something different. And the only way we teach, we teach them something different is emotional impact and repetition. If you're not willing to invest that on the, on a journey, then you're not going to create the shift.

You can get frustrated and throw up your hands and you go on down the road. And guess what? There's been no impact. It's just another person who's, who's attempted to trust someone to help them, guide [00:25:00] them, lead them, who's been let down. And so it go, for me, it becomes this, it's, it actually doesn't become, it's like this next level of responsibility, which.

Which I have to be really aware of because it, it makes me more cautious of who I engage with because I know that I go into love, I go into love and when I, when I spend too much time with someone, I love them and I, I'm like a pit bull on a bone. I don't want to let go. And so it's just really it because this work is emotional.

So, I have to be more cautious now. I just had someone text me the other day, Hey, do you still do coaching? I get these emails. Hey, can you help me? I can't, I can't, I can't. Not because I don't want to, but because I have to really protect this heart space that is still doing this work and still plans to [00:26:00] do this work for the next 30 years.

Uh, I appreciate you talking about love. You're one of the only people I know that really talks about that and then does that. And one of the things I teach the people that I supervise and I coach and all that is that love is the intervention. Oh man. Oh man. Yeah. And it, and it gets distorted because we haven't always been loved the way we need to be loved.

Right? Yeah. And so when you fall in love with these humans, how many people in your life are you hearing from 20 years later, 30 years later, because you've loved them in this

journey. You're, you're, you're 100 percent correct. I hear from people, kids, parents, just like the parent that texted me, you know, that was a 15 year ago relationship.

It's. It, it doesn't, it never stops because love doesn't have limits because love doesn't stop. So I'll have kids and have kids now that I [00:27:00] worked with 25 years ago that are now adults. I had, I was doing a lecture out in California, um, last year and a mom came. She said, I heard you, I heard you lecture 24 years ago.

I heard you lecture. And she said, I used what you, what you taught me. And here's my now 29 year old daughter. Who at that time was a child. She was a child and here she is. That, that was the most humbling thing for me. I think I have experienced in much of my entire career for that woman to show back up 24 years later.

I'm, I'm 26 years old. I don't know shit. I don't know shit. I just have some ideas about the shit. I don't know shit, but I'm out there putting it in the world because I believed in it. And she took it, and she applied it, and then she brought her child, [00:28:00] her now adult child, back to see me 24 years later. Man, that was, that was, that was a rewarding moment of my career.

Well, it's the ultimate love revolution. Yes. And you, you've been on a love revolution since I've met you. And I think that's why it was so important for me to have this conversation with you, Brian, because you love in a way that other people don't. And I think that's such a gift that you give the world, you give the people that hold space with you.

You give, you just, you show up in a loving space as a loving person.

I just want to, I just want to love the way love makes it possible. We all can step into that energy. Into the boundless into the infinite where there's no fears and there's no limits We all have the capacity to be able to do that and just be absorbed by love And I just want to be able [00:29:00] to do that I don't get it right all the time and I'm very human and and have fears and anxieties like everyone else But when those fears and anxieties are show up and they're present for for a short period of time I know that I have a choice I know that I don't have to hold this space of fear.

I know that I can step into this space of love where none of that exists. And that's what I want to do. I just, I want to keep, and to be honest with you Stacey, it looks, it looks less and less like mental health. Because it's not about mental health. It's like someone asked me the other day if I was a spiritual person.

I was like, yeah, I'm a spiritual person, but I feel like I want to be more than just a spirit. I feel like spirituality is limited. I don't, I don't want to be limited. I want to be an energetic person. I want to be a force. I want to be a vibration. I want to be a frequency where none of that limited mind stuff exists.

And, and as we're, yeah. Doing more as I've been more and more into the mental health field. [00:30:00] It's not mental health for me, it's freaking relationship. It's love and relationship and it's healing through being present to people and helping them go through their pain and not being afraid of it and just being courageous when, when the, so, so many parts of the world, you know, that you're, that you dwell in.

They say you're wrong or you're not doing it right and you know, it's like shit. You just got to keep showing up That's what I that's what I want. That's what I want to continue to push forward even when you're the most scared and and you know, the people don't don't they don't appreciate it because it's fearful It scares them.

And, you know, when we get scared as people, we do crazy stuff. We do crazy stuff. We say crazy stuff. And I've been dealing with that for a long time. And I just have to keep showing up because I don't know any other way. I don't know any other way to be.

Well, and when it's your mission, when it's your purpose, That's right.[00:31:00]

You know, you, you've You've written these things. You've put these things in the world. You've created a love revolution when it's just who you are and how you walk in the world, Brian. There is no other option but showing up. That's right. And I love that about you. So, uh, the question I ask all my, my healers and my friends in the biz, how do you take care of yourself?

What do you do to preserve your heart? However, it might look to, to preserve your own relationships too, right? I am certain that being married to someone like you is its own challenges, right? I've got this big purpose, much like me. My husband's like, I'm signing up for your bullshit. I have no idea where this is taking me, but let's do it.

And so how do you preserve that? How do you preserve your personal relationships, yourself, your own energy vibration? What do you do to take care of yourself, Brian?

Well, my health over the last few years has become increasingly important and it's, it's my physical health, [00:32:00] but also my emotional health, um, my spiritual health.

So, I mean, I get up, I cold plunge every morning. I have a cold plunge at my home in Texas. I have one in California. I cold plunge, I work out. I journal. I love quiet. I love to just sit and have my quiet time. And my wife and I, we don't have to do anything particular. We just like to hang out. I like to hang out.

She likes time in. So I like to hang out with her and just do whatever it is that she's doing. I'm just there present. And then I Love Mexico. I love to go to Mexico. I love the sun and the beach.

And you, what I love about you is you preserve time to be there at a specific time of year to bend your ear well, start your ear right.

As long as I've known you, you've done that. Yes.

And I want to increase that, that duration more and more and

more. I love that. Well, a million thank yous for you just [00:33:00] showing up for me today. My honor. You're, you truly have really shaped me in who I am and you are woven into the fabric of my own purpose and I can't thank you enough for that.

Well, you're, you're very welcome Stacey.

I love you and I love this revolution you're on and I can't wait to see what else you're putting out in the world.

Well, you're doing it too. You're doing it too. You're putting out great stuff. Well,

thank you. I appreciate you being with me today. Have a great day.

Okay,

you too.