Ep. 334 Why Are Farmer Suicide Rates So High and What Can We Do About It?

Written By Hoksey Native Seeds

Dr. Karen Vanderhoff, clinical psychologist, joins the Prairie Farm Podcast to tackle some uncomfortable questions about modern life and mental health. The conversation explores why antidepressants are so prevalent, whether we've gotten "softer" as a society, and how the convenience of modern life has disconnected many people from meaningful work. Kent and Nicolas dig into the link between physical and mental health, why farmers face uniquely high suicide rates, and what happens when people lose the sense that what they do actually matters. Expect honest talk about depression, stress, sleep, food, and the deep human need for purpose—with practical insights on recognizing when someone needs help and how to actually provide it.

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  • Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (00:00.098)

    Hi, I'm Dr. Karen Vanderhoff, clinical psychologist at AIM Life Solutions, and this is the Prairie Farm podcast. I'm Mark Kenyon. I'm Dr. Julie Meachin. I'm Jill Bebout. Chad Gravey. My name is Jeremy French. Laura Walter.

    Steve Hanson.

    Kent Boucher (00:13.55)

    Carol Hochspurgeon, owner of Hoxie Native Seeds, and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast. This is Hal Herring, Backcountry Hunter's and Angler's Podcast.

    Gips lie, Iowa Whitetail, Valerie VanCoten, State Historical Society of Iowa, Dr. Matt Helmers, Iowa State University,

    name is Kyle Laubarger with the Native Habitat Project. I'm Judd McCullum. I appeared out of the wilderness and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast.

    Welcome to the Prairie Farm Podcast.

    are significant side effects. Now, we all know people who have benefited wildly from them too. So I'm not saying don't ever go on them. Go on them eyes wide open with informed consent. Understanding that if you start to get some weird thoughts, it could be the medication. So you need to be really wise.

    Kent Boucher (00:56.788)

    One of the things that has been super eye-opening to me, and here's my risk of getting myself yelled at, but just how many people are taking those medications. Right, it's wild. I've had friends who've been in the room with, you know, eight people, and they're the only one who isn't taking it. And I've heard that story multiple times. I guess what's the...

    What's the?

    And we're talking about Prozac or basically.

    Antidepressants can cause suicidal ideation. Anxiety medicines are really addictive. ADHD medicines are really just performance enhancers. So they all have their role, but they all have wild

    I think the context of these have been they were anti-depressants that I've heard of.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:49.83)

    So any presence are gonna be your Zoloft, your Prozac, your Lexapro, those kinds.

    But why I mean, do you think if we went back to the year? Let's go. Let's go to a time when there was lots of depression around. Let's go. You were living on living in this general area in the 1850s. So, you know, America is still developing as a country. Iowa has been a state for five years.

    If those medications were available then, would there be just as many people clambering to take them? And then maybe let's fast forward to the 1920s pre Great Depression. know, everything seems to be doing pretty well in America. It's just after World War I and there's some money flowing again. Same deal, do you think? So if we took like different points when, you know,

    During the pioneer days, there's a lot of hardship people dying all the time wars with Native Americans, you know all throughout the West and Other other just life and death issues. Yeah would it Seemingly we're in this modern time where we've eliminated a lot of those those Base level survival things and yet so many people are taking these medications would would do you

    Do you suspect that that would be the case through time so today's really no different than any time before? Or do think there is something different about now that has caused people to feel the need for those?

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (03:26.734)

    What if I say both? So we've always wanted the easy way out. We just haven't always had it available to us, right? So before Prozac it was alcohol or weed or, you know, we've always sought. Yeah, we've always sought ways to self soothe instead of doing the hard work. At the same time, I would argue that we're a lot softer now.

    than those generations you just mentioned, that the ease.

    What's made us softer? it just because we don't have to worry about our kids dying of appendicitis or we don't have to, you know.

    go through homeostasis because we have air conditioning everywhere.

    about getting drafted into a conflict, that kind of thing.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (04:16.766)

    I think you're on to something there. know, it's a saying, hard times make strong men and strong men make easy times, easy times make soft men. Right. Yeah. So the fact that we don't struggle, I mean, when we're having fights over what a man and a woman are, we don't have enough to fight about. Right. Like you go to Africa,

    you go to some of these war-torn countries, they're not fighting over these things. I'm not saying that to try to be disparaging to people who have gender struggles. I'm just saying when you can walk into a grocery store and buy oranges anytime you want, as opposed to only when they're in season.

    Or just getting any fruit ever because you're not you don't have enough money to do it

    Exactly. Like that used to be Christmas gifts, right? And so that was your one. Peanuts and oranges. And that was a big, big, big deal because that was.

    sensitivities to both of

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (05:13.774)

    So the times have made us easy. Yeah, I have done that to us. You can't measure, we're trying to, but I don't think you can measure until some long ways in the future exactly what our technologies are doing to us. We know they're affecting our brains in wild ways. We know the technologies of food. Like we're not eating real food like we used to. We're eating processed food.

    Do know Megan McKay? She started Peachtree once upon a time. She's doing a thing with food where they're, trying to actually get food to be prescribed, which I feel like is really cool. Also like the lowest of the low in society when like just general healthy food is prescribed by a doctor, right? Just eat. But I think it's cool that she's doing it. And, and she sat down with us not long ago and we talked about just like, enjoy even wine garden. She was the one who taught me. He's like, look at

    He's really

    Nicolas Lirio (06:07.906)

    the whole middle of the grocery store, garbage. You just gotta stay around the edges, get back to your milk and stay next to the meat and then hit your veggies on the way out and then.

    Get out of there. People don't know how to cook anymore.

    Don't talk to me like that, it hurts my feelings.

    You know, your entire life, 100 years ago, was your four walls, was having a safe, healthy home and putting food on the table. And your work was to do those two things. And now we don't spend very much energy on the four walls, on our transportation, our personal health and safety.

    I think a lot of people have this simmering awareness that what they do doesn't matter and that they rarely do anything that does matter.

    Nicolas Lirio (06:54.946)

    You mean like a deep subconscious awareness kind of thing?

    Like when I was a teacher and things were still going well with education, and it's not a blanket statement for all of the world, how my career, when I knew it was time to do something else, I no longer felt, one of the main things I felt was what I'm doing now does not matter. What I'm doing is glorified just.

    babysitting, you know what mean? And, and before that, before I hit that realization, teaching was never like a lot of fun, you know, it's a ton of work. And, and

    I never thought, man, what I'm doing though doesn't matter. I always knew it did. I knew it was really important and there was enough student response to see that it was making a difference in their lives. so it was still rewarding in that sense. But I know once I hit that point where I couldn't answer, does this even matter what I'm doing anymore? That was really hard on me. And I think that there's a lot of...

    part of the fluff of what we've been able to generate because getting food is so easy, because having a heated home doesn't require splitting firewood and water doesn't have to come from a hand pump or a well or something that you're drawing a bucket from, or the creek even, I guess. Because we have so many of those nice,

    Kent Boucher (08:38.094)

    comforts and commodities in our lives, you know, people have jobs where they just feel like they're a cog in the machine that's making someone else very wealthy and if they were all of a sudden weren't at their job anymore, they wouldn't be missed, that kind of thing, you know, and quickly replaced. And I just wonder if that really feeds a lot of this.

    Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. We've got a couple of issues. We've got we've been talking about the medical and food issue, right? And so so to wrap up like this guy gets labs and they adjust his testosterone through food and diet, by the way, and exercising. He quits drinking pop, quits eating chips, starts exercising, even though he works a lot. It's a little bit different to lift weights than to just run around on the farm.

    and everything shifted. All of a sudden he's not feeling depressed anymore. So the reality is there are things we can do besides just word vomit that can help us feel better and that our physical and mental health are connected. grandma died at 102. She was born in 1919. And when you asked her about the Great Depression, when you asked her about surviving the Spanish, COVID did not wig her out because she'd already survived a pandemic. She could not have cared less. Wow. You when you said, well, it was like, oh, you know, she was this

    just tough Norwegian farmwife raised nine kids. you know, no, Graham, we don't know. That's why we're asking. Like they never complained, never. And it's because work had meaning now.

    I don't know if the work always had meaning, but the result of the work did. When you have nine kids at home to feed, it doesn't matter what you do to bring in money. The money has purpose no matter what you did. Because a family, and so not only have some of our jobs disconnected from meaning, but more than that, our society has, I would argue, denigrated the family. And suddenly we've decided that having,

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (10:41.23)

    a healthy marriage and having kids is not that important and not that big of a deal. And so people are not doing it or doing it much later or just opting out for all kinds of reasons. And that is like the most meaningful thing. And so it doesn't matter if you're turning widgets at a factory and you hate it. If turning widgets at a factory puts food on the table for family that you love. Now it's got meaning and purpose.

    That's point, yeah.

    But when you don't have a wife who's cheering you on, when you don't have kids who are counting on your paycheck, at least doesn't feel like it, even the most purposeful job can lose its meaning. So you're exactly right. AIM Life Solutions launches on Monday. And our tagline is restoring identity, renewing purpose, because you're exactly right. People have lost a sense of who they are. And when you lose a sense of who you are, you lose a sense of meaning and purpose.

    Can we click on farmers? right. it. It's the I heard it quoted maybe Kent you were saying that they are the number one suicide job related suicide in the United States or Midwest.

    not number one very high on the list. Fire Farm historically has been that way.

    Nicolas Lirio (11:57.998)

    Our farmers depressed

    It's a great well, I think there could be could be Here's right here Fresco is the official sponsor. it Here's where I don't have stats. I'm just go off gut. So yeah for your listeners, I love agriculture, but I was always raised a town kid, but as raised by

    You think it's the Mountain Dew?

    Kent Boucher (12:24.014)

    There you go.

    My city slicker town was all of all of 1,100 people but but I was still a townie and but my mom

    the best jokes I ever heard was from a kid that I went to high school with who we lived in a town of 600 people and someone was like, Nate, why don't you like country? Why do you always listen to rap? He's like, because I'm from the town of Sherar. That's so great.

    That's hilarious. Urban Dwarf. Fantastic. Yeah, my mom was raised on a farm. My dad was raised on a farm. He would have loved to have been a farmer, but my uncle Mike took over the farm. So he became a grain elevator manager. So I was raised by truckers and farmers. And I'm so proud to be from Iowa, from an agricultural state where we truly, like the rest of the world doesn't understand the science and the

    Decisions and the knowledge that goes into farming no matter what you're farming whether it's livestock whether it's prairie whether it's corner It doesn't matter that the amount of know-how and the amount of wisdom not just knowledge amount of wisdom it takes These are multi-million dollar operations with huge decisions being made all the time. So that factors into it Part of it I do think 100 % okay, and I think

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (13:47.998)

    more than a lot of industries, there's so much that's out of control in the agricultural sector.

    And very little is in for commodity farmers.

    Absolutely

    And when you are making decisions that are in your control, you have to make those decisions trying to guess about a bunch of factors that aren't in your control. So my dad, I watched my dad deal with that a lot, running an elevator. He had to make decisions all the time. Gosh, one harvest, he had so much grain on the ground. I don't think that man slept for three months. was just sitting on the ground rotting and he had no idea what to do with it.

    He's dealt with grain bins blowing up and there's just things you can't control no how good you are. So there's risk. There's tremendous amount of risk both physically and then financially.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (14:45.518)

    all the time he had farmers coming in. think I'm going to do this. And he, you know, he would kind of talk to them. like, okay, what are you? What's the wise play here with with your crops? So that's a piece of it. And I here's the part that I've watched just as an observer that you guys can speak to much more. Is you can't disconnect it from what's happening with our environment, and that's where you all are a needed voice in, hey, as much as I love, love, love

    our farmers and have always defended them and feel like there's this burden to care for the land God's given us. I think there's also some realization now that, maybe what we're doing is not actually great. And there's some, where's my meaning and purpose? I thought I was doing the right thing, but maybe these roundup ready beans aren't the right thing. And maybe all this glyphosate going all over the place isn't the right thing. And maybe the fact that we're now, you know, even just when you talk about

    about commercial, about corn and soybeans, when I was in high school, a really big farm was 800 to 1200 acres. And now, what do you gotta ask? I mean, the big farms are what, five to 10,000 acres?

    You better have at least that, you know,

    Yeah, yeah. We're in the phase of farming where 1500 acres they're looking to having to get out because you know they went they

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (16:10.038)

    And those were our big rich farmers were 1500 acres. And so it's just changing so much that I gotta believe that's contributing to the mental health issues is changing just like everything else is changing so fast in size that it's changing in, okay, all this technology, just like everything, is it actually good? Okay, we've got all these pesticides, all these fertilizers, is it actually good? Should we actually be, should we actually be?

    farming corn and soybeans like we are? Should we, there's just so many, we all thought that we were doing the right thing, are we? Am I actually taking care of the ground like I thought I was? Or am I actually stripping it? Because farmers at their heart, want to take care of God. They are the stewards of the land. And so to have this, I think some of them are starting to have a crisis of have I actually been stewarding the ground or am I actually causing problems?

    Yeah, that's I would imagine there's I don't I haven't heard any farmers really ask that but I would imagine like there's definitely some in their subconscious that wrestle with that, you know, and and I think another part of it that's unique with farming is it's a lifestyle and not just a career, you know, right. And a lot of farms, I wouldn't be surprised. I don't have the data. I would I would assume.

    most farms take out operating notes every year, especially for planting and for chemical fertilizer and chemical. And I think most farms are able to cover those by the end of the term on that note. a couple wrong decisions for a couple years in

    just a couple wrong decisions.

    Nicolas Lirio (17:59.116)

    Yeah on things you can't control

    and you start looking at what are my options and it's you start seeing that lifestyle that you and your identity. Right. What's the collateral, you know, for if the bank calls and calls on the notes, we got to sell land, maybe all of it. And I got to do something else for a very, very visible.

    Get out my-

    I lost the family

    That's the tradition behind it. And it's very visible because people driving down the road see your work every day. there's not a lot of jobs that people are that in tune. Certainly not the only, but that in tune with, hey, we know what that guy does for a job and we know that he's not doing it anymore.

    Nicolas Lirio (18:45.998)

    I haven't even been doing it that many years and I haven't even been in charge for a year You don't know how many times I laid in bed and like Okay, the family fought the family farm is up to me Which was not like if people were betting on people in high school. No one no one would have bet the That wasn't the dude

    know what it was about it.

    If my practice fails I'm not gonna get a lot of public scrutiny if you fail at farming in in Iowa everybody knows everybody knows No, and one of the things that I I

    There's no anonymity.

    Kent Boucher (19:20.684)

    I can't believe I said that word correctly.

    It was wonderful. Well done. Our schools need to do a better job of teaching about the farm crisis. I'm really thankful. The 80s. Well, and we might be, we might be, but we started this part of this conversation with with suicide and the suicide rates in the 80s were insane. And, it was, it was wild and we don't

    I think we're gonna end there today.

    Nicolas Lirio (19:31.406)

    80s or now?

    Nicolas Lirio (19:46.572)

    I did not.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (19:51.596)

    We just don't teach it enough. Every single, I think it should be taught nationwide, but every Iowan kid needs to understand. It's an incredibly important part of our history. The amount of farms that were lost, the amount of suicides that took place, really, really good farmers who did nothing wrong, but were over leveraged.

    Yeah.

    or sold like the new next hot thing just for nobody needed that thing anymore and then all of sudden they've got a $200,000 note on something they could never pay for.

    And was no way, look, suicide's never the answer, but when you start to look at what was happening, you can understand, because there was no way out. They could see they were going to lose the family farm and the weight of that they could not handle.

    Okay, I thank you for diving in it because we've kind of alluded to some of the depression stuff that farmers deal with so I really appreciate you taking a stab at it and I want to

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (20:45.102)

    Their lifestyle does stink though, by the way, so that's part of it. They totally stinks, most of them.

    their lifestyle. In terms of like their diet. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. Okay. I how you just looked at it. Okay. I want to get into that. I'm going give you a choice. You can tap your finger and fix one of these four things. You can fix the environment in the, in the Midwest. We're going to kind of hang out in the culture that we know you can fix. Um, seclusion that's going on right now. The seclusion crisis. You can fix diet.

    Now.

    Kent Boucher (21:17.422)

    inclusion you don't mean necessarily. Yeah, like choosing to not go out with your friends type of thing, right? But lacking in human to human interaction.

    isolation.

    isolation yeah

    Nicolas Lirio (21:24.866)

    Yeah, yeah

    And then there's all sorts of reasons and stuff for it, but it

    Sophie's choice, isn't it? What this is gonna be Sophie's choice

    Yeah, the next one is diet you could change diet and the last one is obviously the one that we talked about for like an hour of my podcast was screens Yeah, so you can fix one of those things

    they're all interconnected too. They really, are.

    Kent Boucher (21:49.069)

    Yeah, they are.

    Yeah, I know they're related, but for the game's sake.

    for the g- right so

    golly, they all affect us so in such huge ways. Environment and food are so wildly connected to one another. We can't have good food without quality water and quality soil. That's part of the issue is an apple today does not have the same nutrients in it that it had years ago. But my answer might surprise you. I'm going to pick diet. And the reason I would pick that is because it's something that people can control.

    I'm tempted to pick environment, but it's out of control. like to tell people things that they can actually control. We can do little things. It's not we can't contribute.

    Kent Boucher (22:35.374)

    You could literally still own that 1200 acre farm and have it completely restored into Prairie. Everything going on around it just basically eliminates what's happening there.

    So

    But you can fully control what goes in your mouth.

    You can control that. look, it's hard. Counselors talk about some really, really sensitive things. We talk about sex a lot. We talk about money. We talk about relationships. And I'm telling you, money and food trump sex over what people are scared to talk about because it is so, so intimate. And I think of those two, because we have to eat. We have to eat. we do not. When my doctor told me that I needed to, I cried the whole way home.

    No more frozen pizza. Like it seems so dumb. But yes. And.

    Kent Boucher (23:24.568)

    Those are huge coping things.

    I feel my feelings when I can hit check flow.

    In my worst days of teaching, I at least knew I could go home and have ice cream.

    Wow, you kept grading papers.

    Right and you know That's exactly right And it wouldn't be a conversation with me if we didn't go a little bit conspiratorial But I don't think this is that controversial actually the food industry is there to make money and so there are additives that make it addictive we want Lays potato chips saying dare you to eat just one is not just clever marketing Right there are

    Kent Boucher (23:38.904)

    but I don't hear what I'm...

    Kent Boucher (23:55.719)

    I've tried so many times.

    You really been like I'm just gonna eat one today. Really? Just the perfect? Have you ever done it? Yeah, okay, okay, okay? I was about to be like what?

    It's not just willpower, like they really do have, and you can look up the ingredients, they are addictive.

    Well, one thing, even if you have tons of willpower, sometimes if I'm doing like a fast or no carbs or something, I'll literally like be on the phone and I'll pop something in my mouth. It's like deep in my subconscious.

    And so it is the one thing though, even though it's difficult, we have control over if we have a really important, strong why, and if we focus really hard on what I can instead of on what I can't. And so if I focus really hard on, I can eat any organic veggies and fruits I want. I can have all of, mean, goodness, thank God we live in Iowa. know a of your listeners maybe don't, but like we have access to so much

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (24:53.518)

    Saturday I'm gonna pick up five whole pasture raised chickens. We can get them just like that from so many people who are raised, you know, you can watch where the cow was grazing, you know what they were eating. We have this luxury here.

    Wow, you have a different side of perspective of that because most people we have on the pod would actually say the other way around, but they are comparing it to the 1930s and you're comparing it to Arizona. Right.

    Or if you're living in New York City, right? And so I lived in LA for four years and like the grocery store was sad to me. Like it was just, so expensive. And I was like, this meat stink, like it's terrible. So we have quality available to us. Your other guests aren't wrong. If we compare to in the past, we have a lot of work to do, but we can still make really good choices in Iowa that aren't, you try to get the quality of meat that we have available to us in LA, you're going to pay obscene, like you can't afford it.

    We actually, it's not that big of a difference in price to get really good quality food and make,

    Well, and what's, I mean, what should we be more willing to, even if it is expensive, you know, pay for than what literally goes into our body and helps us replenish ourselves?

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (26:02.241)

    right.

    Nicolas Lirio (26:09.464)

    will be that thing here soon. So we should pay to have a good one of it, whatever it is.

    We get one body. so I'm sure being a counselor, being a therapist, a lot of it might be surprising. I didn't pick screens or I didn't pick the loneliness is a huge issue. I know. And it affects our brains hugely, but so does our gut. And I'm realizing more and more that a lot of the mental health issues are actually because of our poor diet. And if we get our when I was going through my own health issues with my gut, I

    really thought you were going to pick screens.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (26:44.608)

    experienced brain fog for the first time. I had clients who'd always complained about brain fog. And I was like, okay, so they're having a hard time concentrating. My goodness. I could not, my best friend's son was graduating from high school. I've helped raise this boy since he was two years old. I could not remember his name one day. So the gut brain connection is so much stronger than we want to admit.

    Was your diet getting worse or had the accumulative like poor decisions, even if they were just some poor decisions and some good decisions, had they built up over time?

    It had been building up over time. What it ended up, it ended up, thank God, ended up being gallbladder. So it ended up not being like a life and death situation, but we didn't know that in the midst of it. Um, and we were with diet change, we were able to save my gallbladder. A lot of times we just, again, our, our, don't look holistically. A lot of doctors would have just taken it out. And for a lot of people that absolutely works, but God also gave us things for a reason. I want to try to save it. And so

    that's giving you trouble.

    Kent Boucher (27:44.93)

    We treat it like air conditioning in an old car. Just go with the Yeah, that's fine.

    So and so it takes and that's the other thing people don't like about when I say hey We got to change your diet is that's not immediate. It's something you have to change right away, but it takes time

    It is so painful that 4 30 p.m. Till you go to bed and you're not you're in whatever mode to not eat what you want to eat is some of the most painful times of my life I've ever experienced

    And you know what else it is, is it takes like, especially if someone's got to lose like, you know, 50 pounds or a hundred pounds or, you know, some crazy amount of weight. It takes a whole family being on board. you could be like when you're on your, your regimented schedule of going to work and packing your lunch. And once you're there at work, there's no other options for just whatever you brought. You could, yeah, or zipping. Yeah. You can be

    One salad should be 10 pounds, right?

    Nicolas Lirio (28:36.866)

    or zip in.

    Kent Boucher (28:41.186)

    pretty disciplined with that. But then when it's, you know, your niece's birthday party on the weekend, it's frozen pizzas and cupcakes and ice cream and everything else. Yeah. And you're the only one who's trying to be disciplined. Yeah, that's that's very hard for people.

    I was at my own engagement party. My surprise engagement party about my sweet, sweet husband threw for me at Georgia's pizza, scraping the toppings off of Georgia's pizza because I couldn't eat the crust.

    no! Wow, what a delightful day.

    And it's got to be in the way it's got to be that way for the I mean you got to build those good habits But yeah for the rest of your life, you know, you got to have to have that discipline in that new

    So much of it, we're social, food and social go together. And so you have to be willing to be weird. And in all of those, actually, the screens, the environment, food, loneliness, how weird are you willing to be to be healthy? Because our society's not. And so you've got to be willing to go against the grain. I started teaching a class on how to do adult friendship out of my church last night. And I said, hey, here's what we're going to basically learn. Here it is in a phrase, go first and be weird. You got to be willing.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (29:54.03)

    to, if you're gonna.

    Yeah, there's a lot of to that.

    You learn that right away. That is true. Okay. got it. I got to tell this story. So we were in, we were in the area of another company that does seed and we're in another state and I was like, no, we were, we were doing another podcast and, and, and I was like, man, I, that's a cool place. Like I'd love to drive by.

    in another state.

    with no intention of being.

    Nicolas Lirio (30:22.934)

    And Kent was like, why are we driving 25 minutes one way just to drive by? Let's go in. And I was like, no, that's so weird. And he said, no, let's just do it. Yeah. And we went in and the manager there was so amazing. We had a great conversation. were able to chat. we left and I said, Kent, you're right. And Kent is the ultimate like, just get in front of him. People mostly want to get along, you know? And he does a great

    I was just playing to shake hands.

    Kent Boucher (30:45.94)

    People like networking, you know, but like you said, you got to be willing to go out on the limb first.

    Yeah, same with our screens. If we want to have a healthy relationship with our phone, we got to do things differently than most people do them.

    told me a crazy story about another counselor and she has like a rule before you can even meet with her or something. I can't remember.

    I want to meet this person. So I read this in a book. So I can't, I can't say that I know this firsthand. I, this child psychiatrist, so psychiatrists are the med providers. If you want to be her patient, you have to do a six week screen fast before she will prescribe you medication. And by screens, it means everything and the whole family. So little screens, computers, tablets, television. She insists on a six week screen fast before she will prescribe medication.

    And for clients who do that, the book reported that only 30 % of her patients still required medication after a six week screen fast.

    Nicolas Lirio (31:40.81)

    I know that's just anecdotal and not like fully research but the the idea that 70 % of our mental health issues that we clear up symptom medication for would just be gone if we didn't

    Now, part of the reason I picked food, one of my things I'm most passionate about is helping little ones who people suspect have ADHD. So I do a lot of ADHD assessments for children and for adults. We have a lot of people who come in for adult assessments. And there was actually a study in Europe done, and there's 400 patients in the study. Half of them, they all had ADHD. Half were put on a whole food diet. Nothing wild, just actual real food. Fruits, vegetables, meat.

    The other half just stayed on their normal Western diet. After, at the end of the study, 70 % of the children who were on the whole food diet no longer needed their Ritalin. Wow. So it makes a huge difference.

    Yeah, and if you compound both the screens and the food, 30 % of 30 % is less than 10%. So you're at 8. something percent of people actually need medication. that's a lot of extrapolation from.

    That actually be an appropriate number, Yeah, that would be much more appropriate than every kid who wiggles being put on Ritalin.

    Nicolas Lirio (32:57.773)

    I don't know.

    Nicolas Lirio (33:03.242)

    So, so, I wanted to ask you about this, like Adderall, let's say someone has ADHD and, or, or just have a hard time focusing. And instead of taking, would it make sense to not take Adderall every day or whatever, but just, okay, for, you know, twice a week, I sit down and I do a focus session for work or whatever. Would that make sense?

    Yeah.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (33:25.07)

    It's one of the few medications you can do that because the half life is so short that it's in and out of your system very quickly where a lot of the medications you have to build up and then they have you have to wean off of them. It's a stimulant and so it's in and out of your body quickly so you actually can do that. I would argue look people who really really do have ADHD really do benefit from a psychostimulant not anti-psychostimulants. We just have majorly over prescribed them as all they and people who really need them

    will tell you, yes, this helps me tremendously and also I hate the side effects. Because there are those two. They're performance enhancing. So even if somebody who does not have ADHD took them, they would feel more productive. That's why they're often traded on the black market on college campuses. And that's why they're so strictly controlled. If you lose your script, if you lose your bottle of pills, you're going to have a hard time getting it refilled because it's very controlled.

    My argument is not necessarily against medication. I get accused of that and probably fairly. It's more for informed consent and let's look at the other options, use it as a last resort because I mentioned the guy who had labs, there's no lab that I can run to see how much Prozac you need. There's no lab I can run to see how. So I love testing, but my testing is not as precise as an x-ray. It's not really an MRI. So I just get nervous about.

    the way we're kind of willy-nilly handing these medications out without good science to make sure that it's actually what's needed.

    be your checklist if you could convince your client to do whatever practice you have, what checklist would you go through before you prescribed anything?

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (35:10.508)

    first thing I would do is I would eliminate sugar and dyes and preservatives in a diet. not even as extreme as going, think keto is really, really brain healthy. I'm not a medical doctor though, so please don't take that as advice check with your doctor before you go on a keto diet. But a Mediterranean diet is, I think, pretty universally agreed upon as one of the healthiest diets. And so would say, you

    Even if we're not gonna go Mediterranean diet, like let's at least eliminate dyes, preservatives, and added sugars. And let's do that for a good couple of months and see what happens. From there, let's really get a handle on our screen time. Let's get outside even if it's cold. Let's get some fresh air, let's get some movement. So we're gonna get a cleaned up diet. We're going to start to detox the brain from the effects of blue light and screens.

    We're gonna start to move a lot more. That should affect and improve sleep. So we're gonna start to move through these things. We actually do have some control. The world makes us think we don't. Lifestyle makes us think, we're just too busy. We've gotta run through the drive through. No, no, no, you don't. You don't have to. You backed yourself in the corner thinking you have to. So now I do work with some families where it's like, I don't know how to do this.

    One of them is my dear friend. She has a bunch of teenagers in her house and then a little guy who's in first grade and he's got ADHD and she was trying to clean up his diet. The darn teenagers kept bringing their own Doritos into the house and she was just like beside herself and I said, your teenagers are going to be out of the house in a year. Like, let's try some, let's try some Adderall. Let's get him stabilized and in a year let's, so I mean, there's grace, right? We're all just doing the best we can. But if we could do it ideally, let's eliminate dyes, preservatives and sugars probably in that order because it's

    that's the easier way to go. Let's get off screens and get outside moving, which should improve our sleep. And we can start to supplement and give the brain what is probably lacking. Magnesium, omega-3s, vitamin D, zinc are just all really simple things. And then you can start to get a little bit weirder, like ashwagandha and rhodiola. We start to try some of these supplements that should give the brain what it needs. And if all of that fails...

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (37:32.668)

    then we can start to look at something.

    Interesting interesting interesting. So if like I was told once that dopamine addiction looks a lot like ADHD Is there besides pulling people off of these things are there any indicators as to which is which?

    yeah.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (37:52.974)

    Yeah, that's where. So I'm running through the tests that I do when I when I test somebody for ADHD, and I'm thinking of a lot of my blue collar guys, a lot of my farmers will come in and thinking they have it and lots of them are sleep deprived and a lot of them are stressed and a lot of them are anxious. And so that masks it too. And I wouldn't say there's necessarily a test right now. Now, if you want to spend five grand out of pocket, you can get

    some data, insurance won't pay for it, which is maddening. But you can, there are brain scans that can tell us what's going on in someone's brain that will help us discern better. Is this anxiety? Is this ADHD? Is this dopamine? Like, cause we can see what parts of the brain are overactive when we do a proper brain scan. Dr. Amen is who I trust to do those. He's got clinics around the country. His website and the social medias are awesome. I don't get paid to say that, but.

    But she could. if, Dr. Avent, if you're around, did you order?

    Now I am part of his coaching network, so I do have that bias But I chose to learn about his methods because he just he's really good at what he does And at some point I'm gonna get my brain scan just to see where it's at So I think it's an investment. It's obviously an investment, but it's it's if I were having brain problems an ADHD that's where I would go I would I would save up the money I would go get my brain scan to see exactly what should happen the tests that I offer that are covered by insurance

    It's just not an exact science. I'm going to collect a lot of data by asking questions. You're going to take questionnaires, and we're going to talk. And you're really, what you're paying for more than anything is my 20 years of experience in my gut of, what's going on here for this person? And how much screen use do they have? And how sedentary are they? And what's their diet like? And how much stress do they have? And depending on your career choice, ADHD is not always a problem.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (39:50.412)

    I'm willing to bet there's a lot of ADHD farmers and that it actually helps them.

    I often wondered that too, know, base, survival, you know, natural selection aspect of humans through the millennia. It evidently was a good enough trait to last that natural pruning that happens, you know, and it was somehow it was a favorable skill to have. And so

    creates great entrepreneurs.

    Kent Boucher (40:21.74)

    Yeah, think it's probably important to look at it that way, too.

    Now here's the one thing that it could be that I've talked to people about that we haven't talked about here is I had a really cool dude, a friend of mine, we were sitting down, we were talking and he said, really successful by the worldly means of success and just a nice good human said, you know, I'm always really busy. I'm not convinced I'm not running from something. Sure. You know,

    does that ever rear Ted is ADHD? Because I do that. dead. I, you know, I'm running towards things, but also at the same time, I'm running away from some things. And I find that when the conversation gets vulnerable, I have to have incredible self control to not just change the subject. Like my wife and I will be driving and she'll be trying to talk about something hard. I'll be like, wow, isn't it like, yeah. And it's not that I'm maliciously doing it. My

    subconscious brain will literally be like, look at that house. Isn't that the coolest house you've ever seen? And it's like not, it's fine, but it's like desperate to get away.

    Well, we have an issue in our in my field with diagnostics in general. So a lot of people probably don't understand how the diagnostic manual came to be. What happened is a whole bunch of people gathered in a room in Washington and start to posture for their research. And so I kid you not, when you when you look up the diagnostic criteria for depression, for example, which all of us have been depressed at some time. So yes, it's a diagnosis. We all know people who like they have gone through depression. But we've all

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (41:54.796)

    also been depressed. So when is it depression and when is it a problem in living that we're going through a hard spot? Well, here's the here's how they decided to. Diagnostically, you have to have five of nine symptoms for two weeks. OK, well, where did that come from? Kid you not, four felt like too few and six felt like too many. So that's that's how precise these diagnoses are. So do I believe depression is real? Yes. Do I think it's probably overdiagnosed? Yes.

    We all experience anxiety. When is it actually a diagnosis? So ADHD, do I believe that the symptoms of ADHD are real? Sure. Is ADHD a real thing? It depends on your definition. So the kind that's going to respond to medication is the stereotypical type that we all know where the person simply cannot finish a task and they are just squirrel all over the place. That is your classic. But are there people who

    actually have anxiety and look ADHD? Sure. People who have OCD and it looks like ADHD? Sure. People who just are not real comfortable in their own skin and are not willing to go deep and vulnerable and so are running from something? Sure. And that's why I get pretty passionate about testing because if you go into your doctor and you say, can't focus, I can't concentrate, I would like some medication and they give it to you without sending you to me first, you could end up taking Ritalin.

    which will help you do those things, because it's a performance enhancer, but it's maybe not what your brain needs. What you really probably need is to learn how to be comfortable with who you are and find meaning and purpose.

    Hmm. I don't like that one bit. Nope, not for me. Okay, just a couple more things. I really appreciate you. For everyone listening, I've known Dr. Karen for a couple years now. And I know people that have seen Dr. Karen. I did not invite a random person with the title Doctor.

    Nicolas Lirio (43:56.95)

    in front of it because I thought it'd be cool for the platform progress because I've firsthand seen the fruit of her work. She is very good at what she she does. And I am I am privileged and I would argue that I get to see the best counselor male counselor in the area. And when I asked him, who do you think is a very strong female counselor in the area that you would recommend? He said, well, at the time, Dr. Karen Cleveland, but yeah, no longer. And so I

    of you to

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (44:23.734)

    We're all adjusting to the new last name. Yeah.

    We all are, all together. We're all in this marriage together. And so I really respect what you have to say. And there are things, when I interviewed you earlier, that I still chew on, two or three things, which is about all you can hope to get out of an hour conversation, that I still think about and I chew on. So I really appreciate you coming out.

    Well, I appreciate you guys inviting me because I like I said, I love what you all are doing. I really do.

    So yeah. Okay. Before we get to the last question, anxiousness and kids. It is like the thing, right? Are they, are they actually anxious? And if they are, what's going on there?

    So this is where I'm probably going to sound like the, you know, back in my day.

    Kent Boucher (45:12.578)

    Was better back then, I mean come on.

    I actually think it was. mean, I think about, I had a really, really idyllic childhood, where I got to just run all over a beautiful little small town. was Norman Rockwell. I realize now, you could tell where we were at by where the bikes were in the front yard. It was get home before the streetlights come on. mom and dad had no idea where we were, but they also did because everybody knew everything.

    And we were allowed to get dirty and have skinned knees and broken bones. And there's actually research that the amount of broken bones have decreased dramatically. That sounds like great things. I would argue it's not. That our kids are not climbing trees and on jungle. They're not being allowed to do dangerous things safely. That's a phrase that I heard Jordan Peterson use. And he's exactly right. We have to tell kids you can do dangerous things safely. If they don't learn from adults, you can do

    something that seems dangerous, they don't grow confidence, and then they're scared. And if the adults are scared to let them do something, if the adults don't trust them, why would they trust themselves? So I really think the anxiety problem in kids is an anxiety problem in adults.

    I have been saying that to Kent recently. I think that a lot of the issues going on with young adults stems from over controlling parents. And I didn't get that from her. just, I'm virtue signaling.

    Kent Boucher (46:43.682)

    I don't know if this is virtue signaling, but it's some kind of way.

    I'm like astounded with myself here. I normally don't get things that accurately. So...

    Because that is not sugar. Like what you just said, wasn't sugar, it wasn't screens. wasn't, you know.

    Yeah, those things are a big deal, but,

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (47:06.562)

    I watch parents walking their kids to school. What a beautiful picture, right? how great that dad took time to walk their kid to school in the morning. Why can't the kid walk themselves? I'll never forget, I learned later, when I was always a really anxious kid, turns out my mom has more anxiety than I thought and my dad has way more anxiety than I thought, but I never knew that.

    They did a really, really good job of hiding that from me. My first day of kindergarten, my mom walked me to the front door, put on my backpack and said, all right, I'll see you after school and shoved me out the door. Now we had practiced. I was in a small town. It was two blocks and then across the school playground. There were other neighborhood kids walking to school, but I would have preferred if she walked with me. But she said, no, you can do it.

    You can almost see the school go. When I lived in the country for a little bit, I rode the bus by myself. Mom didn't take me into school.

    You think your mom really wrestled with that? Because you were saying that So...

    I thought when my friends started to send their kids to kindergarten, I was so confused by why they were crying because I was like, my mom just kind of kicked me out the door. And I said that to my mom's best friend. And she goes, that's not true at all. She goes, she shut the door and she called me bowling. And I had no idea. That's appropriate. I had no idea how hard it was. As far as I knew as a six year old, my mom thought I was perfectly capable.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (48:38.934)

    of walking myself to and from school. And if mom thought I could do it, I guess I can do it, even though I was scared.

    You know, Jonathan Eldridge, wild at heart. Man, he has a whole chapter on that. And he says it typically is very painful for moms. I think he cited like nine to 14. There's like a gradual letting go. So how do you sit across a 12-year-old? You realize, ooh, their parents are very controlling. And then how do you have a conversation with their parents?

    I don't know that I'm great at it. It's really hard. It's really hard. A lot of times I've got to work with the client in front of me, the child to say, and start to not replace the parent. That's not at all what counselors try to do, but to at least start to point out evidence. like, hey, here's some things in your life that you're doing well. And then I do want parents

    to come alongside and be open to how do I need to maybe approach things differently. Now, what's really hard is when parents say, but it's a dangerous world, it's a dangerous world. The statistics would say it is no more dangerous than it was in the 80s. We just are aware of it more. The statistics of kidnappings and murders, they've actually gone down. I love it when parents are like, well, I need life 360 because I need to know where they're at and they need to their phone.

    Schools have gone away from phones and parents have a bigger issue with it than the kids. What if there's a school shooting? Your child having a cell phone is not gonna help you in the midst of a school shooting. It just won't. The airways are gonna get all jammed up. It's gonna cause more problems. It will not help. Is the fear real? Yeah. We can't stop bad things from happening. We can prepare them to be wise about what to do when bad things do happen.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (50:30.638)

    I love it when parents are like, what if they get in the car and what if their tire goes flat? I usually say, I hope you would teach them to do the same thing my parents taught me in what to do in the 90s when we didn't have cell phones. hopefully they know how to change a tire.

    Nicolas Lirio (50:50.414)

    no one will ever listen to us again if I say too much here.

    I I I'm real popular for that opinion So it's hard I'm incredibly empathic for parents who are afraid that something's gonna happen their kid We do live in a crazy world I try to remind them that we're inundated with it because of social media and that those things happen in the past too and we can't make decisions because of what might happen We've got to empower kids. We're not raising 15 year olds. We're hopefully raising really strong 25 and 35 year olds So we've got a parent for the long haul not the right now

    Yeah, yeah, I

    Nicolas Lirio (51:25.774)

    Okay. That was awesome. I have nothing to wrap it up except I one last question before, before we go earlier. said like, you shouldn't go to count. Like counseling is just not for your whole life. And any counselor that tells you that is probably farming you for money. And, when, when, when do go to counseling?

    All the farming, Nicholas, all the

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (51:49.87)

    That's a great question. I do have a few clients that have been with me for a really, really long time because their wounds and their healing, their wounds are deep and their healing is slow. So I'm not saying if you've been in counseling for five, 10, 15 years, there's no shame in that. That's okay. Some people need that. But even with those clients, there's been seasons where we've been weekly because something really important is happening and there's times where we back off to monthly or every other month.

    When you need counseling is when you can, when you feel stuck, when you feel like you're drowning, when you know that you are lacking in a perspective or a skill. So I would evaluate when do I need counseling the same as when do I know that I need a doctor when I can't see the path forward that I need to get some help. And I do counseling to get to where, I think I'm back up on my two feet again. I would say medication the same way.

    I've taken depression medications. I'm not anti-medication. My hope is people take them for a season so that they can get back up on their feet again and start to use healthier lifestyle strategies and build and develop skills. We can't, if I break my arm, I know I've got a broken arm. I know it needs to be set. I don't know how to do that. I need someone to help me do that. And then once it's healed, then I can move on. So if you've got a skill deficit, if you've got a crisis,

    That's where a counselor can really walk with you and help you through not just the immediate crisis, but then building the skills so that when the next crisis comes, because there's always going to be a next, maybe you can handle that one next time.

    And you would probably say, like, if you don't have the skills, you would say before someone sees a counselor, unless there's something deeply tragic and urgent, they should go on a diet. They should limit their screen time and they should connect with other humans and get outside first.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (53:42.99)

    other humans for sure. All of those things. And I think, you know, if, your functioning is being impacted for longer than, oh, I would say a month, like don't let something linger, you know, a week, two weeks, the diagnostic criteria would say two weeks. I had been depressed that long. I didn't go see a counselor. Um, but if you are having trouble getting out of bed, having trouble functioning, like that's, that's when it's time, right? If it's

    if it's affecting your sleep, it's affecting your relationships, if it's affecting your productivity at work for longer than a few weeks, make a call. At the very least, ask the counselor, hey, what do you think I need? Should I be here? And we say there's no problem too big or too small. I agree with that. And if it's small, hey, it won't take very long. You're questioning, reach out.

    I got a few questions here. We hear about we have a mental health crisis and maybe it is, you know, kind like we were talking about with medication earlier. Maybe maybe there always was a mental health crisis and maybe to everyone starts thinking there's a problem. I once heard Stephen Ronella say when I was a kid, people just died of old age and now they die of acute, you know.

    whatever kidney failure, you know? And it's like we put a name to the problem on everything. so maybe we have this perceived crisis because, and I remember when the awareness came about with that. It wasn't that long ago. I'm a big Chicago Bears fan for better and for worse.

    This year was alright

    Kent Boucher (55:31.648)

    Yeah, that's it was all right. But I remember back in must have been around 2012 ish maybe Brandon Marshall was one of the best wide receivers in the NFL at that time. Yeah, and he he started, you know, making all this noise about, know, I'm a I'm a new man now. I you know, I found Jesus and I I've gotten some great counseling and

    Paparazzi disorder.

    Kent Boucher (56:00.622)

    I mean, this is a guy who I think had done maybe a little he'd been arrested a few times, think, some domestic violence stuff and and definitely at different parts of his career seemed completely out of control with his actions and behavior and stuff. And he started talking about mental health all the time. And I don't know if he was the first person to really be doing it. But one of the first celebrities, I think that were that that became kind of a buzzword, mental health, mental health. And then he was

    domestic violence.

    Kent Boucher (56:29.294)

    making a big deal because he was getting fined because he'd wear mental health awareness, lime green shoes or whatever the different ribbons for like yellows support the troops, pink is breast cancer and stuff like that. Well, evidently, I think it was, wasn't it lime green? I think so. the mental health awareness or something like that. So everyone all of sudden becomes, starts using this terminology. And again, I don't know if it's because of Brandon Marshall necessarily, but I just remember that kind of coming around.

    And since that time, I was in education, public education for eight years. We started doing all these things called social emotional learning, SEL lessons and stuff like that. You'd start the day off teaching a little SEL lesson. then- or what? When I was teaching. And then came along trauma informed schools where you'd go to, as a teacher, you'd go to training sessions on

    That was when you were when you

    Kent Boucher (57:27.982)

    students who experience, you know, any level of trauma really, but especially the major, you know, like abuse and neglect and things like that. They, it drastically harms their ability to perform at school and all this stuff, right? All this kind of within the last 15 years and

    Kind of along the lines of how things have changed with parenting. There's just been a societal shift in how we view these things and the value we put on them. I used to walk to school too as a kid. And I mean, it wasn't that long ago, a couple years ago, some lady sent her kid to the gas station or something like that. He was like seven or eight.

    I'll kind of heat.

    Well, she got arrested, if I remember correctly. So I mean, it was just because the neighbors watched the kid walking down the street, you know? When I was a kid, your mom would run into the grocery store and you'd hang out in the running vehicle the whole time. yeah.

    Three years old was a good time.

    Kent Boucher (58:42.254)

    You know, that's just not those things society does not accept those things anymore, right and and so Are these Do we have this this perceived mental health crisis? Is it really? Is it really the case or is it more we've just been able to define, know, you know You say yeah, know, Ken's kind of been bummed out for a while now. It's okay has acute, you know

    Can't see his butt.

    Brain eating amoebas, you know, whatever the the you know, like we named the problem and and so Everyone kind of walks around thinking I must have something wrong with me because statistics say you know this many people out of ten struggle with their mental health I mean Do what is the perceived problem as bad as as it really is? Is it actually worse than what the perceived problem is or maybe maybe? Yeah, we just

    have to keep things in perspective a little better that through all time people have struggled with these things.

    Well, might as well end on some controversy.

    Kent Boucher (01:00:00.054)

    I still want to ask you about AI and counseling.

    goodness. yeah. goodness. So this is definitely my opinion and my perspective of what I'm seeing over my almost 20 years in the field. Yes, it is bad as we think it is. But it's not a mental health crisis. It's we have a social perspective crisis. What I mean by that is.

    that yeah that's my counselor

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:00:29.474)

    We're calling it a mental health crisis when really what we have is where we kind of started, where we've got a lot of.

    So there's secondary problems.

    You hit it where we've got a lack of identity and meaning and purpose and instead of people saying hey the solutions in the mirror. We have people saying i'm a victim of this diagnosis or this situation, and so people need to cater to me instead of saying.

    I'm gonna be honest here. When Nick was talking to me, I'm gonna kinda throw you under the bus here a little bit. When Nick was talking to me like, everybody needs to go to counseling. And I still don't know how I feel about that. I've never gone to one second of counseling in my life, and I probably should, right? But it just wasn't, that was not on my radar, know, like growing up and stuff. I you just, I mean, the classic phrase was.

    please.

    Kent Boucher (01:01:24.75)

    I'm just gonna have to get over it, know? And I don't think that that's the answer. I don't think that people just need to get over it. That's a calloused. That being said.

    Yeah.

    You know, it's kind of like when your dad tells you you're too old to cry. You know, it's like, yeah, you're probably right, dad. You know, I should probably get over it when I hurt my hand and not, you know, I should be a big boy, you know, or when I skin my knee and fall off my bike, you know, like maybe that resilience needs that. Like, where's the balance on that? Should we be running to a counselor every time we're feeling down and we're feeling like we aren't heard and we...

    We lose somebody in our lives or whatever, or at some point, where does that, we gotta develop that resiliency. Like you said, we look in the mirror and say, no, the resources are in you to climb out of that hole.

    You're exactly right. So no, we shouldn't run to a counselor every time we've got any emotion that's bothering us, just like we shouldn't run to the doctor every time we've got a sniffle. Not everybody needs counseling. Everybody needs wise counsel. And that looks different for everybody. I've been to a counselor one time in my entire life as a counselor. Now, some people are going to be shocked and appalled by that because there's a belief out there that if you are a counselor, you should be in counseling. I have wise counsel in my life.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:02:49.718)

    I have multiple mentors that hold me wildly accountable. I've been through seasons of prayer. I've been through different healing ministries. So I've sought out wise counsel. I like that. And so everybody needs wise counsel in their life. It doesn't necessarily mean it's a counselor, a therapist.

    That probably depends on the kind of people that you have in your life.

    Well look at the people around me, of course I gotta go find them somewhere else.

    Hahaha!

    I should go talk with Riley.

    Nicolas Lirio (01:03:19.822)

    Yeah, yeah!

    But we've got, we have a victim mindset that's infiltrated our culture that says, the thing about being a victim on the positive, nothing's my fault. Nothing's my responsibility. That's the problem though. If it's not my fault, it's not my responsibility, then I'm stuck. And that's just not true. Even when you are a victim and we've all been a victim, we don't have to stay a victim.

    I definitely agree with that.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:03:47.362)

    There are still things that we can do autonomously. mentioned at the very beginning of the podcast. We always have control over what we think, over what we do, and over how we respond to our emotions.

    Victor Frankel. Yeah, and search for meaning. And so that is kind of wrote it here or he wrote it after he got out of the Holocaust.

    And when the-

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:04:08.578)

    Out of concentration camp. Henry Cloud and John Townsend have written some of the best material on how to have good healthy boundaries, which is understanding that I have the ability to control those things and nothing else. One of the reasons I love, love, love working with farmers and they have such success when they do come to counseling is I very rarely meet a farmer who sees themselves as a victim, even though a lot of them have been. Wow. Beautiful crops coming up and it gets trashed by hail.

    Wow.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:04:38.35)

    by definition a victim. They don't see themselves that way. All right, what are we gonna do?

    the end of the year if they can't pay their bills they would still they would still say I lost the family farm you know they still

    There is incredible ownership in the egg industry, even though it is full of being a victim. Yeah. To the markets, to the weather, to broken down equipment, to things that you didn't cause.

    It makes me think that ownership and resiliency are deeply intertwined. know what I mean? If you're a victim and everything's happening to you, of course you're not gonna be resilient, you know? if you, man, that's interesting. Man, that's such a good question. And also, I wanna add that the way that I see counseling is just like a doctor. If I scrape my knee, I don't need to go to the doctor. If I get in a chuff with my wife, I'm just gonna call a friend and be like, hey, here's what happened. you either tell me that being.

    I don't know.

    Kent Boucher (01:05:28.62)

    Friend of Bleymer.

    Well, I tell her like I'm being an idiot or telling me if I'm right and you know what I mean? And my wife will ask later if I say hey, can we bring up that thing earlier? She's like, did you talk to your friend? Did you call Matt? Did you ask someone about it? And and it has to be someone we both trust. Yeah, you know, because if I just call someone that just I trust she doesn't really trust him I just you know complain that doesn't work. so there are things that's not a counselor, but there are really like if you break your leg, you got to go to the doctor. You know what mean? Like and forbid, you know that

    What is it? Three fifths of all kids are sexually abused. It's wild. I think it's over half. Yeah. So that I think you got to go to the doctor for, you know what I mean?

    So that's the other thing.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:06:11.566)

    Here's what stinks about I don't know where this came from but it seems to me like there's a belief being perpetuated by people in my field that if you've got a wound you're just stuck with it and you're if you've been a victim you're just gonna be a victim especially around trauma like oh you've got trauma in your past and you're just Blowny there's there's always healing available for some it comes faster than others for some it it's hard. It's a grind

    goodness no matter what's happened to you whether it's anxiety depression trauma sexual abuse there is a path towards healing and health and people in the egg industry know that right okay harvest stunk this year we're gonna plant again in the spring we're going to go we're gonna go again

    That's true,

    And farmers, feel like it's such a metaphor that they will get hurt like physically in the field. They don't go to the doctor. So it heals, but it heals a little crooked. You know what I mean? Like our souls can do that too. Sometimes we should have gone to the doctor, get it reset. Look, it's healed, but there's a little bend, you know, there's a little something going on there. And I also would point out that if there is healing to be done, it's got to be exposed as too strong of a word. But if it's covered up,

    covered up with screens or food or whatever, then just like a wound, it'll fester and get infected and get worse.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:07:31.846)

    People have to be ready, right? So as much as I rail on people for those things, I would also say that those things, including addictions, unfortunately, alcohol and stuff, those are not good things. Nobody would say they are. A lot of times it's what's allowing somebody to cope until they're ready to get a better coping skill. Yeah.

    Can I defend AI counseling to you? I don't believe this, but this is the argument. So I'm going to present it and you either do you tell us what you think?

    I'm sorry.

    Just learning how to use AI. Look, I know AI is gonna take over, that's what they say, but I asked AI to make my dog.

    doing different things in the bathroom and it gave it a human hand holding a hair dryer. So I just don't think that AI is quite ready to take over the world if it's gonna give my dog a human hand.

    Nicolas Lirio (01:08:19.47)

    It's not quite there.

    Nicolas Lirio (01:08:24.294)

    It's got some way.

    Let's do it right now. Pull up your phone.

    No, I don't have a... don't have a... Let's do it. ...signal in here.

    Let's go on. Give me a symptom to ask about on.

    Ask it why you get really sad in January. Okay, here's what I want to say about AI.

    Kent Boucher (01:08:42.882)

    My coworker.

    Kent Boucher (01:08:47.341)

    Sorry.

    It can be crazy.

    Playing with it and it has been very helpful We're a four-man team. We do things that for men teams could not do five years ago and and I'm very grateful and I would say that Kent Riley and Judd are some of the most talented humans I have the privilege of being around but We really get it and some of that is just AI so fast now. I'm very I'm pretty conscious. I'm not gonna Like type in random stuff just to do nothing. I just like to test it to see what it can do But I'm cautious because of its environmental impact now. Here's

    Here's where, when I played with it, it was like scary good. And it was scary close to Matthew. And I told it to train itself on the, I basically took people that have a lot of books out there like John C. Maxwell or Bill Johnson or some of these people. said, well,

    My coworker gets very sad during the month of January each year. Any idea what's wrong with him? First of all, seasonal off- I should pull up a picture of you.

    Kent Boucher (01:09:55.854)

    What do you think of these Karen? So it says one seasonal affective disorder. Is that a real thing? So during winter months, especially January, people can experience.

    It is, yeah.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:10:09.228)

    Yep, red light and MiamiD will fix it.

    Yep. Post-holiday letdown, which that's I think that's another like the people getting so excited for the holiday season. Take the letdown side out of it. What's going on at that time of year is just so it's like that's when it's worth being alive, you know, or the same thing we said for a vacation. You know, I've seen people get terribly depressed on the last day of vacation like me.

    red light.

    Kent Boucher (01:10:41.516)

    know, 50 more weeks of the year.

    Also, during Christmas, you eat an insane amount of sugar and then you got to do the rim of a

    There's and part of it too is our expectations and reality don't match so November December are the busiest time of the year for counselors because the the trickiness of the of the family dynamics and people have these Hallmark holidays in their head and then there's anticipation that's

    it's going to be perfect and it didn't end up like this.

    And so then there's a crash or they know that uncle Bill's gonna drink too much and mom and dad are, and so they're anticipating, they want this, they anticipate what they're actually gonna get and the tension and these expectations and not having the courage to set good boundaries and say, we're gonna come, but if this happens, we're gonna leave or we're, so it gets crazy. And then people think January, February would be busy because it's off season, all effective. It gets really, really quiet.

    Nicolas Lirio (01:11:42.057)

    Nobody has any money.

    Nobody has money. Deductibles have rolled over and people are actually too depressed and it's too cold. Now again, this is an Iowa specific thing. People don't leave their house. It gets dark and stuff. And so they're broke. They're so sad they don't want to leave. There's this let down. so

    the Godfather Marathon again, one ever feels good after that.

    But AI can be scary good, I because seasonal effective, like it's gonna peg it, right?

    So, okay, so this is what I did. This is what I did just to test it. I took, I said, hey, write me a hundred page report on John C. White Maxwell. Write me a hundred page report on Bill Johnson. Write me a hundred page report. I think I did Erwin McManus and I did a couple of business people. Riley, I mean dude, Riley Rosendahl spits wisdom. If you give him some time to like, he takes a little bit of time to think about stuff. You give him time, he'll change your life. So, so I did that.

    Kent Boucher (01:12:24.824)

    Riley

    Nicolas Lirio (01:12:37.23)

    And then I re uploaded those hundred page documents and I said, uh, Oh, and I use dr amen. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, and Sahil bloom, that was the other one. Carolyn leaf. I used her. And I uploaded all of those hundred page documents cause it basically read their books and then spit out it. And then I said, pretend to be these people. And then I spent 45 minutes writing out everything about my life. I wrote all my relationships in like my wife was on there. Kent was on there. My

    Yeah.

    Nicolas Lirio (01:13:04.204)

    family, you know, everything I could think of my relationship with them, what my past was like, my, literally, uploaded the testing my mom had done on me when I was in high school. I uploaded my personality tests, all this stuff. And I said, these are my goal, long-term goals and short-term goals in life. Where will I come up short? And then, and then we talked about vulnerability. This, I really struggle with vulnerability in these areas. How do I, how do I do this? And it wasn't like,

    you know, Nicholas, I really appreciate you telling it was like, my goodness, this is very concerning. You probably have dopamine addiction. You need to get in front of a counselor. Right. I mean it roasted me and then I, I, and then I brought, mean it shook me for like three days and then I brought it up to Matthew was my counselor who was a very good counselor and he was, he, he was like, yo, this is good. and, and so that's the argument.

    I think I remember you talking about that.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:13:50.996)

    I can affirm Matthew's great

    Kent Boucher (01:13:58.894)

    So he thought it was he thought it was that he thought it was

    pretty accurate and which was demoralizing to me. You'd be like wow all this stuff.

    But think about how much work you did to get there.

    Yeah, and that's the argument for AI. You will never convince me it'll be there because human connection is so valuable. Invaluable. So, but what's your thought on it?

    So think about all the inputs you had in order to get the excellent output. You'd already had psychological reports from people that you fed it. had, so AimLife Solutions, you had authenticity, you had insight, and you're being very mindful about what you were plugging into it. Somebody who does not have those three things to plug into AI is not going to be able to get an accurate output. Right? So that's the first thing.

    Nicolas Lirio (01:14:40.63)

    Why am I sad?

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:14:46.922)

    Secondly is what you said as good as AI is and will for a lot of people be able to give them what they would get from me in a way that's satisfactory. Someone who's just got some adjustment disorders needs some good self-helpy things. I don't do self-help. We do skill building and increasing insight and getting really authentic and vulnerable. Those things require human connection. And so if what you're looking for is

    What, if you can put in the really, really good inputs that you've already done with human connection, then great, but it doesn't replace the human connection. If you're just kind of feeling down and you need some inspiration, it's gonna be great at that, but if you don't have the insight, AI's not gonna be able to build it because it's only gonna give you what you put in to.

    Yeah, that that is a and that basically is the technology of AI the more context you give it the better it comes back That's why that's literally what the first paper that fat that AI is founded on That's what it says is that that's little points more context. I did not think about that Yeah, how much you know you put into it to be able to get out of it, but Benjamin Franklin He was another one and so and so I'll have questions like I have all these things to do this week based on what you know about my strengths

    What would you guess is like, much of it can I actually get done and how would I schedule it? And I don't, I don't actually do this every week for it to build out my life. I just want to see how good it is at it. Now the scary part is, we were on a road of dependency with AI, just like we are with our cell phones and that's scary.

    But yeah, and you got to take the go at the bat, right? So people used to apologize. They still do sometimes like, well, I've Googled this and I maybe shouldn't have. And and I really got.

    Kent Boucher (01:16:35.854)

    All the medical doctors went to bed with WebMD.

    It actually used to be really, really kind of annoying, but now even just regular Google has gotten so much better. interesting. Right. Wow. That I'll tell clients, hey, I don't have time to research this. You do. Like, this is your health. Like, so here's where I think I've alluded to my health problem. I wanted to treat it as naturally as I could. So I did all kinds of research on what supplements might help and what diet changes might help. And I was really, really doing a pretty good job.

    Pretty good. When I finally saw a practitioner, that's what they told me, hey, your research, you got really close. But here's actually what you need. And so I think AI is gonna get real close. But you need the person who's got the actual expertise to sort through the fluff and say, well, here's what you actually need. Is that fair?

    Do you think that's a great answer? You're, you're 20 years into your career. You've got another 20 to 30 to go. I imagine that you'll spend the latter half of your career mentoring the next generation, but will there be a next generation or in 10 years will AI be good enough where you can do telehealth thinking you're talking to a person in the

    Time will tell, right? It's gonna be interesting to see what happens. AI's already, if you want it to, writing our notes for us. You can have the computer listen and it will write the notes for you. So I'm so old school, I still write my own. But I don't blame clinicians. Part of it is I don't have the patience to train it, because you still have to train it. So you still have to go through and fix and

    Nicolas Lirio (01:18:12.632)

    Get less screen time.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:18:24.236)

    Yeah, and I don't think it's.

    Any tech company that's selling something to medical doctors or doctors of any sort, it's not a $20 a month subscription.

    And I just I know what I know and I'm good at what I do so I'm still that handwriting person But the younger clinicians are loving it and I love that for them. Yeah, because why not use a technology? My time is not well spent writing notes So if AI can do it great

    Yeah, and the truth is...

    Nicolas Lirio (01:18:52.354)

    Yeah, man.

    So we're in the last couple days of January of 2026. it's a great time right now to talk about this. Not Nick's seasonal depression, but.

    I think I do get it, but I literally just cope and power

    I don't think you get it.

    Never vitamin D and fresh air

    Kent Boucher (01:19:11.022)

    In October you used to get it

    Every year. Yeah. Well, it was because I was by myself putting all those mixes together and I was miserable. And then Riley came along and well, he saved my life. Yeah, that's right. Since Riley's been here. I have not had that right.

    Right. Crazy. And I warned him of it too. Yeah. yeah. But

    As we wrap up, if there's one bit of advice that you could give to Nicholas and me and all of our listeners, just, you know, kind of general, good, you know, mental, emotional consideration as we enter into 2026. Yeah. What's what's one thing that if you could get all of us to do to to help ourselves have a better year than we've had in the past?

    what's one thing we could all, like one action item we could all do. We could take.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:20:05.046)

    I hope this isn't too ambiguous. What I've really felt myself called to, and I think I'm seeing a lack of, is intentionality. forget resolutions, forget goals and habits in the traditional way. I think my challenge to your listeners would be live intentionally. So what that might look like is, okay, what am I unhappy with?

    What do I actually want my life to look like in five years? Again, not in a goal way, but who do I want to become? It's that meaning and purpose piece. And then reverse engineer that. What intentional steps can I take towards that? So if you're spending a lot of windshield time, how am I intentionally gonna spend that instead of just driving? You guys did that with your story about dropping by another, like, don't know, we're gonna go in. Let's be intentional about this.

    And that intentionality sounds easy. It's a lot harder than it seems to wake up in the morning and say, it's what you're doing with AI, actually. It's like, OK, how do I be intentional today? So if you're a person of faith, this wake up and saying, God, order my steps today. Help me be intentional today. Life's going to throw a curveball at me. can't I can't plan every minute. I need to to be able to pivot and be distractible because life's distracting.

    But even in distractions, even in diversions, helped me be intentional with my words, with my actions, with how I want to live life. So I'm becoming the person that I want to become.

    that a lot.

    Nicolas Lirio (01:21:42.286)

    Before we go, I'm sorry, I just gotta ask this selfish question. Since Judd has come on the team and I don't have to answer the phone and emails and I don't have to be ready to answer the phone at 7.30 in the morning, I have found myself going to bed at one, waking up at 8.30, 8.45, and.

    You sleep until 8 45?

    If he's going to bed at 1 he's got to.

    I mean, you know, I roll in here sometimes at 10 o'clock, but then the flip side is like, I'm still sending them emails at midnight. actually makes fun of me because I always justify how much I've been working. I work like...

    Yes guys, I'm still working. Sorry guys, I'll be a little late. I was up till 2 a.m.

    Nicolas Lirio (01:22:22.442)

    I believe that love comes from performance. I'm having, I'm dealing with it. Yeah. Tuesday, next Tuesday.

    When's your next appointment with Matthew?

    Kent Boucher (01:22:33.332)

    He'll do it like literally the day after we make fun of him for it. You still have to do it

    I gotta let people know that I'm lovable. That's what it is. We've been working on it. is there a general rule of when it is good to go to bed and when to wake up? is it real? Because there's an app right now that's making millions of dollars that early to bed or early to rise.

    Maybe bring that up next time.

    Kent Boucher (01:22:58.446)

    Franklin say.

    Kent Boucher (01:23:02.562)

    Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

    Yeah, dude, that dude was regimented. He the hour every day. He was incredible. He That's why he invented and did so many things. Incredible man. If nobody, if you guys haven't studied Benjamin Franklin, you need to. He's an incredible man.

    Research would say that women need more sleep than men. We're all struggle with our sleep in this world. These need to be off an hour before bed. So I'm sure you're probably not doing that if you're sending emails. No screens an hour before bed. I don't follow it either because it's wildly difficult in our culture.

    Does the computer count? Can I my phone off?

    Kent Boucher (01:23:33.954)

    Does watching reels with my wife right before I go to sleep.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:23:42.702)

    At the very least wear blue light blockers if you're gonna use your screen late at night But I do encourage people to try to detox before bed It's a good habit again, I'm So I'm total hypocrite on this one we've got a TV in our bedroom our phones are in our bedroom My husband the other day was like do you think we should get some grounding sheets? He had grounding sheets before we got married. I Unknowingly got rid of them

    Are your goggles late?

    Kent Boucher (01:23:56.91)

    Is that the same for

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:24:10.686)

    cause we got, I got new sheets at my bridal shower. So I put my, got rid of his.

    The other one's a- You were like, they were a little- They look like bachelor sheets.

    I thought we needed new sheets. didn't know. And I was like, I think before we do grounding sheets, we actually get our technology out of our bedroom. there's, you so we have a sleep issue in our culture because of a busy-ness issue and we've got a brain issue. And so is there a set time? Everybody has kind of has their own rhythm.

    So is it just having a rhythm is the important part?

    I think so. Now, if you want to go real, real old school and you want to look at some people who are studying this, most of us can't do what's recommended. They would say that we should sleep with the seasons. you you talk about a hundred years ago, you would eat supper and when it got like you would go to bed shortly after it dark. So in the winter you were sleeping.

    Kent Boucher (01:25:00.258)

    i'm just a little thing

    Kent Boucher (01:25:14.924)

    Burn that carrot. That was expensive.

    Lot You you were sleeping long in the winter and then in the summer you weren't you our bodies were adjusting

    Well, there was so much work to do. They had longer days, but not only that, kids weren't in school so they could be at home to work. That's why we have some.

    And our bodies adjusted to that. so interesting. So there are people who are in the more holistic space who are saying, yeah, you should go to bed and wake up with the sun. And most of us just because of jobs can't do that.

    I don't do that at all, but I think it's a good thing to do.

    Dr. Karen Vanderhoff (01:25:53.119)

    I do think we should try to have rhythms and routines that signal to our body it's time to go to bed. So even on the weekends if you can keep it pretty similar.

    conditionally teaching your body.

    And that we should have routines that like I do the same thing before bed every night so that we do for our kids most of us, right? Yeah, and it helps

    We didn't really do that that much and then I don't know I think my wife just laid down the law eventually like no we need to get on a routine and man since we did that and we're not like perfect you know it's not like within a minute but I'd say within a half hour 45 minutes every night is pretty well the same bedtime for the kids and it does make a big difference.

    Well, and if they know, even if it's just it gets kind of wider in their bodies, right? I get my pajamas on, I brush my teeth, I go to the bathroom, we read a book. Like if there's a set routine, their body signals it's time to wind down and go to sleep. And then we let go of that as as adults. I mean, really should probably have a.

    Kent Boucher (01:27:01.23)

    Thank

    Dude, we're all just big babies. We're all just big babies We think we've outgrown all that stuff and we just haven't we just haven't man. Dr. Brander Hoff, they I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Sorry. thank you

    Thank you for inviting me. had so much fun. I've been listening to y'all's podcast. It's super fun.

    Man, so. thanks. Yeah, we we really appreciate actually the last time we had a mental health specialist on we had very straight down the line mixed reviews like didn't care for that at all. And then other people like texting in like that was one of the greatest podcasts I've ever, you know, just straight down the line. So some people care.

    Appreciate the risk, y'all.

    Nicolas Lirio (01:27:43.886)

    You know, it's...

    It's all connected. People ask that sometimes, man, you guys talk about all over the place. It's like all related. it really is. You can't fix the land, which is Hoxie's job, right? Our purpose is to make the world a better place to physically live. Yeah. But to get there, you got to take care of all these other aspects that factor into that.

    Because conservation, it happens one mind at a time.

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