[00:00:00] Greg: Welcome to the Blackpool New York podcast, which is recorded by News Stan Studio at Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan and is distributed by the Swell season Surf radio network.[00:01:00]

[00:01:12] And we're. This is episode number five with my good friend Daniel Rocker. Daniel is a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City, working with individuals, couples, and groups. Dan graduated with a BA from Wesleyan University and an MSW from New York University's Silver School of Social Work. He is a graduate of Ackerman's Clinical Externship program.

[00:01:35] Prior to his career as a therapist, Dan worked as a trader at Jefferies and Company and the head of Trading for investment firms, rocker Partners and Zimmer partners. Dan has been an active volunteer in the doula to a company and comfort program providing visits to palliative care patients since 2004.

[00:01:53] He is the vice president and co-director of the clinical arm of the International Parsis Association, [00:02:00] an organization that provides advocacy and treatment for individuals who suffer with a social anxiety disorder of shy bladder. I had no idea what Parsis even was or how to spell it, until Daniel Rocker told me that that's what he was doing.

[00:02:16] Dan, how are you?

[00:02:18] Dan Rocker: I'm doing very well. Uh, very well, Greg. Thanks for inviting me in today, .

[00:02:21] Greg: Um, yeah, we have, so, I'm so curious to hear all about

[00:02:25] Dan Rocker: paresis. We're dri we're diving straight below the belt. That's, we're gonna go right

[00:02:28] Greg: below the belt. Um, but I'm just, thank you so much for coming. First of all, pleasure is on and thank you to Mr.

[00:02:34] Joe Hasan for making it sound so good. Who helps us here mix the podcasts up on the board. The man is a wizard behind the controls. Um, God, let's just get right into it. Uh, Can you tell us what Parsis is please? Cuz

[00:02:50] Dan Rocker: I'm fascinated. Sure. Uh, I think the simplest definition I could give for Parsis is that Parsis is an inhibition, uh, to initiating [00:03:00] a stream of urine when you are not in a circumstance in which you feel like you are fully in control.

[00:03:05] And in most cases, that would be like, say in your home environment, in your home bathroom. So a lot of people with paresis have a great deal of difficulty using public restrooms. They have difficulty using restrooms on airplanes. They have difficulty using restrooms, basically anywhere that's outside of the home.

[00:03:23] And it's very clearly established at the outset of the treatment because I want all of my clients to see a urologist to make sure that there's nothing physical going on. It's clear that it is a mental rather than a physiological problem. That's

[00:03:36] Greg: fascinating. Yeah. Is this something that stems from anxiety?

[00:03:40] Dan Rocker: Oh, definitely. It is, uh, formally it is characterized as a diagnostic feature. Of social phobia or social anxiety disorder, you can find it listed by name in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It's under F 40 10 or 30 23. Uh, that's [00:04:00] on page 203. For any of our listeners who want to go look it up and get some substantiation in an official manual, like, oh, this is what it's called.

[00:04:08] This is what I've got, and what it is as, as I said, it's a diagnostic feature of social phobia, insofar as the real fear has nothing to do with urinating. It's actually a fear of being judged by other people. As being inadequate,

[00:04:25] Greg: is this something that usually comes from a childhood trauma or something that happens at an early age where this develops?

[00:04:32] Dan Rocker: So I would say that in the minority of cases that people bring to me, and I've worked with several hundred cases already, um, I'm the president of the International Paresis Association and it's about 70% of my practice here in New York City is working with, um, People with paresis, I would say that it's only in the minority of cases.

[00:04:50] Is there an identifiable, significant childhood trauma in the case? In, in most cases when I hear about childhood trauma, it's bullying, you know? Mm-hmm. people, [00:05:00] you know, elbowing into the stall while someone's trying to use a stall or making comments about, uh, you know, someone's appendage while they're standing at the urinal.

[00:05:09] Um, or pointing out that they haven't started yet, or what's the matter with them? Uh, and it, you know, the people. So just, so just

[00:05:15] Greg: the thought of like, going to one of those urinals where there's no partitions, where it's just a giant trough. A trough, yeah. It's gotta be just

[00:05:21] Dan Rocker: terrifying. Oh. So for my population, uh, it's basically a no-go.

[00:05:25] It's absolutely no go. Um, I mean it might be, I've been working on myself for 22 years, so I could probably perform if I was highly urgent. It's not something I'd be looking forward to do. . Okay, let's, let's, let's back up. But in the abso you know, uh, I, I would say that most of my clients, uh, if if there's not a divider between the urinals are gonna have difficulties mo most urinals have divides between, no, I know most of

[00:05:48] Greg: the listeners here are gonna be somewhat curious.

[00:05:50] Yes. Does this relate to defecation as well, or is it only urination? So

[00:05:55] Dan Rocker: the word for it for is there, is there Shai Pooper syndrome also? [00:06:00]Yes. Uh, it is, it's called Par Caprices . I do not treat par caprices. Parker Caprices is much more difficult to treat, uh, with par UREs, which I do treat. If I give someone a liter and a half of water and an hour, chances are they're gonna be hopping foot to foot.

[00:06:15] They're gonna have a high degree of urinary urgency and we're then gonna be able to go and test that urgency by doing graduated exposure in public restrooms. , I could give you some fried chicken and some donuts and God knows when that would want to come out in a and a double espresso. Right. And I, I could give you a double list.

[00:06:31] I mean, unless I was willing to go to your apartment first thing in the morning. Fire in law. Exactly. Exactly. So I, I, it would be, it would be much harder for me to structure exposures, but it's very easy to structure exposures around urination. So some of your patients

[00:06:46] Greg: Yes. Are terrified of urinating in public, however, not like pooping in public is something that's totally fine.

[00:06:54] Dan Rocker: Yes. And, and just to clarify, it's, it's not that they're terrified at all of urinating in [00:07:00] public. Actually all of us who have far ureas are ecstatic. When we're urinating in public. What we're concerned with is not being able to urinate in public. Ah. So it literally manifests itself not as a choice. Like, I'm not going to urinate cuz I'm anxious.

[00:07:14] It's, you're just standing there and you're locked up. I'm using air quotes here. It's, you feel a high degree of urgency. You are in the appropriate place. You are facing a urinal. You have time. No one's telling you you have to leave and yet your body won't let you go. That's fascinating. And that's because of sympathetic nervous system activation.

[00:07:32] Your body's basically in fight, flight, freeze mode. And when it's paresis, it's freeze. It's not my, my guys aren't turning around in running out of bathrooms. Yeah. Or punching people at the adjoining urinals. They are just

[00:07:45] Greg: frozen up. All right, so let's, let's take a, that was a hell of an intro right there.

[00:07:49] Dan Rocker: I can actually answer to answer the question. Just pull the pin on the grenade here. We, we go to answer the question very specifically. Most of my clients who have Parsis, no, [00:08:00] they have no difficulty. That's one of the things that's so a mystifying about the disorder to those of us who have. I could take a dump in, in the waste paper basket sitting next to your desk.

[00:08:09] I don't care. It's, it's not a matter of being of polies or, or, or being delicate. I just, when I am at my tic moments, I'm just locked up. Mm. It's like, are you familiar with selective mutism? I'm not. Okay. Selective mutism is a condition where kids speak comfortably at home. They might be a chatter box, but then you hear in school, the kid's completely silent.

[00:08:32] Yeah. They get terrified about it. And, and it's mutism. Mm-hmm. , but it's selective. It's in, it's environmentally selected. And that's, uh, paresis is like selective mutism of the urinary function rather than of the speech function. All right. So

[00:08:44] Greg: let's, let's back way, way up here. Okay. Let's back way up. Where are you from?

[00:08:49] Well, ,

[00:08:50] Dan Rocker: I was, I spent the first six weeks of my life in Boston, Massachusetts. I was born during the week of finals when my dad was in business school. Uh, but I spent the rest of my childhood in Short Hill's, New [00:09:00] Jersey. Gotcha, gotcha. Where I went to high school. With you, . This is true.

[00:09:04] Greg: Couple years ahead of me.

[00:09:05] Yeah,

[00:09:05] Dan Rocker: yeah, yeah. I'm not, I'm jumping around. I'm jumping

[00:09:07] Greg: around with timeline. We have have very, very similar reference sets. Yes. And then when you graduated from high school, you went to school where? Wellesley.

[00:09:16] Dan Rocker: Oh, Wesland. Yes. Wesland. Yeah. Went, went to Wesley University. What'd you study there? I studied, I was a double major in English and in psychology.

[00:09:22] That's funny. With the English,

[00:09:24] Greg: but I was an English major too, and I remember. , after I had graduated college, I went over to your apartment and you were living downtown somewhere. And I was telling you that I was like studying some like literary theory and I'd read a bunch of fuco recently and you're like, oh, come here.

[00:09:37] Come over to the window . And we looked out the window ,

[00:09:40] Dan Rocker: and I was like, what? What? I don't see anything. And you're like, no, it's the panopticon. Right, right there. It's fuco, Fuka, . It was absolutely by virtue of living in a, having a courtyard view, it was a wonderful apartment. I had no view of the exterior, but I could look into the windows of, you know, all of my neighbors and they could all look into my room, which, or into my apartment as well, which is [00:10:00] so that, that's who we're talking

[00:10:01] Greg: to.

[00:10:01] The guy who's like using the fuco analogy with the, the English major

[00:10:05] Dan Rocker: for literary, if you have to learn about fuco, you have to be able to drop fuco.

[00:10:09] Greg: Yes, yes. This is true. This is true. So from there you went and started working in finance? Yes. Okay. So

[00:10:17] Dan Rocker: talk a little bit about that, just a couple of blocks away.

[00:10:19] Uh, I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I graduated college. Mm-hmm. , I was a kind of a dissolute student and just wandered around and, um, definitely wasn't, uh, an accomplish enough student to even contemplate a, a PhD in, in English or, or psychology. And I really wanted to get out in the workforce.

[00:10:36] I had some family connections into finance. I had been working over summers in finance, uh, since I was 14 years old. And so I went to work, uh, just two blocks north here at Jefferson Company, which is at 52nd and fifth. And, and I was, uh, what they call a rocket at the time. Mm-hmm. actually, that, that would be the closest experience to this is I was kind of like, The equivalent of the disc jockey for the trading [00:11:00] da, uh, for the, uh, the trading floor announcing our merchandise.

[00:11:03] You know, when people came in, they wanted to sell some ibm, they wanted to buy some General Motors, you know, I would have to, all right, let's get around Boston. Let's hit account 32. We're a seller of ibm, you know, let's get around Boston account 39 Dallas, let's talk to account 52. And you know, just try to pitch the merchandise.

[00:11:18] And that's when it was all

[00:11:19] Greg: on phones. And you had,

[00:11:20] Dan Rocker: that's when it was actually, we literally had these like CB operator mics. It was really pretty cool. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it was fun. Yeah. And of course all the trading was done, uh, on the phones and on the screens, and so I spent 10, 10 months up here. Then I got transferred down to Jeff's Dallas, where I spent a couple of years down there before coming back up here.

[00:11:39] And I went to work. At that point, my father asked me to come run his trading Escot Rocker partners. That would've been 1994. I was 25 years old. I can't believe they let kids do stuff like that. But , uh, that's, that's what I did for a couple of years. And, uh, as it, you know, it was a really good time to get into the trading game.

[00:11:57] Uh, I actually timed my entry and [00:12:00] my exit very well, without any knowledge of, but he

[00:12:03] Greg: knew you would never get up to take a leak. You know, he'd be stuck on the desk the whole time. , you

[00:12:08] Dan Rocker: know, I, I, people ask me how I, how I managed with it on Wall Street. I, I, frankly, I don't remember that much. I know it, it was an issue.

[00:12:14] I just, uh, I negotiated around it, right? Yeah. I guess I was white knuckling it a lot. . I, I, I wasn't treating myself. I had no, I didn't know the word myself either. I didn't know what I had. I just, I thought I was the only person in the world who had, uh, the body of a 25 year old, but the prostate of a 75 year old, I really didn't understand what was happening to me at all.

[00:12:34] I, I, I actually thought there was something physically wrong with me. Psychosomatic. Yes.

[00:12:38] Greg: Completely systematic psychosomatic.

[00:12:40] Dan Rocker: Yes. All right. So actually I'll, I'll tell you the one question rule in that I ask people as they say, Hey, does this ever happen to you when you're at home and you're alone and you're under no time pressure?

[00:12:51] And if the answer is yes, then I say, well, you better go see a urologist. But if the answer is no, then I suspect it's Parsis because we don't swap our parts out. Mm-hmm. , [00:13:00] when we go to different environments, you know, I've got the same bladder here as at the Yankee game in, at my apartment and in Penn Station.

[00:13:06] And it should work the same way in all those environments. Uh, unless my brain is interfering in some way and saying, eh, it doesn't feel safe, doesn't feel, you know, let's, let's be a little more hyper-vigilant

[00:13:17] Greg: here. Something like an interesting chapter of your life that I don't, I don't really know much about, and I want to hear more is you working with palliative care patients.

[00:13:25] Ah, because you left Wall Street. Um, you've been 15 years ago. 15 years ago, yes. So you were, the trading just didn't call to you anymore. Yes. . And you went back and got an, uh, master's in social work, right? Yes. And then started working with

[00:13:39] Dan Rocker: palliative care patients. Well, actually the, the order there is, I'll put one asterisk in and, uh, the palliative care work began years before I left Wall Street.

[00:13:50] Uh, it was in the aftermath of nine 11. Mm-hmm. , uh, you know, I think a lot of us were having these kind of feel, you know, these feelings of like, what's it all about Alfie, you know, what's, [00:14:00] uh, I'm not guaranteed 70 and a and a gold watch, you know, a dozen of my Yeah. Buddies just kind of got blown up for showing up at work.

[00:14:06] One day. We, your

[00:14:07] Greg: office

[00:14:08] Dan Rocker: was pretty close to the towers. Oh, yeah. Uh, per a few hundred yards away. You, you recall that we had our, our kids down at, at, uh, daycare at Trinity there. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, that was about 250 yards from the, the towers. And my office was maybe, I don't know, 250 yards in the other direction on the, you know, I was on 40, I was at 45 Broadway.

[00:14:27] So right down where the bull is. Yep, yep, yep. Uh, and so in the aftermath of. The terrible after, after nine 11, I, I remember kind of casting around and, and thinking, you know what, if I'm not doing what I want to do with my life, I really should address that now. How how old were you then? I was 32.

[00:14:49] Greg: All right.

[00:14:49] So 32 years old, you actually have the balls to say, I don't like, I'm not happy doing what I'm doing, and I need to just look for something more.

[00:14:58] Dan Rocker: It was, uh, it was like a call [00:15:00] to meaning. Yeah. You know, it was, uh, I, I actually didn't dislike my job. Uh, I did like my job a great deal, and I liked the people with whom I worked.

[00:15:08] It's just that Yeah. You worked with some amazing

[00:15:09] Greg: individuals. Yeah. Like some of the most entertaining, smart, like, like highly, highly intelligent and just, uh,

[00:15:17] Dan Rocker: creative people. Yeah. That place, uh, each of those environments was special. And it was like, you know, working with Stu was one of the best times of my life for 10 years.

[00:15:25] Uh, Stu was a high school friend of ours, and he's the Zimmer and Zimmer partners. Um, and, uh, it's just that I, I realized that. Um, I felt like I, my intelligence was declining that I was really just trading the same 60 stocks, you know, day in, day out. And I knew a great deal about the way those stocks acted, but I didn't really know much about anything else in this world.

[00:15:46] Mm-hmm. , um, I was then too, uh, tired and stressed and burned by the time I got home at the end of the day to really move the ball forward towards my own education. I couldn't really autodidact. I was just fried. Did you have kids at this time? Oh, sure. Yeah. Uh, grace [00:16:00] was six months old when the towers came down.

[00:16:02] Yep. And Ruth, uh, was born in 2004. Yep. And so, uh, this was around 2004. Around the time that Ruth was born is when I started. I saw an article in the New York Times. It was the cover below the fold. Did you feel

[00:16:16] Greg: like there, I mean, like a lot of the, I don't know, people that sort of make a, a career change or change in, in just the direction of their life and the trajectory that they're living in?

[00:16:26] They feel called to something and a lot of the, I don't know, like Rom Doss, Uhhuh, . went to India. Yes. And met Neem, Corley Baba. Yes. Studied with Neem. And you know, his whole NEMS philosophy was serve the people. Mm-hmm. , feed the people. That was it. Mm-hmm. , nothing else. Yeah. Serve the people, feed the people.

[00:16:45] They're like, oh, you're an enlightened saint. And serve the people, feed the people, serve the pe. That's all, that's all the guy preached, you know? That's it. Just be of service. Was there something that after nine 11 that happened where there was a cataly, like, you know, cataclysm or a catalytic [00:17:00] moment where you were just like, I need to be of service?

[00:17:02] Dan Rocker: Yes. So it was when I found this article on the cover of the, uh, the New York Times below the fold, the author's name I believe was n r Kleinfeld or Kleinfeld. Um, it was. In, you know, it described the doula program. Mm-hmm. that I wound up volunteering for was, you know, uh, in, in March towards death, like a, a friend to the end or something like that.

[00:17:26] I'm, I'm butchering the headline a little bit. I'm sorry Mr. Kleinfeld. Um, but, uh, I read this article and it was about just showing up. and being enough with your presence to show up that what are people looking for in their last months of life? Are they looking for more money? Are they looking for, how,

[00:17:45] Greg: how does palliative care, uh, differ from hospice, for

[00:17:48] Dan Rocker: example?

[00:17:49] It's, uh, , I would've described it, uh, as hospice light. Uh, insofar as So you're, you're working with people that are dying. Oh, yes, yes. Wow. So [00:18:00] palliative care, uh, it comes from the word palliative, I think, uh, to palliate, uh, is, there's a word in Latin that means to mask. And so when you are moving towards palliative care, you're not trying to treat the underlying illness.

[00:18:13] Actually, that's more in hospice. In palliative care, you can continue to treat the underlying illness. When you are have moved on to hospice care, it is solely pain relief. It is no longer you're trying to affect a, a change in the trajectory of the illness. So in palliate, you know, shorthand. Hospice is normally for the last six months of life, and palliative care might be for the last 18 months of life.

[00:18:35] And the suite of services that are available to people, uh, augments as you move from palliative care to hospice because you're giving up medical treatments. And then so they,

[00:18:47] Greg: so you're walking along the street and you see this ad,

[00:18:50] Dan Rocker: uh, I, I was reading the newspaper and I was like, this is what I want to do.

[00:18:53] This is my calling. I want to, uh, work with people in the last months of their lives. Yes. And it,

[00:18:59] Greg: [00:19:00] how so day one of that job, what's like, what's that like?

[00:19:03] Dan Rocker: Well, you get trained, I think I have clearly to do something like 40 hours of training, you know, uh, where you learn about your own emotional responses and, and how you think of death.

[00:19:14] And you'd read some spiritual stuff and learn about the spiritual traditions of a broad variety of people. And then just some basic active listening techniques. Um, I may be forgetting, you know, some rules and regs about like, so I'm

[00:19:26] Greg: curious, like in that experience that you had, which is amazing, , is there one anecdote or someone who really sticks out to you that you had a, like a fond interaction

[00:19:36] Dan Rocker: with?

[00:19:37] Like some Oh, I, I, I, I really enjoyed being with just about everyone. In, in some respects, uh, you get very close, you form, uh, very close relationships very quickly because people don't have the luxury of time of kind of dicking around and being standoffish. Yeah. Uh, so if someone doesn't want to talk to you, they're just gonna turn to the wall and you're not gonna have a relationship.

[00:19:56] They're literally gonna block you out. Um, but, [00:20:00] uh, you know, I, I can't hear the song, uh, Danny Boy anymore without crying , uh, because, uh, not that it was not always an emotional song, um, but there was a man, one of my first, um, Palliative care patients who I visited in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Mm-hmm. , and, uh, worked with for several months.

[00:20:21] Uh, he was a 51 year old retired postal carrier. Uh, just a fun guy and he used to just call me Danny Boy. And, um, we, we had, uh, some really good times together and, uh, I just, you would just go over and hang out with him, basically just go, go and hang out. He'd make, you know, he'd ask me if I wanted, uh, some sandwiches made out of these cold cuts, and then we would just kind of munch on sandwiches and walk around the block a little bit.

[00:20:46] And, uh, it's, you don't have to, uh, the gift is the presence. I, I wasn't supposed to know how to do anything. I'm not an oncologist. I wasn't a social worker. I, it's pretty, it's pretty amazing. I was, I was working on the trading desk at the time. Yeah. But

[00:20:58] Greg: as, as a human, [00:21:00] and we forget this, you're hardwired to know how to do a lot of this stuff.

[00:21:05] Yes. To just, you're hardwired to know how to be kind to people. Right. And, and just showing up. Sometimes is enough, right? Just to be, just to be in acknowledgement of someone else's

[00:21:17] Dan Rocker: presence. Holding, holding someone's hand. Sure. Putting your hand on their shoulder. Putting your hand on their head. Yeah. You know, just, uh, slowing things down.

[00:21:23] Just listening. I mean, there it was. Um, did, did most of

[00:21:27] Greg: these people have family? Were they alone? I mean, did they

[00:21:30] Dan Rocker: live, was it it it was a mixed bag park. I mean, I, the place, it was, uh, original when I started with the doulas. It was a home based system then, then it, it changed to a hospital based system. So I was doing a lot of work in St.

[00:21:44] Vincent's before it converted. Mm-hmm. became residential. Uh, and then, um, Bellevue. I, uh, oh, I mean, talk about like an exist. Situation. You know, Bellevue has a jail in it. Um, , I did not know that Well, so, [00:22:00] so Rikers Island, um, does not have say like a, an oncology unit. Okay. Uh, they've got like an infirmary, uh, and they could probably, you know, take care of some pre, you know, broken bones, infections, illnesses.

[00:22:13] But if someone's gonna be treated for a life-limiting illness, they're gonna be brought to Manhattan and they're gonna be brought to Bellevue. And I believe if memory serves, it was the 12th floor. So you take the elevator up and you get out and, you know, all of the insignia was different. It was no longer Bellevue.

[00:22:30] It was, you know, the correctional department plus Bellevue. And you had to go through, you had to enter bars and leave all your, you know, in inside of prison and, and put your, your phone and everything in a locked case and show that you didn't have anything. And then you would, you know, go visit the individual who was the patient.

[00:22:50] Who also happened to be a prisoner. And, uh, I remember in, in one particular case, I was visiting with an individual who we thought we were going to be able to get [00:23:00] a compassionate release for. Um, but the judge struck it down. There was, there was not going to be a compassionate release. The individual who had committed, uh, murder, uh, was going to die in prison.

[00:23:13] Uh, even though he represented no threat to anyone, he had, he had cancer, uh, had very advanced cancer, he could hardly move. And that was, uh, that was very hard work to stay present and try to stay hopeful and optimistic and, um, have some sense of a aquinas uh, demeanor. Well, I'm with a guy who you real, you literally realize like he will literally never see the sun.

[00:23:37] Wow. He will literally never see anything except this shitty lattice work, you know, painted wires through the window and bars on the outside of the window. Um, and so experiences like that, I think helped, uh, give me, uh, a different sense of perspective than, than the, that really gives perspective on perspective.

[00:23:56] Yeah, for sure. Yeah. When you, you know, you think, uh, you know, you [00:24:00]think it's bad because your, uh, your flight's delayed for a few hours and then you say to yourself, Um, at least, uh, I get to see the sun again. Yeah.

[00:24:08] Greg: It's amazing that I know that at least in some of the work that I've been doing with myself, it's the, the more patient I can be with myself, the more patient I can be with

[00:24:17] Dan Rocker: everybody else.

[00:24:18] More patient and more compassionate with yourself. Yes.

[00:24:20] Greg: Yes. Yeah. Which is part of the practice. Mm-hmm. , do you have a, uh, a practice? Do you have a daily practice?

[00:24:25] Dan Rocker: I do. And it's, uh, uh, I, I, it's been pretty, uh, it's been pretty set since last August, which is, uh, I get up and I read the Daily Stoics, you know, uh, Ryan Holidays.

[00:24:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, fantastic. Yeah, so I read what the entry is for the day, uh, and then I journal for maybe two or three minutes on what I think, uh, about, uh, that particular entry. And then I do just a 10 minute meditation from Sam Harris' waking up at. . Um, and frequently then later [00:25:00] in the day, what I will do is listen to some of the other lectures on Sam Harris's app.

[00:25:04] And I've been, uh, a big fan of what Professor William Irvine's work, uh, who is, uh, uh, a retired philosophy professor from Wright State University, uh, who has, there's like a five hour lecture series on stoicism. And I've, I've really been, uh, enjoying that and I've been, you know, talking it up with my clients as well.

[00:25:24] Greg: So as you're working with these palliative patients mm-hmm. , do you find, is there, do you notice anything going on in yourself where you're noticing things, how you're reacting differently to situations or just thinking about your own place in the universe differently?

[00:25:41] Dan Rocker: Well, I, I don't know that it's specifically when I'm, uh, and, and I should, uh, point out I haven't, I don't know when was the last time.

[00:25:47] I don't think I've done any palliative care volunteerism, probably the last four years. Oh, gee whiz. Probably, uh, the last five years mm-hmm. . So it's, it's been a while. Um, but it was, [00:26:00]

[00:26:00] Greg: you went from a trading desk to working with people that are dying

[00:26:05] Dan Rocker: in the same day. I would, it was volunteerism. So I would leave, I would leave my office.

[00:26:09] Talk about, about just like,

[00:26:10] Greg: juxtaposition of life. Yeah.

[00:26:12] Dan Rocker: I would go, you know, yelling, screaming, uh, everything's numbers on a screen to sitting with a 93 year old bedbound woman, you know? And, uh, basically one of the, one of the things you do most frequently when you're doing palliative care is something called life review, which is where you just try to get the individual not, it's not like we're manipulating getting them, but I shouldn't use that word, but encourage the individual to try to look at their life as if it's one narrative.

[00:26:40] You know, what's the story of your life? Just like you started with me, you know? Right. And so, uh, I think when people towards the end of their lives can. You know, at least trace a rough outline that makes some sense to them, uh, that is more comforting, uh, to them. And it makes them feel that they have, you know, that their story has made sense in some respect.

[00:26:59] [00:27:00] And, uh, and that, you know, all stories end. Yeah. I

[00:27:03] Greg: think a lot of us are trying to make sense of our story on a daily

[00:27:06] Dan Rocker: basis. You gotta check out, I, I, uh, Marshall my, uh, roommate and, uh, best friend from college he sent me about six months ago. Wonderful. Uh, song called, uh, I have Loved The Story of My Life by Xander Schloss, who, if, if memories, uh, serves was, I can't remember if he was in the circle jerks or suicidal tendencies, uh, but, uh, nice

[00:27:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of those guys, we make transitions throughout our lives. Yeah. You know, it's like you go from Repo Man to playing with Joe Drummer to, you know, playing nice acoustic, uh, guitar, uh, lines from, from the trading desk to the Palliative of Care. It just, If it was all linear, it would be boring.

[00:27:46] Yeah. This is very true.

[00:27:48] Greg: This is very true.

[00:27:49] Dan Rocker: It's like, just like, there's nothing about my life that bores me, keeling

[00:27:51] Greg: back another layer seeing what's there.

[00:27:54] Dan Rocker: Whoa. Look at that. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, if, yeah, I could not have scripted this out. You know, if you [00:28:00] were to say like, Hey, this thing that is making you feel, uh, ashamed of yourself or inadequate or non masculine, you were a kid.

[00:28:07] Oh, guess what? You're gonna be the head of a, of a, you don't even know that this thing has a name, but at some point you're gonna be the president of an organization, . That's, that's, you know, you spent all your time hiding this from other people. Can you,

[00:28:18] Greg: can you think of anything like in your childhood that happened to you that is sort of, was, uh, a traumatic event No.

[00:28:26] That your body remembers? So I remember like, uh, when I first started, Trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. Uhhuh with varying degrees of success. More, less than not. Um, I think it was either you told me to read the Body Keeps Score or

[00:28:42] Dan Rocker: somebody told me to read the Body Keep score. Bess Vander.

[00:28:45] Yeah, sure. Be

[00:28:47] Greg: basically like we're walking around in this meet suit. Right. That has a memory towards it. Yes. Not in your brain, but like your, your epidermis. Correct. It remembers everything. And it's the same suit you've been wearing since you came out of your [00:29:00] mom's vagina. Uhhuh, or stomach. If you had a cesarean and it remembers everything.

[00:29:05] Yes. Can you recall something that happened or is it still stored in a part of your brain that consciousness doesn't have access to and it's manifesting your itself? And I'm just not comfortable peeing in

[00:29:16] Dan Rocker: public. So it, coincidentally, I just read something and I think it was this morning, so I'm just gonna bring it up.

[00:29:22] I, I think I, uh, I think it was in the New York Times I was reading. So an article about insomnia or, you know, and how it's related to anxiety in some respects. Now I have insomnia also. I mean, oh boy. Anything really? Oh, yeah. And I, I have been endowed with an extremely active mind now that is not always a good thing.

[00:29:42] Okay. There, there are, there are. I'm good at problem solving. I am good. You know, I'm a fast thinker. Uh, it's just like I haven't quite figured out where the off switch is. If you see it. Could you just flip it for me? ? It would be lovely if I could turn it off occasionally, but as I was reading this article about [00:30:00] insomnia, you know, one of the professors, uh, who was quoted, I think his last name was pal, uh, said something along the lines of, as organisms, we are seldom more vulnerable as when we're sleeping.

[00:30:13] And it just like the kind of penny drop for me. And I was thinking, same thing with paresis. When you're standing there, Or if you're, you're talking about park caprices. If you're hunched over and you're, you know, defecating, you're pretty easy to pick off. You're exposed. You're exposed. If you're just lying there unconscious, you're exposed.

[00:30:31] Uh, and so I think that there are, uh, there's an expression in the anxiety field, which is that nature favors the anxious gene. Uh, as much as it doesn't feel good to have anxiety in the body, like being a acutely, um, aware of what's going on around you, uh, tends to bode well towards your survival.

[00:30:50] Greg: Oh my God.

[00:30:51] Like, uh, just a perfect example. I was in the airport with my wife and my son, uh, two days ago, and I knew that if I was [00:31:00] standing closer to where they start boarding and not behind the throngs of people, Uhhuh, , I would be able to just, you know, not jump the line or anything, but just be able to like, have a, a smoother transition, right.

[00:31:10] To get on the aircraft. Right. And that was giving me anxiety.

[00:31:14] Dan Rocker: So it was give because you were wondering whether someone was gonna challenge you to do it. I, I actually find that situation to be challenging too. But it's, I, the way I conceptualize it is it's because of the uncertainty. It's like, yes, that's a lot.

[00:31:26] Is it gonna be 20 guys coming from the right or are there gonna be people from the left? Oh no. Are there 40, you know, orthodox people who are gonna push the on, in front of me and take all of the overhead compartments? I mean, you know, or all the military guys gonna come out, who knows. You know, there it could, it, it's just, it's, it's stressful and it's irritating.

[00:31:43] Greg: It's like a control thing where you just don't want to be, it's, you have a hard time letting go because we're so programmed to hold on so tightly to everything. Right. Cause we don't want to relinquish control.

[00:31:54] Dan Rocker: Don't want to relinquish control. Don't want to be weak. Don't wanna be, and don't wanna be vulnerable.

[00:31:58] Right. Don't or don't wanna be [00:32:00] exposed. So this don't wanna be judged either.

[00:32:01] Greg: So this makes, this makes sense. Yes. So if you have a, a defense mechanism that's going off with your sympathetic nervous system. , you're not gonna be exposed, you're not gonna, you're not gonna put yourself at risk. It's always like, and I know cause like you have kids, I have kids.

[00:32:16] It just, you don't wanna put yourself in harm's way. And then when you are looking out for the wellbeing of others, it's an added layer of anxiety where you want to protect your family. Right? It's just like you're innately like, how do I put my, you know, what, what's the safest situation possible for the people or for the loved ones in my life?

[00:32:35] Whether it's friends, family, whatever, uh, you know, employees. Mm-hmm. , you just want to just make sure that you're always thinking about what is the risk in whatever you're doing. And after a while it just becomes fucking exhausting because a lot of the situations, you're always trying to think like, where am I?

[00:32:54] And from working in finance, you're always, where are we exposed? You know, what name are we not up to speed on? [00:33:00] Right. Like, you know, which, like, where's the slippage? Right. And that sort of flows through to life also. So like, it kind of makes sense that if there is some sort of, uh, defense mechanism that we're naturally wired with, no one's getting chased by an animal anymore.

[00:33:16] That's correct. That's not happening. But you might be put in a situation where the plane fills up and there's no room for your overhead luggage and you have to check your bag and you spend another hour at Newark Airport waiting for it to

[00:33:27] Dan Rocker: come out. Right. That's exactly what we're trying. And you're like, avoid an hour.

[00:33:30] Right. But the key thing is, God. So what's you're pointing out here is something that I point out to all my clients, which is that there is a qualitative difference between discomfort and danger. Mm-hmm. . Okay. So spending an extra hour at Newark when you have just come in from wherever you are and you're already tired, that's uncomfortable.

[00:33:50] But it is not dangerous to you. Um, if you are taking a leak and you take a look to the left and there's a grizzly bear, you have my full permission to run. That is dangerous to you. And [00:34:00] so, you know, it's just, we have to figure out is what I am concerned about here, discomfort, or if is it danger? And if it's discomfort, then what I encourage my clients to do is just try to wait it out.

[00:34:13] You know, just, uh, you know, there's a pretty standard response that we call it, like the anxiety woosh. It's like, oh, it just comes upon you and, you know, you go from zero to 10 on the Likert scale and you're, yeah, you're not anxious and then you are. But if you wait in that situation, most of my clients, then they hit the eject button.

[00:34:30] So they never learn this. But if they were to just stay in the situation for five or 10 more minutes, it would go from a 10 on a liker scale, maybe down to a nine. This is something that I've

[00:34:39] Greg: been discussing, uh, at length with very close friends of mine, is getting comfortable being uncomfortable. Yes. And if you can master that, Nothing is a challenge.

[00:34:51] Right. No matter how uncomfortable you are, it just, it's okay. Yeah. You have to let go of that. Yes. You know, I have another friend who's just, he's a [00:35:00] fitness junkie, and he just says, you gotta embrace the suck. Yeah. You know, embrace the suck, get comfortable being uncomfortable. Exactly. You know, let go. It's all saying the same thing.

[00:35:08] Dan Rocker: What, what therapists would call it is the willful, the willful tolerance of uncertainty. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just saying, instead of saying, I can only use this bathroom if it's this way, this way, and that way, just say like, whatever this bathroom is, I will figure it out. You know, there are better and worse bathrooms, but I will simply figure it out.

[00:35:26] So how did you make this

[00:35:27] Greg: shift from working in palliative care Yes. To Parsis. So, um, like what happened? Like, was there just like an aha moment where you were like, all right, we're going with the Parsis route. I feel like I'm fulfilled with the palliative care volunteer work. So

[00:35:43] Dan Rocker: oddly enough, it was the process of negative selection, which was I had done, I went to NYU's social work school with the idea of being a palliative care worker on the way out.

[00:35:55] I specifically asked for a palliative care first year internship, and they [00:36:00] gave it to me. Uh, I did very well, uh, got rave reviews and, and, uh, then I applied for a second year. It's a two year program. Mm-hmm. , uh, for a second year fellowship in palliative care. Wasn't even all that competitive. There were six slots and 11 applicants.

[00:36:14] They rejected me and so I had to scramble and find a new second year internship. And after many wrong fits and starts, I wound up getting sent to a psychoanalytic institute where I just learned how to do psychoanalysis and I stayed there for several years. Uh, and then during the course of my education there, uh, I had gone to a workshop myself, uh, as a symptomatic client back in 2001, when, when I was 32, right after the towers came down, the International Party Recess Association was a tiny little startup organization back then.

[00:36:49] It had started in 1996. It was their fifth year or sixth year, and they had a workshop in Newark, New Jersey. And the thought entered my mind, you know, I had found it on, on the internet, and I [00:37:00] thought after watching a dozen friends just get blown up, like, I'm just gonna, I, I don't care. I'm just not gonna die with this stupid fucking condition.

[00:37:09] Mm-hmm. , I, I need to do something about this. Um, and so that was my first step away from avoidance and towards health. Uh, and I went to this workshop and I learned the kind of very basic skills of graduated exposure to a desensitization hierarchy. And, and, you know, then would practice in public restrooms, uh, and.

[00:37:29] When the more I practiced, the better I got and when I would stop practicing, I would regress. It's a chronic relapsing condition. That's what, so it's

[00:37:36] Greg: like fitness for the listeners out there. Occasionally I'll get a video from Dan from an airplane bathroom , where it's just him encouraging his clients that it was okay.

[00:37:45] Like he actually peed at 30,000 feet and it's all good. It's not a graphic video. No, no, no. It's just all above the belt. Yeah. A video in the mirror like I, this, this happened. I did it and you know, it was not comfortable. [00:38:00] It, it worked. And, and you can too. It's like a, it's like a video

[00:38:02] Dan Rocker: of encouragement. E Exactly.

[00:38:04] I'm always ex, you know, I, I I lead from the, I lead from the front. I can just kind of imagine

[00:38:08] Greg: you like at, um, , at like the garden. At a ranger game. Uhhuh. , like with your cell phone out, like taking a video of like all the people

[00:38:16] Dan Rocker: Well, the, uh, at the, you get it, you get a big kick out of this. So one of the, one of the things, what are you doing?

[00:38:23] One of the things that I do, you know, so, so since most of my clients and myself when I was most symptomatic, are really afraid that people are judging you or paying attention to you in the bathroom, and really no one is at all, um, So one of the exercises I'll do when I lead a workshop, and I've gotta give credit to Carl Robbins, the co-founder of the ipa, who taught me this fantastic technique.

[00:38:42] He, he calls it a shame, attacking ex exercise. Um, and, and what it is, is you do the, you enact the exact thing you're afraid of. You're afraid that people are gonna judge you for looking, you know, uh, for being visibly distressed around you urinating. So I tell the guys at the workshop, I say, okay, I'm gonna go to the, [00:39:00] I'm gonna go to the center urinal here, and I'm gonna post up, I'm gonna set the, uh, the timer on my iPhone for 20 minutes, and I'm gonna stand there for 20 minutes.

[00:39:08] And the last time I did this for extra comic effect, I, I had been at the buffet and I had taken those cheesy looking gloves that they make you use to handle the bagels. So I put these gloves on. I bought a 32 ounce diet Coke, and I pulled the straw to the meniscus. So it just made horrible bubbling noises when I subbed on it,

[00:39:25] And then I just camped out of the urinal and I kept one of my arms, one of my hands up on the wall, and I would just moan. Oh,

[00:39:38] for 20 minutes. Also, I hiked hike in a hike in public, in a public bathroom? Yeah. A in a people public with their kids, with their fathers. It was in a food court in a mall in Baltimore. Yeah. And I, and I had, I had my jeans hiked down. I ride commando. So you have like three inches of crack. You can take a look at and, and, and I go for 20 minutes.

[00:39:58] And what, what? And I invite [00:40:00] the guys at the workshop. I want you to circulate throughout the, the restroom, and I want you to closely monitor what people's interactions are with me. There's nothing to report. No one's interacting. No one's interacting with you there. They're just like, okay, no one cares. No one cares.

[00:40:14] I mean, they might notice me. I'm not saying that they, I'm not, I'm acting strangely. I know I'm acting strangely. But the question is, you know, that I put to these, uh, to my clients is, okay, so fine. Even if you act strangely, then what? And the answer is crickets.

[00:40:30] Greg: It's really amazing that there's really, there's no rules to have to have, there's no fucking rules.

[00:40:35] I don't care. Like, listen, there's morality and there's virtue, right? But there are no rules. No. How you get from fucking point A to point B in any aspect of your life, someone that's telling you you have to do it this way, is full of shit. It does not fucking work that way. If you have your moral compass pointed in the right direction, and you're sticking to your virtues, whatever they are, right?

[00:40:56] You're good, right? Morality and virtue, no rules. Yes. You [00:41:00] need to like growl, like a, an old man with one hand on the wall, drinking a coke, you know, in front of the urinal to like, to get you to a point of comfort with

[00:41:08] Dan Rocker: yourself. God bless, right? Fucking do it, man. You know? I mean, uh, it's. One of the things that Adam talks about, you know, we had been mentioning Adam Gornick's book earlier.

[00:41:19] I have, um, one of my Oh yeah. Tell us a little bit about that. Ah, okay. So, uh, for those of them you don't know, who is Adam Gonick? So, a, Adam Got Gonick is a, uh, is a staff writer for the New Yorker, one of the more senior writers, the New Yorker, since the 1980s. And he is a, uh, beloved and, and well-known, uh, New York City author.

[00:41:36] He wrote Paris to the Moon, and this is probably his 10th or 11th book at this point. Um, and, and you know, just a well-known, uh, he's got his own BBC radio show. He's, you know, he's just a well-known guy. Um, and he came in and a phenomenal writer, uh, and a lovely guy. And, uh, he, uh, just so people understand, I am a boundary.

[00:41:57] Therapist, I never talk about my [00:42:00] clients at all by name. Mm-hmm. . However, um, this particular client, uh, he and I have discussed this, uh, in great detail and he decided to, uh, include a chapter in a recent book that just came out on the 14th. Uh, the book is called The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery, and there is a chapter.

[00:42:18] Uh, puny enough called Relieving . Uh, and it is an extensive chapter and a serious chapter, uh, about the work that we've been doing together for the last four years. Uh, as he as a man in his sixties, uh, decided to try to unwind, uh, the serious, uh, kind of consequences, uh, and the phobia that had accrued of having Parsis for the last 50 years.

[00:42:44] Wow. And so there's 50 years of difficult habits to kind of unwind. Uh, but what he, you know, Adam specifically talks about in the chapter that one of the things that I taught him was that anything goes in a public restroom. In New York City, we think that, you know, if [00:43:00] you spend 18 seconds there, instead of 14 seconds there, something's wrong.

[00:43:03] And the mall cop's gonna pull you outta there. And realistically, one of the reasons I take all these videos is cuz you know, there's guys showering in the sink. There's guys cutting their toenails. I was once in a, um, a. I was once in a, uh, in a men's room in, uh, let's see, Palisades Interstate Park. Someone was cooking with a hibachi in the bathroom, in a bathroom, , you know, I mean, and, uh, it's just, so what you, I mean, I spend six to 10 hours a week in public restroom.

[00:43:29] So I see the full spectrum of human behavior. This is going on in there. And, um, you will never be noticed. Uh, it was, you know, you, you would have to basically be lighting things on fire to get negative attention, uh, drawn to yourself in a public restroom. I mean, I've been in, you know, in the bathrooms at Washington Square Park where people are literally shooting up in the urinal next to me.

[00:43:50] Uh, you know, yeah, I don't judge. And that guy wasn't judging. That guy wasn't, was hardly senti, but, and was not

[00:43:57] Greg: really concerned whether no

[00:43:59] Dan Rocker: imp right? [00:44:00] No, he just mean whether I, whether it took me 15 seconds or a minute and 15 seconds to start my stream, he did not notice. And we will be right back. And now

[00:44:10] Greg: back to our show.

[00:44:12] So with the patients, when you start working with someone, is it, and I like, I understand that there's, there's like logical, there's steps that you take mm-hmm. and there's exercises that you can do to get you more comfortable being uncomfortable. And then over time, hopefully there's progress. And then, you know, at the extreme you're not home bound anymore.

[00:44:32] Cause I'm sure there are some people that just, they don't wanna leave home or they're just severely dehydrated all the time, which is really unhealthy. Yes. Do you get, like, as a therapist, like what do you get in, do they have therapists as well as you helping them with their Parsis? Or are you acting as their therapist?

[00:44:49] Cause of the Parsis?

[00:44:50] Dan Rocker: So it's a, it's uh, a mixed modality. There are some people where I. soup to nuts. I'm helping 'em out, you know, where I'm working with them around [00:45:00] Parsis. Then they start floating some trial balloons about things that are going on with their wife. And I'm like, well, you know, I'm also a couple's counselor.

[00:45:06] I can kind of give you some advice on that. And, you know, maybe it goes on to some career advice. May, I mean, there, there are people who have, uh, started with me and, uh, will see me for several years. And, but more often than not, I kind of market myself like a sandwich. It's just like, I don't, I'm, I'm not interested if you have a therapist, I'm not interested in taking a case away from that therapist.

[00:45:29] If you're happy with that therapist, continue to see that therapist. But if that therapist hasn't been particularly helpful at resolving an important issue for you, you know, I'm the guy who will get you out of the sand and then that's it. You don't tee off with your sandwich, you don't do anything but hit it out of the rough.

[00:45:45] Or wait, no, I'm mixing my metaphor. You hit it out of the trap. Um, it's, it's just, you can use me, uh, for eight to 12 sessions to just try to, you know, uh, learn the basics or we can have a, you know, I mean, I just, uh, I have [00:46:00] taken on new open-ended clients as recently as last week. Just people, you know, I, I don't book myself or I don't vaun myself solely as being a paresis therapist.

[00:46:09] It just happens to be the thing that I'm best known. Wow. You know, I mean, who would've

[00:46:14] Greg: thunk Danny Rocker from the neighborhood

[00:46:16] Dan Rocker: Millburn class of 87? If anyone named the did not know that I had a shy bladder. You now do . Any comments, any comments, letters, postcards, sent 'em to dan rocker.com or you can send it to me at one 60 West End Avenue.

[00:46:29] Suite one N. I'll be happy to entertain all covers. It's really, it's really

[00:46:32] Greg: amazing, like how something in life goes awry somewhere. Yeah. And manifests itself in the inability to relieve oneself, which is something that should be the most innate and

[00:46:44] Dan Rocker: easiest thing to do. Think about insomnia again, you know, I mean 30, you know, a solid third of the country is really not getting good sleep.

[00:46:52] What could be more important or easier than falling asleep? Yeah, . Yeah. I mean, that's another way of relieving yourself that, uh, uh, and [00:47:00] Adam mentions that in his chapter as well about, you know, at least with insomnia,

[00:47:03] Greg: do you find any common thread with the patients? Yes. Um,

[00:47:07] Dan Rocker: okay. So what's, what's that thread?

[00:47:08] So, um, . Let's see how to best phrase this. Um, so I, I, I create a metaphor for my clients and I say, okay, you come in and you're pointing at one star in the heavens. Right? You're, and you're saying you see that star, and that's part of your recess. Mm-hmm. , I don't like that. Get rid of that. And I'll say, okay, all right, I got it.

[00:47:28] I got my marching orders. But bef, before we get started, let's just step back and look around the star to see if that star is attached to anything else that we don't want to get rid of. And as it turns out, that star, yeah, I'm thinking of the North Star. What is that a part of the Big Dipper or something?

[00:47:44] I, I don't remember something. I'm not good with astronomy, so maybe I should learn a little more if I'm gonna use this metaphor. But the, uh, you know, it's attached to a character cluster. So my clients, I have never been stiffed by a party. Reese's client, okay? Mm-hmm. , they are always punctual, if not early.

[00:47:59] [00:48:00] Um, the, the careers that they tend to come. From our, uh, at, at first it seems surprising, traders, lawyers, uh, people in the arts, people who are like, uh, copyright editors, accountants, IT people, police and fire, a lot of fire. And so what do all these things have in common? Really important granular distinctions.

[00:48:25] Is that common in the right place? If it's not the whole contract's fucked up. Mm-hmm. , is that out? Is that fire out? Is it still smoldering? You know, being really careful and detail-oriented, um, and hyper-vigilant are, are things that tend to get us rewarded in all these other aspects of our lives, but they bite you in the balls in the bathroom.

[00:48:48] Interesting. You don't wanna spend a whole lot of time being hyper-vigilant and paying attention to everything that's going. Uh, going on around you in the past, male and female, or is this more female as well? Hmm, female as well. Does not, uh, females tend [00:49:00] to present less for treatment? Uh, I, I think, you know, I've probably seen literally a 10 to one ratio of guys to women.

[00:49:07] Well, it

[00:49:07] Greg: makes sense cuz you know, women are not, you know, peeing in an, in, in bathrooms that are public and open. I mean, there's a stall with a door you can close most of the time.

[00:49:16] Dan Rocker: So that's the case. But remember that one of the big triggers is auditory and it's not, ah, are, are, is someone hearing me urinate?

[00:49:25] It's more like, oh no, people are de are, are experiencing the accumulating silence and they can tell I'm not urinating and they're wondering if something's wrong with me. Got it. And so one of the ways in which it can be more difficult and women can avoid yet more than men, which is surprising counterintuitive, is that I would never ask you, Hey Greg, I gotta take a piss.

[00:49:47] You want to come with me to the bathroom? ? Oh, no, no, no. I mean, the guys don't tend to do that. No. Right. women do unless they're doing drugs. No. Right. Exactly. , it would be like, Hey, can I follow you to the bathroom? Right. No, but the, uh, you know, [00:50:00] for, for, you know, I've worked with female clients. You know, here's an example.

[00:50:04] An individual, uh, you know, takes a job, new job. She's the new person. Uh, and so someone else says to her, Hey, you know, the gals and all, we all go to get nachos and margaritas on Thursday night want to come with, and this, you know, the woman is concerned. She won't be able to urinate in the, in the bar. So she makes an excuse.

[00:50:22] Then the next week she makes a different excuse. After the fourth week, they stop asking her, and she kind of gets a reputation as being a stick in the mud. She's not a stick in the mud. She wants to go out with her colleagues, but she knows that if she does and one of the, you know, and she has to go to the lady's room, there's a really high chance, uh, you know, significant chance that one of 'em, she's gonna say, oh, come.

[00:50:44] you know, we can pow I'll hold your bag. Mm-hmm. , we'll powder each other's nose. I don't know, I don't have the language completely down cuz I'm with you. I'm fine. You know what I'm saying? But like, guys, don't do that. Uh, so, you know, women, women tend to develop less of what we call the secondary [00:51:00] Parsis. And just to give you a quick, uh, you know, primer on, you know, primary, secondary.

[00:51:03] The symptom itself is primary. Go to the bathroom, you're standing there with your junk hanging out, hoping that you're gonna urinate. It's not happening. , after two minutes, you wash off and. That is primary Parsis. It's what a fly on the wall would see what a video camera would capture while we're having our tic moments.

[00:51:20] Secondary Parsis is the negative thoughts, feelings, self-evaluation and shame that tend to accrue to having primary Parsis. So if you then think like I am a complete loser, uh, I have a funny video with, uh, Peter Griffin from the Family guy where he was having a, a lockup with Quagmire at Fenway, and he says, come on, you're hearing his internal monologue.

[00:51:41] Come on Peter. Your dad fought World War II and you can't even pee in a urinal. What the hell is wrong with you? That is secondary paresis. And so women tend to have less than that. Less of that, rather, men tend to think that this is a direct hit to our manhood, to our masculinity because of the dual function of the penis.

[00:51:59] We [00:52:00] use it for something else if we're lucky. And, uh, it's just, um, you know, I, I remember is there like any sort of

[00:52:07] Greg: common thread of stuff that happened to these people as children or? No, you know, it's like

[00:52:12] Dan Rocker: that, that it's, you know, it like asking, it's like asking the same question about insomnia. It's like, it's like, well, why do I have insomnia and why does someone else, I mean, I guess you could say that, that, you know, one of the things that Dan has in common with Adam, his client, is that they're both, you know, cerebral, high-strung people, so,

[00:52:28] Greg: so racing.

[00:52:30] Yes. Usually goes hand in hand with Paresis.

[00:52:33] Dan Rocker: Yes. Okay. Yes. Uh, racing Mind or as, uh, Marty c and Sally Winston, who are very well-known anxiety therapists, they refer to it as a sticky mind. Yeah. You know, something gets stuck there and then we just kind of ruminate. We don't What is the, what is, all

[00:52:46] Greg: right. So, I've recently discovered a guy named, uh, Dr.

[00:52:50] Russell Kennedy. Are you familiar with any of his

[00:52:52] Dan Rocker: Oh, no. You sent me, uh, uh, the image of the book that

[00:52:54] Greg: I haven't, he all, he's all about, he, he doesn't, he's suffered from anxiety for years. Uhhuh and [00:53:00] all of the therapies that he tried to work with never, never healed his anxiety because it was all mind based.

[00:53:07] Mm-hmm. . . I know, I don't know what the correct, what the medical term for it is, but he came up with a theory that having some sort of somatic experience, like finding where it is in your physical body, that the anxiety is manifesting itself for a lot of people. Like I know if I'm feeling anxious, it's in my stomach.

[00:53:25] Mm-hmm. , it's like the pit of my stomach. Some people, it's in their sternum, it's in their chest. Yep. Uh, some people get it in their traps and their shoulders.

[00:53:33] Dan Rocker: I apparently get it in my pelvic floor. You

[00:53:36] Greg: get it in your pelvic floor. Yeah. So when the anxiety builds up, it's,

[00:53:39] Dan Rocker: yeah, it's basically fr Well, the, the irony is, is and it's really not all that helpful is that when you get anxious, uh, one of the frequent physical concomitants of the anxiety is a desire to urinate.

[00:53:53] Like you just, uh, animals when they're, when a zebra realizes that a, it's been scented and a tiger [00:54:00] or cheetah, whatever, typically eats zebra is, is gonna chase it down. As it starts to run, it'll, it will empty its bowels as it's running. Mm. And it's because literally it's trying to, it's trying to make weight, it's trying to, like, everything that is access, you know, all the blood is being sent, is being pulled away from the vital organs and sent to the arm arms, not on a zebra, uh, to whatever you call it, on zebra legs.

[00:54:25] Uh, you know, and it start, you know, and you start running, uh, because the idea is get away, uh, from, you know, that which is pursuing and we will be right back.

[00:54:37] Greg: And now back to our show, is there a thought where instead of working on, you know, uh, going here into the head mm-hmm. , I have my hand on my temple right now.

[00:54:49] Mm-hmm. like going into the body and trying to find in the body where the trigger point is, like what's happening to get into something that happened in the past, whereas, you know, [00:55:00] Dr. Vander Cooke would tell you, again, the body's keeping score the whole time, but it's keeping score in a place that consciousness doesn't have access to.

[00:55:07] There is something that happened somewhere along the line that is manifesting itself in this bizarre behavior. Mm-hmm. , and it's, it could be insomnia also, or it could be whatever, like it's just when you're, when you're, I mean, do any of these other people have like physical health issues at all, or is it basically just completely psychosomatic?

[00:55:29] Dan Rocker: It's almost, I mean, exclusively psychosomatic. If there was a physical component I would refer out for until it was treated, and then we would reassess and say like, okay, now that you've had, you've taken a course of Flomax or your oxytrol, you've had a turp, you've had some kind of surgery, right? Like, um, does it work better?

[00:55:47] And if the answer is no, then okay, now we'll, we'll resume our work. And if the answer is yes, then it's like, okay, gay gaunt, it was a, it was a physiological problem, you know? Right. You don't need to talk to me. Um, but, uh, it's, [00:56:00] um, what I, I, I don't try to link the, I'm not trying to say, okay, like, where is it in your body?

[00:56:07] And then trying to draw a connection from that person's personal history to that part of their body. As much as it's okay, let's actually focus on what you're feeling in your body right now. , you're standing here or urinal, uh, your fingers are feeling a little cold. Your, your blood, you know? So you do actually

[00:56:23] Greg: go into the body and try to like recreate instead of Oh, no, no.

[00:56:26] We're

[00:56:27] Dan Rocker: literally in the bathroom when we're talking about it Right as it's happening.

[00:56:29] Greg: And, and trying to not be in your head thinking about, oh my God, is somebody looking at me? Versus, you know, what is it, what is it smell like in here? What is my body feeling like?

[00:56:38] Dan Rocker: Sure. I mean, there's that famous, what is that?

[00:56:40] What are five things I can see? What are four things I can hear? What are three things you don't want to taste much in the bathroom? I don't really , but it's, you know, there, there are these little, ah, so what you're talking about is, I talk about this a lot in, in therapy, the distinction between what it, what.

[00:56:59] Which is [00:57:00] anxious thinking. That's like worrying what if, what if Greg asked me a bunch of questions I don't know how to answer. What if I Yeah. He starts spiraling

[00:57:06] Greg: out. Exactly. It's just never-ending cycle of, you know,

[00:57:09] Dan Rocker: the, and then there's what is and what is, is what's actually happening in the moment.

[00:57:13] There is actually a microphone here. I am actually facing you. We are actually in New York City. These are things that are okay. Mm-hmm . And when we can move our clients from what if to what is, it's really good for them because what if is only limited by your creativity? And is Dave Carbonell, who's a very well-known Chicago anxiety therapist, says what if is be is anticipatory anxiety or what if thinking is basically saying, let's pretend something bad.

[00:57:46] Yeah,

[00:57:46] Greg: yeah, exactly.

[00:57:47] Dan Rocker: That's, that's exactly what it's, this is what's not happening. Let's think about what's bad. That's with anxiety there. Exactly. Yeah. And so, so like, let's get the hell away from what if, and just, you know, I'm focusing, I'm looking at you. You're right here. I'm right here. This [00:58:00] is what, what is I, I'm not thinking about, you know, what, if your next question is wildly inappropriate and I Why, why I'm so fascinated

[00:58:07] Greg: with this.

[00:58:07] It just, I mean, it's because I, I get, you know, I've been dealing with anxiety, which I, you know, for, for most of my life. And just at, you know, I'm 50 now, uhhuh coming to terms with, yeah. I'm anxious. I'm an anxious person. Um, my parents were anxious people. Mm-hmm. , their parents were anxious people. Mm-hmm. , my great-grandparents, were anxious people and dealing with all kinds of adversity and how they got here from Eastern Europe and mm-hmm.

[00:58:34] things that happened to my parents and, you know, weather that anxiety is inherited. And when you see it manifesting in something as as challenging as Parsis, it kind of really makes me want to think about like, how do you unpack, like, where is this coming from? Why is the body manifesting this in itself?

[00:58:53] And I understand it kind of, it's all, it's anxiety based. Right. This, this makes sense to me. And just getting into what is [00:59:00] versus what if brings you back into the present Yes. Which grounds you and brings you back into your body. So I, I mean, I said , I have all these practices that I've been picking up off of like different podcasts and people that I hear, like Mel Robbins, she has the high five habit.

[00:59:16] Okay. You high, you high five yourself in the mirror and just say, I got you. You know? And basically you're just, you're acknowledging yourself on a daily basis. And it starts to build this whole pattern up of just neuroplasticity, where you're just saying like, no matter how crazy you look in the morning or what's going on, you feel okay about yourself.

[00:59:34] Mm-hmm. , it's just, I got it. You know, I'll make it through the day. And then one of the things that Dr. Kennedy was talking about was reminding yourself that you're safe in the present. Like right now, you and I are in the studio, you know, Joe's got his arms crossed and his brow is furrowed. listening intently, but we're safe.

[00:59:54] Right. Not being chased by anything, like things are okay now. I'm not thinking like I

[00:59:57] Dan Rocker: trust Joe. He seems like a lovely guy. I

[00:59:59] Greg: trust Joe [01:00:00] too. Yeah, I definitely trust you. . We're not thinking about like a what if moment, right? Where life could go spiraling out. Like, am I gonna make it home on the subway?

[01:00:08] Right. Will I survive that? Yes. You know, I've taken the subway so many times, it's Yeah, I'll probably survive it. You know, there might be a homeless guy, shit himself in the car with me, but whatever I can deal with that, you know, I'll make it home safe.

[01:00:19] Dan Rocker: That would be, that would be discomfort, not danger.

[01:00:21] Yeah. . But I,

[01:00:22] Greg: but I'm comfortable being uncomfortable with that. Yeah.

[01:00:24] Dan Rocker: Yeah. I mean, I, I, you know, I, what's so funny, and again, so do you, so, so

[01:00:29] Greg: working with all these, these people and doing the work, do you find that you yourself mm-hmm. are less anxious now Yes. Than you were when you started? Totally. Because you're surrounded by this all day long.

[01:00:39] Dan Rocker: Yes, because it normalizes it and it gives me the privileged perch. It's like being a secular priest. You know, people come and they confess to us, and we get to, you know, in the same way that the priest would know what was going on in the town, I get a better sense of like, what's going on with guys with this problem by and large, or when I'm doing couples therapy with the various ways in which, [01:01:00] um, you know, couples can have less happy marriages or less happy relationships.

[01:01:05] Uh, and it just, it gives me a tremendous sense of how to best put this, um, I feel extremely grateful and I, I have, there's no rule that says, I know this sounds, this might sound obnoxious, but there's no rule that says that I, you know, that I can't learn from my clients and watch them make mistakes. , oh, that's the way that looks when it's tried out within a couple.

[01:01:32] I gotta make sure that I am not going to do that. Yeah, yeah. So it's like there's, there is, uh, I try to model what I think behavior is that will, uh, be more helpful. But there's nothing that says that I can't learn from seeing stuff that doesn't work and just be like, okay, glad I didn't have to learn that firsthand.

[01:01:50] where

[01:01:50] Greg: do, do, do you, where do you think, you know, it's kind of interesting cuz if I, if I look at the trajectory of how you wound up in this seat, you know, going from [01:02:00] working on, on trading desks to, you know, palliative care, to working with paresis, like, what's next? Like, where do you see yourself if you could do anything and, you know, five, 10 years from now, like what interests you right now?

[01:02:12] Dan Rocker: Um, I, I think that, I think I found my. I don't think there is an next, uh, I think we're getting up there. Mm-hmm. , uh, I have no plans on retiring. I'm gonna be 54 next, or in the beginning of May. I, uh, I have a supervisor who's 87 and I still talk to him every week. And if I could 87, if I could still be doing this at 87, I will be doing this at 87.

[01:02:38] Um, there are, uh, I, I get tremendous satisfaction outta my job now. Uh, uh, I, I, it ain't wall stream money, but it's, it's not, it's not terrible. And it is. I re every day I feel like I'm helping people and they tell me I'm helping them. Um, and it is in service. It is extremely dis goes back to being of service.

[01:02:58] Yeah. That, that's what the [01:03:00] advice I gave my kids, you know, uh, I mean, I don't know what they're gonna do in life, but I always just said, serve. Yeah. Like, you know, just like, I think Bob Dylan had it in a song, but it's just like, you gotta serve someone. Uh, you know, I don't, you can, I'm not telling you how to serve them, but you know, don't just go follow your passion, follow your bli.

[01:03:17] There's, there's nothing wrong with that. Well, I, I, I, I like Joseph Campbell, so I shouldn't say, I'm not gonna shit on following your bliss. I, I feel like I'm following my bli , but I am at the same time serving people while doing so. You know, it's not like I've just decided well it's, I'm gonna ride. It's the mo burs.

[01:03:33] It's the

[01:03:33] Greg: snake. Right, right. It's like feet eating its own tail. It's, it's the cycle. Yeah. Like you are doing something that's fulfilling and enjoying to you at, and that's being of

[01:03:41] Dan Rocker: service. I mean, and, and twice this week so far, I've had the opportunity to have an initial session with a college student or a high school student and just be able to look at that kid in the eye through Zoom, cuz they're outta state and just be.

[01:03:55] I'm going to give you what I wish to God I had when I was your age, [01:04:00] and I had no idea where to find it. Mm-hmm. . But I'm gonna give it to you. And as long as you just follow these instructions, like you will not have this problem anymore. Like it's gonna take work. But this is a solvable problem. And you know, they light up.

[01:04:15] They are.

[01:04:16] Greg: How could they not light up? I mean, it's gotta be, you feel so alienated and terrified. Yep. Like you're at school and you're a teenager, which is hard enough. I mean, I don't even wanna think about what it was like . Yeah. And then not being able to pee at school. Yep. Because you're terrified.

[01:04:32] Dan Rocker: Yep.

[01:04:32] Yep. I actually, you know, what's, what's interesting is that Parsis is a condition that is negative. Uh, I'm gonna use some psycho babble for a second here. It is like negative, negatively operantly reinforced through avoidance, which is a fancy way of saying that. Okay, if you're six and you're afraid of the dark and.

[01:04:55] dogs. Um, when you're 26, there's very low likelihood you're still gonna be afraid of the darkened [01:05:00] dogs. You'll just outgrow it. You don't have to go to a therapist to not be afraid of the dark anymore. Most kids outgrow that. But if you have sis, when you're 16 chances and you don't do anything about it, chance are, it's gonna be much, much worse when you're 26.

[01:05:12] Now why is that? It's because there's no such thing as anti behavior. Behavior is all affirmative. It's all positive. It all, you know, e even something that is a negative behavior, it's just something that has happened. Okay? So when you leave a bathroom having not urinated, you are not anti urinating. You are executing, uh, and reinforcing avoidance.

[01:05:35] Mm-hmm. . And so it's like you're building the avoidance bicep. It's getting stronger and stronger. It's doing dips every time you give up. increasing the likelihood and the speed with which you're gonna go to avoidance as a defense mechanism next time. And so you just get better and better at avoiding, which is getting worse and worse at living.

[01:05:56] Greg: Yeah. I guess I'm, I'm curious, do a lot of your patients, [01:06:00] uh, obviously working with you, they would say that they have an uptick in quality of life? Yes. Cuz they get better than that, but outside of the bathroom, In terms of how they go about their day-to-day. Are there other parallels with working with you that sort of manifest themselves in, you know, a more beneficial life?

[01:06:19] Yes,

[01:06:19] Dan Rocker: uh, absolutely. And that's, that's happened with me. I, I say working on any anxiety works on all the anxieties. Uh, so I, I, the metaphor I've come up with, and I don't know if it's my own metaphor, if I cad it from somewhere, so I apologize to someone who's smarter than me if they came up with this metaphor.

[01:06:34] It's like, think of it as a hydrocarbon field. Like, you know, it's, uh, uh, it's uh, the oil reserves that are underground, okay? Mm-hmm. , you put, uh, you put a derrick down here and you start pumping oil comes out. Uh, that's, say Parsis, you put an, uh, derrick here and start pumping. That's insomnia. But it's still the same oil that's coming up.

[01:06:53] It's the same substance. It's like there's one anxiety in the body. It just kind of travels to different parts of the body and manifests itself [01:07:00] in different ways. So, lemme give you an example. Um, I went to, The shops at Hudson Yards in early 2021. Uh, it was still deep covid. I went in there. Mm-hmm. . I was just really interested in scoping out the men's rooms and seeing if it was good for doing practice with my, uh, with my guys.

[01:07:16] So I'm in the shops at Hudson Yards.

[01:07:18] Greg: I love how you just troll around the city, like looking for spots. Oh, troll. You could practice with them. So like you, you bring your clients into these public places. Oh yeah, absolutely.

[01:07:27] Dan Rocker: So you're always scouting men's rooms. I mean, Adam joked about it in the, Adam joked about in the chapter, he said, I sounded like a real estate dealer.

[01:07:33] I'm like, ah, it's a classic six and six. Look at this. It's a one and one on the top of the hill with a brick finishes. It's lovely. You know, it's for you. I can see you in here. So, um, this journal has ice in

[01:07:43] Greg: it. You're gonna love it. You're gonna love it. Exactly. This is the one in McSorley's. It's three and a half, four feet tall.

[01:07:48] Oh, those, yeah, you could stand in it if you want.

[01:07:50] Dan Rocker: Right. I was gonna say, those are like phone booths, . But the, uh, um, so I'm in the shop at Hudson Yards and I'm, I'm pissing up and a storm and I'm having a great time and I think I, I think [01:08:00] Oh wow. Um, I really hope this place doesn't go out of business because, I mean, this was deep covid.

[01:08:04] Sure. This was February 21. Sure. Yeah. And there was no one in there. So, believe it or not, I'm thinking like, I wanna throw the mall operators some extra money to make sure they stay in business. So they have this thing called the Edge where you can take an elevator up, 1,150 feet, walk out on this, you know, triangular shaped, uh, you know, deck.

[01:08:20] And it's the gimmick is that the, there are no bars, you know, the wind, uh, it's very thick glass, so it just looks like you can see to the horizons. Right. You know? Right. It looks like you can walk right off and then there is, uh, a triangular portion in the center that's cut out and you can walk over and look straight down, 1,150 feet on the taxis below you.

[01:08:41] Wow. Right. And so the funny thing is, I don't think of myself as someone who's afraid of heights. I've been skydiving. I used to go cliff jumping, but I haven't done it in a long time and I wasn't expecting it. And when I walked across the thing, I got the anxious wash. Whew. It just popped up in me, like, uh, my heart started racing, so I stepped back off it.

[01:08:59] and I [01:09:00] immediately said to myself, okay, I'm just gonna create a desensitization hierarchy for this. Uh, I teach all my clients to do desensitization hierarchies for urinals. I'm going to create a desensitization hierarchy for this. Uh, let's see what makes me, what am I sure I can do now? Well, I am absolutely certain I can walk around the perimeter of it with no fear.

[01:09:18] Okay. So I do that. Then I noticed, I'm like, well, I noticed when I had my cell phone out and I was taking pictures for some reason. . Having the view mediated by the cell phone, by the camera made me less anxious. I was focusing on the camera and less the, the height. Mm-hmm. , so I walked across it, but I used my camera as like a lens that I was looking through.

[01:09:40] Then I walked across a corner than I walked across a longer corner, and then after that I was ready to walk across the middle again. But those are the kind of skills that you pick up and. You pick, you know, those are cognitive, behavioral, uh, CBT skills, cognitive behavioral therapy skills, graduate exposure skills, exposure response prevention skills.

[01:09:59] And [01:10:00] they can be adapted to any situations. So if you were to say, uh, I got public speaking anxiety, then I'd say, well, okay, let's see if we can have you arrange for you to talk to, you know, your th your three nieces and nephews on the topic, you know? Mm-hmm. . And then maybe you can talk to, you know, another, a group of friends, and then maybe you can, you know, get up in Washington Square Park and, and read a poem.

[01:10:20] Uh, I mean, I'm just spitballing here. But you would, you would, uh, as you know, and then maybe you would join

[01:10:25] Greg: Tony, you have to ascend into the thing that it is, that, that makes you anxious.

[01:10:30] Dan Rocker: Gradually that, you know, you've heard there's so many quotes that are, you know, that are like this, you know, life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

[01:10:37] Is it, is actually, it sounds kind of cheesy. It's true. It is true. You just gotta go to the

[01:10:40] Greg: end of your comfort zone because I have, I have some travel anxiety. Yep. And I have to travel for work and I wanna take vacations with my family. And it's like, it can be a Sunday night. My trip is three or four weeks away, and I will get cri the anxiety and I feel it in the pit of my stomach, even though a month from now.

[01:10:57] And it's just the, the [01:11:00] what if I'm late to the airport? Right. What if something goes wrong? But then on the day where I have to travel, I'm totally fine.

[01:11:05] Dan Rocker: That is because in the first example you're talking about what if exactly the second example you're talking about what is, and so I'll send you a video that you'll like.

[01:11:14] Marty Si and Sally Winston, uh, just were interviewed by Drew Enchilada talking about their an, uh, their recent anticipatory anxiety handbook that they have published. Um, anticipatory anxiety tends to be the last part of anxiety to go. So you can actually get. at, uh, traveling, or I could get better at public urinating, but still have that feeling.

[01:11:39] What if, what if this time? Mm-hmm. , what if I dropped my skills? And the key thing is, is to, when you have feelings like that, to just say to yourself, you know what? This is my anticipatory anxiety. My anticipatory anxiety has not proven to be a good prognosticator. It is a liar. It is a bluff. It is an exactly, it's such a fucking liar.

[01:11:57] It is not accurate. So I'm just gonna put this [01:12:00] aside for the time,

[01:12:00] Greg: except for during a covid, when we got, we were got stranded somewhere, but my anxiety worked out. I scrambled to whatever. Whatever. That's a different story. . Well

[01:12:10] Dan Rocker: actually, you know, back on nine 11 when, when stuff went down and I was in Trinity.

[01:12:15] Yeah. Um, as Adam writes about it in its book, like cuz I told him in my story, it's like I actually felt that second plane come up while I was taking a leak at Trinity. I felt it come up through my legs. Oh my God. Like the vibration. I was, that we were that close and I immediately, because I do have an active mind that does tend towards, you know, the negative, you know, being raised by a short seller and having catastrophic thinking what could go wrong.

[01:12:38] Sure. Yeah. And, you know, knowing that there was a holocaust not that long ago, uh, you know, there are things that can go wrong and I just walked right in. I said, I'm taking Grace right now. And I took her, I put her in the stroller, I went downstairs. There were people sitting there taking pictures. There were people who just didn't get out of the way.

[01:12:55] I mean, I'm sure they're fine, they didn't die, but I'm sure they had [01:13:00] horrific traumatic experiences getting out of there. After I, I was just like, Nope. Got the kid. I'm running home as fast as I can. And it, it, it's like there,

[01:13:10] Greg: did you notice an uptick in your paresis post nine 11 versus pre nine

[01:13:16] Dan Rocker: 11? You know, actually the red herring or the confound variable there would be, I went to treatment immediately thereafter.

[01:13:24] So if anything, it should have gotten better, not worse. Mm-hmm. . Um, but so I, I, I, I don't recall. Um, but here's what I can tell you. Another analogy I use with my clients, a toilet analogy. I'll say, Hey, you know, you've taken the top off a toilet and fixed the floater, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Think of the water level in the, in the tank as your general background, anxiety level.

[01:13:45] Think of the floater as your dominant go-to symptom. So for me, it's gonna either be insomnia or Parsis, you know? And as the general background anxiety, oh, maybe I lost money because I made a bad, well actually I don't trade anymore. But say I redeemed [01:14:00] badly and I did, you know, I made right, I made a financial misstep.

[01:14:02] Or you know, say, uh, someone are, you said something you're ashamed of. I said something I'm ashamed of. Someone in my family isn't well, or something like that. You know, the background anxiety is rising. That just means that, you know, it's not, um, that I am, I'm selectively deciding now's a good time to be more phi.

[01:14:19] It's just like that's gonna come up at that point, you know? And I'll just say to myself, and that's what I tell my clients. I'll say, eh, remember that Tom Petty song walls? Just tell yourself, some days are diamonds, some days are rocks. Today's just a rock. It's just today's not a Diamond day. Yep. You know, or, uh, you know, uh, was it bridge over troubled water?

[01:14:39] Hello? Darkness, my old friend. Sure. Uh, yeah. I'll, I'll just, as soon as it sh shows up and I feel the anxiety is, I'll just be like, hello, darkness my old friend. You don't really have to be here. It's okay. I'll tolerate

[01:14:50] Greg: you. Yeah. There is this whole element of surrender that goes

[01:14:54] Dan Rocker: into it. Exactly. You know, it's like, I am not gonna come get me.

[01:14:56] Yeah. Graham am from, from acceptance. Let's go from acceptance and [01:15:00]commitment therapy. Russ Harris has this fantastic metaphor. He calls it the struggle switch. Imagine that you've got a switch in front of you and it's just two directions and it's, it's set to bad and the other setting is worse. , you gonna, you going to, you wanna engage with a struggle switch or do you just say, okay, it's bad, could be worse.

[01:15:20] Yep. And I'm just knocking a truck with it, you know, it's, I'm just gonna leave it there. I don't, I don't have to. This is, you know, to talk about the dichotomy of control that the stalks have. This is not something where I have to jump in an effect a change. This is something I just have to tolerate. Dan, do you have,

[01:15:36] Greg: do you have a website?

[01:15:36] Like, if people want to, you know Oh, sure. Learn more

[01:15:38] Dan Rocker: about you and, yeah. Dan rocker.com. Dan rocker.com. Dan rocker.com. And, uh, I think if you're really only interested in the, uh, the Parsis side of the practice, you can skip right ahead to, it's a restroom.com . I like to tell people like, Hey, it's, it's a restroom rest.

[01:15:55] It's a comfort station for your comfort, a relief station for your relief. It's a restroom.com.[01:16:00] Uh, and also the International Parsis Association, um, which is, you know, the organization that I'm the president of. And I really credit, uh, with, uh, making a very significant difference in my life. I don't, I frankly, don't know what I would be doing if I, if I hadn't discovered what this was and that I could do something about it.

[01:16:17] Pretty amazing.

[01:16:18] Greg: What was the first live concert you ever went to?

[01:16:22] Dan Rocker: Rush Moving Pictures, tour first. That, that was the

[01:16:25] Greg: first, like first live music experience. Yeah.

[01:16:27] Dan Rocker: And who was it with? Ben Rothfeld, who was a classmate of mine. His mother was really cool. She, she unfortunately passed away about 20 years back, but she, um, she brought a Ben and a, a bunch of his friends in December of 82, uh, for his bar mitzvah to the movie Pictures tour at Brendan Burn Arena.

[01:16:47] That's a pretty great first show there. And there was, there it was and there was like, uh, some gal in front of me throwing up and yeah, I mean, it was like a full on film.

[01:16:55] Greg: I ask

[01:16:55] Dan Rocker: everybody what their first cut, first seventh was for a seventh grader. It was an eye-opener and oh my God, Tom [01:17:00] Sawyer was my favorite song for years.

[01:17:01] That is

[01:17:01] Greg: a great song. That's an awesome song. I, so I thought for years that my first live show was Kiss on the Animalized tour, Uhhuh probably in like 84 with John Kent, who lived across the street from. But thinking about it a little more, actually, the first live music I ever saw was, um, it was like Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.

[01:17:21] At Radio City with my grandma Rita. Wow. Took me into the city. She's like, we're gonna go see some music. And I had no idea what was going on. Did you think it was cool? That was super cool, just being, you know, like five or six years old in Radio City, seeing Sammy Davis Jr. You know?

[01:17:34] Dan Rocker: Yeah. I mean, uh, now I, I, he did a

[01:17:37] Greg: kza cover of the Wichita Lineman, by the way, which is one of the most fire covers of Glen Campbell's, Wichita Lineman I've ever heard.

[01:17:45] Dan Rocker: I will have to check that. It's pretty, pretty good. Yeah. And, and I do remember seeing Beatlemania when it was in the Winter Garden Theater. So in 19, the Winter Garden Theater. Yeah. In 1980 I saw Beatlemania and, but, uh, I mean, I digress. Now I'm just wandering all over the field. And

[01:17:59] Greg: you st and [01:18:00] you home base is New York City.

[01:18:02] Yes. But you travel around the country?

[01:18:03] Dan Rocker: I do. I lead workshops. Uh, I, last year I led them in, uh, Baltimore and, uh, Chicago and Los Angeles. And, uh, Yeah, I mean, I, I travel and, um, uh, wherever, uh, there are a large group of guys who want to get together and work on this, they can write to the ipa and, you know, chancellor, I'll throw down and show up.

[01:18:24] Greg: There you go. Throw

[01:18:25] Dan Rocker: it down and show on up. I mean, yeah, look, I, I mean, uh, at, at, at this point it's like leading a week weekend workshop. It's a really intense thing. It's like 16 hours of programming over a weekend. But like, I've got it pretty much wired down where I could, I wouldn't say I could do it in my sleep, but I would say that, uh, I've done it a lot.

[01:18:43] So for

[01:18:44] Greg: Parsis sufferers out there, or people who know, people that you know, will admit to having Parsis Yes. Dan rocker.com?

[01:18:52] Dan Rocker: Yes. Or, or the International Party Recess Association is a great place, uh, you know, to find, uh, there are a lot of resources. Or it's a restroom.com or it's a [01:19:00]restroom.com. Perfect.

[01:19:02] Greg: Wow. Dan, thank you so much for coming down. It was just absolute pleasure. Just times, usually just Eva evaporates when you're, Speaking to people and part recess

[01:19:10] Dan Rocker: especially, particularly when I am speaking with you my friend. Yes.

[01:19:13] Greg: So remember people, we are all just driving a meat covered skeleton on a rock hurling around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour.

[01:19:21] So drink good coffee, listen to good music, and be kind

[01:19:25] Dan Rocker: to the humans. Yes, be kind to everyone. For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle . Amen.[01:20:00]