Taking the Scenic Route to Connection: Steph and Craig Salazar on How to Heal Individually Together

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Virtual Couch. I'm your host, Tony Over Bay. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist and I would love it if you would go check out my new website, tony over bay.com. There you can sign up for the newsletter send me a question or a comment or a story idea or if you have relationship questions, especially. I'm looking for those of people who are navigating maybe a bit of a faith deconstruction.

I've got a lot of content that is coming about that, and I would love it if you'll follow me on Instagram at virtual couch or on TikTok at Virtual Couch. or on Facebook, Tony, overweight, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, or my YouTube channel. Let's get to today's episode. I'm, I am, I know I say this all the time. I wouldn't interview somebody that if I really didn't, I. Think it would be very good.

But today's episode I think is really special to me and I've been looking forward to this conversation for quite a while.

I'm thrilled to welcome Step and Craig to the show and if their names sound familiar at all. That's because I was a guest on their podcast not too long ago and, dare I say that interview was a bit transformative. We had such a, a positive vibe. What started out is just, uh, it's a professional exchange and I think it, it just so quickly evolved into something so much deeper. We had these incredible moments of connection.

It felt like there were those aha epiphanies that just clicked by the end of the conversation, I really, felt like I found some kindred spirits in, in this space of relationship work. And we covered. Emotional immaturity, differentiation, narcissistic traits and tendencies. , acceptance and commitment therapy. You showing up as the only version of yourself and even, , attachment issues that straight from the womb.

. I. I'll include the link to that in the show notes, the reason I think that I have felt this connection to them also is I've been recommending that interview , of me going on the Step and Craig show to my therapy clients ever since because I'll tell 'em, you have to listen to this conversation that I had with my friends, step and Craig. Yes, friends, because all of a sudden that's how naturally our connection formed.

And, , even after just one meeting, I started feeling like I had this parasocial relationship with Steph and Craig. We'd only talked one time, but, , I would see their content and I would think, oh, yeah, as if I know exactly what they're going through or talking about.

And the more I stepped back and thought about it, it's their authenticity, their vulnerability, the way that they work together. They process life together as a couple, and it really resonated with me so deeply that I couldn't wait to then have them on to continue the conversation. And this will not be the last time I have them on the show.

And if we're talking about social media, they put out good content.. So they have become fixtures in my feed, and it is because of their honest, , unfiltered take on relationships and growth and the messy and the beautiful, and the whole journey of healing together. , plus there's a video there where Craig is on a riding lawnmower, , shirt off just. Doing his thing, it looks so liberating. , here's a confession. I did also deliberately avoid researching their backstory before this interview.

And it's just this thing. I like it. Sometimes I'll go to see a movie, I'll know absolutely nothing about it, just for a pure, unfiltered experience. So I wanted to approach this conversation fresh, even though I've created all sorts of narratives in my head about their journey. And, , I can't wait for you to get to hear the real story unfold. I think really what makes them.

Unique in, in today's episode, compelling it is , you'll hear the raw vulnerability that they bring into their relationship journey. And it is a journey.

We dive into their backgrounds from how they met while working in law enforcement. Steph is a 9 1 1 dispatcher. Craig is a police officer to these crisis points that transform their entire relationship. , they share with remarkable honesty, and that is an understatement, how they navigated everything, career changes. Mental health struggles and the challenging work of healing both individually and as a couple.

And we are gonna talk today about some pretty pivotal moments that shifted their whole trajectory of their relationship.

Craig attending a men's retreat that Steph secretly feared might end the relationship, , Steph's breaking point in dispatch work and her, I would call it a courageous pivot to go to massage therapy. That's quite a jump sometimes I think about my 10 years in the computer industry to now go into. Marriage and family therapy, , it can be quite a jump. . But Craig and Steph both found their way through therapy.

, they changed up their spiritual practices and they even, , talk a bit about psychedelic assisted healing. What I really do love the most about this conversation is that Steph and Craig don't position themselves as relationship experts who have everything figured out.

, they candidly share how they have taken the scenic route through all of life's challenges, hitting every obstacle, every pothole along the way, but then finding healing through their own mistakes and their growth. And so now their mission is simply to share their journey authentically. It is definitely a them thing, and they are, they're okay with it. And so they're creating a mirror, I think, where other people might see themselves and then feel less alone in their own struggles.

Whether it's Your relationship is facing challenges, navigating a career transition, , a faith journey, doing your own healing, or if you're just interested in authentic human connection, I promise that this episode, delivers it. It will. Provide you with profound insight and it's wrapped in genuine heartfelt conversation. So without further delay, please join me in welcoming my friends, Steph and Craig to the virtual couch. I. Yeah. Um, okay.

Let me tell you why I'm so excited about this interview. , little do you guys know that we're very good friends now, even though I was just on your podcast one time. Cause I feel that way. So now when I'm referring, and so I send our video out and I don't like watching me on anything, but I really enjoyed that interview , it seemed like we had a lot of, ahas and epiphanies and connections. And so when I'm meeting with a new client now, you guys are in my, in my mind.

Hey, , you have to watch this one and you have to watch, one of these, you have to do this. It just went from, I think it's a good interview to my friends, Steph and Craig so, That's so awesome, dude. I love that. Yeah. Yes. And then, and so now I just see you guys pop up everywhere on Tik TOK and reels and YouTube. You're very much on my feed. And then my daughter, , Sydney, Hello, Sydney. all right. She loves your guys vibe as well.

And so when I was telling her that I was interviewing you guys, she was really excited. And so she wants us to say lots of clever things so make sure no pressure, but I want to hear like, We're bringing the clever. Yes. We'll do our best here. We got this. , and then, okay. And the last like confession is that the thing I've been waiting for for a long time to interview you guys as well as I don't know anything about your story.

And I've thought about doing a good cyber stock, Google search of you guys , but I just told myself. I love movies. And once in a blue moon, I'll go to one that I know nothing about. And I really enjoy that experience. So I've created narratives in my head of you guys and your story , and I don't think they're probably correct.

I don't know anything really about you guys other than it was a great interview and you guys are processing things really well as a couple and my couples therapist opinion. I can't wait to just, I'm going to sit five, babe. We got it. There you go and I'm going to share with you it wasn't that was yeah I don't even know where to start I just want to hear tell us tell me your story Where what got you to where you're at? And what are you doing? Yeah. It's a big, long story.

First off, we're really excited to be here, excited to connect with you again, Tony. We had such a good time last year, and it's been something that it's like, when do we get to talk? I've been really excited to talk to you again, and I know Steph has as well, too, but it's I'm grateful that we're finally here and that we get a chance to connect again and all that kind of stuff.

So I probably appreciate hey and you are you doing do you do card tricks? Is that what you have the cards in your hand? I do have card tricks. , cards are one of the things that helped me. I was a magician. He was like, okay, I was gonna say street musician, yeah. Okay. No, I've always loved magic growing up when I was a kid. I grew up during the era of David Copperfield when he was really big.

And I remember going and seeing him in Salt Lake city, like at Capitol theater because it was like at The height of david copperfield when he was the man, right? It's during that time period where he vanished the statue of liberty and I remember this. . yeah So magic has always been a like from afar, right?

Just something that I always loved watching always seen and close up magic Like when david blaine came on the scene watching his cardistry and what he was doing with cards So it was always something that I really enjoyed You And then I had a job once when I was in a casino, when I lived in Minnesota for a brief time, and I worked at a casino.

And during my off time, I would sit and stare at one of these slot machines that had these fake Mickey Mouse hands and the big white gloves that would deal the cards. And when nobody was playing the machine, that the hands would do things , because it would just be a screensaver essentially. And it had this one handed cut. And so I would sit and just study the one handed cut until I could you doing it. Yes. . And and then over the years it would come and go.

And when we quit smoking back in 2018 or 2019, we always get it wrong. Yeah. It was one of those, right? One of those. I think it was 2018. Yeah. But I picked it up then and it became the thing that I could do with my hands. And so I've got cards all over the house and in the band and everything like that. And. Then I went really deep down the rabbit hole with cardistry and learning different things and different card tricks. And now it's my ADHD fidget spinner as well.

That's what I was thinking about , can you do online card tricks or could you amaze me now or here we go. Here we go. Here's my, this one, you'll see the setup for it, but it's a snap change. So if we watch the card, right, this one's kind of hard to do on camera. Okay, that was good. That's a That's not too bad. That was pretty good. Yeah. So that was pretty good. Yeah. okay that's funny Steph, are you a good night. Do I, we appreciate it, Tony. Thanks for having us on the podcast.

We'll see you guys later. That's right. Hey, where's my wallet? Like, I don't know how you did that. Like that, And look in your back pocket. It's the ace of Oh, it's okay. And it has Steph's name on it. That's incredible. Okay. So magic . Back to you guys. , , this is fun.

grew up in the same county area, the same part of Utah. Stephanie grew up in this small town in the top of this mountain. And I grew up at a small town at the base of the mountain. Really? Okay. So I actually grew up in Utah as well. So where were you? Where was that at? grew up in Tooele County. So it was out West. Yeah. Yeah. Where did you grow I was an Alta Hawk in Sandy, Utah. . We played some baseball in Tooele one time around the mountain

. . . So we both grew up out there, but we didn't meet or know each other until We were in our, well, it's, we've been together 13 years now. And when we met, it was during a time period in our life where we had both transitioned into new careers. I had just become a police officer in Tula and it was about, I think I started in March and then Stephanie started in, I started in June, June. So it was a couple of months apart What was your career, Steph? , . I was a dispatcher.

A 9 1 1 dispatcher, yeah. Wow. Okay. And that's how we met. . Where she was the dispatcher and I was the cop and then we magically fell in love. Until his oldest time. Right. Exactly. Steph, do you have a lot of stories from that?

, I feel like I've worked with almost every profession doing therapy for 20 years, but a dispatcher and I, so it's very it's really interesting either you guys are so mentally stable and healthy that no one needs therapy, or I just, that's a profession I just haven't run into. That's yeah, that's not accurate. Okay. Yeah, there's a it's a lot of chaos. A lot of trauma that's coming through. A lot of secondhand trauma that's coming through. . How you deal with it comes out in different ways.

So a lot of people just shove a lot down. I would like to think that it's a really healthy environment, but unfortunately, the way that industry is handled and how these things would obviously affect you is handled. It's not a healthy environment. And so they could use a lot of support. Wow. How long did you do that career? Almost six years. Wow. That's a long time.

. Well, when we met, we were both at the phase of our, cause we both were married at the time to our previous partners. And so it was one of those things where we met and then life happens and transitions change, and we ended up getting divorced from those people and ended up getting together. And initially it was just kind of like, neither one of us were super, I don't think either of us were really excited about the whole concept of getting married again.

Yeah, I think we were both like I remember communicating That I would not get married and you weren't responding with oh shucks. You were like good. Yeah. Yeah, we're not doing that Yeah, so we just did the whole we shacked up together bought a house together. We completely blended our families We each have two kids So we just crammed everybody into this house thinking that it was going to be, it did. Yeah. We met one afternoon and then we moved in three weeks later. I think this is good.

Let's just go for it now. Yeah. There was a couple of years of dating and everything like that before we decided to actually buy a home together. And then when that happened, I think we bought our house in 2014 or something like that. Was it 14 or 13? Again, we don't remember. Times very well. Yeah. I was back right there, that interaction you just had is one of the, I'll throw the couple's therapist card. I've got these four pillars. I think maybe I'd gone over them with you guys.

The COVID connected conversation. There's that assuming good intentions and then you can't tell you the person they're wrong, even if you think they are. And the argument that couples have on dates and places that then cause the conversation to go out in the weeds. Yeah. It's just so silly. So I love the way you just did that. I dunno, 13, 14, they added a number to it. And then, right. we gave up on trying to keep track of all of it a long time ago. I'm terrible at it.

I can't remember every time. I can't remember what happened last month. I kind of let go of time this year because I realized I had this epiphany, Tony, where it was like, I would be like, what's today? Oh, shoot. I can't remember what today is. Is it Monday? Is it Tuesday? Is it January 10th? And then I would shame myself and I'd get all caught up in oh, I'm such a worthless person because I can't remember what day it is. And I'm not, , participating in society appropriately.

And then I had the awareness of wait a minute. I live such a life where I don't have to worry about what day it is or what time it is and how free that feels. So now I just embrace it and I'm like, yeah, I let go of time. I'm not worried about those things. But at some point we bought a house together. And to be fair, we've always struggled with dates. Yeah. Okay. It's been when we're like, Oh when was that? What year was that? How old? Yeah. It's definitely not a new thing for us.

It would be nice. Sometimes it's frustrating that we can't remember, but we also just let it go. Yeah. If it's important, we'll get it. Yeah. Yeah. If we're lucky, we'll remember it when it's important, but we bought the house. . , did you stay in the careers ? So stuff six years as a dispatcher and then what happened? . We still were. So what happened? Yeah. We were in that field together for quite a long time.

And. Truthfully, it was, we basically works together because she was dispatcher for that county, which meant she covered all the different agencies, right? It wasn't just 1 agency that she was covering. And so to a city was 1 of the agencies that she covered. So, oftentimes, if we were on the same shifts and things like that, if I was queuing up on the radio, talking to somebody, it was usually Stephanie in dispatch doing her job and vice versa. Right.

She would send me out to calls and different things like that as well. And then. We got married in 2015 and we were still both in that same career. And then it was literally, we got married in April of 2015, went on our honeymoon. So I took time off for the wedding and everything like that. And we went on our honeymoon. And then when I got back, I ended up getting fired from being a police officer through a random series of events where it culminated in.

being put on admin leave and all of those kind of things. And it's one of those things where I think a lot of people hear you get fired from being a cop, and then they assume all of these worst case scenarios of why, people get fired from being a police officer. And it wasn't really that it was a culmination of a couple of different things. And truthfully looking back over it, because it's been over 10 years now, Looking back at it.

It was one of those things where obviously it was something that I'm grateful that I had the experience It was a challenging thing to go through being fired and going through all of that But it was really for the best because my mental health was completely in the gutter. It was such a incredibly challenging job for me for a myriad of reasons. And so I think that led to it at the end of the day, where it was just compounding upon.

Trauma and things and experiences that I had gone through and sat through and witnessed and watched and participated in from the perspective of you know being a first responder and having to deal with a lot of death and a lot of the imagine that Craig. . And is there anything that could have prepared you for that? I worked with several clients in law enforcement and that is one of the things I think that comes up so often.

I think I did you know, we joke about it sometimes but I think I had a unique set of skills actually that Set me up to be a police officer And looking back, it is a lot of the trauma that I experienced as a child and being brought up in a very chaotic environment. So I was really tuned to be able to operate at a high level when that fight or flight kicked in is when I really turned on and was able to really, I was a really good police officer when it mattered.

And I was a really good police officer when it didn't matter as well, but that meant that oftentimes I was the first person on the scene for a lot of really. intense situations and a lot of really intense things. And over time that just became a lot to deal A lot to that was that chaos the familiar, did it just feel like at that point Yeah, it definitely did. You know, I definitely got in you as a police officer. It was that and it's not just me, right?

It's the thing where I look at it now from the lens of the nervous system, and you're always in an activated state as a police officer, even when you're off duty, very rarely would I ever have times of like complete, calm, relaxed, in this really level kind of place that I move through life now, because even when you're off duty, you're still doing, you're still in that mindset and that frame of of hypervigilant, right? I mean, I Very much so.

And I was like, I was all in, I was like the guy that had, off duty. I was carrying everything all the time. I was always prepared for all the worst case scenarios. Every time we went anywhere, it was always like prepping everybody that, Steph and the kids and everything like that, in some degree where it was like, okay, if this happens, then you just have to do what dad says and follow dad and all these kinds of different things. And, yeah. Steph, what was that like for you during that time?

Yeah. indoctrinated into that field and into that environment. So it was kind of, I guess, in a unhealthy way, it was reassuring that I knew that he had it. And it felt like for once I didn't have to be on, I didn't have to be looking out for all of the things. So in a really unhealthy codependent way, I was like, yes, I'll follow. Let's do that. You show us where to go. And it got to where. It became a difficult thing. It became a difficult thing, but why, why do you think it did?

Or what was that like? It switched to a part of where it was like, it was Craig knew what to do. And it was always like that way. And so I stopped believing what I knew what to do. And again, That wasn't his, it was like, we have the trauma that goes into that space. And so like my family up until that point, I had been in this environment my entire life.

So I knew how to be in this environment, but when I started growing and starting to shift out of things and being like, wait a minute, I have thoughts here. I have perspective. Then there became some conflict there as well as Craig going through his healing and trying to figure out, it's like, I don't want to make all these choices I don't want to do. So it was a unique shift. Of where we started realizing this doesn't actually work. This isn't healthy. And we can't keep going like this.

That didn't unfold in a beautiful, calm way. It unfolded in chaos. And we had to really, I like to say we take the long way around. We didn't, we, route. yeah, we take the scenic route. We take the long way. We don't want to miss anything. Yeah. So we made sure we hit every obstacle along the way. And until we found our way, cause neither of us had a, we didn't have a demonstration of what that looked like. We didn't have anyone in our life showing us the healthy way.

So we were, hitting every bump along the way till we found ourselves in a way that started openly communicating with each other and being able to Just show up as individuals and respect the other person in a way that they're choosing for them and not they're choosing for them and they're choosing for us. I'm saying that wrong. hear you though. I've chosen me and now I'm going to choose you. I'm whole. So now I can, I want to know you. , I can be more curious or is that fair? Yeah, that is.

It's like really the journey of getting to know ourselves along the journey as opposed to who we are with the other person. , . I love when something. Yeah. You think you know it and then it means something else, the more experience you get in life and the simple cliche of, if I do not love myself, I cannot fully love someone else. I've said that, but I feel it the last couple of years where I'm okay, I'm good, solid sense of self.

So now I can love somebody because they can have all their feelings and emotions. And I'm okay. My, my home base is okay. So, Hey, I want to know you. I want to know what's going on. But if I don't love myself, then it brings up all that anxiety or fear that what if they don't love me? I must not be lovable. And how can I get them to love me? And that is not having a true sense of self. So I love that.

I think when I see your guys content, that vulnerability of you guys just say , how you're feeling. Like craig's out there mowing the lawn with his shirt off, you guys are having emotional, experiences I think of bojangles. I saw one of those. I mean, I love it. The vulnerability is it's real I can feel it in all of those all of a sudden i'm wanting bojangles. We don't even have one around here. Yeah It's delicious.

Okay But that but I appreciate that vulnerability it shines through and again what I love about today's interview.

I don't even know What your angle is, I mean, I just love watching you guys are you doing retreats? Are you offering courses or, you know, it's are you just wanting to put things out there? I'm so curious. Yeah, it's It's been a lot of different things over the years for us. Where we had to figure it out. The catalyst of getting fired was something that really just mixed up everything in our life. And it sent me down a spiral of depression and,.

It was a real kind of oh shit moment in life that required a lot of time. Yeah, I don't even know. I don't even know how we got through a lot of those time periods because, I decided after that, that I didn't, I had other offers to go work at other police departments and it would have been really easy for me to stay working in the same field and doing the same thing just at a different department. And I didn't want to, cause I could see how badly it had affected me.

And it was one of those things that I just didn't want to go back into, but at the time I didn't have anything else in a sense, it wasn't like I was going to go work a nine to five job. Some warehouse or something like that. So I was doing in conjunction during that time period as well.

When I was a police officer, I had this spiritual awakening where it was learning about energy and learning about, energy healing and all the different modalities and all these kinds of different things. And it was something else that kind of like. Stephanie and I shared together in our relationship because we had these beautiful spiritual experiences through meditation through all sorts of different things.

I mean, the myriad of things that we experienced over that course of our life at the very beginning of our relationship was really impactful for building a true connection to each other that felt like it was deeper than just the surface of meeting, person to person. , So I went in that direction initially where I was like, okay, I'm going to, cause I was doing like readings at events and things like that on the weekends. And so I was like, I'm just going to do this now.

I'm just going to be the guy that does. Energy healing and readings and help people this way. And that didn't really work for a bunch of different reasons, mostly because I just don't think I was ready for that.

And I ended up working for this company called dream pod that manufacturers sensory deprivation tanks. , how was that? yeah, it's, it was crazy. That was another thing that just came out of left field. I was really into the concept of floating and I had tried it a couple of times at a place in salt Lake. And I was looking for deeper meditation. I was looking for a deeper way to connect to that source and do all those kinds of different things.

And then somebody opened up a float center, 20 minutes from our house. And through that connection, I ended up working for this company and DreamPod manufacturers pods. And they're based over in Asia, but they ship all over the world. And they're the biggest float tank manufacturer right now. So for the past, I don't know, I did that for like eight years where I was traveling and setting up those and training people and doing all the support for DreamPod.

And that gave us financial stability to some extent. But outside of that, we were also doing, we started the first podcast back in 2016 called Energy is Love. And I did that for a hundred plus episodes. And then Stephanie came on as co host. And then we did I think we ended at 382 or 385 episodes of that podcast. And along the way, Steph ended up quitting dispatch and.

You went to massage school, she chased her dreams in a sense, too, and left that field because of all the stress and everything associated with it. And that's a whole other big, like monumental shift and change in our life that I'm sure, do you want to, of course, baby speak to it. Like it was huge. The therapist notes that Craig won't let Stephanie talk. Right. Hold on. Anyways, let me tell you more about Stephanie's experience of what that was like, right?

Okay. I stayed working dispatch for a few years after that So it's about two years or so and just yeah after I got fired. Yeah, it became increasingly I feel like I changed on that because I had to, it was a bunch of different rules that were coming up and it was, as I was moving up in that area, it became increasingly, it was a really toxic environment and my nervous system was getting less and less. resilient in that space.

And it was just taking the life out of me and it was turning me into a really ugly person. I wasn't, I was very tired all the time. I was overstressed, overworked, and that's not really a fun, it's not a fun mom to have. It's not a fun wife to have. It just was too much. And I was building a lot of resentments for a lot of different things, including Craig. traveling all the time. And it was like, it felt like everything was just on me.

And at one point, I just I had this snap and I, it's a really beautiful story. It sounds very sad, but I was in the shower and I was literally on the floor in the shower, just sobbing and had nothing left and was, I was so empty, just so empty. And then this thing came over me and it's why it's so beautiful because it was just like this moment where I stood up and like physically stood up. It was like, I'm quitting this job.

I'm going to massage school, which is something that I had wanted to do for a very long time. I wanted another way that I could incorporate energy work instead of just saying, I'm, we will work with energy here. It was massage and bringing it all together. And I was always too afraid to, I had a lot of. issues about, I wasn't nervous about giving massages, but I heard a massage school that you also get massages. And so people are touching you. And I was like, no, no. okay.

. So that silly little thing held me back until this moment. And I stood up, I put in my two weeks notice. And before I even got accepted to massage school. It was like, I got out of the shower, found a school, applied, put in my two weeks notice when I went to work the next day, and then heard that I got accepted. And we started to figure out financial aid and how we were going to pay for it because I was taking out our income. We had the study, Craig had dreamed, had his dream pod, but yeah.

You feel like you had to, were you the provider for a while?

Well, one of the things I want to explore a lot in 2025, maybe you guys can help be my muse. My guide is the concepts around like that masculine, feminine energy, the polarity, the Shiva and Shakti, , so were you in a healthy masculine space? . No, no, Imbalanced then? They were really imbalanced. And, I didn't have the thing that I felt like I had the hardest time with was it wasn't that I was working.

It wasn't that it was that like is obviously Craig went through a big transformation when all of this happened and it felt like that it was the home life. That everything fell on that part. It felt like that the imbalance there was really crappy. And so I had to step up in a very unhealthy, masculine way, trying to fill these roles. And it just was, it was a mess. It was a real big mess. I didn't know what I was doing other than trying to control.

be uncontrollable, trying to put patches on, a dam that was like bursting everywhere. , it was really hard. I would love both of your thoughts, on this. The more , that I'm really trying to understand the role of my wife, of maybe the feminine and as I'm out there slaying the dragon, I'm, that's what I'm thinking about. And sometimes I recognize, I don't realize all that that puts on my wife.

Not that she isn't capable, , and even in little ways where I thought about the cliched story of when the kids are sick, , the mom's going to take care of them when the dad's sick, the mom's going to take care of the dad when mom's sick, dad's still got to go to work and the kids have to go to school, and that so many things are just left for, you know, the mom, the wife in that scenario that I think the husband doesn't even recognize.

So when there are things where I really feel like I'm expressing myself and I don't have time for that, or I'll get to it, that, What I'm really doing is offloading my discomfort onto her. And my wife shared with me at one point, and I thought it was so brilliant. I said, I will take care of like car registration, which with ADHD, of course, we always paid them, I paid them late, but then I thought I was doing a great thing by taking ownership of that. Hey, that's, that's a me thing.

But not realizing that the whole time that she's worried about a kid getting pulled over with the out of date registration and the stress that that would cause them. And I'm saying, I'll take care of it, but then I'm not taking care of it. And then I'm even telling her, Hey, it's okay. You can remind me. I won't be a jerk when I respond, but I didn't even realize I'm still putting that on her.

And so then it's, at some point she just feels like, well, I could just do this, but then I'm going to get angry and my immature state of saying, but I said I would do it. But not realizing just how many things are just put on the feminine. Would you feel that, Steph? I'm trying to really look back, Yeah. I don't know, like that relates in different ways. Our dynamics were , I don't know that we could have done it any differently , and it goes both ways.

There's things that I had to handle that I did not have room for, and I shouldn't have had on my plate and vice versa with Craig. He wasn't over here just dumping it. I also had my unhealthy ways that I was like, here you go. Now you can figure this out. It went both ways.

It, I feel like that's No, I appreciate you're not needing to just say, Oh yeah, that resonates Tony, I really I love that about what you're saying there, because even as you're saying that, it gives me an opportunity to take a look at that. And, and when I'm thinking about more of maybe when there's that really deeply entrenched, anxious and avoidant pattern, often that avoidant person doesn't want to ask for help. And so I think that they're just taking on burden after burden.

So I appreciate when you're saying, Oh, I was trying to offload those as well. Did the time period where all of this was going down. So it was literally after we got married in 2015 and then for the next. Probably four or five years of our life. It was a lot of chaos. All of our kids were, we had three daughters and then our son is the youngest, but they were all teenage girls. And this isn't about the chaos of children and everything like that.

But it's just context for all the different dynamics that we were trying to control and deal with and face as a team together at the same time. And, you know, It was just too much. So we were very much in a state of survival for that whole entire, probably first decade of our relationship and not having any awareness of it, right? Not really recognizing that that was what even was taking place. And there were a couple of different things that happened for us that really made a big difference.

One of them was I went on this men's retreat in 2017. That was like a week long backpacking trip into Yellowstone with this organization called every man. And that was a really big shifting moment for me.

The organization is all based around, not just masculinity and things like that, but, I, what really drew me to it was the connection to the emotional side of stuff and it was learning how to tap in and connect to your emotions as a man and doing it within the context and the framework and the safety of, that container of other men supporting you in that space. And I got back from that.

Week long trip, all sorts of fired up, just ready to go with emotional work and ready to talk about emotions and ready to do all these different things. And she told me after the fact, I don't, I didn't know this at the time, but it was the kind of thing where I was out in the yard, mowing the lawn. And I was listening to a podcast, again, podcasting, saved our life in so many different ways. But I was listening to the founder of that organization. His name's Dan Doty. And he was on Joe Rogan.

And he was talking about this. Thing that he had started every man and I was like, Oh my gosh, this would be amazing to go on. And I told Steph about it in passing, but at the time it was like, I mean, money for us has always been this struggle back and forth between, feast or famine. And we were very much in the famine phase of that relationship with money.

So the idea that I was going to be able to go on some week long backpacking trip to Yellowstone and the costs associated with it was a pipe dream. And an hour later, Stephanie comes back out and she's Hey, I made some phone calls and did what, we can do financially and you can go if you want to go. And I was like, holy cow. I couldn't believe it.

So I went on that, had an amazing experience, but come to find out, she thought that that was going to be basically a goodbye in a sense where I She was under the impression that I wasn't going to want to be with her after coming back from that. So it was this real leap of faith on her part. And truthfully, it was the thing in some capacity.

And in some ways, sometimes I think I, I like to, I make everything, So much grander than it is at times, but it was a really life saving experience for me because it was such a trajectory shift and it put me in the space of connecting to emotions, connecting to my body. I came back from that and started a men's group in Salt Lake that met every week for like 4 years up until COVID when it kind of all started to fall apart because of COVID and that became like a real.

It was just a space to practice connecting to my emotions, connecting to the ability to communicate those things. And I did it clumsily. I did it wrong. I did it, and all this confusion and chaos. And I would try to like, cram this type of communication and connection into our relationship. And we tell the, we had a funny podcast we did. I don't remember what episode it was, but it was a while back where we told this story.

We were coming home from California and , Because I was in this men's group space, like I was balls deep in it. Tony. I was like, every week I was at the group that in Salt Lake, I was traveling to all these different events and helping facilitate different things. And I had gone back to Yellowstone like twice to help support their expedition. So it was like, Very much in my space. And we're coming back from California and Stephanie's going through some emotional things.

And I'm like, this is it, baby. We're going to pull over on the side of the road and we're going to have an anger ceremony. And I'm going to help facilitate this whole experience where you're going to tap into that deep seated anger that's in you that needs to be released. And of course it did not just like getting back with that. The one I was getting back from my first woman's retreat, which was like a major thing for me.

And I was learning how to like really tap in and feel my Bringing all of this connection. The It was so much. Just the side of I 15, like in the middle of nowhere. And I'm like, baby, you just got to let it out. You could just yell. It's okay. And she's like, too scared. I didn't say Peg him with a rock or something . , I love that . . Craig, tell me what I can't.

Uh, say, tell me what Steph was thinking though, back when she thought that retreat, where you were going to that and it was over, or, I'll ask you Steph, but what, yeah, what, what where were you at where you thought that that was And then even now I want to make another joke, which I, that's what I do with my discomfort and say, Oh, was getting the money together for him to go to the retreat, the way to, to rid him.

But then when he came back, you're saying, Oh, I thought you were going to go. there's a deep layer. Tony, I'm excited now. Let's look at that, baby. Let's look at that. Maybe you're getting rid of the guy that you wanted to get rid of by sending him off to this retreat in then he comes You He's there. I'm, I've never had that question posed to me. And I honestly, I'm going to have to think about that. It's okay.

Because I feel like as soon as you said it, there was a part of me that was like, so there's a little thing in there that I hadn't really given a voice to on that part. I mean, I've, that part of me has had a voice throughout a relationship. Don't get me wrong. I wasn't like, I've never considered that, but had that having a role and it wasn't on the surface. It wasn't anywhere near the surface and what was carrying the weight, what was carrying the weight, not that it wasn't there.

Now I have to look at that, but what was carrying the weight is. It was really an unhealthy dynamic for us. And. It was really hard. It was really, really hard. what we have come through and how we are able to show up for other people. Isn't because we just happened to stumble across it and get it right. It's because we've done it all the way wrong. We've gone through all the steps, all the steps of getting it wrong.

And I could see where Craig was , I was really worried about him and I did think that it was going to change him to the point of where we weren't going to be together, but that didn't matter because I thought that where he was going, he wasn't going to be around I was that was our relationship was not what was coming. I was sending him on this so he could be okay and saying goodbye. Was worth it. I didn't want that to happen. You pose that question.

I'm like, there might be part of me that wanted that. There might be part of me that, there had to have been, I think like the subconscious part that was just so overwhelmed and so much fear surround, just being stuck in so much chaos and fear that just the relief maybe of to say to have me out of your life, but just to not have to carry all of those different things. I think that might be a component of it. I don't know. Switch the camera back to me. I'm talking for a moment. I love it.

No, it was I was really, I couldn't show him how scared I was that our relationship was gonna end because I wanted him to go. He didn't know that going off. He didn't know that I had any of those. Cause I was just like excited for him and letting him go have this experience. And when he came home and wanted to , start to really look at himself and all this emotional, and he had this light and wanted to work on a relationship. I was very, very happy. So I think what I would look at from that is.

I didn't want a relationship to be done, but I did really as much as he needed to go. I didn't need the relationship the way it was to be done. That relationship had to end. I couldn't do that relationship anymore. Even if it was to let him go. even if it was to let him go, . . So then that was when he comes back and he's this new man, let me ask you the I call it shelf life.

Where when somebody goes and does something, a kid goes to a summer camp or as adults, we read a book or something and all of a sudden that's going to, that changes my life and often the shelf life is a week or two. And then we default back to our home base. No, nothing wrong with that part of the human experience. When he came back, did it feel like this is a completely different shift or had you seen these shelf lives before from other things that maybe really invigorated him?

definitely seen the shelf life and other things. But when he came back, it was a completely different experience. So both of those are true in that we have reinvented and recreated in this new thing that comes in several times. And it does like things are going to be this way now, this way, this way there's that shelf life that does happen, but he was different. When he came back, it wasn't all better.

Things didn't magically just start working from that point, but there was something that was very different Oh, I appreciate that.

And I think that, back to the, even the masculine feminine, the polarity concept in general is, I think one does have to know what the shelf life looks like to then know what something else feels like from, and maybe it is an energetic standpoint or, and I wonder at that point, is that where Craig, where you starting to feel like, okay, there's a change in my core Yeah.

I definitely felt different, it took a long time to totally understand it and for the change to fully manifest in myself and be, behaviors to change for actions, to change for accountability, to really start to show up. And it's still something that, I feel like today I'm the most accountable that I've ever been. I definitely, It set me on a path that was a hundred percent a shift. And it wasn't even just like the shelf life thing.

I chuckle about that, but, cause there's a lot of those, but yeah, yeah. this was something that I was bound and determined to go towards because it, It was like finally giving me space to feel things. It was giving me an opportunity to express things. It was giving me that space to really connect to the things inside that needed to come out. I needed to have, Capacity to express and connect and do all of those kinds of different things.

And it took us to all these beautiful places, Steph went on her woman's retreat in. 2018, 2019, that put her down this path and trajectory towards different things along the way, we always had the podcast that we were doing together. And that was a beautiful thing. We were always like tinkering around how to work with each other in the context of what that would look like. And then we had another life changing experience after COVID because that took me off the road.

I was traveling all the time for that job that I had where it was like out several times a month and was all over the country and international and things like that. So when COVID happened, all of that shifted and I no longer was on the road, which meant I was home all the time. And that was really, really. It was something that I was burning myself completely out. Our relationship again was getting really, really stretched thin simply because I was gone so much.

And then we found some therapists that really showed up for us during that time period and during lockdown. And we went through this massive. experience over the course of about two years through therapy, both individually and together. And it was in conjunction, we did MDMA assisted therapy with these guys, and they came out to the house actually. And we took turns having our sessions and it's a whole thing that we both went through that just really cracked everything open even deeper.

So it was like we did all the prep work to get to this spot in life because we were connected emotionally with each other. I look at it much different now, but I think what the really key thing was, , before we could truthfully start healing together, We had to feel safe with each other.

And in order for us to feel safe with each other, it's like we had to do our own amount of healing individually and understanding and processing and getting to the, shadow parts of all these different things from childhood and all this other kind of stuff. And once we did that, it gave us the foundation to really feel safe with each other. To it's not even necessarily work on our relationship.

A lot of this stuff that we thought was going to be a big deal in our relationship and was going to require a lot of healing in our relationship. Some of it's definitely did and it's some stuff we're still processing and healing through, but the vast majority of it was our own stuff. It was all of this stuff from our pasts before we ever met. And that was the stuff that once we felt safe enough in our relationship to support each other as each one of us.

Got into that stuff and we're able to really process and start healing all of that inner child stuff. And that was the real big, significant shift for us, both in our relationship, our individual as people, as our, just everything, it changed everything. It was a big shift going from. You need to fix this so we can be okay. Yeah, that was my rhetoric for a really long time. We did that for quite a while until we dove into that individual work that was like, Oh, I need to fix this.

I need to look at here. I have some things I have to look at here that have nothing to do with you. And so it was a really long individual journey of getting real familiar and accountable for our own individual shit. Steph, was that a relief to you? Were you when Craig would say, you need to fix this, or were you the, sometimes I deemed the pathologically kind where, okay, I will go figure out how to fix it, even though. It was a him thing? Was that ever the case? Oh, it was both. It was both.

He definitely projected a bunch onto me. And what I did with a lot of that was like, I'm garbage. I do need to fix this.. And I then flew it back at Craig and was like, you know, I could fix this if you would fix this. And so it was we found really, our shadows are really clever. They're really good. They're We joke now they're like Bonnie and Clyde or Joker and Harley Quinn. Like they just, they blend together so beautifully and burn everything to the ground. Yeah, mine was like, Oh no. Yeah.

for almost 50 minutes. So maybe we do say, stay tuned. We're, we'll do a part two. I have so many more questions now and you guys are everything that I was hoping this would be, but even now I want to do an episode and we talk about psychedelic assisted therapy and let's talk about, there's so many things I mean, it was like, we didn't even just do MDMA. We did we also did a bunch of psilocybin and microdosing psilocybin for about a year.

And. The conjunction of all of that work, because it wasn't just, we definitely, I definitely did way more psychedelic experimentation than Stephanie did. We also did it in a very conscious way. And when we micro and setting, right? Yeah. yeah. And that changed so many different things too. We're big proponents of it under the context of, you know, And that's what I've been following that movement.

And so I've had experiences with ketamine and even the now microdosing ketamine and just the benefits of hitting that default mode network of the brain when you're being intentional is just, it's phenomenal. So I think there's so much there that we could, I would love to talk to you about as well. So then maybe I know maybe in a minute or so. Again, I still don't even know. Are you guys just putting content out there to change the world or do you offer things? Or what is that like?

it's evolved what it looks like today. And we say today, cause we're in this state where who knows what's going to happen tomorrow. But currently what it is, is we had that podcast that we did for a long time, energy is love. And at the end of 2023, I got this big nudge to change that and then it was like, Well, we're just going to rebrand the show and do a new set.

And eventually it got to the point where it's well, we're going to end that show and start this new show, which meant we built this and had to do all of this stuff and start this stuff and Craig show. And at the time we were also doing couples coaching and working with couples and doing all sorts of different, we had plans for retreats and all sorts of different programs and things like that. And really what happened was we just got.

Pushed and nudged in the direction of being content creators and being podcasters. And so now we don't work one on one with people anymore. We don't do any sort of like coaching or anything like that. We literally just, we think, podcasts have the capacity to change the world. I think they have the capacity to really help people in a magnificent way. So our goal now is just to share our journey with people through social media.

\ in hopes of helping people, it's the tagline of we're all healing together, not just Steph and I, but like all of us together are on this massive healing journey, trying to figure shit out. And we're just sharing our journeys and trying to hold up the biggest mirror that we possibly can.

So that people can see themselves reflected off of us through all the different things that we've gone through, because that's what we learned is it's like everything that we experienced or when we talk to people or when we'd have people on the podcast or when we were coaching people, I mean, we're all going through the same stuff. We're all navigating the same experiences.

And so we just try to really share those as much as we can and as vulnerably as we can so that people can see themselves in it and not feel so alone. Well, and I think you nailed it. That's the vibe I feel when I see your content. It just feels real I resonate with it Whether it's with myself or a client, I've sent clips, I send the interview that we did together. Uh, mission accomplished there.

I would love to have you maybe be regular, come on more often, or we jump on and do a TikTok live or something like that and Yeah. We would would you be up for that? Okay. Absolutely. , that's funny because I think I was texting Craig and talking about where you guys live and I have relatives somewhat close, but I was saying we'll come out there and do a retreat and because, I mean, on the map, there was a Piggly Wiggly. We could get all the Right.

Yeah. It's just a really We love the Piggly Wiggly. Yeah. Yeah. Context. I'm looking at where they live and there's the town and a little dot that says Piggly Wiggly. I mean, is that it made it look like. That's all you guys have, but is there kind of all that's in the small town that we, It is. Okay. It's the hub of the town that we live in for sure. It's directions come from like, okay, so if you're at the pig. Yeah. Even the pig. I love it. Stephen Craig, thank you so much for coming on.

I can't wait to have you back on. Let's do this again. Yes, we would love to Tony. Thank you so much. Perfect. Perfect. Sounds great. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's great.