SoulStirred: Stories of Growth And The Human Experience

Emily Garcia (00:03)
Welcome lovely listeners to SoulStirred Stories of Growth and the Human Experience. I'm Emily Garcia. And I'm Kasey Clark. We will be your guides on this journey. We are so glad you are here. Each week, we'll come together, sometimes with other incredible thinkers, creators, and adventurers, to generously share stories of self-discovery, recovery, triumph, and what it means to live a life on purpose. No matter where you are in your own journey,

connection is here for you at SoulStirred Settle in, take a deep breath in, and let's inspire each other. Welcome to SoulStirred

Emily (00:49)
Hello, SoulStirred listeners, welcome back. Today we are here with Chris Perez. Chris is a CRNA, I'll let him explain what that means. And he is the CEO of Access Integrated Mental Health, which is in Colorado. We're so excited to have him here today. We wanted to bring him onto the show because he really has such an amazing story about mental health and the systems that we work in. So...

We're hoping that you can pull out some value because he has a lot to share. Chris, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

Chris Perez (01:28)
Oh, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be on here with you and I'm looking forward to our podcast.

Emily (01:35)
Well, can you start by telling us about how you got from your old life to the life that you're in now? So, I'm going to start by telling you about how you got from your old life to the life

Chris Perez (01:43)
Yeah, I'd be happy to. So I've had kind of an interesting trajectory over the years, and this is really my fourth or fifth machination of myself. And funny enough, Emily and I crossed paths many years ago when I was first starting in healthcare. And so I left undergraduate school and started in pharmaceutical chemistry. I worked as a QA, QC chemist in Longmont, Colorado.

And I realized pretty quickly that wasn't very fulfilling and it's just not what I wanted to do with my life. So I started back in school for a bachelor's in nursing. And I worked on that for about three years while I was working as a chemist. Knowing that I wanted to get into anesthesia, I'd had the great fortune of meeting a doctor while I was working out at Midtown Gym in downtown Denver. And he told me what CRNAs were and said, you know, that's a really interesting career path. You might wanna look at that.

And so I did and learned what the requirements were and set out to do that. So after I got my BSN, I started in the ICU at Denver Health and I worked with a really interesting patient population. I'm not sure who's familiar with Denver Health, but it's our community catchment hospital here in Colorado. So a lot of substance abuse, a lot of mental health issues, a lot of poverty, a lot of things of that nature.

And it was really my first introduction into some of the dysfunctions of our healthcare system. I would see these patients that we'd get in that were on maintenance psychiatric medications, and we could never get them in-house. We would struggle to get them, sometimes even things like methadone and other items like that. And so these patients would suffer.

because we couldn't get their regular medications in and they'd have to restart after we discharge them after an ICU admission. And it was just brutal to watch that. And as I was saying before, at the same time, we were using a ton of opioids to sedate them and keep them comfortable while we were doing what we needed to do. But it was really my first exposure to hyperalgesia or like excessive pain response after taking opioids.

And at the time I thought it was drug seeking. I didn't really know the difference. It wasn't for five or six more years that the pieces came together for me and I recognized that. At the time we thought it was breakthrough pain. So while I was doing that, you know, in the ICU, I knew that I wanted to go to CRNA school or certified registered nurse anesthetist or anesthesiologist. I knew that's what I wanted to do. So you had to have ICU experience to go to graduate school for that. And so I worked three years in the ICU.

and applied and got into CRNA school. And it was really an interesting time in my life or really challenging. As I was applying, my marriage kind of fell apart knowing that I was gonna go to grad school. For my wife, it was just too much to bear after I'd been in school almost most of our marriage, full time while working. And then the fact, staring down the barrel of me going to three more years of school full time.

was probably just a bit much for her. And I always say that it wasn't until that occurred that I realized the emotional stress that I was experiencing as an ICU nurse and inability to communicate it. And so I was burying all these feelings and just was not able to interact with my family when I'd come home. And so I realized all this as this was going on. So I'm applying to CRNA school, I interview, I did fairly well, I got waitlisted.

Chris Perez (05:21)
So I was waiting to make a decision and I decided to call the graduate program and say, hey, I've been waitlisted. What's going on? And it's so funny as life tends to work out, I took this action step and they said, oh, Chris Perez. Oh, hey, what do you know? A spot just opened at Denver. Would you like to go? And I said, yeah, I'll go. And this was about March or April and I was to start school in August. So.

I committed to the program. Meanwhile, I'm going through my divorce and the day before my very first anatomy and physiology test, I had to fly home, finalize my divorce, the courtroom ran over because a person before me wasn't prepared, missed my flight home, had to fly back the next day, go straight from the airport into the test, and of course did just horrible.

And so I ended up on academic probation and I would like to say that's the most stressed I've ever been in my life, but being an entrepreneur has been a very new experience. So as you well know, so I got into school and I started and made it through the didactic portion or the book training and started in clinical and I loved it. I mean, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the work. I loved the people I worked with.

Emily (06:25)
I'm

Kasey (06:27)
Mm -hmm.

Chris Perez (06:42)
And I was fortunate enough to be back at Denver Health for my clinicals. And again, that same population. So delivering anesthesia for a very, very challenging population, people that have neglected their health their entire life have done just so much damage to their bodies. And again, what we would do is just a matter of practice was mass amounts of opioids because that's what worked well.

these anesthetics would look beautiful and we'd think, oh, we did such a great job. Well, then I started thinking about that hyperalgesia and wondering like, was I doing more harm than good? And I started learning about opioid sparing techniques and would those really work? And that's how I've really discovered ketamine and started adding it to my practice and having it be a part of my anesthetic practice. And so graduated, got a job at Children's Hospital here in Colorado and went to work there.

And at the time I was so glad to have the job there because there were no jobs in Colorado. I thought I was going to have to live in Kentucky and try and come back and see my kids. You know, I thought I'd work like 14 on and 14 here. And so it was just ecstatic and it was a great team there. And, and, uh, I really enjoyed working there. And I started focusing more on using ketamine as much as I possibly could and trying to figure out what worked and what didn't. And it was exciting to see because you did get.

some much better pain relief and you were able to avoid some of the problems that you would see with the opioids.

Chris Perez (08:11)
So I was using more ketamine in my practice and I was really growing to love the results because we were getting the pain relief and not some of the negative side effects that you see with opioids, which especially in a pediatric population felt really good to me. And at the same time, things were going on in my own personal life. My stepkids were really struggling with their own mental health and we had a massive challenge trying to find

mental health care for my stepdaughter, who was I think at the time 13 or 14, something like that. And as you well know, the challenges that she was facing were causing massive disruption to the household. We were walking on eggshells. We were just, everybody was under stress. Everybody was really not their best selves.

And luckily we found a pediatric psychologist and a pediatric therapist that just did wonders with her. And our lives started to kind of smooth out. What we found a few years later though, was that she had severe ADHD. And so we were able to get her on medications and really help set her up for success. So.

Here I was, we'd been experiencing these issues finding care and my wife and I said, this is a broken system. Why is this so hard to find care for our child? We've got great insurance, we've got resources. I can't believe this is so difficult. And at the same time, I was in a leadership role in our state association of nurse anesthetists or nurse anesthesiologists. And I had the good fortune to go to a conference in Chicago.

and met a person that had a model that I was so excited about. It was ketamine infusions, psychiatric medication management and therapy, and TMS all in one. And I told my wife, the minute I heard that, I called my wife and we talked for eight hours on the phone that night and I said, we gotta bring this to Colorado, this is genius. This is what the world needs. And so we started moving forward with it. And at the time it was a franchise model and-

We signed the paperwork, I'll never forget, September 19th of 2019. And I started this new venture. So I left Children's Hospital in February of 2020, opened the franchise. Our doors opened in October of, um, sorry, I was signed the paperwork in 2019. Doors opened October of 2020. And, uh, the next phase of my life began.

And initially, we were so excited to be a part of this franchise. We were excited for the support. But things were kind of funny. The other franchisees were peeling off. And at the time, I was just curious. And everything I was hearing was that they were just not a good fit. They were the mistake. It was all on them. But we started to see the holes. And as you have heard before, Emily, at that time, we had

or three providers and we were just flailing. I mean, it was tough. We were not gelling as a team.

Chris Perez (11:10)
were seeing a whopping three or four patients a day between three providers. It was bad. And I realized I needed help. And I had the great, great fortune. I'm so grateful for this. Found a book, an audio book on Facebook from a business coach.

And I remember I was running and it was drizzling a little bit. And a few things that the author, Alison Maslon said, just hit home. And I said, oh my gosh, what is this? I need this. And a part of her funnel then was to invite you to a one-on-one or a group meeting. There was four of us. And I had forgotten about it. And that other day that it occurred, I was on a long run and it popped up on my calendar invite and I said, you know what, I'm going to go.

So I literally sat in the bathtub taking this meeting and listening to three other business owners that were struggling and this coach. I said, that's what I need. And at the time, it was so incredibly expensive to me that I didn't know, I mean, I couldn't afford it. I paid with two or three different credit cards to book the first appointment, but I knew that I needed help and that I just wasn't gonna make it without some real help. And you know,

Having access to another person that had been there and a coach were some of the best things I've ever done for myself. And that's what was cool about it, was that I learned that I had to do it for me. Not for anybody else, but for me. And it really helped me understand how to rebuild the business. So we started working towards that. I came back pretty quickly and had a meeting with the team about what our future was going to look like and what we were going to do for culture and how we were going to help.

Kasey (12:37)
Yeah.

Chris Perez (12:53)
try and change the world, right? Cause that was our mission at the end of the day was to make healthcare better, to make mental healthcare better. And I'll never forget, and I love this story, I deliver this presentation, this group meeting, and within two hours I got my first resignation. And I was just kind of shaken, but at the same time I realized that, a lot of the team wasn't a good fit. It wasn't gonna get us to where we needed to go. And so we started just again,

Kasey (13:18)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Perez (13:20)
I put my head down and got back to work and we just started moving forward. And by May of that next year, so within seven or eight months, totally rebuilt the team. Started all over again from scratch. We had rebranded in January of that year as Access Integrated Mental Health, and we just started rebuilding. And since then we've grown almost 500% and we're taking care of so many people now in the Denver area. We're just excited and we're continuing to try and build on that.

and really improve our processes. But all this time, some of the lessons that I learned, and we had talked about this before, the first thing I did was that I went to therapy myself. And I realized the benefit. And I wrote a blog called Therapies for Everyone, but Not for Me. And I realized why I was making these decisions and choices in life that weren't helpful for me. Why I was.

stuck in some of these thought patterns. And it was so beneficial, it was just, it was amazing. You know, one of the disagreements I had early with the team was that therapy is the end solution. And I didn't believe it. And it took me a while to believe it because I thought, well, isn't ketamine the solution? Isn't that why we offer this? And so...

Kasey (14:38)
Hmm.

Chris Perez (14:41)
As I was treating those early patients and then I went to my own therapy, I did start to gel that idea that, yeah, it's therapy that we need. That's what actually builds the framework for us to succeed. And while I was rebuilding, I realized that no staff that I had was gonna be confident in the procedures and treatments that we offered, unless I grew to be an expert in them, I grew familiar with them. So I dove into it head first.

what I did was I set to creating knowledge notebooks for our team. So I have these big three inch binders for each treatment that goes through the history, all the journal articles that lead up to how we got to this point, some textbooks, our policies and procedures, our best practices. And I really got comfortable with them. And in that, and again, one of the most miserable times of my life, but from it,

this knowledge and that I'm again just so grateful for that I now have the understanding behind them. And what I kept seeing was these tools are only a means to generate neuroplasticity and it really forced me to go back and look at my understanding of mood disorders and why were they occurring? Why were pills only marginally effective? Why wasn't therapy effective all the time?

Why were pills and therapy better in combination? Why do pills stop working? And what I found was a lot of talks and a lot of research papers on the default mode network model of depression. And while it's a little oversimplified, I love that it basically states that chronic stress, depression, anxiety, PTSD, you know.

borderline bipolar to like these non-biologic mood disorders really are in response or brains response to what it perceives as threat. So you know as many people say our brains are designed to keep us alive not to make us thrive and so our brain rewires in response to these stressors and often gets caught in these negative thought loops.

Kasey (16:40)
Mm.

Chris Perez (16:51)
And it really helps explain why we see such common hopelessness, feelings of guilt, rumination on negative thought patterns and negative thoughts. And at the same time, you see people struggle with executive function. So you see that higher level brain underperforming and being underactive, while the lower level brain, for lack of a better term, the default mode, where we're supposed to be while daydreaming, reflecting, is hyperactive.

and those two are out of balance, it causes this imbalance between the neural networks, the ACC, the ACG, all these components are just out of balance. And I liken it to when we first interact with patients, and you probably know this from your clients, so many of them smell smoke and they think fire. And not only do they think fire, but they think, oh my God, I got to run like hell. And as they start to heal, what you see is that they say, oh, fire.

Is that barbecue? Because I like barbecue. Is that fireworks? Because I like fireworks. Or is that an actual fire and I need to be concerned? You see them stop to process instead of just react. And it was so cool to realize that what we had at our clinic was a pathway to help people generate an opportunity to improve. And then what you needed was great therapy to help build the new pathways.

Kasey (17:51)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Perez (18:16)
help build the new positive adaptations. What I started to realize was that I started listening to a lot of neuroscience talks. And what I loved was that neuroscience and functional MRI were at this crossroads where they were saying, hey, this is fascinating. Why is this occurring? And they started talking about non-pharmacologic ways to generate neuroplasticity. And what we know is that novel experience generates neuroplasticity.

Um, new sense smells, you know, new foods, new experiences, as it turns out, high altitude hiking is incredibly beneficial for, for neuroplasticity.

you know, it really got me to thinking, well, what are we not offering our patients that would help them capitalize on this neuroplasticity? So we started introducing fresh fruit and bergamot rollers and started giving people tickets to the Botanic Gardens. Like go experience something different and report back, you know, what you saw, what you smelled, you know, what you felt.

And it was amazing to see people's lives and thought patterns kind of change around that. And again, it really helped me gain confidence in what we were doing as a practice and how we're relating to the community. And it's really helped define some of our newer programs. And so at the exact same time, right, then my stepdaughter was also growing and changing and we decided to send her

abroad for a year on a foreign exchange program to Spain. And the change that we saw in her during that time was just amazing. Again, that novel experience, that ability to experience independence within safe boundaries really helped her grow and become the young adult that she's becoming. It was just fascinating. And so we see that now every day in our clinic. We see how sounds, sights, smells.

you know, even tastes help redevelop our brain in a healthier, better way.

Kasey (20:13)
Wow.

Chris Perez (20:13)
Yeah, fascinating.

Emily (20:15)
There is something that you said, I don't know if you have ever read anything by Benjamin Hardy, the author, he's written a bunch of books, but he talks about the gap versus the gain. And in our lives, the experience of, you know, you can have something bad happen. And when you look back on it, you can go that's a gap. That was when, you know, this part of me was formed and I'm, you know, I am how I am because of that, or you can look at the gain in it and go

Chris Perez (20:22)
No!

Emily (20:43)
What is the lesson from that time? And what is the part of my story that has been formed from that experience that at the time the initial feeling was negative, but now what do I pull from it? And what I hear you talking about is in building a business and being an entrepreneur and being a father, a stepfather, in creating a team, in helping your patients, there is this parallel process of learning.

to look at the gain in your own experience so that you can help other people with new experiences that will help them to see the gain.

Chris Perez (21:19)
Yeah, 100%. I think it's funny. I don't know how much you dive into the entrepreneurial world and the entrepreneurial journey and growth in that. But one of the most fascinating things I've seen is the parallel ideas between both mental health and entrepreneurial journey. And some of the best stuff I've ever gotten has been things like you talk about the gap in the game.

Kasey (21:40)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Perez (21:46)
There was a time when the business was really struggling and we were getting ready to rebrand, where I was convinced that the business is gonna fail, my marriage will end, my second marriage, and I'll be living in a cardboard box because this is it. And I finally started getting the right inputs, the right speakers and books and conversations to realize that I am not the businesses and the business is not me.

Kasey (22:02)
Mm-hmm

Chris Perez (22:15)
that it's a part of me and it's a part of my growth and journey. But whatever happens on that end is separate from what happens to me. And whatever the outcome is, the growth and the experiences that I've gained from this make me a better person and make me a better, a better servant to the world. And so having, you know, really coming to that realization was super powerful. And it's not all the time, right? I, I.

I had a little breakdown last night while I was working on something. I was just like, why is it so hard? And why is it always so hard? And then I just realized that, you know, to be able to change the world in the way that I want to help change it, I have to grow and be a better person. And I think the most difficult part is always saying, what is the lesson that I need to learn next?

Emily (22:48)
Yeah.

Kasey (22:48)
Okay.

Chris Perez (23:04)
And it blows me away that sometimes the universe drops it in my lap, whether I like it or not. And that all I can do is control my response to it and do what I'd always do, double down and like just put my head down and get back to work on it and try and take the lesson that I can.

Kasey (23:22)
Yeah. Which is the same thing you're saying that we're all working on trying to help our clients and patients to do, right? That level of like paying attention to the signals and then knowing the only thing you really have control over is how do I want to respond to what's in front of me? And subtext, not react.

Chris Perez (23:31)
That's it.

and not react. How do I pause for a second and digest, right? And then respond in a healthier, better way. And I love that, as you both know, leadership of a team incorporates so much of this, right? Where we're actually stopping to say, okay, what am I taking in? How is my body feeling about it? And how can I react in a healthier way? It's just fascinating to me.

Kasey (23:50)
Great.

Yeah. Well, and also you're you sound like an insatiably curious guy. Like when things are hard, you ask questions. Curiosity, the future belongs to the curious, does it not the learner not the knower?

Chris Perez (24:12)
I really am.

It really does. What I love about it too is I'd like to think that we can all redevelop that sense of curiosity from our childhood. But what prevents us so often is fear, that we're so afraid of what the outcome might be, or the loss if we make the wrong choice, that we're afraid to ask the question, or we're afraid to ask the right question. The question isn't like, why is my business a failure? Why do I suck at this?

Kasey (24:44)
Yeah.

Chris Perez (24:50)
How do I succeed? How do I grow? How do I get better at this?

Kasey (24:52)
Yeah, yeah. What's here for me to learn? What's in the hard? And it wants to be easy, and how do I get out of the way, right? Yeah.

Chris Perez (24:57)
What's here for me to learn?

What's in the heart?

How do I embrace the discomfort?

Kasey (25:07)
Yeah.

Emily (25:08)
I think that people can have more fear of success than they can of failure because success is like, okay, maybe I've never had that before. I have no idea what that looks like, but failure, like maybe I just go back to the life I led before and I know that life. And so it can make you like stop and just go, well, I'm not even gonna go there. I'm gonna stay where I am.

Chris Perez (25:31)
That is amazing.

Kasey (25:33)
Reminds me of my favorite Marianne Williamson quote, our greatest fear is not that we, of our darkness, our greatest fear is of our light, that we will be powerful beyond measure. And I just love the creativity and the curiosity that you use to open up that neuroplasticity in yourself and in others so that they can, you know, let the, be big.

Chris Perez (25:42)
Wow.

Kasey (26:00)
You were meant to be big and it's supposed to be easy.

Chris Perez (26:00)
It's...

I'm sure you probably recognize this in yourselves as you wonder sometimes, like, how did I get here to this place? And then you realize, like, this is where I'm supposed to be. And I love what you said about people fearing success and fearing our light. I think that, I don't know if you've ever listened to much Lisa Nichols, but she talks a lot about that in that same verbiage. And I love it because it's so true that it's just so easy to slide back into that comfort.

Kasey (26:10)
Exactly.

Chris Perez (26:33)
of the known and not keep pushing forward to the unknown. And I think in some ways you're right, success is scary for lack of a better term. Will it mean that I don't associate as in the same way or do I not have the same relationship with my friends and my family and who will be there and who won't? And what will life look like? It's really terrifying.

Kasey (26:57)
Yeah, I also I wonder even if it's if it's something before success that we fear, which is the uncertainty The unknown answers to all of those questions you just Bulleted seems to be what where many of us get stuck in the pause. Mm-hmm

Emily (26:58)
You don't.

Chris Perez (27:11)
Mm-hmm.

Emily (27:16)
That makes me wonder in terms of your story, when you went to nurse anesthetist school, that is a huge deal. I mean, such a difficult program. And you work all of this time, you spend your three years in the ICU, you do all of this work, you get in, and then you complete that program and you change your path completely, which is terrifying and a really impressive part of your story that you were like,

there's something else and I'm curious what it is about you or your perspective that made you go just because I've put in all of this time doesn't mean this is where I need to be I need to be over there what happened?

Chris Perez (27:57)
That's, I, you gave me goosebumps with that question, Emily, because it really defines my life in a lot of ways. You know, when I was in undergraduate school, I grew up in a household that was not wealthy. My dad worked very hard and...

He is an amazing man and actually went back to law school in his late 30s, after working in health and human services and probation for a really long time. But I had grown up in an environment of scarcity and I said, I want to make X amount of money. And to me, it was this figure. And I said, I'm going to get there and I don't know how I'm going to get there, but I'm going to get there. And that's how, you know, I started whittling down into healthcare and then into anesthesia.

And it really, again, that curiosity and that just sense of like, set goal, achieve goal, set goal, achieve goal, just repeated pattern. And then what I found was that while I loved anesthesia, I was miserable. And I didn't recognize that, or I started to recognize, I guess, that I would work all week, and then I would binge drink on the weekends.

and that I was really just so stressed out and I was miserable and I didn't enjoy it and that I wasn't feeling fulfilled.

I started to recognize that it wasn't a good fit. And I still, I love anesthesia. I love the practice of it. I loved the hospital environment and the people I worked with, but I had this moment where I thought I cannot live the rest of my life doing this. It just Sunday night would come and I would get that pit in the bottom of my stomach. And we had always talked about, you know, my wife and I now had always talked about

owning our own business. We just never knew what that looked like. And when the opportunity came, it's so funny now, one of my favorite kind of stories about that, Emily, is that I didn't wanna tell anybody at Children's Hospital what I was gonna do, because I thought they might take the idea and run with it. And as you all know, it's like, you get a couple of years into it and you're like, nobody else would want this. It's so hard. I work, it's hard work. I work way more now than I ever did.

Emily (29:59)
This is hard work!

Chris Perez (30:05)
But I love it. And what I'm actually getting to do is change things on a different level. I don't know that I had the foresight when I made that change to recognize what a different person I would become, but now that's one of the things that I'm most grateful for. And there was a day, and it's so funny you asked this, about a year ago this time, I really realized I need to...

stop being clinical and be all business. And there was a lot of sense of grief and loss over that clinical identity. And when you're in anesthesia, you're, for lack of a better term, you're kind of a badass, right? Like you run in and you grab the airway and you help keep people alive when things are going horribly wrong in an operating room. Like you're...

You're at the head of the bed. You're making a lot of really serious decisions and you're guiding the team. And there's a lot of pride and respect that goes along with that. So to your point to shift gears just so drastically, I think it wasn't until last January that I recognized, oh my God, I feel so sad about this. I mean, I'm obviously very excited for where the business is going and what I've been able to accomplish, but I'm really sad. And I miss that life sometimes.

And it kind of helped me understand that as we grow and change in life, we often have those periods where things change so drastically that we have to mourn who we were to become who we need to be. And I think that's sometimes why our clients and patients fail to make progress is because it's, it's so hard to envision the new life and the new being. And you know, I love the storytelling experience where you say, if this is my, my movie,

and I'm the hero, who does that hero become? Who does that, as I throw the rings into Mordor, who do I become? And it's just something that over the past couple of years, I've started to really recognize the stages of life that I've gone through and the massive change and how they continue to, they'll always be there. It's how am I gonna embrace them?

Kasey (31:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. You're, you're harken me to one of my favorite quotes. I think it's by Joseph Campbell. Like, are you willing to let go of who you think you are to become who you were meant to be?

Chris Perez (32:31)
that's it. And that, you know, a lot of entrepreneurial speakers talk a lot about that, like, you need to start embracing the person that you have to become to do that. And you well know, right, leading a team is challenging and sitting down and doing the books and the finance and the payrolls and putting everything together and opening the new location and all of that stuff, compliance and, you know, taxes and you really just have to grow so much to be able to take on that responsibility.

Kasey (32:33)
And yeah.

Right.

Chris Perez (33:01)
and to be calm and collected when things go bad.

Kasey (33:04)
And it's for the sake of something so much larger, but and it starts with you, right? You wanna heal the world, start with yourself.

Chris Perez (33:09)
That's it.

That's it. You have to, and really, you hope that others see you doing it and see you being better. And I love nothing more than when people on my team, you know, the one person that's been with me since the very beginning, she'll often say like, wow, I really see you growing. I see you reacting differently. And she's like, it's just, it's so awesome to see, Chris. It's like, I'm so, so grateful to see it.

Kasey (33:38)
So Chris, what do you want to say to the SoulStirred listening audience about access or the treatment that you've discovered or the human experience, anything? What would you like them to know while you're with us today?

Chris Perez (33:51)
You know, the number one thing I want people, your listeners, everybody out there to remember is that there is hope, right? That we can all heal and we can all get better. That everything that we offer at Axis is really just a lever to help you be better. It's a part of the treatment plan. It's not the end solution. But you know, you have to take the first step. And I'm always so proud of our patients and clients when they come to us.

And we do our best to say, you should be proud of yourself. This is a huge step. Offline, we were talking about how it's similar to going to the dentist. It's not something that we wanna do, but we need to do for ourselves and those around us. Earlier I said, everybody should go to therapy. And I truly believe that. Everybody owes it to themselves and to their loved ones to do that.

Kasey (34:44)
Yeah, and accessing therapy doesn't mean that you are bad or wrong or broken. I say to my friends and clients all the time, we should all have a therapist and a coach on our bench all of the time that we have a relationship with and who knows us and our story that we can check in with when things get hard or when we need to go to that next growth edge and we just need some support.

Chris Perez (34:50)
Not at all.

Hallelujah!

Yeah, especially for your younger listeners or those at a crossroads. You know, I agree with that as well, a coach, a mentor, like we need those in our lives. And the data is overwhelming that both parties live better lives when they have that mentor mentee relationship. You know, it's so funny. It's just back to the basics, right? Eat, sleep, community, positive input.

Emily (35:28)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kasey (35:32)
Absolutely connection life wasn't meant to be lived alone We need each other in order to survive and definitely to thrive Yeah

Chris Perez (35:34)
Connection. Not at all.

Definitely.

Emily (35:40)
Well, Chris, can you tell our listeners who you support, like the ages or the types of people that you support at Axis?

Chris Perez (35:49)
I'd be happy to. Yeah, at Axis we actually offer med management to anywhere from five and up, five to 75, really. Therapy, we love connecting with folks like yourself that can do therapy with the pediatric population. We do support some therapy for adults and really adding on that psychedelic assisted therapy now. We have the transcranial magnetic stimulation, which I am...

so incredibly excited about it. If you guys ever want to hear about that, it's really become my favorite modality. I love Spravato, I love the results, I loved what I saw with ketamine, but TMS, being non-pharmacologic, I just am so excited about it. And the results last much longer than they do any other modality. Yeah, and so we're here if you need us. We actually envision ourselves as a-

the first stop in your journey where we can say, yeah, you probably need therapy, let's route you over here. Or you might actually need IOP, PHP, let's get you over here. Or we're happy to help you with what we've got, let's get you on here. And you may or may not need meds, but let's talk about it. And let's help you live a better life, whatever you're doing.

Kasey (36:58)
Yeah.

Emily (36:59)
So cool. You've created something that is needed and really amazing. Yeah.

Kasey (37:06)
and really important.

Chris Perez (37:06)
Thank you. Thank you, I'm so excited about it. Again, it's a journey, right?

Emily (37:12)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, we're never done. We're never done growing as individuals or as business owners. Yeah, so we will have all of your information in the show notes in case any of our listeners want to look you up and reach out.

Chris Perez (37:15)
Never done.

Yup.

Kasey (37:27)
let's have you back to talk about the, I'll forget the acronym, TPMS, TMS, TMS.

Emily (37:32)
TMS.

Chris Perez (37:32)
TMS, yeah, oh my gosh, yeah, I'd love that.

Emily (37:35)
All right, SoulStirred listeners, thank you for joining us today and we will talk to you next week.

Kasey (37:41)
Take good care of yourselves and each other. Bye-bye.

Emily Garcia (37:50)
Thanks so much for joining us on this episode of SoulStirred, Stories of Growth and the Human Experience. We hope our stories have touched your heart and sparked reflections in your own journey.

Therapist, we are not your therapist and this podcast is not a substitute for therapy. If you find yourself in need of professional support, please don't hesitate to seek it. Your well-being is important and there are professionals out there who are ready to help. We encourage you to carry the spirit of growth and connection with you. Life is a continuous journey and we're honored to be part of yours. Stay tuned for more captivating stories in the episodes to come.

Until then, take care of yourselves and each other.