00:00:00 Rosemary

If you’ve been listening to our podcast and are curious about the Compassionate Inquiry approach developed by Dr. Gabor Maté and Sat Dharam Kaur, consider joining the professional training program. It’s open to all healing professionals, including naturopaths, physicians, bodyworkers, coaches and therapists. In addition to learning how to use compassion to support your clients in their most vulnerable moments with greater empathy and authenticity, you’ll also deepen your own internal process. If you’re interested, look for the link in the show notes.

Rosemary:
Welcome Gabor. So happy to have you here with us today.

00:00:45 Gabor

I just show up and I never know what I’m doing okay. Or why I’m doing it.

00:00:48 Kevin

The reason that you’re here with Rosemary and I today is this is the start of the Compassionate Inquiry Podcast. And myself and Rosemary and two other women, J’aimeand Mari Russell, with the support of the marketing team and Satram and the admin team, are developing the Compassion Inquiry Podcast.

00:01:05 Gabor

You know, Kevin, I barely even, to tell you truth, I was barely even aware of it. In fact, it’s news to me that there’s going to be a CI podcast. I don’t have much to say about it, except I’m happy to support you whatever way I can.

00:01:23 Rosemary

This is the Gifts of Trauma Podcast. Stories of transformation and healing through Compassionate Inquiry.

00:01:40 J’aime

Welcome everybody. This is the Gifts of Trauma Podcast. Last week we aired our 100th episode with Sat Dharam Kaur. And this week I am here with my glorious co hosts Kevin Young and Rosemary Davies-Janes. And we are here to share with you a beautiful plate of bites of different episodes that we have done over this last two years. So welcome Rosemary. Welcome Kevin. It’s really good to be here with you guys and for us to reflect a little bit on these last two years and these 100 shows. How are you guys doing?

00:02:23 Rosemary

Great. Thank you so much.

00:02:24 Kevin

I’m just still a little bit hung up on you calling me glorious. J’aime, truth be told, I’m not so sure that the glory or the gloriousness goes to us, but certainly listening back to some of these bite size snippets of previous podcasts, they certainly are glorious. And I think that glory goes to the guests that we had on and how well they presented themselves and presented their work and presented compassion and humanity. So I’m really looking forward to enjoying these little, bite-sized pieces of our conversations.

00:02:57 Rosemary

Yes, thanks, Kevin. I am too. Looking back, over a hundred episodes was so heartwarming because as I looked at the title and the guests names, their faces… their faces and their stories, were so alive in me. It’s been a wonderful journey and as J’aime said, we hope you enjoy these appetizer size bites of the most listened to episodes out of our offerings from the last two years.

00:03:29 J’aime

Glorious is definitely the word. I’ve just been basking in it. Being with all of these shows, I wish that we could have taken an excerpt of every single episode that we’ve done because the most listened to episodes are indeed delicious. But there is also so much flavor in these other shows. So we are putting in the notes, links to every show that you hear in order that you hear it in this podcast. As you go back into the archives, we really invite you to take a peek into some things you may have missed. Like we have covered everything from math anxiety to… 

Kevin: Menopause.

J’aime: Yeah, talk to me.

00:04:13 Kevin

Childhood trauma to addiction, war, trauma, racism, how it is to be a person of color in the world. We’ve talked about motherhood, fatherhood…

00:04:24 Rosemary

We’ve talked about the perinatal experience, which none of us remember, and how that impacts us. We’ve talked about adoption. We’ve talked about trauma in journalism. We’ve talked about the trauma of joining a capitalistic corporate enterprise and how meditation and mindfulness and Compassionate Inquiry can support people. The list is not endless. It’s only a hundred episodes, but my goodness, we have covered a lot of ground in the past two years.

00:04:53 J’aime

And, and you know, I have a friend, you guys, who gives me a hard time. It’s like, J’aime, it’s, you’re like all about the trauma. Get out of the trauma. It’s the trauma. I’m like, no, no, no, you’ve got to understand that I’m in the trauma because I like to talk about the gifts. I like to talk about the things that come through, what’s available and accessible when you really integrate this experience of trauma. So hear us when we say that, yes, we’ve, we talked about all things trauma, but the name of this show is The Gifts of Trauma Podcast. And we are celebrating the gifts. Being able to witness.

00:05:25 Rosemary

Yeah. And that brings to mind, J’aime, one of our more recent episodes. Diana Gharib was literally considering the invitation to be on this podcast as a gift. Because outside her front door, she was on the front line of the war, and she was living in Lebanon. The drones were overhead. Everyone from her street inward had been evacuated and she was sitting there with her small son having this conversation with us. And the gift for her, as she said in that episode, was just to be taken out of what was going on around her for an hour.

00:06:01 Kevin

Rosemary, can I ask you a question? Rosemary, I noticed just a while ago when you were talking about the people, the faces, the names that we have on this show, I consider myself very lucky to sit down with a number of these people, and I noticed that you got emotional. And I’m trying to think that I know what you’re thinking about when you’re getting emotional, remembering these names and faces and places. Would you share with us why you seem to be emotional right now remembering these people?

00:06:28 Rosemary

Thank you for your question. You’ve taken me right back there. It’s really such a privilege to have these conversations with people. Two of the people we’ve spoken with in the last few months have passed away shortly after our interviews, shortly after they spoke with us. Efu Nyaki, a powerhouse in the Somatic Experiencing world. We recorded her interview on May 20, and the news was broadcast on May 30 that she had passed on, or as… how some of her Somatic experiencing colleagues referred to it, she had graduated. And not long before that, one of our own Compassionate Inquiry Community members, Maria de Los Angeles Estrada, who joined us along with Ellie Davis and Dr. Kenneth Doka. They all came together to speak about disenfranchised grief. And her spirit was so vibrant and alive in that episode. So it’s been an absolute privilege working with people, sharing their stories, hearing such intimate details of their lives, their struggles, their journeys, their joy. And we have a whole new joy that we’re finding in a new type of episode we’re offering now called Spotlight Episodes that feature members of the Compassionate Inquiry Community who step forward and say, yeah, I’d like to be on The Gifts of Trauma podcast. And it turns out that these people who are stepping forward are hidden gems within the community. And I’m so happy they’re stepping forward, because I don’t know how we would find them in such a large and growing community otherwise. So you have a whole lot more coming, that, from my perspective, is different and incredibly inspiring.

00:08:14 J’aime

We received that news that Efu had passed the week that we were running her episode, and colleagues sent me messages thanking me for being a part of capturing that transmission. Of course, it’s… That, too, is just a pure gift of grace that we were able to do that, and this will live on forever..

00:08:36 Rosemary

Yeah.

00:08:36 Kevin

Yeah. Here’s remembering Efu and Maria.

00:08:40 Rosemary

Yeah, it’s been a wonderful ride so far. And the journey continues.

00:08:46 J’aime

So y’ all ready to get onto the train? The train’s leaving the station. You guys hop on board. We’ll see you at the end of this episode.

00:09:01 Gabor

What people appreciate about my work is my capacity to bring it all together, bring everything together, to see that it’s all one process, that mind and body can’t be separated. They’re not separated in real life. People’s social lives and emotional lives impact their physiology, their relationships impact how their brains develop. That what we call pathology are actually processes that are responses to life experience rather than just strokes of misfortune. And if we can unravel all that and see the connections, we can actually provide some guidance through healing. So it’s that unitary vision that I was able to develop, learning a lot from all these colleagues that I’m referring to, but incorporating that into a broader vision. I think that’s what I’ve been able to do. 

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with anybody. There’s distortions of development which are normal responses to abnormal circumstances. And therefore we can all come back to ourselves. So nobody should believe that they’re damaged gods or beyond healing. There’s nothing wrong with you fundamentally. And everything you feel or believe is wrong with you is actually a response to life experiences and that the wounds that you carry can be healed. 

Yeah. What you need is stories. What you need is people with their experiences and what they’ve learned from their experiences or what they are willing to learn from their experiences. And what lessons can they derive? And what lessons can your audience derive?

00:10:39 Sat Dharam

In that first workshop we did in Vancouver, it wasn’t just me that could see that possibility. We could feel it. Something big is happening here. We’re changing history. So there was a sense of, a feeling of, yet not knowing what it was going to be is what was emerging. You know, just a feeling of something big was emerging, even though we couldn’t put a name on it. And I’ve had that all along. So on the other hand, I feel that because of my spirituality, I’m able to be a kind of like an open container for all that happens through Compassionate Inquiry. And I would say it’s not me that’s holding it, it’s something bigger. And so I think that’s where it comes in. Is that because I have. I don’t know if I’d call it deep faith, but just trust in the universe. I connected to something bigger. I’m allowing that something bigger to carry this whole ship. So it’s not me, it’s that. And we’re all connected to it or we wouldn’t be here together, you know, so it’s something that’s happening through us in consciousness that’s bringing us all together to create this amazing container and process for humanity at this time. That’s how I would say it. I have this sense of what’s supposed to happen. And so no matter who the individual is, if they’re having a challenge or falling or whatever it is, it doesn’t faze me so much, because I see what’s possible and for that individual, and I see what’s possible for all of us together. And that’s what I’m living for. That’s why I’m here, to make the impossible possible, with an amazing group of conscious people that have the same intent. And when we get a whole big group of people that are doing this and supporting each other and mirroring each other, it’s amazing is not just creating this container for good things to happen by creating a container where other people can tap into their gifts, their capacity, and for all of us to be used to our capacity and service.

00:13:01 Rhonda

That’s what I do. That’s one of my coping mechanisms. I withdraw, learn to hide. This disability throughout my family life has been essentially invisible.

00:13:12 Rosemary

Congenital myasthenic syndrome is a group of conditions characterized by fatigable muscle weakness caused by an inherited neuromuscular disorder.

00:13:22 Rhonda

But all throughout that time, I had this ability to drop the cane when I was around my family. I could make that disability invisible in front of the people who I needed it to be invisible upon.

00:13:35 Kevin

In 2014, she came across the work of Dr. Gabor Mate with an intention to enhance her professional work as an addictions counselor and attended a plant medicine retreat led by Gabor the following year.

00:13:48 Rhonda

I experienced in that work just how fear was running my life, and it was a response to the emotional unavailability of my mother. My mind can rationalize anything by calling it a passion or a mission or the work of my heart. But I did too much, as a lead in this retreat. Gabor had stopped me at one point. Now, on paper, if you heard this, it may sound harsh, but in interaction and coming from a place of compassion and non judgment, he says to me, drop your arrogance. He says, not that you’re not humble, it’s that you think you need to hold it yourself. So you’re feeling rage and you’re stuck in your rage. And he says, go back to the group and tell them that you’re hurting, you’re in rage, and you are stuck. So I did.

00:14:53 Kevin

How would the term schooling by apartheid land with you?

00:14:58 Stephen

Yeah, because that’s essentially what it was. But it wasn’t just schooling.

00:15:02 Kevin

So the Troubles were a 40 year period where there was violence, bombing, segregation, separation, that people had to live under constant fear and live in a state of constant heightened awareness.

00:15:19 Stephen

I’ll never forget the first time I went to Belfast by myself at the age of, I think it was 17, 18, and I’d got off the bus and I was walking through a part of Belfast and all of a sudden there were Union Jacks painted on the curb stones along the side of the road, red, white and blue everywhere. And there were just big murals of King Billy. And I was shit scared, for want of a better word. This is not an area that I would be safe in if somebody asked me, what’s your name? Where are you from?

00:15:53 Kevin

What was the fear? What did you fear would happen?

00:15:56 Stephen

I would be beaten, shot, killed. It was as extreme as that. There was nothing else. I knew I was in the wrong place.

00:16:04 Kevin

And we’re recognizing that the aftermath of that is huge. It’s really, really big. It’s having a big impact on our community, the community of the north of Ireland.

00:16:14 Stephen

Today, in the context of the north of Ireland, there are so many stories that are undercurrents of beliefs for people. And there is so much of ‘ I’m not wanted’ on both sides of the community. It’s much larger than both sides of the community. But there’s this, ‘I am not wanted’. There’s something wrong with me. Neither side belongs anywhere or have been fighting, still are fighting in different ways to belong somewhere. Nobody really knows what it is that they’re fighting for.

00:16:46 Kevin

I can feel that tension in my body right now, and I can feel that in my stomach. And maybe because you’re reminding me of experiences that I can totally relate to.

00:16:56 Stephen

You ask somebody where they’re from, you’ll figure out whether they’re Protestant or Catholic. Nationalists, Unionists, safe or not safe.

00:17:06 Kevin

More than 90% of schools in Northern Ireland are still segregated by religion. So this is in 2024 that over 90% of our schools still have children separated by religion. Catholics and Protestants are educated separately from the age of 4 right through to the age of 18. Mental health problems are the single largest cause of ill health and disability in Northern Ireland. 1 In 5 adults in Northern Ireland has experienced a mental health problem. And prior to the pandemic, one in eight children had an emotional difficulty indicating psychological distress. You know, we talked recently about the idea of things that you were taught and things that you caught. And I know from a very, very, very early age that we just knew. You just knew where to go, where not to go, what to say, what not to say, how to look, what not to look, who to look at, who not to look at. You know, that. That level of vigilance that we lived with, you know, you said a certain level of vigilance. For me, that was all the time.

00:18:29 Rosemary W

I was born into the western construct where I was living in a colonized mindset. So when 1788 came here, I think that they took this around the world. When the west went out, they took out three warfares, outright warfare, killing as many indigenous peoples as quickly as possible. Whoever was left, applied germ warfare, whoever was left, psychological warfare. So the conditioning that you’re ‘less than’ that, your ‘poor thing’, you need our help. The power of their psychology keeps not just indigenous peoples locked in, trapped in thinking and believing that they’re poor things and that they’re disadvantaged. And in that process of being born into a colonized mindset, I was colonized to believe that I was less than, I was a poor thing, I was disadvantaged ‘cause I’m aboriginal and a woman on top. What I’d done in the process of that five years, I decolonised my mind. All hell broke loose to become who I am today.

00:20:02 Reggie

Many people, especially in the lines of work that have become my vocation, delight in the: I just don’t have time for that or I would do more of that if there were only more time in the day. You can’t chase peace, you can’t chase like well being. You have to begin with it and you have to create structures in your life that reinforce it as a foundation as opposed to, oh shit, I didn’t meditate today. So for me, I have sound bowls at my house, literally at my feet. So when I walk out of the bed or when I wake up and I’m still in that where am I state, there’s a sound bowl right there. Can be like…. as I wake up. So this vibe is in my brain when I leave the house. So if someone cuts me off in traffic or I get an email where someone shows their entire ass in ignorance, or you’re in a zoom call, that could be 15 minutes, but someone won’t shut up and it lasts for 40, you know, like all these things happen. Like, instead of me being worked up, like, I’ve already invested in this.

00:21:29 Juliano

I’m not a therapist, not a counselor, I’m a psychopharmacologist. I have an hour to figure out a person’s life story, figure out what’s wrong, and figure out what medication or alchemy might work to improve some of the debilitating symptoms, and then schedule an appointment, and on with their day. And I always felt like those were missed experiences, There were missed opportunities. And so I asked permission to take the professional program of Compassionate Inquiry with the intention, but I would take from it some of the languages, the Gabor Maté-isms, the stepping stones. I would ask permission and check infrequently, what are you feeling in the body? And I would implement them in my 15 or 20 minutes with somebody. And all of a sudden, those routine check the box assessments would uncover years of hidden shit that people are carrying with them in this bag of suffering that we all carry on our backs, instead of a pill or a modality or a program or a book or a substance, a habit. Maybe it was just like, I can lead you. I can compassionately guide you through your own inquiry to the place, to the time, to the event that caused you to believe this narrative that’s not true. And through your awareness, through your own Compassionate Inquiry, in the few minutes that we have, you can explain and validate your lived experience in a nonjudgmental way. And now, with your intention, you don’t have to pass it on.

00:23:08 Vimalasara

I call Gabor the Ghostbuster, the story buster, the happy story buster, because he always loves to bust the story of a happy childhood. But I wanted… If you’re listening now, Gabor, I want to say the reason why we say we had that happy childhood, because we wouldn’t have survived. We needed to hold on to those moments of that happy childhood so we could survive. Anybody who comes along mindless face addiction recovery course is coming because they want to work with the triggers. They want to work with the activation because they want to stop. They want to stop using their choice of adaptive behavior. And so it’s important to really be transparent and be explicit, to explore triggers. What I do want to say that we explore triggers through playing. Coming back to the teachings of the shamans. When did you lose your play? Hey, when did you lose your aliveness? When did you stop being enchanted by your own story? When did we stop dwelling in the sweet territory of silence? When did you stop breathing? Teaching us to breathe through the experience of the body. Teaching us to breathe through the experience of feeling, to breathe through the experience of perception, cognition, to breathe through the experience of aging, sickness and death so that we can be awake. Being awake is being fully alive.

00:25:03 Kevin

The undertone that I hear in that Sat Dharam, which is really delightful, is moving the responsibility for addiction away from someone who is addicted.

00:25:15 Sat Dharam

It is… the responsibility Is the community.

00:25:18 Kevin

Yeah.

00:25:19 Sat Dharam

Let me understand you from a place of compassion and care, the compassion of understanding. Let me understand your trauma, what happened to you. That’s why you’re in this predicament right now. So there’s no blame, no shame. It’s just what happened to you. And then the next one is what happened to your ancestors. Because the tendency to addiction, it could be from our childhood experience, but our childhood experiences, the trauma, also can be passed down through several generations. So we may be reflecting if we have an addiction, more also from our ancestors, what they went through. So it’s what happened to your ancestors. And then finally the healing eventually is, you’re not what happened to you. Once we heal and process all of that, metabolize all of that, go through all that pain, release all that pain, get to the other side, and then we recognize, oh, here’s back to my true identity. My true identity is not what happened to me. My true identity is this ever present essence in me that can never be damaged. That’s where we want to take people, but that’s a process. It’s a long process of healing that can be done only through relationship I believe.

00:26:37 Luke

Exposure to porn is happening at a younger and younger age. I was first exposed to porn at the age of five.

00:26:45 J’aime

Males are more likely to be exposed to pornography at an earlier age and to use pornography alone. While research indicates that women are more likely to consume pornography in order to please a partner by consuming it together.

00:26:57 Luke

It’s perfect for men because it can be done anonymously, privately, and it’s available in a wide diversity.

00:27:06 Kevin

Research found a significant relationship between mental health and pornography use, including behaviors reflecting addiction.

00:27:14 Luke

What that means is that for men who are already traditionally conditioned to avoid their emotions and not speak about their mental health, well, they can consume this substance, this consumption, in private, and not have to share it with anyone. So it just perpetuates that solitude. It perpetuates bottling things up.

00:27:34 Kevin

A study found that 11% of men, compared to 3% of women, resonated with the statement, I am addicted to pornography.

00:27:43 Luke

We were already having an intervention simply by giving these men who had been conditioned to hide this consumption in shame, not just porn, but mental health concerns in general, was to speak about them. Growing up as a man, the indirect or very direct way that I was taught and raised to relate to my experiences, to my emotions was to not speak about them. Beneath the surface are these very similar core beliefs, these very similar core beliefs of fundamental lack, fundamental not enoughness. It’s not about blame. It’s not our fault that these programs have been installed and programmed into our nervous system. Whether they’re intergenerational, whether they’re from the womb, whether they’re from childhood, whether they’re simply spiritual and cosmic in nature, we didn’t put them there. But it is our personal responsibility. No one else is going to be able to unravel them for us. No one else is going to be able to look inward and do that work.

00:28:46 Kevin

Porn addiction distorts our perception of healthy relationships, robbing us of the ability to truly connect with our partners on a profound level.

00:28:56 Luke

Because of my inability to connect on a real human level, because I didn’t know how to, I was never taught how to. I didn’t even know what an emotion was until I turned 30. Porn was my band aid for these experiences that I was avoiding experientially. So it was protecting me. At the core of it, porn was protecting me. Just like any substance, behavior, consumption, addiction, whatever label the mind wants to use, at the core of it, it’s protecting us from an experience.

00:29:24 Kevin

So somebody carrying a belief, this ‘I’m not good enoughness,’ how do they show up in the world? 

00:29:29 Luke

I could be with my mates and all of a sudden there’s a woman in the periphery and my attention goes there. And it’s not by choice. It’s like an automatic impulse and drive and a compulsion. And all of a sudden I’m turning on charisma, all of a sudden I’m turning on charm, I’m peacocking, I’m doing these things and I’m like, there is this thing that is expressing itself and now I’m seeking to achieve it and attain it through a person. And it’s not just the sex, it’s the validation and the faux connection, this fake experience of connection, the short lived, fleeting experience of connection that I was getting from these interactions.

00:30:08 Kevin

So for anyone listening to this, then, hang on, I do that. And for anyone thinking I’m ready to move away from that, or I would like to move away from that, how do they do that?

00:30:23 Silva

A lot of the time when I try to make the conversation about sex more comfortable, I actually use the analogy of food. Because one of the discomfort that we have about sexual conversations is that we’re not socialized to have them, but we are more socialized to have conversation about food. So we can discuss quite socially different foods that we have that we like, different menus, different cuisines from different cultures. And that seems to be okay to be able to have those conversations. And it seems we don’t judge each other. If I happen to like something that you dislike, we just think, okay, we’re just different, we have different tastes. When it comes to sexuality somehow we just find it so difficult to have those conversations, but they are exactly the same. It’s the conversations about accepting differences, about being aware that there’s a menu, about being aware that there’s different menus in different cultures and to try them out and even not try them out, but even to look at the menu and to be curious at the menu. And that is really when we can start to begin to understand our sexuality, understand our erotic processes, understand what we might lean towards, what we might feel warm towards and what we might feel cold towards. And slowly getting to know who we are erotically.

00:31:40 Wendy

I’m done hustling. I don’t need to go fast.

00:31:46 J’aime

How far back do you track this Wendy? Racing down the road to get somewhere.

00:31:53 Wendy

It goes back to having to be self sufficient and take care of myself. Not having the luxury to relax, take it easy, pause, slow down because there’s more to do, you have to do more. Constantly chasing the dangling carrot, the temporary pleasure of sitting an a stoplight in LA. I was that person that was scrolling my social media, responding to a text message or something. There was no time, there was no time to stop, and pause and do nothing and be. Institutionalized self abandonment. How normal it is to be a workaholic and hustle culture and to go against that and not self abandon is scary. I either abandon myself or I get abandoned because I can’t show up and be the overachieving, people pleasing perfectionist. I’m done hustling. I don’t need to go fast.

00:33:16 Jordan

I chose this life to learn how to love. And at one point in my journey I went, okay, I’m trans, I can’t change that. This is who I am to my core. How do I love myself? There are many things around ADHD and autism that you can’t just heal, but there are many aspects that you can. And understanding, it was deeply meaningful to understand that ADHD can be a trauma pattern from childhood. And so it’s through my own work, it’s through taking a hundred percent responsibility for those places. I did not want to take responsibility. It’s like, oh, that was my 5 year old driving the bus and he sure left a mess behind him, right? So understanding that we create our own mess and I didn’t do it on purpose. Like I wasn’t that guy on purpose. And so how can I just love that guy that is sometimes all messy. For me, it took plant medicine going back to my roots to really break open that part of understanding that, okay, this is the human that I have right now, let’s do this. And how can we do this with love and grace? Because I grew up in a world of shame and guilt. And in my journey, shame is a shortcut to change with long term consequences, whereas love is a long road that ends in resilience. And so Jordan’s going to take the long road because the short, the short road led him to suicide. Right? The shortcut, the shortcut put him in this place of not wanting to be here. So who do I want to be? Who am I really in this lifetime while I’m down here on Earth School? I think Earth School is a school of love. Like how can we become love through and through.

00:35:27 Louise

There is an assumption, I think for lots of people that the way they perceive the world is the norm because it’s their perspective. But the whole umbrella or the whole discussion around neurodiversity is opening that up. I suppose it’s encouraging that inquiry, that curiosity, empathy and kindness towards different people who perceive the world differently, who think differently and who experience the world differently. That’s what I think. Neurodiversity is, just being aware that our brains are all wired differently and hideout packed how we engage, relate, communicate and experience the world. Compassion always wins as far as I’m concerned. And it’s not that difficult to get your head around, but it’s just not the way this country’s often operated. Bully boys have got their way, violent men have got their way, and there’s still those bullying. I find there’s a lot of bullying at the community I was born into, I’ve got a lot of bullying, but I’m able to stand my ground. And I have a lot of privilege. I was brought up middle class, so I’ve got that privilege. I’ve got that educational privilege. And I try and use my privilege to speak up for others who don’t have that privilege, but I know we are losing people. It’s quite a harsh environment for people who are different.

00:36:52 Sara

We live in and operate in a culture that tells us adoption is beautiful. We have pastimes a whole hobby is dedicated around genealogy. Then you tell someone you’re adopted and the first thing they say is usually, oh my gosh, that’s so amazing. And yes, it can be that. So I’m not saying it can’t be that. And it’s never that. And I’m really fortunate I have lots of beautiful parts of my adoption story, but I also have a lot of really hard parts of my story. And when there’s not space for that in our families, there’s not space for that in our culture. We don’t know what to do with that. We don’t know where to put that. There’s grief, there’s loss that don’t get acknowledged.

00:37:43 Kevin

Gabor Maté’s perspective on adoption explains. For nine months they heard the voice of the mother, registered the heartbeat, attuning with the biorhythms with the mother. The expectation is that it will continue. This is utterly broken for the adopted child. We don’t have sufficient appreciation for what happens to that infant and how to compensate for it. Adoptees and children who are fostered are overrepresented in the prison system, addiction clinics under four times more likely than their peers to attempt suicide.

00:38:26 Sara

The innate question we ask ourselves growing up as children is why wasn’t I good enough to be kept? For me, it’s I wanted to prove that I was worthy. I wanted to be kept by my next family. I wanted to not have anyone else go away. I wanted to keep my loved ones close and try to be in charge of all those relationships that children aren’t supposed to be in charge of. I also wanted to attract my birth mom to come back, starting at a very young age, performing on the piano or in gymnastics later, like, maybe she’s out there, maybe this is good enough for her to come back and she’ll be out there in the crowd watching me and she’ll want me back. And it is part of why I’m so passionate about making space for the stories and adopting voices too. Because you need to have a place where you can express it all.

00:39:23 Rosemary

We’ve had an explosion of coaches, self help books. The Internet is full of advice. Do you think this abundance of information is keeping parents more in their heads and seeking outward input from experts when they really just need to tune into their hearts?

00:39:43 Gordon

Oh my goodness. And sometimes the irony is so strong as you see parents googling something, what am I supposed to do? And that creates the actual separation. And the child is disoriented trying to figure out what is wrong. And the more we look for the right thing to do, the less we do the right thing. The more we think the answer is in what we do, the less we realize the answer in who we are to our children. Whether it was apparent 5,000 years ago in the middle of a forest or a hunter gatherer tribe, we’re the same people, we’re the same humans. And the same things will have been true 10,000 years ago as they will be from 10,000 years hence. And that is when children, regardless of their parents’ education, history and so on, when children experience the conditions that are conducive to the spontaneous unfolding of potential, flourishing happens. They become who they were meant to be. And when we’re part of it, we become who we were meant to be as well.

00:40:47 Matthew

For me, the real edge of this is asking what role journalists can play in recognizing the role of trauma underneath the crises that we see in the news. Whether they’re big geopolitical crises or breakdown in our community or sensational crimes, even the way our politics is conducted, we see trauma, individual, collective, ancestral trauma playing out on the world stage again and again. But that’s not, not really a conversation that most journalists have really had. For me, and then this is really the, the edge I’m at is really the question I’m walking is how can I take my growing understanding of these mechanisms and how trauma works at a collective level and integrate that with news coverage, both in terms of what we write about, how we write about it or cover it, and also how we present and receive the news? How can we steward the experience in a more trauma informed way? How can we create spaces to come together in community and really relate to these overwhelming crises we’re now facing in a way that extends coregulation to the group and allows us to really meaningfully relate to what’s going on in our world rather than feeling, feeling overwhelmed, numbing out, understandably disconnecting because it’s all too much. There’s many layers of exploration that I’m now engaged in, but I feel that there is a vision wanting to materialize, of an entirely new media system actually, rooted in this understanding and dedicated to trauma restoration and integration. And I think that’s the update that our industry now needs.

00:42:42 Maria

First of all, let me say I’m a strong, firm believer in the power and the gift of the shared story. I think we all benefit from each other by hearing our stories. And to some extent, someone shares something with me, months prior to me going through what I’m about to share, which unknowingly helped me a lot in my grieving process. 

Ellie: Well, you know, honestly, it was my own grief, my own grieving process that even made it possible to begin to open myself to working with other people in their grief. So I recognized really that a big part of what I can offer is this disenfranchised grief and I was so heartened when I learned that term disenfranchised grief.

00:43:39 Dr Kenneth Doka

It’s like I don’t have a right to grieve. And that’s when I started using the term disenfranchised. And I was surprised when I first presented and first used that term. I was presenting a paper at a conference and people lined up after to talk about, this is like when… This is like when my high school coach died. This is like when. And they really just expanded the concept. And they’re still expanding the concept amazingly. So it’s been a very rich and interesting line of research that I’m still doing.

00:44:08 Rosemary

Thank you. Oh, I’m so glad I asked that question. And I can relate.

00:44:13 Rennett

We can’t make our clients responsible for our own on yield places. So it was with deep reverence that I had to be able to hold space to understand that as someone speaks, I look at them, I look in their eyes, I look at what’s happening for their body and I am there with them. My womb has helped me to have a greater capacity to do that and a greater capacity sometimes to be curious to myself and to understand that as I awake and as I take my first breath, it begins right there. That is where I start with my pain or my wounded to be able to acknowledge and do my work before I could sit in and start in the day with someone else.

00:44:58 Efu

You know, when I look at the person in front of me, I always see that they have also their own ancestors behind them and I have my own ancestors behind me. So we all have the same dignity. And therefore, I’m not going to fix you, I’m not going to do anything. That’s what we want to make sure we say to them, I’m holding space. And then with curiosity, as I look at your ancestors, and I’m able to ask right questions that will help unite our ancestors and then create a bigger space of expansion where both of us are healed. In that space.

00:45:45 Allison

Life is happening. Life is going to keep happening. As challenging as it may be to open our heart to ourselves and open our hearts to each other, that’s the place where the magic happens. And we can take that with us, take our balance point with us as we move out through the world.What does the world need to know? The magic, the potential, the possibility of all life force lives in our bodies and it’s there for us if we tune in. 

I have a visceral, felt sense awareness of that presence. It’s flowing, there’s connection, there’s life. It’s very visceral and palpable, and you feel it when it arrives. And I love that space. And really for me, it all comes back to this intrinsic healing energy that I know we all carry within us. And it’s in ourselves and it’s in our hearts. One of the things I love about CI is that I feel like it’s a really effective way to connect in to that authentic space of being and reflect it, resonate it, help people feel safe enough to step more and more into themselves.

00:47:10 Zach

Can we let go of the genetic expression of 40 generations of trauma that’s pounding on your doors right now, creating the cacophony of chaos in your mind, heart and soul? Can you let go of that for a moment and just give the space that Eva was encouraging us to take the breath, and now feel your water. Feel this deep ocean of memory. It is a saline solution. It is a literal ocean inside of you that remembers the original imprint of our birthright. What does it actually mean to be human? To be human is to be the greatest imagination of Mother Nature. A vessel that will contain more biodiversity and interconnected intelligence than any other species will hold. The genomic sequencing of the human now shows that we hold more biodiversity than any other mammal. The colon of the human is uniquely designed anatomically to hold more of Mother Earth than any other container she’s designed so far. And so to be a human is to hold Mother Earth in an interconnected environment where your wisdom and your truth comes pouring out. As the trees speak through you, as the river speaks through you, as the oceans speak through you. Remember from your water, not from your genetics, remember from your water, not from your ancestors. And find out in that water that your ancestors are not some past thing, they are present, right? There is only time in the human construct of separation from, from nature. So let’s let go of the trauma, let’s let go of time, allow our ancestors to become present and have an energetic upgrade to our memory through the water of the original human design.

00:48:58 Inès

Recover the power of the energy that we were supposed to have since the beginnings of time, starting with the trauma of birth, the transgenerational trauma. Everything that is in my body as a container is a lot of that, plus joy and pleasure. And we want to enjoy life. So let’s enrich the conversations and the solutions from grief to pride, the pride of being born, the pride of going through shit and pleasure in life. So that life is the psychedelic experience, experience without psychedelic, because it is a mess and it’s beautiful. We just need to be safe and contained by this time in life. Look at people’s eyes and see. We got you, honey bunny. We got you. Of course we got you, because you’ve been doing it all, and you don’t have to do it alone. That’s all. And you can melt in those arms. You cn melt in that image.

00:50:03 Kate

When I say can feel the brain pruning, it’s almost like revisiting these hormonal transitions in life, beginning with puberty, childbearing, postpartum, and checking in with, oh, now I understand what was going on for me. So I go back to that time. I can see that, oh, I’m not that same person. I’m getting an upgrade grade of some sort by feeling it’s my brain pruning or what other women speak of. We can see where we’ve come from. We are creating almost a new vision for ourselves that are taking these other parts with us. There’s also a repairing that’s happening, these times where I didn’t speak about what was happening or I didn’t have the language, there wasn’t the safety. I’m going back to those versions of myself, and I can witness it from this mothering, nurturing lens, integrating whatever need was there that couldn’t have been met. And so entering these later years of my 40s and then into menopause with a more wholeness I can see that also repairs a lineage of women on both sides who I never saw relax.

I’m pruning not just for my own self, but for everyone that is coming up before me and after me.

00:51:34 Kevin

It’s a really interesting piece that you’re mentioning, Fredrick, around the idea of toxic masculinity seeping into the very space therapy treatment.

00:51:46 Fredrik

I had a client today, and he said, I’m okay. I said, how are you doing right now? I’m okay. Okay, you’re okay. How does your body tell you that you’re okay right now? Check in with your body and just tell me what’s going on. Okay. And he is able to do that. And his hands are sweaty. He can venture that his heart’s beating fast and his shoulders are and muscles are tensing, and then he just bursts out and laughs and like, I’m no fucking near okay. Toxic manly norm. To be able to look the way I look and still be compassionate. It’s a good thing. It’s an icebreaker. I mean, looking the way I’m looking most of the time, most of the clients. Let’s say it’s a good thing. The horror Tattoos are all over the arms, no hair and the beard and so on. Some of my clients, just particularly one of them, one of the bravest boys, men I’ve ever worked with, he told me that it was like the second or third session, and he said, you are a copy of my abuser. His stepfather. You look like him, sound like him, almost have similar tattoos. And now we’ve been seeing each other for six months. We summarize what’s been going on. Where are we at right now? And he said, being able to feel safe with you has made my relationship to men in general much better.

00:53:28 Joe

What does that feel like in your body? What does toxic masculinity feel like in your body? What does it feel like in your body to not be that boy that you were supposed to become? What does it feel like when you’re not being the man that you’re supposed to be, the person that you’re supposed to be?

00:53:48 Bret

What so many of us were taught about what it means to be a man, that facade is starting to be exposed for what it is. It’s not a deep, meaningful role. This facade of the tough guy, the superhero, the one man can do it all alone. I think a lot of people are confused about it because so many people are moving beyond that. And I think there’s a lot of men who are just like, what? Wait. That’s how I was conditioned to believe this is what a man is supposed to be. Where do we go from here? Because it’s clear things ain’t working.

00:54:35 Kevin

Something I’m taking away from this conversation is responsibility without blame. I like how you both sat on that. That we can hold ourselves responsible, we don’t have to do that… We don’t have to do that with violence. And that seems something that really seems to be close to my heart and has done for as long as I can remember in my life. So I will ask you both the same question. And it’s a question I ask all my guests. I’m going to change my question today. If you.. Maybe you did have an answer prepped. If you had the ear of men, if you had the ear of men, what would you whisper into the ear of men?

00:55:16 Bret

I think I would say, hey, it’s okay. You’re not alone. You don’t have to do this alone. Things can be better.

00:55:29 Kevin

Thank you, Bret.

00:55:30 Rosemary

Joe.

00:55:31 Joe

Yeah. There’s so much more to you than this. Like, you’re a bit miserable, aren’t you? And do you want to have more fun? Do you want to have more sex? Do you want to play more games? Do you want to have some joy? You don’t have to stay behind that wall. Here. Here’s a guidebook to coming out from behind the wall. You don’t need to do this by yourself. I know it’s. I know it’s hard, but it’s hard for lots of us, not just you. So let’s do this. And it will take as long as it takes, so no rush.

00:56:10 J’aime

If I may, if you had the ear of all women, what would you whisper? Would it change? I’m just curious, each of you.

00:56:24 Kevin

Kevin, I would say. Christ the night, love. I am so fucking sorry. Can we start again?

00:56:35 Bret

Yeah, I think I would say I see you. I know a little bit about what it’s like to be in the world that we’ve created, and we’re trying to do better.

00:56:52 Kevin

I’d also ask her if she was single. Just joking.

00:56:55 Joe

Cut that bit out. You’ve had to put up with so much shit, and this has not been fair at all. And we’re going to do our best to change this as quickly as possible. It might take some time, but we really want it to be different.

00:57:18 Bret

Yeah. And, oh, I also want to add. We’re ready to follow your lead. We’re not going to solve like we can’t solve. If we would have been able to solve this, we. It would have been solved like, we need you up here at the front. We need to fall back. It’s time for women to be elevated and valued. What can I do to elevate you? What can I do to honor you so that. Yeah, that’s what I would say. Get up front. We’re going to learn. We’re going to listen.

00:57:45 Kevin

Thank you, Bret. Thank you, Joe. Shall we land our conversation?

00:57:50 Joe

No.

00:57:50 Kevin

Yeah, I know.Quite often we just get warmed up and get into the free flow of the conversation, and it’s time to end. Hey, maybe we’ll have you back on the show really soon and maybe we’ll come back and. 

Kevin: Oh, man, I’ve really enjoyed that. It is so true. We were just getting started at the back end of that show, and I think as a team, we all feel that we really are just getting started. We are starting to settle into a rhythm, a flow of this show, and we would love to ask for your help.

00:58:26 J’aime

Yes, you guys, the key metric actually is even easier than rating or reviewing. Listen, all you have to do right now, if you have not done it already, is look at whatever you’re listening to this through and just go to the Home of where the gifts of trauma lives. Whether you’re an Apple, podcasts, Spotify and subscribe or follow the show, this will do so much for us to get these stories out to more people and for us to grow our Compassionate Inquiry community.

00:59:00 Kevin

And J’aime, I think it’s really important to mention that the feedback that I get from people and as much as my ego loves that, you know, I know it’s not about me. It’s about what people hear and how helpful it has been to them in whatever journey they are on. So by inviting our friends and colleagues and community to subscribe and like and share on the platform they’re on, we’re really supporting each other, we’re helping each other. So we really ask you from the bottom of our hearts. I’m being serious now. You’ve got serious Kevin and not playful Kevin. We would really like it if you would help us support each other by liking, sharing and subscribing.

00:59:41 Rosemary

Yes. Thank you so much, Kevin. And our intention really is to be a gift to the world. Let’s expand the reach of this podcast to people who otherwise wouldn’t find it. Who in today’s chaotic and tumultuous world need to spend an hour with something that regulates them, that inspires them, that clarifies something for them.

Oh, I understand that. I’ve experienced that too. So many people relate to what our podcasts cover, what our guests and if we can spend an hour with someone helping them make their world make a little more sense, then our journey is. What is our journey?

01:00:21 Sat Dharam

We’re arriving at our destination every time it lands with one person and they realize they’re not alone in the thing. We are arriving to our community. I feel. Thank you for being here. You are part of our community and we love you and are so grateful that you are choosing to spend your time and your energy with us right now. And we look forward to serving you over the years.

01:00:48 Kevin

As ever, I’m going to do some CI work, even on a Sunday. What day is it today? Saturday.

01:00:53 J’aime

Saturday. Take care.

01:00:54 Kevin

Much love. Ciao.

01:00:55 Rosemary

Much love.

Bye bye.

01:01:02 Kevin

Your journey with Compassionate Inquiry matters. Your work in the world matters. If you have a story to share about bringing compassionate inquiry into the world, we’d like to amplify your voice. Spotlight episodes are full length Gifts of Trauma podcast interviews offered exclusively to CI community members. You’ll not only share your story with 55,000 healing professionals across all platforms, you’ll receive a pre interview strategy session plus three promotional video clips. We’re offering only 10 Spotlight episodes per year, and production realities require a financial contribution. Follow the links in the show notes to access full details and express your interest.

01:01:50 Rosemary

The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma healing, transformation, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. 

Please note this podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for personal therapy or a DIY formula for self therapy.