(00:03) [Music] I’m Dr Kelly Brogan you may know me as a New York Times bestselling author of a book with an exploding pill on the cover Renegade psychiatrist pul dancer or honorary member of the disinformation Dozen what can I say I’m a born provocator I’ve spent most of my recent life exposing deceptions connecting dots and discovering the secret places my her victim is still waiting to be liberated and now I feel called to help you reclaim all of your parts your health your sexuality your power and your expression so that you can finally truly
(00:43) own yourself I want to ignite in you that inner knowing and the pulsing Vitality that lives beneath your disempowerment disconnection and resentment so that you can audaciously courageously and playfully alchemize your struggle into the specific pleasure of Who You Are this is Reclamation radio a soulfire production hi and welcome back to Reclamation radio I am Dr Kelly Brogan and I am here so honored and excited and delighted to be in conversation with the one and only Teel Swan so I have made an effort in this podcast to Showcase many
(01:25) of my nerdy colleagues who you know are studying in a Dusty corner and I am interested in making sure that they have the microphone this is a different experience because I guarantee that everybody listening knows exactly who you are and I imagine has consumed many many hundreds of hours of your incredible material and so I really hope that this can be a conversation between two women who have come to very similar perspectives on the subject of mental health if we can use that very reductionistic phrase and really just to
(02:03) contribute this to the collective that there is a growing field of awareness around the nature of mental health why the concept of mental illness probably should be left in the files of history and where where we should go you know moving moving forward so I wanted to just relay a funny intro teal because I only came upon your work I don’t know maybe three and a half years ago or so I know you’ve been at this for a minute and when I did I shared a video of yours that was super resonant I just felt like such Kindred energy listening
(02:42) to you and I shared it with somebody in my life and that person said oh no no no she runs a cult right and so I come from the the sort of truther world where there is a lot of fetishizing about how evil you know sort of satanic practi iers are and there’s a lot of sort of like no don’t go there energy right and I’ve I’ve spent a lot of my recent career exposing the shadow of activism my my own activism included and and so it could have meant something to me right like oh no she runs a cult and instead I felt like even more interested
(03:19) like I felt like even more intrigued because I myself have been accused many many times over of the very same thing and somehow that was the validation that I needed to dive in and I have since enjoyed I mean I don’t even know your your content is an extraordinary Library it’s a gift really and I’ve been to your synchronization event here in Miami and have just really I just smile every time you speak so it’s really really an honor to be here with you and I there’s so many subjects that we could speak about
(03:51) you know manwoman Dynamics and so many nuances of you know what is happening in this moment for the collective I would like to really Focus Us in however on this subject of psychology Psychiatry and mostly because it just feels good for me to have you in my corner and it might feel similarly for you and to really unpack you know what it is that you have come to understand about the nature of what it is that people struggle with when we call it an illness of that degree so thank you for being here it’s good to be here yeah thank you
(04:30) amazing so I want to start teal by just zooming out a bit because I know that you have developed many insights and that they have of course as they do grown from experiences that offered you contrast shall we say yeah and there was earlier in your experience as a public figure there was a moment where it seems like it became a very important point of advocacy for you to begin to speak on behalf of those who have been psychiatrically labeled I would say captured by the guild and I wonder if we could unpack just what that
(05:13) was like for you why does this subject even matter and I know for me I’ll say that I have examined my own process and I have gotten in touch with the part of me that believes myself to be crazy and so it makes a lot of sense that I created the conditions for me to be on the side of the crazy desk that points the finger right so to be the psychiatrist rather than ever you know sort of finding myself in the patient role and that’s not something that was available to me years ago however I do think that there’s truth in it and why
(05:47) many of us are called to explore the nature of you know emotional cognitive and behavioral well-being is because of our own you know the ways that we we touch in the limal spaces of of our own let’s say speak for myself stability and sense of inner coherence so I wonder where and how that became a point of focus for you where and how it became a focus to call out the mental health field yeah and I you know what I felt for you is the advocacy for people who’ve been otherwise impacted by it right so yes there is a g you know and
(06:21) I’m I’m very interested in this myself and have been but there is a sort of like this is what’s wrong with the system but it comes from it seems to me from a place of wanting to like I would use the word gatekeep but gatekeep for those folks who might otherwise find themselves wandering the Halls disoriented and potentially abused you know if we want to look at it that way well I think what’s scary about my story is that it comes from two distinct places the first is definitely a personal experience within the mental
(06:50) health profession and the second is when I have just watched The Slaughterhouse quite frankly that is the entire mainstream modern health and mental health and wellness industry so I’m coming at it from this very activist side seeing people get damaged and also having been damaged myself it’s both so let’s go you want to go personal first sure so when I was younger I was unfortunately targeted by a really I’m talking really unwell individual and I became a like full-blown victim of ritual trauma in my childhood as a
(07:30) result of this association with this man of course the sort of preceding factor for me being able to get on the radar of this person was growing up in a dysfunctional family Dynamic so there was a lot of stuff that was happening that was not not going good right naturally when I started to show symptoms from both what was happening in the house and also what was happening within the the context of the abuse situation that I was in everybody got it wrong literally everyone so here I am basically as a child being intentionally
(08:03) programmed to not tell people what was going on with me walked through elaborate scenarios as to what would happen with my parents with my pets if I was to say anything and as a child I think it’s very hard for people to understand what that’s like because we relate to the world as an adult for example as an adult we relate to police officers as public sort of Servants of some kind we know that if we call these people it’s not going to be a bad thing for us it’s going to be a good thing for us if we’re in trouble that is not the
(08:34) relationship that a child has to the police so a parent an adult can form whatever relationship or Association that a child needs to have with that at their discretion so if cops are now the dangerous people who are going to get you in trouble that’s the one that be avoided right so you can mess with a kid to the degree that they never will speak about what is going on with them and yet you see all the symptomology so I’m exhibiting all the symptomology both with my parents you know and at my school and so you know what happens with
(09:02) a kid who’s exhibiting all this symptomology we immediately throw them into the mental health field we this kid needs help this kid needs a psychologist oh that psychologist doesn’t work we need another psychologist oh that psychologist doesn’t work let’s try a child psychiatrist like my childhood was a slideshow a tour of the mental health industry and it was such a failure I don’t have words it’s marred my whole family it’s not just me that it damaged it also damaged my parents who you know missed everything reframed everything
(09:35) took me to people who could not conceptualize of well maybe we should extend the idea of who may be abusing her Beyond just Mom and Dad so it was one of those things where you know even the people who did catch wind wait a minute every single sign we’re seeing in this kid is a sign of abuse it was like they would finger in on my parents and then they would yank me out of therapy and then they’d put me with somebody else who was willing to come up with a different explanation so what happened is by the time I
(10:02) reached 19 years old and finally run away from the abusive situation that I was caught in I had like over 20 diagnosis each time they gave me a new medication of which I was on so many it was ridiculous they had to give me a new diagnosis none of them agreed sometimes they’d be sprinkled in the same but you know this one says skitso effective this one says bipolar this one says borderline this one says you know it was just you’re sort of sitting there going you guys don’t know what the hell you’re doing do you and what was really lucky
(10:32) is we ended up with a child psychiatrist actually one of the leading child psychiatrists in the nation my mom takes me to him he takes me into the room and I ended up kind of poking at him a little bit which I used to love to do because I wasn’t at the point then where I was working with therapists I was I hated them so it was really annoying to me especially with all the abilities that I had when I was younger to be able to sit in a room with somebody and See Clearly all these shadows and yet that person sitting here sort of making a
(11:04) judgment of what’s going on with me and they’re wrong okay so I started poking at him with his life things that I shouldn’t have been able to know it was with his relationship with his son so he walks out of the room walks in with my mom and says listen your daughter just basically brought some stuff up she can’t know about my son was severely severely bullied to the point where he’s in the hospital today I don’t know how she knows this stuff this is beyond what any of us understand I think she’s got a lot of gifts nobody knows what’s going
(11:33) on in this field is the reality this is a study and that’s what most people don’t want to hear so he said basically we have a choice today the choice is I start with the letter a and I start with the class of drugs that I am aware of that start with the letter a and we go down the list and just try her out on it but I don’t think that’s the way to go with this child so you know it took how many of these professionals before we get to the one who’s like listen this is not a text but case and even with those cases we don’t even know what the hell
(12:02) is going on and almost admitting that the frustration for a lot of very good people in in the field is oh my gosh we don’t know you know and therefore the prognosis for people’s very poor it’s terrible when you when you go to somebody it’s not like when you go to the ER it’s not like you go in there with a broken bone and they’re like oh we know how to set bones now this is a wild experimentation yeah impressionistic yeah yeah I was damaged I was deeply damaged by that experience you know there just fragments of
(12:35) memories of me you know taking things like Abilify and being doubled over on the floor throwing up blood just horrible experiences of telling people you know almost like flirting with certain therapists about some of the stuff that was going on with me and them immediately saying oh I’ve already decided that stuff can’t happen it’s get so effective so obviously I reached this point getting out of it where I’m still engaging in therapy right it’s not like I’ve written off the entire psychology field like I have a therapist even now
(13:05) why because I’m under so much stress in my career I need somebody to hold space for what I don’t see but oh I got out of this and got even more disappointed because you know when I got out of this I had complex postraumatic Stress Disorder so severely with dissociative identity issues so severely that I was having dissociative seizures and just panic attacks left and right and all this classic stuff right so I I go into therapy and the standard attitude was there’s nothing you can do about this teal the kind of stuff that happened to
(13:35) you happened at such an early age your brain is actually formed differently and we can do nothing about that so you’re basically looking at this being the rest of your life and so I you know it was very much this thing of like these guys don’t know what the hell they’re doing if I’m going to want to heal I’m gonna have to figure this out myself so that’s the one part this gets me obviously off into this huge career which I’ve now built for myself which is just beyond passion for me diving as deep as I can into breaking all this down
(14:03) understanding these things from different angles listening to what standard you know the standard psychology field understands but also being like that’s crap that one’s crap where the hell did you get that from guys so it’s like I’m trying to weave a tapestry for people which is more effective and what I’m hoping for is is actually active participation not not a shutdown you know I’m not here to basically take the entire mental health industry and be like you guys are worth nothing get out of the space I’m saying
(14:33) look if we’re both on the same team of wanting people desperately wanting people to be able to get past the suffering that they’re going through you need to be open to Alternative opinions and perspectives because sometimes the most brilliant ideas don’t come from inside a field yeah there’s a little bit though right of that expression it’s not broken it was it was built that way this may be conspiracy theorist in me speaking you know but I I appreciate how much you also see the world through the lens of victim Consciousness right and
(15:03) if you look at the allopathic system it’s diagnoses I mean especially in Psychiatry where there are no objective measures no valid instruments it’s all basically a cosmo magazine quiz you know that somebody is filling in the bubbles and picking out of the 500 page and ever expanding dictionary if you look at how it is designed it’s really designed maybe not intentionally maybe not consciously to render the patient dependent and helpless and Powerless and it like kind of doesn’t work otherwise like I say it’s like going to the
(15:33) butcher for a vegan meal it’s like you can’t have Sovereign Consciousness inside of that system and so I think that’s part of why I wonder if you would agree like the integrative model is like a bit of greenwashed allopathy you know it’s it’s why you can put your fish oils and your therapy and a little EMDR with your Abilify but is that really getting at the core wound which is a reification of the I am broken something is wrong with me I am damaged worthless unlovable you know that is reified every time somebody looks at a prescription bottle
(16:08) with their name on it right so you did in many ways like you know shift your focus and decide I’m going to I mean this is what it looks like I’m going to empower people who would otherwise be disempowered I’m going to help people understand why it is that there’s nothing wrong with them that’s what I hear any anyway in a lot of your teaching and maybe it’s it’s because that’s what I believe too you know is the good news and the bad news is there’s actually nothing wrong with you so so kind of now what how do you
(16:39) understand what you are experiencing as an adaptation you know as a wise response like there’s an uncomfortable responsibility that comes with that right well I mean it makes me happy that that’s what you’re taking away from it because it was definitely not necessarily my intention my intention was almost more scientific than that it was literally looking at what is happening realizing that what is happening is not what is happening that they don’t even recognize that and being like this isn’t the answer then I mean I
(17:05) would love for it to be like more sort of mushy emotionally than that but it really wasn’t it was literally like you got I don’t even know how you can look at this and not get this how it seems so dumb you know you’re seeing my real passion herapy on this one do you think there’s like parent child Dynamics because I have looked through the lens of like parentification of these authorities whether it’s medicine or you know educational system or the government or whatever and how adult patients can derive a great sense
(17:37) of validation from being in that submissive inferior role of the compliant patient like it does work oh yes it does yeah of course I have definitely recognized those it’s the transference basically onto the authority figure in the room which is that person who’s now instead of what your parents did now is going to be the person that comes in and you know helps you and does support you and takes over and leads and all of those missing needs you had from childhood now everybody who is has been a therapist is going to hear
(18:08) this and be like oh my God it’s so exhausting because even that comes with the oh by the way you can’t have that parent figure projected on you that also having the projection of the negative aspects of Mommy and Daddy so you quite quickly get into those with your client as well but let’s also not leave out the fact that a lot of therapists love the hell out of this Superior position that is the only way that many of them feel safe actually in social situations I can’t tell you how many therapists I’ve run across where you get them into a
(18:35) social situation and they’re absolutely unable to have a relationship the only context in which they’re able to have a relationship is this top down therapist patient Dynamic where they are loving the power that they have and they are expecting absolute obedience and you know they’re definitely going to not see you as a a you know person with personal power so it’s like there’s a lot of these ill kind of relationship dynamics that play out in the therapy sphere to such a severe degree it is it’s scary because it’s like you’re constantly
(19:06) navigating a Minefield you know the people who are not good at navigating that Minefield just step right on the landmines and don’t even really see the damage they’re doing and the the therapists who are really good see that it’s a a mine field and their their entire existence in their field it’s just who I got to make sure my Shadows don’t get in the way I got to make sure that they’re doing like they’re getting their healing experience but I’m not making them dependent and yeah it’s definitely a difficult space the need
(19:32) meeting is something that I can speak to personally I mean there were so many needs that were met for me as you know a prescribing MD that were a covert part of the arrangement right that were never actually explicitly expressed and so that’s why I wonder about this idea of being like a match for certain experiences I do believe that the AL apathic system has all of the trappings of a hierarchical like abusive dynamic right the gaslighting the you know imposed first of all like let’s not even get into things like Gynecology or
(20:05) ritualized body penetration all this stuff right so you can just stick to Psychiatry and see that there are all of the elements of you know if you want to call it like a narcissistic codependent Dynamic if you don’t want to use those words which sometimes I struggle to find better ones you can see like all the trappings are there so is it possible right because I I went through 10 years as an angry activist thinking that I needed to also my own superiority right and like inflated rescuer complex I needed to save all these women right
(20:35) from the abusive system and then I reflected on like well I was a match to that system prescribing you know to pregnant and breastfeeding women and and all the rest and then I shifted right so what is it to be like a so-called match to abusive Dynamics like is there a victim in that situation right or is it the fact that there are as Twisted as it might sound needs being met even within this simulacrum of you know somebody’s childhood abuse that is now institutionalized right so I sometimes I’ve seen some of my former patients who
(21:11) are emancipated from the system I have seen them get stuck sometimes in the anger and the pain of identifying you know this this big enemy this parentified enemy on the outside so I I like to consider possibilities that it’s all by Design and it’s all in service and that we are a matched to that system we don’t get captured by it and you know oppressed by it also because I’ve I’ve been it so I know I’m the same person I’m not a better person now than I was then I just maybe have a bit more awareness so I wonder what you think
(21:43) about like being sort of a match to the the Dynamics of the system itself I don’t think that being a match to the Dynamics itself takes the concept of being able to be victimized off the table we’re looking for something that’s a lot more gray area I do you know when people talk about victimization and victim Consciousness and things like that it makes me very very nervous because there is such a thing as true victimhood it doesn’t matter whether at a higher level we become a matched to something for a certain reason or
(22:11) because our specific patterns feed into something that awareness just helps us to get out of the powerlessness that we’re experiencing in a certain situation do I feel like it’s really beneficial for us to see these abusive Dynamics like one would when they’re looking through a victim lens in certain institutions yes I do does that then mean these are the bad guys that blank blank blank no it’s the meaning that we add to that awareness that is the problem it’s what we do with an abuser that is the problem also because and
(22:42) like the that’s why I sort of started this off with my attitude is not that I want to just like take this entire industry and rip it to the ground there is reasons why they ended up doing the things they’re doing there’s there’s reasons why every person who fits into the categories of what I’m describing is engaging this type of behavior with their clients and the way to address that is not to you know rip their license away and then put them in jail or you know burn up the building that they have their practice
(23:09) in it’s I I see this much more almost like accommodative way of going about trying to understand them and creating ways where there can be a mutual exchange I would like this to be a win-win instead of a zerm unless it can’t be if you know what I mean so yeah unless it’s an evolution right like unless the obsolescence of that model is just an organic process as we begin to meet our needs in different ways but I hear you and and I think that’s super helpful that that Paradox of like yes there is an experience of victimhood I
(23:44) I’ve been accused of of victim shaming people before so I think sometimes my shadow is that I can have an insensitivity to what it feels like to make the meaning out of uh a situation too soon right or before the acknowledgement of the actual emotional experience and its imprints you know takes place so I appreciate that I want to shift to how you have conceptualized you know the struggles right so so whether you mentioned and we’ll use these terms descriptively because that’s what they are rather than diagnostically
(24:21) they do represent patterns and that’s one thing that I’ve certainly taken from my conventional training is that patterns are real they are real they’re observable phenomena and connecting dots does help us to make meaning out of suffering and that helps to resolve right a lot of the powerlessness that we’re discussing so you know patterns like panic attacks or Mania or psychotic symptoms patterns like impulsivity or in atttention that these you know phenomenological experiences that maybe even our our forms that exist already
(24:55) that people sort of like tap into I have understood a lot about what you imagined to be the origins of some of these patterns and I completely resonate so I’d love you know for you to to sort of zoom out on how it is that we we get caught in these patterns that induce a lot of suffering you know not always right I’ve been told Mania is is certainly not certainly not a bad couple of weeks sometimes it’s the the transition out of it that is you know and the experience the reason that this psychiatric industry exists is because
(25:31) there is an ego distonic you know dynamic it feels bad to be locked in this pattern of experience so what do you think is behind that generally behind behind the so let’s call it quote unquote mental illness okay okay what drives mental illness is trauma like it’s literally as simple as that people need it’s not it’s not about what is wrong with you it’s what happened to you and that is the story that most people do not want to swallow yeah especially yeah when the chemical imbalance Theory right and and this
(26:05) concept that it’s in your biology I’m sick of this crap so penetrant yeah I’m sick of this crap is what it is there was a meme that came out maybe a month ago is the first time I saw that I absolutely adore it it’s this cartoon of a little baby koala who was clutching to the bottom of a tree that’s been cut in half and there’s nothing surrounding this tree that’s been cut in half but other trees that are cut in half and it’s sitting there traumatized and shivering and there’s two people with a clipboard of course psychiatrist
(26:34) psychologist types right who are writing down there’s something really wrong with this koala no there’s not because he’s responding exactly as you would expect somebody to respond had they gone through that life experience so this this is the first thing that started to bother me and this is not just teal projecting Teal’s experience onto the mental health field I have found this to be the case without exception for every person that I have seen over the last 14 years being in this position we arrive at these adaptations which people call
(27:06) the symptomology involved with mental illness because of traumas that we have experienced now we need to take that concept of trauma and we need to blow it way up because when people hear that word most people like yeah but I never went through a trauma and I’m like oh come see me for one day let’s see if you have the same attitude afterwards why because most people they can only mentally quantify or understands where I live this idea of trauma within the context of something very severe something like well you know I don’t
(27:37) remember getting into a high-speed car accident at 70 miles an hour well I don’t remember somebody you know molesting me when I was eight so we’re looking for these big markers which for our minds that’s the only reason that somebody would be damaged is if that happens and I’m needing people to understand that trauma is simply distress without resolution that is it that means that when an infant has distress because they’re being weaned in a certain way that actually is trauma and believe it or not let’s just stay
(28:07) with the weaning theme if you have gone from this experience of warmth and all of a sudden your needs are just there whenever you need them to suddenly the thing I need is being deprived and so I’m developing this craving for it and I don’t I almost have this feeling of starvation in my being and that’s my new relationship to the world is oh my gosh when I need something it doesn’t come this kind of trauma can be at the root of all kinds of issues with abundance when a person is older just that so I’m not just talking about these things that
(28:36) we would classically called mental illness I’m talking trauma is the root of the discomfort and the issues that we’re having in general in our adult life it’s just that with mental illness we’re looking at this very specific grouping of behaviors which makes it functional Behavior quite difficult whatever we want to toine functional as right so things like I can’t go through the day without having so much anxiety that I can’t really you know interact with people socially for example okay so let’s go back to trauma trauma is the
(29:04) reason why we have these symptoms crop up that we have now lumped into these diagnosis but each one of these represents an adaptation or a reaction to an adaptation that we have made so let me explain how this works a little bit let’s say that you’ve got somebody who is cutting so let’s say you go into a therapist and you’ve got this person is cutting themselves and you know a lot of therapists are like oh well cutting definitely fits into the diagnosis of borderline so they’re like watching already for you know the other markers
(29:33) of borderline personality to kind of slap that label on them what people are not thinking about is the why Behind These behaviors why are they not thinking that way because there’s already an assumption that all of these behaviors that are causing a negative effect in a person are not benefiting them in some way that’s one of those moments remember I said where I’m just watching this stuff going how dumb can you be how dumb can you be literally because it becomes so obvious when you start to bring break it down that all of
(30:00) these behaviors that fall into the category of self-sabotage many of they’re Nots they’re not self-sabotaging they help the person in some way they’re an adaptation and they work very well in specific environments that may not be the specific environment that a person is in now it may be may not be you may not be able to get rid of it why because it may still be serving them but I I guarantee you if a person has that adaptation it’s because at a certain point it benefited them so let’s just look at cutting and I could of course
(30:28) make this more complex than I’m going to be able to make it to in sort of like a pitch like this but okay so cutting what does it do it enables people to see pain that the person can’t otherwise Express it’s a form of self-regulation why because you are creating an intense release of chemicals in the body that actually calm you down so obviously this maladaptive strategy is something we would look at and be like oh my gosh that person’s ill actually what they’re doing is is meeting a need right now that’s why they can’t let go of it
(30:56) because it meets a need and this goes all the way down to you know with anxiety you’ve got the hypervigilance that makes a lot of sense if I was going to take that person and drop them off in a dangerous environment this is a person who thinks everything is dangerous of course anxiety makes sense right so when we start to look at it this way where it’s an adaptation to a trauma all of a sudden it changes the way that we would the entire way that we would deal with it doesn’t it because now instead of being like Oh God they got a problem I
(31:22) gotta medicate them it’s like wait a minute cutting a serving a function let’s figure out what the function is based off a figuring out what the function is we can actually paint a picture of what went wrong here even if the person is currently suppressing memories which is an absolute reality if you want me to get into that fight okay um suppression of memories is an absolute reality the vast majority of people especially if they spent their childhood dissociated do not remember the things that happened to them okay
(31:46) but even if that is the case if a person is in a in the role of a therapist and they’re watching this whole dynamic between the adaptations that people have made and what that’s doing for a person it’s very easy to trace it back to be like well what might the trauma be then if a person is like doing this what they’re getting out of say cutting is something like you see my pain then it’s like all right instead of having a conversation around how do we stop the cutting sweetie we have a conversation around what pain needs to be seen
(32:14) genuinely you start to go down to the absolute root of the trauma that a person experienced and start to develop a a framework for what the healing of that pattern looks like it would blow your mind to see how fast people get through these things things were previously people would been like well that’s a lifelong diagnosis want a bet want a bet me of course I’ve been on a journey of maturing my inner masculine and feminine and I’ve needed all of the energetic support I can get I have been using one of my favorite resources which is lotus
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(33:14) com and use the code Kelly 15 for 15% off the link is in show notes for you I wonder if you have intuited or observe specific patterns of you know woundology unsa trauma with these specific patterns of diagnosis like I would say also because I’ve heard you talk about this I’m teeing you up but like Mania like how would Mania be adaptive how would depression be adaptive how would psychosis ever be adaptive right so I think that’s what some people might be thinking with these more quote unquote severe or extreme manifestations of
(33:51) different ways of living the human life can you sort of speak maybe to those specific examples well with with psychosis for example there is absolutely no pressure on the person themselves they literally have let themselves go completely there’s no pressure to stay in line and it’s not until you you know really go into the experience that somebody who’s in psychosis has but you have to do that to realize how much tension you have in your being to try to stay on track and stay in alignment and stay like with psychosis it’s gone the regulator has
(34:23) left the building yeah it’s there’s it’s there’s the feeling actually when you’re in it is almost like it’s what people sometimes flirt with wishing they could do where it’s like you literally have stripped yourself naked and you’ve thrown through the window and like who cares whether all the windows are broken and you’re like rolling around on the floor and like there is there’s it’s like a complete opposite of inhibition type of experience there and what you see when know before people go into this type of a a state is this the pressure
(34:54) is building building building building building building in their psyche so that’s one thing that that feeds into also with psychosis you get fantasy realities it doesn’t take a genius to see where fantasy could be an adaptation if the reality is so hard to accept that you can’t go there it’s actually why you know some people when they go down the shamanic path they actually end up in psychosis a lot of the reason why is because these deep healing techniques that cause people to look very deeply at the reality of what they went through
(35:25) sometimes a person just has such a hard time with the pressure of swallowing that that they just slip right into you know oh I can’t hold this I actually can’t hold this in my being and I can’t I can’t process this mentally and so sort of slipping into this fantasy reality feels a hundred times better right okay so that would be one example I’ve actually toyed with the idea of going into these sort of traditional diagnoses and breaking them down in this way of course the mental health industry is very uninterested in me doing this
(35:55) because you know they’re like unless you have a actual license then we are not going to allow you to even use these words if so we’re going to go after you for practicing therapy without a license so right now I’ve got the mainstream mental health field against me in this respect of course we run into the issue where if you go ahead and you do that and you get a license they take it away if you don’t say exactly what they want so you know okay so let’s go on to another one so manic depression is an entertaining one
(36:19) because you’ve got with that a a very specific split within the psyche now trauma creates fragmentation of the stream of Consciousness that is a a person now if you’re in the mainstream psychology world you’re going to think of this in terms of a person’s psyche splits within the psyche which is an absolute reality for all people doesn’t matter whether we’ve diagnosed them as multiple personality or not so with manic depression what you have is this drastic split between a part that is completely in despair about what
(36:48) something that they’re going through I see this a lot in families that are really put together really put together families where there’s a high emphasis on the way things look produce a hell of a lot of man depression why because when a when a child goes through something that really causes them immense amounts of pain they are expected to shut up stuff it up and behave in the way that they are you know needing to behave so what happens is they develop a split between the part of them that is desperate and in Despair and a part of
(37:15) them that is is adopting the essentially the like parental way of going about dealing with emotions which is a very avoidant way of dealing with emotions they essentially internalize that that’s an adaptive strategy they internalize the way of getting away from emotions and then that is the manic part that is trying desperately when they start to feel that despair creep up to drag them out of it in every way possible so this is an internal protector part that is like sirens Bells whistles let’s do anything we can to not feel that way oh
(37:49) my God you guys let’s go party for eight days in a row you know and then you can’t maintain this So eventually what will happen is the attempt to run away from and resist this gets so strong that it’s a and all of a sudden the the one that’s in despair takes over and you see this person just in a hole right but then they they never actually go all the way through what despair they have and what actual changes need to be made to their life based off of the despair that they’re in and so they just get right back into the
(38:18) cycle of how we deal with emotions in this family it’s just you’re watching that external Dynamic that was happening in the family internalized okay well that makes sense kind of great it does and you know it’s that concept that if you you know it’s the Apparently Krishna mury did not say this I just I’m finishing editing a book and I put this because I say it all the time and then one of my editors was like no he actually didn’t say this that it’s no sign of Health to be well adapted to a profoundly sick Society right this idea
(38:48) that there are individuals who we pathologize so the identified patients who are actually reflections of their systems and that it actually is functional for them until some moment where it’s not so I’ve interested myself a lot in that moment right so what H why did people end up you know in my field you know in my practice or doing my protocol like what was the moment where it stopped working sufficiently where they were seeking something else oh I could tell you that moment exactly I would love to hear your perspective on
(39:22) that yeah that moment happens when an adaptation that we made to something is now interfering with something else that we deeply want that we value yeah yeah I love that I love that and I think for many the answer would the desire the longing that yearning is to feel whole right like to feel connected to something that matters you know whether you call it God or Source or spirit I think that that is a it’s the soul like rattling the cage and I know that you are also somebody who has seen the power of Parts work you reference some of the
(39:57) terms you know that internal family systems used to understand this circus that we all are and I wonder you know what you think about the role of safety in this self- Reclamation restoration regeneration integration process because you know if these trauma adaptations are driving these behaviors and they rendered that individual safer at some point in their existence how do we create you know safety electively as adults how does that look you know what are some of the tools that you found to be effective well obviously that’s going
(40:35) to depend a lot on the specific circumstance that a person has gone through what their definition and experience of safety is why I’m saying this is that let’s say that somebody has a history where they’ve got all kinds of unsafety dynamics that are happening in like fancy locations this person is not going to feel safe in a fancy location so even down to designing or helping a person to design their environment in a way where they feel like they have control over that experience of safety is an important element of this whole
(41:02) thing but by far in a way the most important element of creating safety is what’s happening within the context of relationships so to develop safety in relationships is absolutely necessary for us because we are a relationally dependent species and another thing which most people don’t want to accept and I’m quite frankly so sick of this because in the mainstream mental health field there is an absolute obsession over Independence I’m talking an absolute Obsession now what I’m saying is that personal empowerment does not
(41:31) have to disinclude people right now we’re treating it like it does no it doesn’t and no not all your needs can be met by you sorry so basically relational dependence right is something that which we have to accept about ourselves if we’re ever going to create a safety for somebody and if we’re ever going to meet our needs as a species which we must do we have got to accommodate for our Humanity okay so relational dependence we are a relationally dependent species to a degree that most people are completely unwilling to swallow much
(42:01) more than other species and I find it interesting because human beings will look at herd species and we go oh my gosh it’s so terrible that that like that pack animal like that dog is stuck by itself inside of that little cage oh my gosh same thing with like deer or horses you know I love to have this conversation with people where I’m like okay so play this out with me do you think it makes sense to walk up to a deer in the middle of a herd and say sweetie you really need to work on Independence I think this is real
(42:30) dysfunctional that you rely on your herd so much we would never do that why because we have accepted that that is a herd species and yet we we make a deer look like nothing a deer comes out of the vaginal canal and is literally standing within a matter of minutes how long does it take before that adult deer can function completely on its own guess what watch a human you lay a baby out on the sidewalk and it is done for and we’re and we watch that that’s for years I mean we are so relationally dependent that our entire nervous system is wired
(43:04) into our safety being dependent on our relationships and this is not something that should change or does change when we suddenly reach some magic threshold where oh my gosh a person can reasonably walk from point A to point B without a person or can reasonably go try to find food okay no we are a relationally dependent species 10 times worse than what you see with dogs and with deer and with with horses and these types of animals okay so that means that the picture of human health must include relationships so when I’m focused on
(43:36) creating safety that’s the primary place that I’m looking at why not only because we are relationally dependent and absolutely need that for the sense of security and safety but also because if you look at the overall picture of human struggle on Earth what will depress you the fastest is the fact that the vast majority of our pain comes from each other that’s where the unsafety is it’s in relationships okay so then that means that what we need to do to create safety is to create safety within relationships
(44:06) how do we do that well first of all we get people to understand that it is absolutely not possible to play a zero sum game we’ve got to start caring about each other and in fact if we don’t start caring about and for each other we will suffer it is not possible in the closed system like life here on Earth to do damage to somebody else and to not experience the repercussions of having done so at the very least we should be able to see that if we create an unsafe or a painful situation for somebody they are forced to do none other than to go
(44:35) into protector personalities and if you would like a dangerous world just look at a world where everybody’s walking around in a protector personality it’s going to be a problem for us all so so we need to humans need to work on on building trust first and foremost trust is you can rely on me to act in your best interests I’m going to indicate to you that I’m a safe person because I care about your experience are we doing that in society no all we have to do is walk through TSA how many people get through TSA
(45:03) without on the other side you know so is like what we see here is we can practice this concept of creating safety in our primary relationships but blowing that out to a much more important level for us in this conversation today is we absolutely must change the way that we interact with ourselves within society and we have to change the structure of society to something that actually benefits human health we have to make the society one where people feel a sense of safety not a society where people have to armor up to deal with
(45:33) each other every day and unless we’re able to do that you’re G we’re just going to keep perpetuating this whole cycle of trauma and adaptations to trauma and then all of the negative effects that has and then having to unwind everybody from this and I’m you know what I’m really seeing is that where this is going to start is really in our relationship with our children that’s the foundation for this whole thing the way that they are interacting with us when they are children as their parents and caregivers the way that we
(46:00) are setting up schools for them why do I say that this is so important besides the fact that that is the foundation of life because those are the people that are going to design this society and you better believe that if we give them this experience where they understand what safety is they’re not going to create Society the same way they’re not going to have the tolerance for human pain that we have today I found as a mother of to teenage girls that the greatest offering right so I was very militant about holistic living and I am a
(46:31) believer that you can send biological signals of safety in fact I have a whole protocol that does that right so I I do believe in the relevance of like raising your children to be aware of all the toxicants in the world and all the things but what I unfortunately more recently recognized was the ways that I can confer safety to my girls is number one by acknowledging their reality right literally and can only happen if I have a regulated system right so like how how disregulated it would be to me to not impose my reality my perspectives my
(47:09) beliefs on their differing reality perspectives and beliefs it just wasn’t available to me because my system was was not regulated enough so I know that you offer could I call it a methodology an approach called the completion process which I would say is one of one of the way that internal right because if we do have responsibility relationally for bringing a regulated system to a dynamic how do we do that right so I know that I I think of something like the completion process as being one of the ways to do
(47:43) that so I wonder if you could speak a little bit about you know what that is and its intentions and where you think it’s best applying yeah so the completion process is is a process that I created ultimately to deal with these very undal with traumas therefore to undo the adaptations that we had to make as a result of those traumas so what I start with is the exact opposite presumption that the people in the mainstream medical mental health field have which is that triggers and flashbacks are a problem instead we
(48:17) start to work with them under the premise of the body doesn’t actually do anything against itself unless doing so per serves a purpose and therefore it’s not against itself so we start to look at Trigg and flashbacks as the very things that are trying to get your attention desperately to what is unresolved within you we work with those directly as almost like wormholes to bring a person back into what is unresolved and by doing so to learn what we need to learn from the unresolved experience to accept what we need to
(48:46) accept from that experience and to reverse the process of dissociation that occurs in trauma when we are choosing willingly to go through and re-experience something first of all it’s you can’t consider this retraumatization because a person’s going in by choice by definition that is not what has happened when somebody had that original event happen right even that changes the whole entire experience that a person has if it’s a choice for them to revisit an experience but a lot of the reason why we become stuck on
(49:15) these traumas is because in the moment of trauma we dissociated from the experience when we go back and we re-experience what we went through we are reversing that process of dissociation which is very profound especially when it comes to People’s Energy bodies of course this is taking people way out on a limb not necessarily staying within the context of the mainstream medical medical field but when we’re reversing this process of dissociation we’re bringing a person’s life force out of where they’re stuck in
(49:41) the past back into the now and this is very profound because most people who especially those that are highly traumatized are walking around with a 30% battery because the vast majority of their personal energy is actually in the past not in the now so once we have done that experiencing process where we gained all the information and all the experiencing that we needed from that that particular part of it this switches to an active visualization process we start to own our life again which pulls us out of the victimhood instead of
(50:11) being somebody for whom this just happened to we’re now an active participant in the resolution of what is unresolved so that involves a lot of need meeting that involves caretaking the child who is within the the traumatic scene right that involves resourcing things that may not have been available to you at the time a person gains so much awareness about themselves about why they do the things they do about what they desperately needed and currently need and so they’re meeting that need in this process we’re also
(50:43) creating separation and distance through several steps in this process between what they went through and where they are now to kind of lead them to the space of like wait a minute that’s not necessarily going on anymore I can have a different life experience and after this whole process takes place of resolution resolution resolution you get to this sensation of almost being complete with that specific trauma that you experienced once you have done that and the person comes out of it it’s like psychic surgery it’s not like a
(51:10) meditation I mean it’s is not a trait self-help technique it’s really intense but you come out of that and then you go on to figuring out the practical application for what it is that you just experienced and that practical application gives people a template for how to practically change their current life so that their current life is no longer a byproduct of that trauma and this can be painful sometimes it can be things like I need to leave this abusive relationship it’s not fun to leave in a relationship that’s not fun so it can be
(51:39) something like that right but it can also be something that is really fun something like wait a minute I got this issue with feeling deprived of food and what I really needed was to feel like I could actually be nourished and so now the step forward is every time I go to a restaurant I’m going to let myself get the thing on the menu I really want and instead of always picking the thing that’s $3 you know that’s a fun thing you know instead of being the person who dictates your whole life according to this self control that’s the ultimate
(52:06) byproduct of trauma around deprivation suddenly you’re like oh I can have it that does feel good you know so it totally depends on the specific trauma what a person ultimately decides to do with their life to change their life so it’s not such a byproduct of the things that they went through and is more in the direction of what their consci iously wanting to live and this is really what owning your life is about because a lot of times when we talk about personal responsibility it’s like it’s become a dirty word especially for
(52:36) people who have been truly harmed because the feeling of you know having somebody really do damage to your life I mean very deeply and then have people be like well it’s your responsibility to get out of it it’s just it’s like a level of pain where you’re you’re just ready to do yourself in honestly so what I want people to get is that you don’t even need to go down the road of I need to take person responsibility for what I went through you don’t actually you have every reason most people do who have been through trauma to lay on the bed
(53:02) and to give up it’s really about what do I okay I’ve got this life like yeah I could choose to end it but like I have this life I must be here for a reason what would I do honestly with my life if I really owned all of it and so processes like this and really biting down on committing to resolving the trauma that happened it’s not about whether it’s your responsibility or not it’s about the fact that ultimately you’re not going to be happy unless you really really own your life and that’s going to be really hard but it is going
(53:32) to be worth it it’s going to be better at least if what you’re doing is all right nobody was around to rescue me and yet here I am at Point a I would like to be at point B what is the first step that I can take that is at least empowerment empowerment is way better than where most people are today amen I know you’re also focused recently on what I would call like Legacy burdens lineage level ancestral issues and the balance of you know the it didn’t start with you Phenomenon with that personal responsibility for the narration if
(54:08) nothing else of your experience it’s hard I’m very passionate about family consolation in fact I just got off a training call and it’s where those things meet right like what your ancestors gave you your loyalty you know to those lines and also but as you say what are you going to do with it now it’s this intersection is very sacred so I wonder if you could share a bit about what you’re up to yeah my passion I have so many passions this is me all the time oh that’s my favorite oh no that’s my favorite you’re not a double Gemini are
(54:41) you because that’s my excuse I am so much Gemini it’s nuts okay so ancestral trauma is an absolute passion for me I have just become obsessed with this whole thing because it makes life so rich the understanding of all of this does you know the story of you started so long before your individual existence and if the the sort of picture of that when you get down to the minutia of it makes it so that you understand that the amount of energy that went into the making of you in this universe is so extreme there is no way to feel
(55:13) insignificant within that picture it’s not possible it’s like an orchestration on a level that you cannot imagine so yeah I’m I’m very passionate about this obviously ancestral trauma you’re suffering from it no matter what actually the the vast majority of the traumas that you yourself experienced we could call ancestral trauma why because it was your interactions with your parents which why are they it that way because of their interactions with their parents so we are all of us dealing with ancestral trauma whether we are going to
(55:38) call it that or not I just feel like the awareness of these patterns having not started with you or even mom and dad or even you know Grandma and Grandpa is this very juicy type of experience because it makes it a lot less personal I feel like when it becomes less person Al like that it’s actually easier to sort of step up and be like wait a minute I’m just a small picture of this whole dynamic here which has been going forever and that makes it actually easier for me to step up into the place that I want to take within
(56:10) this family line like this is a disease at this point do I want it to keep running through this line straight down to my children and the their kids kid no I don’t want to do that so now it’s almost like you’re you’re not just doing it for you you’re almost like doing a favor to your entire family line and what’s interesting about this is that most people get really stuck on their family line being just about the people that they knew in their lifetime but your family line is so much more Dynamic than that you know there may have been a
(56:37) third grade grandparent that you loved that would have adored you so if you are aware of that you should not necessarily Define your whole family line by those very specific and limited individuals which you had interactions with in your life it becomes more compelling to step up on behalf of your whole line you know and for a lot of people who who have had a lot of pain with people in their lives specifically because here I am specializing in the super trauma situations it’s quite powerful and important when you connect to somebody
(57:06) in your family line rather than Feeling Just abused by them totally disconnected from them like you don’t belong with them the picture of piecing together yourself within this bigger story of your family line it changes your identity for the better it definitely does I’ve watched to empower people immensely not only that a big part of ancestral healing is not just about identifying these negative patterns that are running through a family line and changing them or these negative ancestral loyalties and changing them a
(57:32) big part of it is owning these positive attributes which are running through every single family line without exception it’s tempting for people because of black and white thinking and not really liking cognitive dissonance to be like oh my family’s all amazing or all crappy no guess what you start to piece out the story of your family line and you are going to be horrified and amazed but like part of it is is to see those amazing elements and to realize you know what I may be working on a lot of stuff here that’s really difficult maybe more
(58:00) difficult than some of the people that I know in my life however look at this stuff I don’t even have to work on thanks you know yeah coming into your ancestral pow is is a very profound thing for people also and I that’s something that I think that can be very easily and would incorporated into this picture of overall therapy whether people are doing it in the traditional therapy setting or not because it’s so important to reflect to people the things that are about them not just what is ill so this illness
(58:29) model of like well you’ve got all these things wrong let’s work on what’s wrong with you we can’t have that as the full picture of how to heal from something there also needs to be this other piece which is like do you understand how amazing you are at this I don’t know if anybody’s ever reflected this to you but like you don’t need to work on this at all unlike so many people so here’s your nugget you know we’re almost like building up a person’s self-awareness and that’s going to include these aspects which are really not benefiting
(58:54) us very much right now which we can work on and these asp which absolutely are and we need to lean into and on absolutely and also the appreciation of you know that that Alchemy historically right so how our ancestors have turned you know into gold yeah so that we can you know carry that in our pockets and and to remember that that’s the nature of you know the the experiences that befall us you know or feel like adversity or challenges and I couldn’t agree more we’ll have in show notes what you’re up to and what you’re offering
(59:24) with regard to you know the these points of of focus and you know I’m just sitting here thinking I observed early in my career that those who are captured by the psychiatric system are the canaries in the coal mine are oh yeah rightly sensitive to you know what is very wrong about how we are yeah and I just see you as such a living example of that such an affirmation of my perspective because of what you have you know alchemized in your experience and process and I bet you would on some level look back and say I guess it had to be exactly that
(1:00:04) way you know in order for me to be this extraordinary light and even if there are Parts you would edit right it’s like what would have changed though if you did edit and the dominoes fell differently so I like to really you know turn on its head this idea as you do that there is pathology and people who are not well adapted right to to what we have going on and to change the story in the ways that you are contributing to I’m super grateful that I consider you an incredible Ally whether you know that or not and just grateful you know that
(1:00:36) your perspectives are out there that you are compelled I know the feeling to share them maybe even despite yourself and sometimes when you wish you know you weren’t beholden in ways to to the microphone I’m glad that you walk up to it and I’m just tempted T to ask one totally unrelated question before we close because I really wanted and you know perhaps one day I will have you on again to speak more to this subject because I know there’s a lot to say yeah I am very interested in this concept of safety that we’ve been talking about and
(1:01:10) I have been focusing on how it is that we can learn as women to generate safety in our own systems I call that I have teachers who think it’s annoying when I do this but whatever I call that the inner masculine and also Translating that to relationship ship with men that that women have with men not just romantically but because we walk the earth with men as women and this concept of the Zero Sum game that feminism has offered us on a platter and I know you have a lot of opinions about this but I wonder I wonder if you could leave us
(1:01:45) because I see these as topics as very related and I don’t know a lot of other people who are connecting dots you know across Health Reclamation to what I would call feminine Reclamation you know other other than you maybe a handful of others so I I wonder if you could speak just very briefly teaser about the subject of the Zero Sum game of feminism and how you think it’s relevant to this whole concept of you know a safer World a safer experience for women in the modern moment also because of this relational concept because if we are to
(1:02:19) master relationships as you say you know how does that implicate feminist ideologies in you know a lot of the ways that we have failed to explore healthy relationships to understand this picture we have to go back to the feminist movement itself and the origins of that are nested in very painful experiences in a world that was made for men by men and there was really no option to gain empowerment except for the masculine way so what we have as the major shadow of the feminist movement is this movement which on the surface per professes
(1:02:56) female empowerment but in fact is nothing more than we can be men too and we have killed our feminine Essence this way and set ourselves up because we can point to things that are beneficial about obviously what we went through anybody who doubts what the feminist movement did should just go live in the 1950s again and you know experience what it is to not be able to get out of abuse of relationship because you’re legitimately stuck you can’t even get get a credit card so we can point to these positive that came but here’s the
(1:03:27) major shadow that we’re all living in is that when women went and became men they cut off their powerful femininity and we made femininity wrong bad and weak not only that we killed our bodies not only that we’ve Now set ourselves up so that we’re doing everything so now a lot of women are having this crisis of like what the hell are these people here for if I’m doing everything I’m doing the house I’m doing the kids still I’ve got this full-time job like why are you here and they’re the perpetrators violators
(1:04:00) abusers they represent that right so it’s almost even worse yeah so now now this has become it’s been interesting because it’s it was supposed to be Pro women but it’s turned into women being anti-woman actually becoming men and then hating men and now we don’t want there to be men and now it’s time for women to be in power and yet it’s not women that’s in power it’s it’s men with female bodies in power because that’s how they’re making themselves act right so what we are needing very very powerfully is for for women to
(1:04:31) understand that they are a different element like as a woman and a man you are two different elements I don’t want us to get into this conversation as genders as to which gender is got to be in power or is better or blah like we need to drop this off the table which is why I want people to think in terms of elements because we’re not sitting here having debates all day about whether water or fire is better or worse or whatever we’re literally like wait a minute these are super necessary in the overall picture of life on Earth and
(1:04:58) they do very different things and they offer very different qualities and resources so for for women it’s like it’s very important for them to get in touch with that Essence that is female and to bring that out into the world which is a very powerful force you know things like wisdom that’s a female trait for example if so just think about just wisdom if we brought wisdom out into the world then and we LED with that foot rather than say competition which is a male trait by the way I’m saying this loving competition myself so if we’re
(1:05:34) going to bring out wisdom versus competition it means that we’re kind of doing different things than the other person would be doing and that that in of itself is going to restore a hell of a lot of the quote balance which we have been looking for especially in our bodies which we’re headed towards a a fertility crisis and a women’s physical body Health crisis unlike anything we’ve ever seen before so it’s NE necessary super super necessary couldn’t agree more thank you teal thank you this has been super fulfilling and validating and
(1:06:04) affirming and I am grateful for and and to you so thank you so so so much thank you so much
