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Show up as your more healed self.
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Let people see how you walk and move as a more healed version of yourself.
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Let them see how you re modeling, how you show up differently, and how you no longer feed the cycles.
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You break them.
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Welcome to the School of Greatness.
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My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
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And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
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Thanks for spending some time with me today.
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Now let the class begin.
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First thing I want to ask you is about healing trauma without medication and without medicine.
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Because I think a lot of people, when they think about trauma, especially emotional or mental health trauma, they think about, well, I m broken and I need some medication to fix me, to heal me.
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And I love the work that you do because you really break down these different types of strategies on healing trauma without medicine or medication.
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Can you share a few of these key ways to do this if people are just getting started and they feel a sense of overwhelmed stress and trauma in their body?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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You know, whenever we re talking about trauma, it s going to be critical for us to first start with the body.
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So the very first place where we need to go to is our nervous system, because that s where trauma is primarily situated.
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So when we do any of the practices that are gonna help settle our nervous system and help us feel more grounded, that s already gonna be the best start that we have toward healing trauma.
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Then we can actually get into the digging work, what happened to you, what happened before you, what happened around you, what happened that actually left an imprint in your soul that made it so that you experienced this tenderness that we call trauma.
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Really?
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Yeah.
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So we should be thinking about body and the nervous system first,
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what happened to you at seven years old?
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What did your parents say to you that hurt you?
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We shouldn t be asking those questions first.
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That s correct.
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Whenever we re actually approaching a therapy session, typically you sit down and the therapist asks you, well, what happened?
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Tell me why you re here.
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And so you start spewing your entire story.
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But very often, people actually feel traumatized or re-traumatized or triggered by their own stories and their own trauma narrative.
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It causes a heightened nervous system response when you tell this story.
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Yes, because it feels like you re going back there again, because you re telling all the little details of everything that happened and trying to get this person, this therapist or a friend or whomever you re recounting to.
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trying to get them to understand what happened, but your body s also remembering in that moment.
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And very often what tends to happen is that people then engage in avoidance strategies, like they no longer want to touch the trauma narrative or their own story, or they drop out of therapy because they no longer want to actually engage in the conversation that felt so incredibly dysregulating.
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Wow.
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They re re-traumatizing themselves when they talk about the experience in the first time, I guess, right?
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Yeah, because most people don t know that when they approach their own trauma narrative, that it can actually spur up those emotions in them and cause their nervous system to go into that fight, fly, freeze, or fawn.
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Most people are not aware of the fact that just by telling my story, this can happen to me.
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But if we re actually training folks to engage in their body in a way that helps them to feel more safe, then it allows them to then
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be able to tell their trauma narrative in a way that actually, in a way where they don t actually need to run away from themselves.
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So when we re thinking about a way to heal initially, and we know that we ve had some stress, or maybe we re reactive in certain situations, or maybe we feel tightness, or just not our fullest, highest self, and we know that there s been some trauma, but we re not sure how to talk about it or how to heal it.
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what is something we should be thinking about with our bodies to start this process?
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Well, the first thing is that we have to befriend our bodies.
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We have to actually engage in a relationship with our bodies and really tune in.
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Most of us don t actually take the moments throughout the day to say, how s my body feeling right now?
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Where do I feel the tension?
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Where am I experiencing in my body this external situation, right?
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And if we can actually train ourselves to just do body scans, for starters, right?
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There s so many things that we can do, but for starters, just scanning how we feel in our bodies from head to toe and just getting a sense of how our body is taking in our environment, that s already a really good setup for understanding ourselves better and understanding ourselves when we re juxtaposing ourselves with what s happening outside of ourselves.
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So, if someone has experienced a level of trauma, but they have no clue if they ve actually got a lot of trauma, a little trauma, or somewhere in between, how can they do a trauma assessment within their body scan to know, oh, this is actually a big thing that I need to address right away, or this is more minor, but I still need to address it.
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How can they scan
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Well, you know, it s actually much simpler than what one might imagine because people can actually just remember, right?
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Remember what they actually do remember and then simultaneously try and gauge what s happening in their bodies as they re remembering.
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As they re thinking of the story in the scenario.
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Exactly.
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Are you feeling tightness in your chest or your throat?
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Are you clenching up?
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Or are you sweating?
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Yeah.
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It s like, what are these symptoms?
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Yeah.
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And typically, some of those symptoms correlate with how the nervous system is actually internalizing the story.
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We typically get a knot in our stomach, for example, right?
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But that s really our nervous system actually shutting down specific functions of the gastrointestinal tract because we actually don t need that for survival in a moment where we re in survival mode.
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And so- So if we feel it on our stomach, it s almost like we re in fight or flight mode.
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Exactly.
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Just thinking about a story for 30 seconds or a couple of minutes from something that happened 10, 20, 30 years ago.
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That s fascinating.
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So something that happened that long ago can continue to harm and hurt you decades in the future until we learn to heal it.
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Exactly.
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It continues to live in the body.
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It can metabolize in the body then as chronic illness when it goes on unaddressed.
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And of course, one of the biggest risks and repercussions of it going on unaddressed, many times because we just don t know that it s there or that it s something that needs to be addressed.
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But what can happen is also the possibility of transmission into the next generation.
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So there s a lot of consequence.
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Yes.
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And that transmission is really you leaving a legacy.
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You know, do you want to leave a legacy of peaceful, harmonious, emotional well-being, you know, humans as children or kids that carry your stress responses?
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Right.
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And kind of your nervous system responses, right?
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Yeah, yeah.
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I always ask parents, like, look at your little one and look into their eyes and think for a moment, do I want them to hurt the way that I have hurt?
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And that usually is enough for a parent to say, you know what?
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Actually, I want to break this cycle because I don t want their little heart to then absorb the kinds of traumas that I ve absorbed.
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And for them to then be the adult that has to then be in search of their emotions or in search of healing, because they now have an inner child wound as an adult.
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What s the greatest gift a parent can give their child?
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The gift of understanding their emotions and understanding how to self-affirm.
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Because when we can actually know how
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what our emotions even are.
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And what I mean by that is that we have emotions and that they re body centered, right?
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Like that we have a really concrete understanding of the full spectrum of our emotions and how they can manifest in our bodies.
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And then how we can actually do something to validate ourselves through the emotional process.
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I think that s a beautiful gift that parents can give their children.
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And when parents do that for themselves and their children, it s a beautiful generational gift.
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Yeah, that s beautiful.
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So the first thing I m hearing you say is kind of the ways to start healing is to first do an assessment of the stories and the memories that hurt you and see how the body reacts or responds.
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Right.
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What would be the next step after that?
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We notice a tightness in our stomach, a clenching in our throat, a pain in our chest.
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What would be the next step to starting that healing process?
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Step two is relaxation.
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Step two is actually going into any kind of practice you choose, right?
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But it can be breath work, it can be meditation, it can be Tai Chi, it can be yoga, it can be so many that can actually help your body to release some of that tension.
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And so what we re doing in that very moment is that we re, of course, recognizing that there s a pain that has been there, that has been emotional, that has now a physical
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manifestation, and that we re also integrating a relaxation, a body relaxation practice to help release that tension, help absolve that tension from the body.
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If we never release it, what happens?
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it becomes disease.
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Wow.
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So emotional memories turn into physical pain and eventually disease in some way.
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Many of the metabolic conditions that we know about, diabetes, for example, cardiac conditions, a lot of those can be mapped back to stressors in life.
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And there s a lot of studies that have been done around even autoimmune conditions being very deeply connected to stressors and to trauma.
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And more recently, there s some studies that also have some correlates to certain cancers.
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So when we start thinking about what the body is telling us, the body, when it s in that state of disease, it s telling us
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I don t feel well because I m not being taken care of emotionally.
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And that is usually the clue for us to say, oh, I need to slow down, when we needed to slow down probably 15, 20 years ago.
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Right, right, right.
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So once we recall the memories, and I guess really reflect on where we re feeling this pain or reaction in our bodies, the third thing I m hearing you say is to relax through some type of therapeutic process.
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Breath work, meditation, yoga, some type of relaxation process to release it, right?
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What would be the next thing?
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Because a lot of times, most people just numb or disassociate the pain, right?
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we don t truly feel the pain, because it s too painful.
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And so we ll find ways to numb, distract, disassociate, block the memories, to not feel that pain.
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And that can be just as harmful, right?
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Just to numb, block, or disassociate?
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It can.
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You know, there are protective factors.
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There are ways that we protect ourselves from the pain that we truly feel, and especially the depths of our pain.
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Some of us just don t want to understand how deeply hurt we have been.
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how wrong we ve been, how unfair, unjust, hurtful these things are.
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Yeah.
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And in order to self-preserve, in order to make it through another day, the mind and the body, they re just brilliant, brilliant machines.
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They have mechanized a way to actually protect us from ourselves.
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And so they basically structured all these coping mechanisms that, albeit harmful or maladaptive or not helpful or not connecting when we re talking about relationships, right?
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They can still help keep you safe for another day.
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But the alternative to that is to then learn coping skills that actually can be adaptive, connecting.
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And that can actually be the better recipe for not only your ability to stay within healthy relationships with other people, but also for you to experience the type of sustainable and long-term mental and physical wellness.
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What s the next step after that?
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Once we start applying some of these self-therapeutic experiences, you know, it might be 10 minutes of breath work or some type of release.
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How do we get to a place of truly healing that wound or that memory?
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How long does it take of us doing this over and over again?
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Do we eventually need to process in other ways through talk therapy or more intensified therapies?
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What s the solution to absolute healing?
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And is that even a thing?
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Well, there isn t really a 100% type of healing that truly exists.
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I mean, I think that anything that leans in the direction of perfectionism is a myth, including healing, right?
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However, there are ways in which we can live a life that is filled with ease and peace more often than not, and a life in which, if triggers were ever to present themselves, that they would be just subtle and tolerable, and that we can have the actual tools
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the sense of empowerment and agency over our own bodies and minds to actually release that process and move into the next thing that life has for us, rather than being stuck and frozen, which is what tends to happen with trauma.
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But the next step really is, the way that I work is that I integrate a lot of these nervous system restoration practices for a long period of time with folks.
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And I ve done it myself and with my family and with kind of everyone in the book.
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But this actually is the lengthier part of the work, the actual grounding.
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This can take months or years, right?
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It can, it can.
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And, you know, sometimes I actually like to give it a bit of context, like for people who feel like, well, let s say, you know, that
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I want to do this work, but how much am I going to have to do in order to really... It might be a lot.
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It might be a lot.
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And that s okay.
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And it might feel exhausting, and it might feel overwhelming, and it might feel emotional, and it might feel...
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You know, like it s all-consuming at times.
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Yeah, all of the above.
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And that s actually, I wouldn t even go as far as saying maybe not might, but it will, right?
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For a period of time.
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Yeah, for a period of time.
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And it is survivable.
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And if you have the tools to actually help you to settle,
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Once things feel like they re getting really heavy, then it s going to make the experience more tolerable.
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You re not going to feel like you re thrown into the abyss of your deepest, darkest emotions and have no way out.
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You re like in a black hole.
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Yeah.
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There s this, I don t know who s originally said this type of quote or this kind of phrase, but
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You ll hear people say, what happened to you is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to overcome it, to heal it, to process it, to realize what it was and not let it consume your life.
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And I think what you mentioned about higher self, learning about our nervous systems,
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so we can work with it to become our best, highest self as most often as possible, right?
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Which means having peace and harmony inside of us as frequent as possible, because that is our true nature, peace and harmony.
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And I think that s what it comes down to.
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What are you willing to do to create peace and harmony to actualize your highest self as frequently as you can?
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It s not about perfection.
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You re not going to be this Zen person all the time.
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That s a beautiful life, living in peace and harmony.
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Living in suffering and pain and agony and numbing yourself is not a beautiful life.
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It s a survival mechanism which is useful for a period of time, but not for all of time.
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And so we just gotta be aware of that.
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And it s gonna take doing some intense, painful work for a period of time for hopefully a lifetime of freedom afterwards.
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Exactly, yeah.
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And I like to always help people understand
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Let s say that the work needs to take a period of two years.
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Let s just say that.
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You need to focus, you need to do nervous system restoration practices each and every day for a period of two years.
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You need to do journaling and some of the digging work and do talk therapy, and you need to engage in connections with people that help you feel at home.
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All of that needs to be a part of your process.
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Those two years, when you take into consideration the 40 that you ve already lived, that have felt awful, those two years feel like they re really worth it.
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If you want to live the next 40 feeling more abundant, more peaceful, more grounded, more like you know yourself, your true core self, and more like that core self that is now burgeoning from within you is a reflection of your higher self.
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Yes, and I m just a big believer that flow and abundance does not come to those who are constantly in suffering or holding on to pain.
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It comes to those that have peace, who have clarity, who are relaxed, in a more relaxed state.
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And that may seem like a nice thing to say, but if you re in your 30s and 40s and you ve got three kids and you ve got responsibilities and job and you re overstressed,
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And you re thinking, I don t have two years of my life, let alone 30 minutes a day to go to the gym.
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How can I do this work when I have so much responsibilities?
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When I ve got, you know, a partner that I m in a relationship with, I ve got kids, I ve got bills, I ve got all these different weights on top of me.
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Doing this type of work seems like impossible.
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What do you say to someone like that?
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It isn t.
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It actually is really doable because the work requires for you to bake it into your life.
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It s not work that is a task apart from the rest of your life.
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It is your life.
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It is your life.
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Yeah.
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And, you know, the work can actually, the way that I like to structure the work is to make it very accessible.
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And the reason why I like to make it accessible to anyone is because I want people to do the work.
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And I want to make it as easy as possible.
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I ve gotten that statement so many times.
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Well, you know, I m a mother of three
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and they re all really young, and how am I going to find the time?
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I always tell people, listen, you have 1,440 minutes in the day.
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If you take five of those minutes and do a breathwork practice, you re already ahead of the game.
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Wow.
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And if you do that for an entire year, 365 days,
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What we know, what neuroscience is telling us is that it takes an approximate three to four hundred repetitions of a nervous system restoration practice for our body memory to start shifting.
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Really?
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So if you take those 365 days, that year of those five minutes,
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you re already doing work that is going to be monumentally effective in you feeling more settled and like your nervous system is actually experiencing a lot of ease and calm that it wasn t experiencing before you did the year.
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And how much
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is our partners in an intimate relationship picking up on our nervous system wounds and also our kids picking up just by watching and observing us and being around us?
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How much do others pick up our pain?
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It s almost instantaneous.
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And especially the people that are closest to us, but especially children.
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Because children are very, very keen on picking up on nonverbal cues.
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We actually, when we re like infants, that s the way that we understand
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whether or not the world is safe or not.
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We actually see the facial expression of an adult that s our caregiver.
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And if the facial expression is one that mirrors safety, calm, and ease, then what we interpret that as is, the world is safe.
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I can be calm.
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If the adult feels preoccupied, angry, babies pick up on that, and their nervous system is also picking up on that.
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And so it s important for us to actually be more attuned to the ways in which other people also pick up our energy, and perhaps that can offer more motivation for people to actually do the nervous system practices that can actually be helpful for them and their families.
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If a parent is watching or listening to this right now and they re thinking, wow, my kids are five or 12 or 16.
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I m just starting to realize that maybe I was too reactive based on my nervous system wounds or for many years, or maybe we shouldn t have yelled at each other as parents in front of our kids, or we shouldn t have been so reactive in situations that were explosive or we didn t need to be.
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And they re starting to realize, oh, okay, this could have some long-term effects on kids.
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And they ve been living that way for a decade with their kids growing up.
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What can they instantly tell themselves right now about how they ve shown up?
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And what are some actions they can take to start breaking the cycle for themselves and their kids who still have developing minds, who maybe aren t as comfortable talking about emotions yet because they re younger still?
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How can they start shifting that without thinking, I ve ruined my kids  lives?
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You know, it s important for parents, for anyone really, to understand if I didn t know better, I couldn t do better.
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So if you didn t know that what you were struggling with was intergenerational trauma because you were exhibiting toxic relationship behaviors that were reflected in your childhood home and you absorbed those as the norm, as a status quo, then you wouldn t know to actually disrupt those and not pass those on or not exhibit those in your home.
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However, it s important that if you now do know better, that you take action, that you decide, okay, I know that there s a different way, and I understand that the way that I ve been behaving is unhealthy.
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Let me shift.
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That is already a step in the right direction.
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When it comes to children, it s important to understand that children can also engage in the healing process.
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They can.
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Yeah.
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I mean, there s a lot of age-appropriate ways in which we can integrate the work with children.
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Children can meditate.
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Children can do breath work.
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Children can talk about their emotions.
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Children can, you know, do dance parties with their parents that actually help them to release some of the stress and tension of the day.
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And all of that can be a large part of what families can do together to actually do some collective healing
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and engage in age-appropriate types of practices that can help their children not only absorb the healing in the moment, but also understand for the long-term, for the entirety of their lives, that they can do something that can help them to heal.
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Mm-hmm.
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That s cool.
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Yeah, dance party and drawing classes together, just different things.
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You know, going for a walk out in nature.
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Yeah.
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That s beautiful.
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You mentioned these nervous system restoration practices.
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What are the couple other examples you have for that, where we can start healing the nervous system?
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The practice that I tend to integrate into my work the most is humming.
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Humming.
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Humming, yeah.
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It s so calming.
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It is very calming, and most people don t know you actually have this tool that you can use whenever, and it can actually help you feel calmer.
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Well, humming, I mean, there s so many, you know, there s now science that s backing all this, but this has been the, you know, ancient spiritual leaders have been ohming and humming for thousands of years because of the, you know, I think ohm is like God, right?
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It s like you re connecting yourself to God and you re speaking like source, creator.
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breathing it, and there s chemicals involved, there s dopamine involved, and it s calming.
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This feeling in your heart is starting to get into a better rhythm, right?
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So there s all these benefits to this.
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Yes.
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And when we think about it from just integrating the nervous system perspective into that as well, we have different branches of the nervous system.
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And the branch that actually helps us to feel relaxed and calm is the ventral vagal nerve, which is what tends to be stimulated when we ohm.
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When we ohm.
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Yes.
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And so and so or when we hum.
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Right.
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Like typically, like if I m doing work with a family and or with a child, you know, sometimes I ll pick a song that they like and we ll hum the song instead of singing it.
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And that already is an age appropriate practice that we can do that integrates the practice that we understand is going to be restorative to their nervous system.
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But we re not necessarily like shoving mental health, you know, just therapy talk all day.
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Right, right.
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But we re doing something that can be very health promoting.
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Now, eventually, you know, people catch on and they say, that made me feel relaxed.
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that made me feel more at ease, especially when I had all these like floating thoughts that just wouldn t go away.
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And so when these children are then older, they have the tools.
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And that s what I want for us.
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I want for us to be able to be the generation of cycle breakers that can build the tools for ourselves and for the next generation.
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And even if we want to maybe like pass some of that back.
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my parents are 65 and 71 and I do this stuff with them and they re open and willing and they re Dominican parents like which I would have never thought would you know like do anything that was related to mental health period but they re so willing right now after a couple years of talking it through and it s beautiful to see how they have never really had any kind of like
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foundational orientation around how they can feel more settled.
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And now they do.
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And that in their old age, they can actually feel more at ease in their own bodies.
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It s beautiful.
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If someone s in a marriage and they realize they want to break the cycle and they re willing to do the work themselves, but maybe their partner isn t as open yet.
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And they re realizing like, oh, this person, you know, I want to do this work, I m healing, but this person s still in a nervous system reactive state and unwilling to break their own cycle.
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What can they do if they re the only one trying to grow and their partner is not?
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That s a really tough situation, and we have to empathize with anyone that is in any kind of environment, particularly a home environment, in which they have to go back to the source of their pain, right?
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Or back to a place where their safety is compromised in any way, their sense of psychological safety, I mean.
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And so, what I tend to help people reorganize in terms of their own thinking around this is,
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Show up as your more healed self.
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Let people see how you walk and move as a more healed version of yourself.
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Model for them, whether it s your kids, it s your parents, it s your partner, it s friends, right?
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Like anyone.
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Let them see how you re modeling, how you show up differently, and how you no longer feed the cycles, but you break them.
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And then see who is willing to join you in that process.
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Right.
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And there may be, you know, months of resistance and challenge where you ve got to keep showing up as a healed person or in the process while someone s reactive or crossing your boundaries.
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You ve got to keep creating those boundaries, which is a challenge.
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challenging thing to do.
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It s one of the biggest barriers to people being able to continue their cycle-breaking process, which is going into the spaces where people have not actually done the work, and them feeling like, what am I even doing this for?
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Right.
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Like, I may as well just like, you know.
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Let it go.
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Let it go.
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And just play their game.
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It s so challenging.
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It is very challenging.
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And it s a process that also is going to require that they, in essence, just tolerate the distress, which is why distress tolerance skills are so important when it comes to trauma-based work, because we have to train the mind and body to tolerate the guilt, tolerate the guilt of being the one that s doing the work and leaving others behind.
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That sometimes tends to be how people feel about their healing.
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And so when we re able to reorganize the body and how it s actually internalizing that emotion, it helps them to sit with whatever guilt may still be lingering in a more settled way and not just throwing the towel.
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What do you think of all the different traumas that you ve...
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worked on at your clinic and worked out with individuals, all the different types of traumas, abandonment, abuse, neglect, all these different things, bullying, you know, being cheated on, all these different things.
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What one is the hardest trauma to overcome that you ve seen or takes the longest for people to psychologically wrap their heads around the wounds that they ve received?
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You know, grieve, forgive, own, move on, process.
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Which one is typically the hardest to overcome?
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What I have seen has been the hardest and what I have seen like people struggle with the most and has taken the most time has been abuse, childhood abuse specifically.
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Them experiencing childhood abuse.
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Them experiencing it, yeah.
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From a trusted adult, someone who either cared for them or someone who was proximal to them.
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And the experience of feeling almost kind of like their entire life formation was around
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that experience also being a part of it.
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And then having to extract that from all the layers of how it became a part of them is something that can be really, really hard.
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But also there s people that can live really abundant lives once they start doing the work in that direction.
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Usually wherever we feel the biggest triggers, that s where the work is.
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And so when we can centralize the work there in that triggered space, it makes it so that
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Um, we can experience probably the better part of our healing.
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I guess in storytelling mythology, there s, there s heroes and there s villains and they have a similar backstory.
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They ve both been abused or abandoned or something happened to them, right?
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And the villain uses that pain to hurt others.
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And the hero, you know, works with that pain, transforms it into making sure that others don t have that pain ever again, right?
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And I probably had both of those in my life of like, I ve used the pain to try to be angry at others and like dominate and win in sports.
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And then I ve found transformation and be like, I don t want anyone to feel this pain ever again.
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And so I think we have a decision at different times of life of how we re going to use this trauma or this memory or this experience for us.
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Are we going to live it to harm others or to help others and be in service?
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And I think it s really tricky, speaking from experience,
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As an adult mind, trying to understand your 5, 7, 12, 15-year-old self who is sexually abused, childhood mind that s still stored inside of you, it s hard to reflect back and recall all those moments and then think about how you carried that trauma until the adult mind is reflecting on it.
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Process however many years that is, and all the decisions you ve made your entire life, why you ve been reactive, relationships you ve gotten in, challenges you might have, good that might come from it too, and then learn how to heal that time.
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It s like, it s kind of a mind, you know, it s a mind mess, you know, it s tricky.
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And so I think you re, you know,
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You re probably right in that that s probably a painful one to overcome.
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I know there s lots of different traumas, but that one s definitely painful.
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But I know from experience that there is incredible peace and love on the other side if you re willing to do the work.
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It took me a couple of years to really kind of feel like I could speak about it without having a nervous system response anymore.
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But I think also when you realize you can overcome something like that, it gives you a lot of confidence, a lot of poise, a lot of power, a lot of peace, and knowing, okay, if I can take on this as a five, seven, 10-year-old, what can I take on as an adult with these tools that you re providing?
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So I think it s a great thing that you re sharing these tools because a lot of adults don t have them still.
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And I m still learning as many tools as possible.
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But why is that so challenging for adult minds to understand sexual abuse or some type of abuse as a child?
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Why is it hard for adult minds to understand that and overcome it?
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Well, because there s been a really pervasive intrusion, you know, like a person feels like they are accessible to people, like people can hurt them, right?
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You know, they re vulnerable and they remain stuck in that vulnerability.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes.
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And so the challenge in our adult lives is in the fact that that vulnerability just got carried on.
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And we still feel raw and open and vulnerable and like tender to the touch.
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and people can actually hurt us easily.
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And so that s why very often people also develop the coping mechanisms to try and protect themselves because they don t want to land in a similar situation where then there s yet another intrusion and how will they then survive that, right?
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And so it makes it, I always say when it s doubly hard to actually get through something, the reward would be double.
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Right, even more.
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It ll be even exponential, right?
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I think so.
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And I think your story, which I know you ve spent many years now sharing, and I think that it offers a beautiful moment for all of us to also reflect upon the fact that there is hope about abundance on the other side of healing.
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Because most of us think, like, when will this ever end?
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Will I ever heal?
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And we kind of get stuck in that narrative rather than in the narrative of just do the work.
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Trust that there will be abundance on the other side.
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There will be a Steady version of you that is meeting you on the other side.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I started the healing journey ten years ago with this with the sexual abuse that I experienced as a kid and
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And I thought that I had healed a lot of it, but I still kept, and I did in certain areas, but I still kept entering relationships that proved otherwise and allowing myself to be kind of cross certain boundaries that I didn t want to, right?
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Because I didn t have the skills or the courage to be able to stand for the inner child inside of me and what he really needed.
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during certain relationships.
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So it wasn t until about three years ago when I kind of revisited it again through intimacy.
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Like I was able to heal in some areas but not every area and that s when it took even more work.
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It was like an extra couple years.
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So you know I feel like healing is a journey.
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It doesn t like mean okay I ve done six months of intensive work now I m good.
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Like new things might come up in a couple years that you have to readdress and at least that s what s happened for me.
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But
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Not thinking you ve got it all figured out, I think, is something we need to have in mind.
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Be like, okay, I don t know the answers.
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Even if I feel better, I m gonna keep working and processing.
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SPEAKER_00
If we don t learn to seal our inner child as adults, what will happen to us?
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SPEAKER_01
Well, we can actually develop the same type of inner child wound in our children.
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SPEAKER_01
Ooh.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
So they don t have to experience the wound, we re just passing it on, right?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and that comes up, of course, we re talking about intergenerational trauma having some biological connections, right?
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SPEAKER_01
So there s already a family that perhaps is already, from a nervous system perspective, from perhaps an epigenetic perspective, already having tenderness and vulnerabilities that are emotional.
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SPEAKER_01
And then you have the possibility of there being misattunement between a caregiver and their child.
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The caregiver may be so preoccupied with their own stress and trauma that they miss the social cues that their child is telling them, I need you.
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And that sense of emotional abandonment can surface.
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inability to really relate to and connect with others, which is kind of like the general foundation of like attachment and attachment styles, right?
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SPEAKER_00
A lot of those things can start to surface as a result of those initial imprints of the relationships that are primary to us, which are with our caregivers or individuals that are in essence taking care of us in the school system, any of the individuals that have proximity.
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And then, you know, it s going to be really important for us to also understand that whenever we re talking about, like, not wanting that to carry on to the next generation, not wanting that tender little soul in front of us to then experience the pain that we have carried for so long, we have to talk about how we can also heal our own wounds.
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We need to reparent ourselves while we re also parenting others.
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SPEAKER_01
Right.
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So it s an intergenerational reparenting.
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SPEAKER_01
Something just came up for me as you were saying this, because I think a lot of, I m not a parent yet, but I get the sense and the feeling that a lot of parents in America today are very protective of their kids.
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You know, I see this.
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Maybe it s not everywhere, but I see a lot of that happening.
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They re more worried about who they re hanging out with.
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I hear a lot of parents say, I m never gonna let my kid do sleepovers anymore.
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SPEAKER_01
I m taking them out of public school because it doesn t feel safe or whatever it is, right?
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SPEAKER_01
They re just more protective as opposed to allowing their children to kind of fumble and learn along the way.
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SPEAKER_01
And I m curious in your perspective from what you ve experienced and what you ve seen with your clients, your patients,
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Is it worse to allow our children to be free in the world and be vulnerable to potential harm?
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Or is it worse to overprotect them and pass on our own traumas and wounds because we keep them so close to our wounded self?
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SPEAKER_00
You know, I would say that it is important for us to actually allow them to have some connection to the world that isn t necessarily overprotected by us.
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However, it is going to be really critical for us to, as parents or parents to be
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to also vet the environments that they re a part of.
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We need to vet the people that are their babysitters and ask them questions that are taboo, that are uncomfortable, that are likely to actually protect our children.
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SPEAKER_01
Right.
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Be uncomfortable with your questioning.
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be uncomfortable with your questioning so that you don t have to live a life of discomfort because you didn t ask the question and properly vet the person.
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And then something would have happened that could have been avoidable.
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SPEAKER_00
Not always, right?
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SPEAKER_00
We can t say that, you know, it s the onus is on parents.
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SPEAKER_00
The onus is really on people who, you know, just aren t protective of the children that they re connected to.
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SPEAKER_00
But beyond that vetting process, which is a vetting process that is permissive because you re also allowing the child to be in the world and explore and understand and enjoy the world and fumble and pick themselves back up.
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And what we know about that process is that that also builds resiliency.
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And so we need that process in our lives in order to actually be resilient adults.
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SPEAKER_00
But it s also going to be critical, as I see it, specifically as cycle-breaking parents, for us to then transition into also being advocates on behalf of our children.
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We need to also, in whatever way is possible, advocate for the systems that they re a part of, for them to keep them safe.
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Advocate for better safety in schools, which, as we see in today s world, especially in the US, is really compromised.
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and also advocate for the laws that hold people accountable when they hurt children.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s like all of these things that are also systemic are also gonna be a part of the process of how we parent forward in a way that s different.
4
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
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SPEAKER_01
What about the epigenetic element of this?
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SPEAKER_01
You know, this is, how much of trauma is genetic versus kind of emotional mirroring and then passing on through just environment, space, emotions, onto another nervous system?
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SPEAKER_01
Is it a genetic thing that we carry?
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SPEAKER_01
Or is it more of like, we re just observing it all day long and these responses?
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SPEAKER_00
Well, what we know about intergenerational trauma, it is the only type of trauma that has a bit of both.
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SPEAKER_00
So it actually can be found at the intersection of our biology, which is all of those kind of epigenetic factors, and our nervous system, and really kind of like the structure of our biology really early on, cellular memory, all of those things.
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SPEAKER_00
and our psychology, which is, in essence, kind of everything that happens thereafter, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, after we re formed, after we re born, after, you know, we re out of the womb, there s a lot of interactions that we have with people, with systems, like all of those interactions then actually create a certain experience, an emotional experience that can trigger a trauma response or perhaps never allow it to surface.
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SPEAKER_00
And so it s a little bit of both.
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SPEAKER_00
But the thing about coming from families that they themselves have had any kind of trauma that has been longstanding and has been held in the body and has been held in their behaviors is that typically what tends to happen is that our bodies actually reflect
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SPEAKER_00
the trauma that we have engaged in, the trauma that our bodies are constantly trying to fight, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
When our bodies are in this nervous system alert and threat response for an extended period of time,
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SPEAKER_00
it actually can transition the ways in which our genes actually turn on or off, which is the general premise of epigenetics.
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SPEAKER_00
Whatever is happening in our environment, socially, is impacting the ways in which our genes are turning on or off.
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SPEAKER_00
And so what happens at conception is that both parents
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actually have genetic markers or genetic messaging that actually gets translated to a baby at conception, including, of course, all the physical features and things like that, but also including a lot of these other things that are a part of just the general emotional makeup that a child can be born into.
4
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
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SPEAKER_01
So if both parents don t break their intergenerational traumas,
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SPEAKER_01
They re passing down two different sets of multiple layers of traumas from family history into the child.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and it gets really, really layered and complicated because, I know, it s a lot.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s like the trauma of every one of your tree.
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SPEAKER_01
How far back do these traumas link to?
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SPEAKER_01
Is it like great grandparents or?
4
SPEAKER_00
They say it s an approximate seven generations.
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SPEAKER_00
Seven?
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SPEAKER_01
Oh my gosh.
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SPEAKER_00
And there s a possibility that it might be 14 based on some newer studies.
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SPEAKER_01
Oh my, until you break the cycle, it goes back seven to 14 generations?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and it s, you know, when I,
4
SPEAKER_01
So all the traumas of my, you know, from like 300 years ago then.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
Are passed down to me.
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SPEAKER_00
It said that it s about 255 direct histories, including your own living in you.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh my gosh.
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SPEAKER_00
Which is why this- Seems overwhelming.
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SPEAKER_00
I know, I know.
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SPEAKER_00
Which is why it s so critical that because it is transferable messaging that is there in our body, it s important that we go back to the body.
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SPEAKER_00
That s why when we do these talk therapies,
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SPEAKER_00
They can be good for an extent of the work that needs to be done, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
But not necessarily for when we re talking about layer trauma.
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SPEAKER_00
When we re talking about these traumas that have been there for generations and that have these imprints and have these ways of coming up in ways you would never imagine, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes a scent.
4
SPEAKER_00
Just completely takes you back to two generations.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh my gosh, and that s also saying, you know been widely studied You know in the ways that our senses are actually, you know, they capture memory imprints from generations past and so all of that is a part of
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SPEAKER_01
Do we have memory imprints?
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SPEAKER_01
Do we have past lives that we have memory imprints on, like all the things we went through there, too?
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SPEAKER_01
Or is it only from our current generations, from our past generations?
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SPEAKER_00
Well, it s said that, you know, at least we have at least like...
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SPEAKER_00
seven or so possibilities of generations that can actually, now the studies have only gone as far back as two generations, and especially I believe in humans, but at the very least we know that there can be, like for example, a scent that can actually be translated forward.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like I had this one client that I actually, I found that the work with this person was so like,
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SPEAKER_00
Just, it felt like it, you know, all of the things that I had been learning about that were research-based were now being represented in this person.
4
SPEAKER_00
But the most interesting to me was
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SPEAKER_01
the fact that he actually had a grandfather who had actually been attacked at a park by some random person who had actually had coffee prior to the attack.
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SPEAKER_01
And he survived the attack, but then he actually didn t have kids yet, but then he had a daughter, and that daughter actually found the smell of coffee to be repulsive.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then another generation forward, my client actually could not stand the smell of coffee.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so, you know, we started digging through some of those layers and it made a lot of sense through the studies that have been done around, you know, the ways that these like these kinds of smells and the ways that we respond to them through the generations are there to almost protect us.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because the smell of coffee is telling this generations of family, of this family.
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SPEAKER_00
Danger.
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SPEAKER_01
There s danger.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
And so you must protect yourself.
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SPEAKER_00
Watch out.
5
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
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SPEAKER_00
There s something around here.
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SPEAKER_01
Don t go there.
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SPEAKER_01
There s coffee in the area.
5
SPEAKER_01
That is fascinating.
5
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
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SPEAKER_00
How the body and the nervous system and the memory can transfer into different cells.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
That s fascinating.
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SPEAKER_01
It s a forward planning process that our bodies do in order to help us survive as a species.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, I guess if you think about just, yeah, evolution.
5
SPEAKER_00
animals involve their bodies so that they can survive in the environments.
5
SPEAKER_00
So humans, I guess it makes sense that we involve our senses so that we can survive our emotional or psychological environments as well.
5
SPEAKER_00
Precisely, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
That is fascinating.
5
SPEAKER_00
It seems like the world is very over-medicated right now.
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SPEAKER_00
I m not saying there s not a need for medication in certain cases, but when it s over medication without applying therapeutic, natural therapeutic healing remedies, I feel like that s a problem, personally.
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SPEAKER_00
Because I don t feel like it s allowing your body to fully heal if you re just constantly on medication.
5
SPEAKER_00
What s your thoughts around trauma, healing, and medication?
5
SPEAKER_00
When should we take medication?
5
SPEAKER_00
Should we try other therapies first before applying medication?
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SPEAKER_00
Do we need medication to heal?
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SPEAKER_00
What s your thoughts on this?
5
SPEAKER_01
I m a big proponent of the idea that medication is something that can be used on a temporary basis and mostly when there s crisis involved.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right, when it s too much to think clearly.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like the person is just in a place where they re not reachable.
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SPEAKER_01
We can t pull them out of that state of dissociation or emotional shutdown in order to actually start doing the work.
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SPEAKER_01
Then medication can be really helpful in just getting through those moments.
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But medication, I see a bit of like a Band-Aid, right?
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Just placing the Band-Aid on the wound so that the wound can,
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then start to heal, and then we rip it off, and we allow the wound to then do what it needs to do in order to reform into the skin, right?
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Very often, we don t take off the Band-Aid.
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We just leave it in.
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Right.
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Or if you re always staying medicated, you re never actually able to do the work.
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Exactly.
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Or people are being medicated without what s supposed to be supplements or ancillary work, which is therapy or other kinds of modalities that can actually promote some sort of healing and restructuring of the mind and how a person is taking in their emotional experiences so that they do some learning and then apply different coping skills that then become default.
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And then they don t need the medication.
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Yeah, so you never really learn to integrate the lessons.
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Unless you re using medication, you re integrating at the same time, then hopefully you can get off the medication because you re doing the work.
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Yes.
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But if you re taking medication, you re not doing the work and you re not integrating lessons into the body.
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you re always gonna need the medication, I guess, to disassociate or numb the pain or something, right?
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Yeah, yeah.
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You re gonna be reliant upon it and, you know, there s different kinds of dependencies, right?
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And some of the dependencies are very biological, but some are more psychological dependency on medications.
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Like, I need my meds versus this medication is really helping me to get through this stage of the process so that I can get into this stage of the process.
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That s the way we should be thinking about it.
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You know, something you mentioned before, you know, about peace.
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I m a big believer, my philosophy in life is we should be thinking about our habits and our behaviors to support us having the most harmony and peace possible, right?
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So that when we are in a relaxed state, we can see wider, we can see things clearer, we can make better decisions, we feel better, more calm, we feel more abundant from a peaceful, harmonious state.
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But I lived most of my life not feeling peaceful.
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I felt very anxious, very driven to achieve constantly because I felt like I was never enough.
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And even when I did achieve big things, I still didn t feel like it was good enough, so I had to go after the next thing.
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I felt like I was in a state of anxiety and constantly needing to create and do more.
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I felt very anxious.
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I wasn t able to sleep at night that well for most of my life until I started the healing process.
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And I realized, and I thought to myself, oh, what I m doing is working because I m getting results.
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Like I m achieving as an athlete, I have a business that s growing, whatever it might be.
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I m able to get things done.
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But I still didn t feel good.
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I didn t feel enough and I didn t feel calm.
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And I think it wasn t until I started to realize like, oh, I m in constant mental breakdown and I m getting results, but I feel like there s no peace.
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That s when I started to realize I ve got to dive in and do some emotional healing, some emotional work, some psychological, I guess, therapies to support me and merging the both worlds.
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How can I accomplish what I want, but also have peace and harmony?
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knowing that it s not going to be some perfect thing where I never have, you know, discomfort, but how can I have more peace and harmony inside of me?
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And I think that s the main thing that I try to talk about in life as a philosophy.
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And I love that you talk about this higher self, you know, nervous system.
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It s like, what is your nervous system s highest self?
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want.
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It wants to feel calm.
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It wants to feel relaxed.
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It wants to feel safe.
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And I think it s really important to go through your book and assess and ask yourself, where am I allowing myself to fall short here with my nervous system?
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And if I can heal the nervous system in the body,
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then I m going to have a lot more abundance and peace in my life.
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Is that what I m picking up with everything that you re talking about here?
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Absolutely.
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And what you re referencing in reference to the goals that you were achieving was what in the science of behaviorism we call positive reinforcement.
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So you re getting actually reinforced
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by working, you get reinforced because you get the results, then you work more and you get the results again, right?
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And so the same can actually happen.
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We can apply the same structure, theory, philosophy, method, right?
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We can apply it into the goal of peace.
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The more that we engage in the practice of meditation, the more of the neural networks inside of our brain and nervous system that are actually gonna start forming around that calm and peace.
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And the more that our brains, which are neuroplastic, are going to start forming actual brain matter that is organized around peace.
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So we re going to get reinforcement.
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It s not going to look the same.
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It s not going to be that reward that s going to come right away and that we re going to feel like, oh my goodness, it s all lifted.
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But we are going to feel better eventually if we continue that process.
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That should be the game.
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Not like, how do I accomplish more and achieve more and make more, but how do I
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consistently be in a state of peace.
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When something stressful happens in the world or with a person around me, how am I responding?
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Did I respond in a way that my highest self would be proud of, or did I respond in a way that my wounded self wants to justify?
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And I think it s finding those different types of reward systems, which in a big city like LA, just driving anywhere, you can be triggered just with someone honking at you.
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Why are they honking at me?
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How can you reward yourself every day with like, man, did I respond in a way my highest self would be proud of?
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That served my nervous system and my body.
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That my inner child would be grateful for.
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Right?
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Yeah.
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I always say, you know, every single day presents us with an opportunity to break a cycle.
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All you have to do is take it.
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Every single day, instead of rolling down your window and screaming out at the person in the other car,
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There s a choice that can be made every day in your relationship.
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You have a choice to continue that same cycle and pattern and yell back, right?
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Or integrate a different version of how you can engage in the relationship.
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Every day, there is an opportunity in all areas of life.
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And it s a dance.
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Make sure you create boundaries.
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you re not getting walked on, but you re not reacting like a crazy person, all these different things.
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So it s a dance.
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And if someone has been through, you know, a breakup in a relationship and they have not yet healed from that breakup or from their entire childhood, what will happen if they don t heal going into a new relationship intimately?
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Well, the biggest risk is that they ll repeat the very same patterns that they re used to.
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I mean, there s this thing called repetition compulsion, which I know you re fairly familiar with.
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And it is when we, in essence, repeat the patterns that just feel familiar and that are already pre-programmed inside of our minds.
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We go into every single relationship, and the relationships start looking the same, with the same patterns, the same beginning, end.
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And then we go into the next relationship with the same beginning, middle, end.
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And so it just becomes a cyclical process where we re not actually doing anything different.
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We just have different players in our lives.
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And so whenever we can actually identify, oh, look, that s when I start getting into those codependent qualities.
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That s the in.
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That s my thing.
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I start, let s say, you know.
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I feel like I need this attention or whatever it might be.
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Right, like whatever your brand of it might be, right?
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We all have a brand, right?
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And that s true.
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Then people can actually start noticing their own patterns and then start cutting those patterns.
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We start cutting at the root when we re aware we cannot heal what we cannot see.
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If we have something that we can
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actually identify as not being aligned with how we want to live a life, then we can identify it, call it out, and then when we see that it s about to creep up, say, not anymore.
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Not this time, yeah.
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Not going in that direction.
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As a trauma expert, psychologist, what is the biggest challenge you face today?
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What s the biggest pain or problem that you face personally from your years of work and experience and education that you ve learned but also teach?
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I still struggle personally with
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personally with the experience of patience.
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Having patience?
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Yeah.
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What, with family, with intimacy, with friends, like in life?
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More so with family.
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I am someone who s like typically really fast in my thinking, fast in my acting, and you know, I m just like very, I tend to operate on autopilot a lot.
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But it s actually something that I ve been working on for a number of years and I m still working on really intently.
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And even next year, I want to work on in a way that I hope can really, really make an impact because I want to slow my life down, like really slow it down and really like do things that can actually help me to build the patience rather than
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you know, just like tone it down, which is what I ve been doing.
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And I think that that s also going to help me build greater compassion, be more self-loving and other-loving, and have an opportunity to also be more mindful and attuned in the spaces that I occupy, including my space with my family.
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So all of that, I think, is going to burgeon out of me growing that sense of patience around my life, which is, it s been so hard.
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It s been so hard.
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It has been.
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To be patient.
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To just be patient.
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With family.
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With family, with my goals.
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If I m in an intimate relationship with an intimate relationship and where things are going and where they re not going, like patience is just not, and my family will tell you, they ll say wonderful things about me and they re so kind.
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And then they ll say, well, she s not very patient.
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They ll always say that.
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So they know me well, right?
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And I know myself.
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And you know, it s not a quality that I love.
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and I know I can do better, like I know it.
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And so I want to do better, which is the key, right?
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Like it s the motivation.
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We re very similar.
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Martha, my fiancee, is like, yeah, you don t really have that much patience.
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But I told you when we started dating that I don t.
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And so I ve told you everything good, bad, in between about me.
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And I said, hey, do you want to accept this?
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Yeah.
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And it s all about an evolution, right?
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Like I m much more patient than I was 10 years ago.
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Yeah, of course.
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And I desire for myself, I really desire this to be better.
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That s good, yeah.
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I m sure when I have kids, it ll force me to be patient, or I m just going to feel more frustration and pain and anger.
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So it s either I suffer or I become patient.
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It s like you suffer or be patient.
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Suffering s temporary, though.
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Exactly, it is.
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I m so grateful for you in this book, Break the Cycle, A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma.
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I want everyone to get a copy of this, give it for a friend.
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Again, I just true to believe, after my last, I guess, 10 years of healing journey,
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that this is the work we should be doing to better everything else in our life, to better our careers or our professions, our relationships, our health, everything starts with doing the inner work and healing.
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And I really believe that on any new chapter of life, if you re entering a new career, a new relationship, a new year of life, you should be reflecting on where do I need to heal first before I enter this new thing?
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Or, while I m entering this new chapter, what can I start healing in the process of entering this?
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And the healing will continue.
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It s going to be a journey, but it s got to be something you really are attuned to.
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And I think when you focus on that, like you said, beautiful things will emerge.
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There might be some pain and sadness and grief for a short period of time, but then on the other side, there is more abundance and peace.
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And so I m really excited that this book is out, Break the Cycle.
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I want everyone to get a copy by Dr. Marielle Bouquet.
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Make sure you check this out.
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Where can we get this copy and where s the best place to connect with you?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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Thank you for saying that.
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And, um, the copy of the book can be purchased wherever books are sold.
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It s everywhere.
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And also I have it linked on my website, which is drmarielbouquet.com.
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Uh, where I m at, um, is usually LinkedIn.
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Sometimes, you know, uh, are you more on LinkedIn than Instagram?
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I m more on LinkedIn lately.
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I love it there.
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It s a, it s just your name on LinkedIn.
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It s just my name and I tend to learn a lot there and it s very invigorating.
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That s good.
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I love it there.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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Make sure to follow you over there.
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SPEAKER_01
Check out your content there.
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Thank you.
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Break the cycle.
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Maria, I m very grateful for you.
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I want to acknowledge you for the constant work you re doing to put yourself out there.
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You know, you, you work in,
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and a clinic for many years and a professor for many years, but now actually being a teacher and an educator to the masses through putting it in a book, by teaching content online, I really acknowledge you for bringing this healing work to us.
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Because again, I think this is what we should all be thinking about.
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I like talking about health and relationships and money and business.
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But if you don t have peace in those areas, it s not going to be fulfilling and rewarding.
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So you ve got to have healing peace first so that those things can be abundant.
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So I m really grateful that you re teaching this and doing this work and doing the research to dive in on how we can heal these things.
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And I acknowledge you for the consistency that you have in serving us.
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Thank you.
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You re welcome.
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I asked you this question before, but I m asking these two final questions.
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This is called the three truths.
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So imagine it s your last day on earth and you only get to leave three lessons behind to the world.
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You ve got to take all of your work with you and everything you create from now until the day you die has to go with you somewhere else.
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What would those three lessons that you would leave behind be?
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It would be if we are not careful, history can repeat itself.
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So let s be mindful of that and cut the cord where we can.
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That it is important for us to be in healthy relationships with other humans because we are relational beings.
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So let s continue to foster the relationships that help us feel psychologically safe.
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or build ones if we don t have any.
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And that even if our life has at any point in time felt like it has been in shambles, there s always something that awaits on the other side.
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If we are willing to not give up and just hold on to hope and maybe like take a couple points of wisdom from the people that have done it before.
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Well, that s beautiful.
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I love that.
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Final question.
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What s your definition of greatness?
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My definition of greatness, I just love this question.
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My definition of greatness is being able to get back up.
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I think that s greatness.
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It s in everyday acts of just getting back up.
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really tapping into our resilience and into our internal strength, seeing it, the fact that it s really there, and then using it to keep going.
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I hope today s episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
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Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today s show with all the important links.
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And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on apple podcast.
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If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend.
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Leave us a review over on Apple podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes.
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I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better.
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And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.
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And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
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And now it s time to go out there and do something great.