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Trauma s negative energy that you carry.
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The more you release it, the more you, you become.
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But there is a way to release it.
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I have a very, very special guest today, MD, psychiatrist, therapist, speaker, and trauma specialist.
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An author of a newly released memoir, To Be Loved.
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Frank Anderson.
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Dr. Frank Anderson, good to see you.
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Like at 32 is when my life fell apart.
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I was just too disconnected.
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Like, wow, Frank, you were so far from you.
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When we make decisions from parts of us that are trying to protect us.
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Or please others.
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Or please others.
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And a lot of that is fear of loss of connection.
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In here, our truth, our authenticity is silently screaming inside.
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What would you say is the number one emotion that blocks us from peace, harmony, and ultimate happiness?
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Shame.
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I think it s shame.
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Shame is so toxic.
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And shame is usually the result of relational trauma.
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What happens if we sweep it under the rug, we run away from it?
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What happens to everyone if we do that?
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I ll tell you what happened to me.
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We ll start there.
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Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness.
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We have the inspiring Frank Anderson in the house, who is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, a renowned trauma expert, and an expert on IFS and CPTSD, among many other things around how to heal trauma.
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And I m so excited that you re here.
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I saw this stat online that said 70% of adults in the US have experienced some type of traumatic event at least once in their life.
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That s right.
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that is, you know, a majority of the U.S.
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population, and I m assuming that s similar around the world.
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And I m curious, how do we, you know, to start it off, a big question, how do we really face the things we ve been running away from our entire lives, so that we can integrate
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these traumatic moments, memories, or events in our life that have caused us to run away from them or chase things to fill an empty hole or traumatic hole experience in our life.
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How do we really start to turn around and face these moments that are so crippling and create so much fear and stress within us?
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How does that process even begin?
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what it typically begins for people when their life falls apart.
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Yes.
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Sorry to say that, but there s a massive breakdown, right?
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People do not come to therapy because they re like, I have unresolved childhood trauma.
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Nobody goes, it s because I m drinking too much.
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My wife is, you know, a divorcing me.
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I ve had an affair.
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I m hitting my kids.
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Like people start real, like they kind of hit their bottom to say, okay,
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it s time to do something different, right?
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So that s the way most people get into this.
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I m trying to bring people in in a different way, like, hey, we all have some form of trauma, like, and you know, the word trauma is activating for people.
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Right.
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So I don t have trauma like in the general public.
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I don t have trauma.
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You know, not me.
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I m not weak.
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That s not me.
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So there s this avoidance of the word.
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There s an avoidance of dealing with the pain.
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Move forward.
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You know, why go back?
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What s the point?
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So I m trying to teach people, educate people like maybe you can do a little preventative medicine here.
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Like what if we looked at this before it became a disaster in your life?
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That s powerful, and I can relate to that because, I don t know, it was about 11 years ago, I finally started getting into opening up and facing the parts of me that were causing shame, resentment, anger, fear, stress, overwhelm, and breakdown in my life.
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And it was a storm of multiple events from a breakdown in an intimate relationship, a business relationship, and then me taking it out on the basketball court with my anger
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on others who were just like, you know, random bystanders, to where a friend was like, hey, I don t like the way you re showing up.
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And it allowed me to look in the mirror and say,
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Man, all these breakdowns, the common denominator is me.
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But I didn t want to acknowledge it.
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I wanted to blame everyone else.
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I wanted to say, they don t understand me.
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They don t get me.
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They re taking advantage of me.
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They re abusing me.
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Whatever it might be, it s pointing the blame at others as opposed to looking within.
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And when I had these different events that caused me multiple breakdowns and someone confronting me that I cared about, I was like, oh, maybe I should take a look at myself.
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And that started the journey over the last 11 years of healing.
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And healing is a journey.
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It s not like it was overnight and I m like, I m healed and I m better.
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But it allowed me to start diving into these different therapeutic experiences that have given me harmony and peace and wholeness back.
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And I know this has been your mission for a long time, to help people heal from traumas.
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And one of the things is I know a lot of people that say, I had great childhoods.
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My parents were great.
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Beautiful, loving families and relationships.
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And maybe they didn t have big T traumas, but they had little T traumas that caused them to be avoidant, resentful.
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get into situations where they allow their boundaries to be crossed over and over again, they become doormats, things like that.
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So what is the difference between big T trauma, little t trauma?
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And should we be thinking about addressing both of them?
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100% it s a great move.
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It s a great shift that s happening in culture and society.
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And you know, friends of ours, mutual friend, Nicola para is a perfect person that s like, Hey,
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Maybe when you re ignored, hey, maybe when you re yelled at, that can have an impact too, right?
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So she s a perfect person that s bringing that awareness.
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You know, for people who know about the ACE studies, the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, big study here in California, right?
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And they looked at kids that were growing up in alcoholic families, kids that had
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divorces, there s physical or verbal abuse in there, and all of the problems that these kids had growing up and all the cost, bigger deal to the medical community, like, oh, that s when everybody started looking.
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So how many things are, what is that?
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What is that?
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A called a ACE, the ACE study, adverse childhood experiences.
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And how many, how many, I guess, points are there in that?
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Oh, I don t remember.
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There s like, they have a questionnaire and there s a rating scale.
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I think there are nine points, but I m not quite sure.
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If you had like, your parents were divorced, if you had sexual abuse, if you were yelled at, if you were, or whatever it might be.
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Witnessed something.
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You witnessed something traumatic.
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Yeah, that s another thing.
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I remember someone reading this off to me and I was like, I think I ve experienced every one of those things.
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And I was like, does that just mean I m messed up for life?
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If everybody took the scale, everybody would have a lot of them.
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This is the thing that, this is what I was saying earlier, people get weirded out by the word trauma.
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I m using, Louis, overwhelming life experience.
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It s more palatable for people.
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I m like, have you ever had an overwhelming life experience?
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Well, yeah, like, of course, bullied on the playground or any shamed at so and so or failing in school or not making the football team, whatever it is.
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So people relate to that word overwhelming life experience.
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differently than some people are adverse to the word trauma because I m not weak, right?
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They re triggered by trauma.
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Exactly.
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That s exactly right.
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So I m trying to normalize that in the ways that I can and say, look, these things have an effect on us and we naturally have ways to try to protect ourselves.
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They might not be the most effective, but give yourselves a break for the ways you re trying
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to protect yourself or push the bad stuff away.
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I do this like cavemen.
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We re wired like in the day, touch the fire.
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The fire hurts.
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Stay away from the fire.
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You know, it s like that.
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So we re just automatically programmed to stay away from pain.
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So bringing people to the pain, they re like, why would I do that?
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Right.
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So it is counterintuitive.
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I was talking to somebody the other day.
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It s like it s like you re we do the U-turn.
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Go inside.
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you re going against the current.
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Because the current is stay away, push it away, get rid of it, move forward.
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Sweep it under the rug.
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Yeah, and that s what our natural instinct is.
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What happens if we
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resist looking at the overwhelming life experiences or traumas in our life, and we sweep it under the rug, we run away from it.
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What happens to everyone if we do that?
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I ll tell you what happened to me.
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We ll start there.
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Because I was in therapy, as you know, starting at six years old.
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Your parents forced you to do this, right?
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As a kid, you know, the book opens like, you re not going to school today, Frankie.
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It s like, why?
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We re going to a hospital.
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For what?
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I m not sick, you know?
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And I went downtown for psych testing because I got caught.
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in my cousin s basement playing with her Barbie playhouse.
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This was back in the day when being gay was a total disorder, right?
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So my parents, well-intended by the way, oh we have to make Frankie normal.
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They sent me to therapy for six years as a kid because I got caught playing at the
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I thought the Barbie playhouse was cool.
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The toilet, the little furniture.
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I was like a kid.
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I didn t know.
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I wasn t like... Exploring.
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I was exploring.
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And at the time, it was a problem.
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So I was in therapy for a long time, learned how to do boy things, how to play with boy toys, how to act like a boy.
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do baseball I did all this kind of stuff and So I learned I was taught to suppress right?
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I was taught to suppress What I ended up doing was marrying a woman which is what you re supposed to do as a man, right?
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And so it was a kind of a mess like a 32 is when my life fell apart Like you talked about yours, right?
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You got married
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married, was there something inside of you when you re like walking down the aisle, or I guess you re not walking down, but when you re about to get married, is there something inside of you that s saying like, I don t think this feels right?
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Or were you like, I m excited, and this is going to be my future forever?
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I would like to so here s what it was like, actually, for me was like,
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This is what you re supposed to be.
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This is what you re supposed to do.
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I was doing the right thing.
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I didn t even know what love was.
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I was, I never felt in love in my life.
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I didn t even know that I was missing.
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Like I didn t know I was missing something.
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I was like, this is what everybody else is doing.
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We were friends.
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I really liked her as a friend, but I didn t even understand what love was.
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And that way, so I just did the right thing.
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I did what everybody wanted me to do.
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Everybody seemed happy.
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And I liked her.
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You know what I mean?
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You got along?
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I got along.
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And you know, here s the thing.
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Honestly, maybe not every gay guy could do this.
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I can have sex with a woman.
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It felt pleasurable.
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Like, it was physically pleasurable.
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I had an orgasm.
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Like, I could do that.
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So there wasn t even that that was like, Frank, this is a problem here.
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Do you know what I mean?
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Everybody s got their...
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orientation on a spectrum, right?
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So I wasn t like receiving her at the end of the aisle being like, this is a problem, stop this.
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I was just too disconnected.
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I feel sad about that now.
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Like, wow, Frank, you were so far from you.
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Look what you did.
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You know, look what you were able to do.
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So disconnected, you know, so that s what is what happens in someone s life when they make decisions out of disconnection to please parents, society, certain rules or standards versus
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being fully and wholly who they are and meant to be, what happens?
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Yeah, the difference, it s a great question.
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It s a great question because the difference when we make decisions from parts of us that are trying to protect us,
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Or please others.
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Or please others.
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And a lot of that is fear of loss of connection.
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I m going to do this because this is what I can see.
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This is what you want for me.
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And if I give you what you want for me, then I won t lose you.
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A lot of it is, right?
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A lot of it is fear of loss.
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But you lose yourself.
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You lose yourself.
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Or parts of yourself.
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Or you never had yourself.
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Yeah.
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See, this is what happens with kids.
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When parents are yelling or screaming or drunk or whatever it is, ignoring you, you as a child have to choose them over you.
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To survive.
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To survive.
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You have to choose them over you, right?
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So you learn you re the last one that s important.
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Yeah.
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OK.
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You relating to that on some level?
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I mean, I think a lot of people are related to that.
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We do.
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That s what happens.
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So we re kind of programmed that way.
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And so we make these decisions in a disconnected way.
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Most of us do.
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And then it falls apart because this in here, our truth, our authenticity is screaming, silently screaming inside because we re not living an authentic life.
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How do you, you know, someone s watching or listening and saying, you know, I love my parents and I love my family.
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And, you know, the family that I grew up with, obviously everyone s a little dysfunctional, but they don t support my decision of, yeah.
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whatever, of me choosing to love this person.
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They don t support my decision of pursuing a career that I love.
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It s against their Christian religion or something religion for me to want to fully step into who I believe I m supposed to be.
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Whether I m right or wrong about it, but it s what I fully believe feels right to me.
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That s right.
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How do you have the courage to be who you want to be without disappointing, letting down, and disconnecting with your parents, family, and community?
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It just happened to me recently with my mom.
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I ll tell you about this a little bit later in our discussion together.
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We have a hard time with the and of things.
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We have a really hard time with an and.
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Like, can I be myself and also love you?
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Can I be myself and tolerate your feelings of disappointment?
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Okay, so we kids don t do and because they don t have the psychological capacity Yeah, or the emotional regulation or yeah, you can t do it.
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So adults have a really hard time doing that So do parents, you know, they never learned how to do it.
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They never learned how to do it.
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So this and is really complicated It s kind of black or white either live by the standards or the rules or the code that I live by that s exactly right or I don t know how to be with you right and I have to
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I have to truly like, love, respect myself enough to choose me over disappointing you.
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That is not easy to do.
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I ll tell you a story recently.
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So my mom, it s a lot in there about both my parents.
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My dad was physically and verbally abusive to me.
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My mom was kind of the passive bystander, right?
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You need that combination in order for it to happen.
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And she won t read the book.
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She s like, I can t read this book.
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It s too traumatizing.
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It s too traumatizing.
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You re defaming the family.
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My father passed away and you know, you re, you re, you re destroying his.
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So I said to her, this was last week when I was in Chicago filming something, I said, mom, is it possible for you to love him?
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and acknowledge that I was hurt growing up.
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I said, if you can t, that s okay.
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Okay.
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I can now.
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I actually love my father.
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And he really hurt me for things that were more about him than they were about me.
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And what I said, Lewis, was, I mean, this is raw.
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Like, do we ever stop healing?
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No.
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Like, this was last week.
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I m like, Mom, I chose you my whole childhood because I needed to.
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When I came out at 32, that was the first time I chose myself over you.
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Wow.
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And I m doing it again.
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I m sorry.
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I m going to tell my story.
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This is my truth.
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And if I lose you over that, I m, I m going to take that risk.
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I hope I don t because I love you.
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I could love you and know what happens.
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And I hope you can too.
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And it was a big moment for us.
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And she throws to the, I tell you, she was 84 years old.
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God love her.
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She s like, I love you.
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Yes, you were hurt, and I m sorry I didn t protect you. 
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Wow.
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Oh my gosh.
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I swear to God.
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That s healing.
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It was hugely healing.
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It was hugely healing for me.
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I never expected that.
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I had a moment with my dad at the end of his life, which was hugely healing.
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And then I had this last week with her, and I was like, right before the book comes out, she s like, I m going to read the book.
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I m like,
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So she was able to, because of my capacity to show up, helped her capacity to join me.
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Yeah and it sounds like, I m assuming you didn t come from a defensive, upset way of communicating.
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You came from a courageous, loving, appreciation, I m grateful for these things, and an understanding of
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You know, someone who is my heroes, my parents, essentially.
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I can love them and be frustrated and hurt by the things that they didn t know what they were doing also.
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They didn t have the tools or the skill sets to be able to teach.
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Because you were able to have empathy and step into their shoes from their generation, what they knew.
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and what they lacked knowing as well.
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I hated him, hated him.
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And I got to the point of like real true acceptance.
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Like when you release the energy, trauma s like negative energy that you carry.
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It s a negative interaction and you carry the negative energy as a result of that.
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The more you release it, the more you, you become, right?
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The more you release energy that s not yours, the more you, you become.
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It enabled me to have compassion for him.
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That was you.
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That was your struggle.
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It wasn t about me.
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I was affected by it and I was able to really accept him for who he is as opposed to hold on to the hate because the hate was eating away at me.
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Not so much him, he wasn t caring yet.
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I mean, he was affected by it for sure.
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So to have the healing allows you to hold the other person for who they are more with acceptance.
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All the parts of them.
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All the parts of them.
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You may not like certain parts and may need to create boundaries and communicate.
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This doesn t work for me, mom and dad.
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That s right.
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And so I m going to create a boundary here.
2
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I m not going to show up to these types of functions.
2
SPEAKER_00
Or when you scream or get loud, I m going to remove myself from the situation, or whatever it might be.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
2
SPEAKER_00
You ve got to step up for you.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
But you can still love the other parts of them.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
2
100%.
2
SPEAKER_00
Man, this is fascinating.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, one of the things that you ve been a part of for, I guess, 30 years is the Body Keeps the Score research.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you were talking about energy, trauma being this energy that s stored inside of us.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes, that s right.
2
SPEAKER_00
Why does the body keep the score?
2
SPEAKER_00
What does that mean?
2
SPEAKER_00
And how do we actually start to release trauma so that the energy gets out of our body and we can become more whole?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s one of my, that s probably separate from bringing trauma healing to the world, which is the big mess, the big purpose.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s not my purpose, that s somebody else s purpose.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay, I m just a messenger for that.
2
SPEAKER_01
So there s the big purpose of bringing trauma healing to the world.
2
SPEAKER_01
My purpose is showing people that healing is possible, like you don t have to carry stuff that isn t yours and doesn t belong to you.
2
SPEAKER_01
You don t.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s so some therapies do that and some therapies don t.
2
SPEAKER_01
OK, so when you.
2
SPEAKER_01
acknowledge, okay, I m carrying stuff that isn t mine.
2
SPEAKER_01
There is a process, you know, and it was Bessel s book, The Body Keeps the Score.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s not coincidental that it s been on the New York Times bestseller list more than any other book because people resonate with it.
2
SPEAKER_01
During the pandemic, people were sitting home making bread and reading Bessel s book, let me tell you.
2
SPEAKER_01
So really, and because it s resonating with people, the message is real.
2
SPEAKER_01
The way I think about it is trauma is held in the body, thoughts, feelings, physical sensations.
2
SPEAKER_01
So the thoughts like I m worthless, I m no good, I m a piece of crap, like we internalize
2
SPEAKER_01
the view of somebody else.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you re yelled at, you worthless piece of crap, you internalize that, I m a worthless piece of crap.
2
SPEAKER_01
So we internalize thoughts, emotions, trauma is overwhelming emotions, and our body s the first recipient of it.
2
SPEAKER_01
Our body holds that stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
So The Body Keeps the Score is such a great title for Bessel because the body does keep the score, but it s in all these different dimensions.
2
SPEAKER_01
Any sensory modality, you can hear something, you could see it, you can feel it, you can smell it.
2
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Our body takes it in, sensory.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it could trigger you.
2
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And it holds, well we hold it.
2
SPEAKER_01
We hold it, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And we hold it and then we develop all these protections to keep it away.
2
SPEAKER_01
And what I like to teach,
2
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in this crossover ways, you can release it also.
2
SPEAKER_00
There is a way to release it.
2
SPEAKER_00
How do you release it of feelings, thoughts, and emotions that have been stored in your body for decades?
2
SPEAKER_00
How do we let those things go that have been so conditioned as a familiar habit that has become who we are almost?
2
SPEAKER_00
We ve owned the identity.
2
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How do we change decades of an identity and release?
2
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I have what I call now, you know, there s models of psychotherapy that I ve kind of integrated.
2
SPEAKER_01
And now in this new world, I m like the four T s to trauma healing.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so I have the four T s to trauma healing, and I ll explain them to you right now.
2
SPEAKER_01
First, and we talked about the first one, thank your trauma responses.
2
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The protective responses.
2
SPEAKER_01
The protective responses, the drinking, the eating, the yelling at your kids, the suicidality, the depression.
2
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
2
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The anxiety.
2
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like think about suicide for a minute.
2
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Suicide doesn t, suicidal part doesn t want to die.
2
SPEAKER_01
They want to stop the pain.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
They want to get rid of the pain.
2
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I m the last responder, they say.
2
SPEAKER_01
If it gets bad enough, I can protect us by stopping the pain.
2
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay?
2
SPEAKER_01
So thank your protective responses.
2
SPEAKER_01
Thank your trauma responses.
2
SPEAKER_01
Thank you for trying to help.
2
SPEAKER_00
But do those be called symptoms or just responses?
2
SPEAKER_00
Totally.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you re in the mental health field, you call them symptoms.
2
SPEAKER_01
Got it.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, if you re in the coaching world or whatever, you ll call them responses, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Everybody calls them, but it s the same thing.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
2
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All the diagnoses are trauma responses, really.
2
SPEAKER_00
So thank them, acknowledge them.
2
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And thank them.
2
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And you know what they say?
2
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How do we thank that?
2
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Internally, it s all this is like meditation.
2
SPEAKER_00
If someone has a thought of like, I want to kill myself, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
I
2
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I m a worthless piece of crap.
2
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No one loves me.
2
SPEAKER_00
Look at all these evidence of how I ve been abused and neglected and taken advantage of my entire life.
2
SPEAKER_00
No one will care if I die.
2
SPEAKER_00
What s the process?
2
SPEAKER_00
How do I thank them?
2
SPEAKER_01
Tell me more.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a curiosity.
2
SPEAKER_01
Tell me more.
2
SPEAKER_01
I know you re doing this for a reason, and I know it s helpful.
2
SPEAKER_01
I want to learn more.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s this active listening.
2
SPEAKER_01
When I say, thank you, trauma responses.
2
SPEAKER_00
Internal, active listening.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and it can be like, close your eyes and go inside, which people hate to do, by the way.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, everybody s on their phones, you know?
2
SPEAKER_01
But you can write.
2
SPEAKER_01
You can sit with yourself for five minutes.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right?
2
SPEAKER_01
It s go inside.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s weird.
2
SPEAKER_01
People like, I ll do this with trauma survivors, people I work with, go inside.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
2
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They pop out with it.
2
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I m like, that was two seconds.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let s do four, you know, and get people.
2
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If you just stop, there s so much about stopping and listening, which is scary for people.
2
SPEAKER_01
Stopping and listening, they re like, I just feel nauseous.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m like, okay, let s be with the nausea.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because parts can show up in any physical sensation, and I m just hearing you, loser.
2
SPEAKER_01
All right, let s just be with, I hear, let s just be with your loser.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let s just get curious about it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And how long has it been doing this, and how is it trying to help?
2
SPEAKER_01
It says, Dad called me a loser.
2
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If I call myself a loser, then I can beat him to the punch.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, OK.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let it know you get that.
2
SPEAKER_01
So people start going, wow, that s what they do.
2
SPEAKER_01
They re like, wow, so this thing that I ve hated is actually helping?
2
SPEAKER_01
Trying to help.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s trying to help.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a false sense of helping, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it s doing the best it can do.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
So that s the first piece.
2
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Thank your trauma responses and appreciate them.
2
SPEAKER_01
Second is trust that you have what you need inside to heal.
2
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You don t need gurus.
2
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You don t need other people to tell you what s right for you.
2
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But we ve learned to not listen to our gut.
2
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We ve learned to not listen to our authentic self.
2
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So I want to bring people back to trusting that.
2
SPEAKER_01
That little voice inside that s like, not, I hate you, you re no good.
2
SPEAKER_01
Those are the protectors.
2
SPEAKER_01
The, I knew this relationship wasn t right.
2
SPEAKER_01
I knew there was something wrong here.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s like learning how to differentiate, listening to your gut, listening to your intuition, reclaiming that relationship with your wisdom.
2
SPEAKER_01
You can feel the difference, like you re a jerk feels different energy than this isn t right.
2
SPEAKER_00
But as a six, eight, 10 year old, how do you have wisdom that you can tap into?
2
SPEAKER_00
They do.
2
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Those kids have wisdom.
2
SPEAKER_01
Raising my kids, when my husband would lose it, for whatever reason, I m not saying, I m not blaming him, because I certainly have lost it too, but I m just, when he loses it, they look at me like, that s crazy.
2
SPEAKER_01
Kids know normal behavior.
2
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They do.
2
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So they have that wisdom too.
2
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The IFS model believes we re born with it.
2
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We re born with that wisdom and we learn not to listen because of life.
3
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Shut up, shut down, disconnect, disconnect.
3
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So we all have it.
3
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Let s reconnect with it.
3
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That s the second step.
3
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Trust.
3
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Trust that you have in you.
3
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Then there s this transform.
3
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This is where the healing comes in, Lewis.
3
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The transform, what doesn t serve you and doesn t belong to you.
3
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There are three steps to this.
3
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This is where the real healing of trauma comes in.
3
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of this is rooted in the models of psychotherapy that I ve trained in and neuroscience knowledge.
3
SPEAKER_00
Memory reconsolidation is a type of neuroscience that rewires our neural networks.
3
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You need to share.
3
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You need to witness the experience or share the story.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s not just the words.
3
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It s the, you know, the part that holds the trauma needs to share what it s holding.
3
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with internally with me, or with my therapist, or with my partner, or with a friend.
3
SPEAKER_00
You need to speak it out.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s not just the story.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s the thoughts, the feelings, and the physical sensations.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was terrified.
3
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I thought I was going to die.
3
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It was humiliating.
3
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I had shame.
3
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I had insecurity.
3
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Sharing it is the first step, because the part holds it all by itself.
3
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The body you mean?
3
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The part that holds the trauma.
3
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Once it shares it, it s like, oh, I m not the only one holding this or I don t have to be the only one that holds it.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the first piece is share the whole experience, not relive it, be with it.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a big difference because
3
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We don t want people to relive their trauma.
3
SPEAKER_00
Not to re-traumatize themselves.
3
SPEAKER_00
No, that s right.
3
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It s not about re-traumatizing, it s sharing.
3
SPEAKER_01
Say it again, not be with it?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s be with it, not in it.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we don t want people to relive it.
3
SPEAKER_00
We want them to share the experience with someone, with a loved one, with a therapist.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then this happened, and then this happened, and it felt like this, and my body felt gross, or I was all tensed up.
3
SPEAKER_00
Anything else, anything else.
3
SPEAKER_00
So once the experience is shared,
3
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That s step one.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s step one of transform, okay?
3
SPEAKER_00
Second is we want a corrective experience.
3
SPEAKER_00
What does that look like?
3
SPEAKER_00
Neuroscience knowledge tells us we want to disconfirm the trauma.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, I m loved.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m seen.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m acknowledged.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m important.
3
SPEAKER_00
But whatever this trauma is, we want a corrective experience.
3
SPEAKER_01
If someone watching or listening is thinking, that sounds great Frank, but I can t find evidence that I m loved.
3
SPEAKER_01
I can t find evidence that I m worthy.
3
SPEAKER_01
you know, thought of, considered.
3
SPEAKER_00
When the part says, I m no good.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m unworthy.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m not lovable.
3
SPEAKER_00
Either the self says, I love you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like I can see that little boy that was six years old.
3
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I m like, I love him.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the corrective experience can happen internally.
3
SPEAKER_00
My adult now,
3
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can say, you should have never gone through that.
3
SPEAKER_01
That was horrible.
3
SPEAKER_01
But if you ve never learned how to love yourself, how do you tap into that love?
3
SPEAKER_01
That s the trust.
3
SPEAKER_01
We all have it.
3
SPEAKER_00
We all have it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Got it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now, it also can come from somebody else.
3
SPEAKER_00
It can come from you to me, like Frank.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ve known you for 10 years.
3
SPEAKER_00
I love you.
3
SPEAKER_00
You are, you know, and you re really talking to the wounded part.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re not talking to me.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re talking to the wounded part.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it can be some, but you know, it can be trauma heals in connection because trauma is a violation of a relationship.
3
SPEAKER_00
Mmm.
3
SPEAKER_00
Say that again?
3
SPEAKER_00
Trauma is a violation of a relationship.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is it a relationship with others or with self?
3
SPEAKER_00
Both.
3
SPEAKER_00
Both.
3
SPEAKER_00
We disconnect from ourself to survive and other people we disconnect from to protect ourselves.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay?
3
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay?
3
SPEAKER_00
So this corrective experience is a relational repair.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a relational repair.
3
SPEAKER_00
Even if the person s not there to repair with.
3
SPEAKER_00
Even if the person s not there, it can happen with somebody else.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s what therapy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Ideally, it s supposed to be a therapist saying, you know, or ideally it s the self.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, I m here now.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m an adult.
3
SPEAKER_00
I heard what happened.
3
SPEAKER_00
You shared it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I love you.
3
SPEAKER_00
I care about you.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the part receives that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Or from a, I ve had corrective experiences with my kids.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
when they ve seen me in a way that I ve never been seen before.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like we have children to grow ourselves also, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
So you get that corrective experience.
3
SPEAKER_00
So once you ve shared it,
3
SPEAKER_00
Once you ve had some form of corrective experience, and you can feel those moments, they re like, ah.
3
SPEAKER_00
You ve had a couple of them here, I ve felt it from you, when you re going, like your body relaxed, you go like, ah, man.
3
SPEAKER_00
When something lands, that s a corrective experience.
3
SPEAKER_00
It hits differently, and it feels different, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
So we have, when that part that was traumatized shares its experience,
3
SPEAKER_00
Then it has a corrective experience.
3
SPEAKER_00
Then it s like, I don t need to carry this anymore.
3
SPEAKER_00
I got what I needed and somebody else knows it.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that s where release is possible.
3
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is that step three?
3
SPEAKER_00
Three.
3
SPEAKER_00
Step three in the transform, then release is possible.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I say to people like,
3
SPEAKER_00
Let it, let the part, let it go in any way it wants to.
3
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes people s bodies literally shake.
3
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes they re like, oh my, it s just floating up into the sky.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s just like the energy, it s an energy release.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, for me, this is resonating with me because I feel like I ve had a few of those energy releases in big ways over the last 10, 11 years.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
3
SPEAKER_01
The first time when I opened up about being sexually abused when I was a child by a man that I didn t know, and held onto it for 25 years without anyone knowing, and I let it go, it was like this release.
3
SPEAKER_01
A few years ago, three and a half years ago, I was going through a challenging breakup, and I was doing therapy for six months with it.
3
SPEAKER_01
intensive, like five, six hours on a weekend, like, you know, experiential, just like diving into all the parts of me that were blocking my ability to love self.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_01
And create boundaries.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I kind of had these heart pain for years, a few years, I was coming and going.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
In this relationship, kind of a tension and a ball feeling of pain in my chest.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sometimes palpitations, sometimes it wasn t there.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I remember feeling it in this one conversation with my therapist.
3
SPEAKER_01
And something all of a sudden clicked in my body and it felt like a pop and it released throughout my body.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was the weirdest sensation and I haven t felt that pain since that moment of release of corrective experience and sharing it and witnessing it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s so freeing to let go of trauma.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s amazing.
3
SPEAKER_01
Freeing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Isn t it?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, because when, and I get chills, like you say that I could feel it from you and I m feeling it for myself.
3
SPEAKER_00
I get chills throughout my body because there s nothing like, that s how you become you again.
3
SPEAKER_00
You don t change, you re not become somebody else.
3
SPEAKER_00
when you release, you reclaim yourself, you reclaim yourself in this amazing way you do.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s true.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I love that you ve, you ve had those moments like serendipitously because of the work you re doing.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m saying there s a method here.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you do, and I m always watching.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m making sure those three are happening, even if we re in a conversation.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it can happen.
3
SPEAKER_00
I want the world to know this can happen for you too.
3
SPEAKER_00
You don t have to do 33 years of therapy like I did.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like I m a therapy lifer, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
It can happen.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like this is the method.
3
SPEAKER_00
These are the steps.
3
SPEAKER_00
That transformation, you feel it.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s real.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you don t carry it anymore.
3
SPEAKER_00
You don t carry it anymore.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s like people who have taken antidepressants, when they kick in, they re like, I m different.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m not depressed anymore.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of like that.
3
SPEAKER_00
When you release that trauma, you re like, I m not in the world the same way anymore.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that happens.
3
SPEAKER_00
Those are those three steps.
3
SPEAKER_00
that need to happen for healing to occur, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
The last of my four Ts is now take back your power.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is take back your power, become you, you, you re more you every time you release something.
3
SPEAKER_00
And this is something I love to talk about, which was totally new for me, Lewis, around the death of my dad and the healing that I did with him.
3
SPEAKER_00
I told you earlier about my mom and the
3
SPEAKER_00
like this healing moment I had with her when she acknowledged what happened and she didn t protect me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Towards the end of my dad s life he said something to me and I m not gonna say what it is because it s like the big it s like the moment in the book where it s like oh my god it was an incredible moment what a gift for me to have this
4
SPEAKER_01
exchange with him.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was the first time I felt love from him.
4
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I felt love for him.
4
SPEAKER_01
Holy cow.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was incredible.
4
SPEAKER_01
First time.
4
SPEAKER_01
First time.
4
SPEAKER_01
And this was two years ago.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, not everyone gets this moment, though.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I was such a gift.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was like, I think that s why I m here.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s why I ve went through this is because many people don t get that you can still release without having the relational correction with the person.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes, you can.
4
SPEAKER_01
You don t have to do it with the person.
4
SPEAKER_01
I happen to be lucky enough
4
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to do it with him, to have that.
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And I felt love for him, even after all that he had done to me, I felt love.
4
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And it was amazing.
4
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Talk about freeing to feel love for someone who was brutal to you.
4
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It s like, it was the most freeing thing I ever felt.
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It s like,
4
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That didn t even affect me because I can love someone who harmed me is so powerful.
4
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It was like a drug to me because I was so beyond it that even what you did doesn t affect me anymore because I can love you despite of that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Is there ever power in not loving someone who hurt you or abused you as opposed to saying, well, they sexually abused me and they manipulated me and they gaslighted me for decades of my life?
4
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really psychologically mess with me for 20, 30 years.
4
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I m just going to love them, accept them for who they are and just, you know, not stand up for myself.
4
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Like, is there, here s the thing.
4
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I love that you re asking that question.
4
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Cause it s so controversial in our, I know you had somebody on recently as a different view and that I m going to be meeting with her soon, but we re going to have, we re going to do an event together.
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Yes.
4
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Okay.
4
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Cause Dr. Romani, she just has a different view about this.
4
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And I love that.
4
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We re going to have a conversation about it because differences are really important and useful.
4
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Yes.
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Okay.
4
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We don t need to stay in the us and them of things because we ll never heal that way.
4
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We will never heal.
4
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It s the and.
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It s the and, 100%.
4
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So I think there are people that don t want to and they don t have to.
4
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It s not a requirement.
4
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This piece that I m talking about is loving, and it s not like, oh, no big deal.
4
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It s when you ve truly healed, you re not carrying it anymore.
4
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So it feels different.
4
SPEAKER_01
And forgiveness, if I use the F word, forgiveness, because people get really activated by that word.
4
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is a choice.
4
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And the thing that people don t understand, and I didn t get it until a couple years ago, is the forgiveness was me releasing what I was caring about my father.
4
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It s not forgiving his behavior.
4
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No, it s not condoning.
4
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It was, I m not carrying the stuff about him anymore.
4
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Forgiveness was more about me than it was about him.
4
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Wow.
4
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People still have a choice to do it.
4
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Oprah talks about this, forgiveness, and Tyler Perry talks about this too with all the trauma that he s gone through.
4
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So if you choose to, it s more for you.
4
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And if you don t want to, you don t have to.
4
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Some people are like, it was too brutal.
4
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It was too painful.
4
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I m choosing not to forgive.
4
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And I m like, that s OK.
4
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It s whatever works for you.
4
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I was lucky to have this experience that I never thought I would have to be able to love someone.
4
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I never thought I would love somebody who harmed me.
4
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And the thing that was even a weirder bonus was I started forgiving myself for all that I had done to my kids, to my husband, to myself.
4
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So my
4
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loving him, still knowing what he did, not forgetting that, allowed me to love myself differently.
4
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Because who hasn t harmed or been harmed?
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This is the us and them piece that I have a mission to kind of get rid of.
4
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I know that s a big mission.
4
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I hear voices, let me say that, I hear voices a lot.
4
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Love, compassion, love, connection, unity.
4
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Love, connection, unity.
4
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Bring trauma healing to the world.
4
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I m like, shut up.
4
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It was like, stop, you know.
4
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Unity kept coming up and I didn t want unity to come up.
4
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I was like, oh, that s a hard one.
4
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The divide of us and them, the message was like unity, unity.
4
SPEAKER_01
So this was where- The divide is safer, right?
4
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It s so much easier.
4
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Wouldn t you rather be on one side and blame somebody else of the other?
4
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so much easier.
4
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But now I m free because I ve forgiven myself for staying too long in relationships.
4
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Oh man, I m guilty of that.
4
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Right?
4
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But if you choose to forgive, you release what you re caring about the other person, but it gives you an opportunity to kind of release what you re caring about yourself.
4
SPEAKER_00
I saw this quote of yours that said, trauma blocks love.
4
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Love heals trauma.
4
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Trauma activates an internal cascade of reactions that blocks love, connection, and creativity.
4
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And in turn, love has the power to transcend trauma, heal our pain, and reconnect us to our self, capital S, our source, and to each other.
4
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How can we
4
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Is it possible for us to truly love ourselves and others if we re holding on to traumas?
4
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I m going to say we re not going to use all or nothing.
4
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Uh-huh.
4
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And it s all degrees, OK?
4
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I am so much further along in this process than I was 20 years ago.
4
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Was I able to do 40% of that 20 years ago?
4
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Probably.
4
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Can I do 85%, 90% now?
4
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Yeah.
4
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Am I 100%?
4
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Probably not.
4
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Ever.
4
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Right?
4
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So yeah, that statement, like when I hear that, I was like, Oh my God, that s so powerful.
4
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Like, thank you for sharing it with me.
4
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I kind of feel like it s channeled information, honestly.
4
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And I ve lived it.
4
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And I ve spent my whole career studying it.
4
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So yes, I think that s entirely possible.
4
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I do believe it.
4
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I believe it wholeheartedly.
4
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That s why
4
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That s why I m on this mission.
4
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I m on this mission, and I m not the only one on this mission.
4
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That I m very clear about.
4
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You re on this mission.
4
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There s so many.
4
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We re coming together in a different way.
4
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All these people are coming out of the woodwork.
4
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The people in the ivory tower are showing up in the general public.
4
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We talked about this earlier.
4
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The influencers are showing up, and these motivational speakers are coming together in this way, because I think it s a collective.
4
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I think it s a collective to do this.
4
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And I think it s, I really do think it s possible, and I m not doing it alone, tell you that, but I m one of the people, and so are you, that are doing this.
4
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I think it s totally possible, and I think that s what s gonna heal.
4
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What do you think it takes for someone to truly love themselves?
4
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Is releasing the stuff that blocks that.
4
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The trauma blocks love, love heals trauma.
4
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Every time I wrote, I wrote Transcending Trauma, my other book during the pandemic.
4
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And I d write, write, write, write, write, go for a run, right?
4
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Go for a run.
4
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I m like such a runner.
4
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And I d hear trauma blocks love, love heals trauma, trauma blocks love, love heals trauma.
4
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And I m like, that is the truth.
4
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Because every time I release.
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How do you love yourself if you re blocked by trauma?
4
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How do you get rid of the trauma?
4
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It s this cycle.
4
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It s the cycle.
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It s going through the four Ts that I talked about.
4
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It s going through that.
4
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And each time you release something, you ve got more capacity.
4
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in the beginning, right?
4
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Each time you release it, you expand your ability.
4
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And it s like this cumulative thing.
4
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It doesn t happen all at once.
4
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It s not like a Hollywood moment.
4
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It happens cumulatively.
4
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And early on when you re super blocked, if you can find some loving connection, because you can help.
4
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It s not your responsibility to heal me.
4
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But your loving me helps me heal myself, because love is contagious.
4
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So if you are in a loving environment, you can access yours and utilize somebody else s, right?
4
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And just as love is contagious, so is hate and anger.
4
100%.
4
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Yes, it is.
4
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That s why you got to really protect your energy and your relationship with people.
4
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And do your best to shift conversations, move away from those conversations.
4
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That s right.
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and not get caught in that cycle of anger and hate as well.
4
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That s right.
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It s moments.
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Like, life happens in moments, and so does trauma healing happen in moments.
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It doesn t happen.
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Here s something that, you know, I ve heard people talk about.
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It s like, okay, if you ve had traumatic experiences, and you re a lifelong, you know, in therapy and psychiatrist, like you ve been in this work for every daily for 30 plus years or whatever,
4
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How does someone continue to release without reliving and resharing the traumatic experiences so that it affects them so much?
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Some people say quit reliving it and resharing it all the time.
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Therapy doesn t work if you re always in pain.
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therapy, reliving it, and you re not getting release and freedom, then it must not be working.
5
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That s right.
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So how do we communicate it without being stuck in this?
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Well, I ve been there every 10 years, then why are you still stuck and angry and resentful?
5
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That s right.
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And there s a lot of bad, there s a lot of therapies that are not trauma healing therapies.
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I was in, I told you, 11 years, five times a week during my residency.
5
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That was a lot, a big amount of therapy.
5
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But it was the talking, telling the story without release.
5
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Interesting.
5
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It s a lot of therapy, not release.
5
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I knew all about it.
5
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I understood it.
5
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I was stronger.
5
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Analyzed it.
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Yeah, I figured it out.
5
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I was stronger, but I was still carrying it in my body.
5
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Interesting.
5
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Yeah.
5
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So not all therapies have those qualities of release.
5
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That s why that transform thing I talked about, so important.
5
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Now, IFS is not the only therapy that does that.
5
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EMDR can do it, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.
5
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I ve heard great things about that, but I ve also, I mean, what s the difference between IFS and EMDR?
5
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And if you were, if someone is experiencing trauma in their life, what would you recommend first?
5
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Here s the thing.
5
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So there s sensory motorcycle therapy, there s Peter Levine somatic experiencing, there s a lot of different ABC, you know, everybody s got their initials, IFS, you know, EMDR.
5
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They ve got their
5
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They ve got their method.
5
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There s probably six or eight trauma methods, okay?
5
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And nobody knows this.
5
SPEAKER_00
When you go to therapy, you don t know.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s trauma methods and those should have a release component.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like psychoanalytic therapy that I was in didn t have, at that point, a release component.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I processed it without releasing it.
5
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so you weren t getting the full benefit of results.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was better in a lot of ways.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was able to come out, you know, I, you know, they did stuff, my life got better, but I was still carrying it.
5
SPEAKER_01
You re still holding on to the body was still keeping the body was still keeping the score.
5
100%.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
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Interesting.
5
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Yeah, it was.
5
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So I want to teach people that there is a way to do this.
5
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And it s not just telling the story.
5
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It s not just reliving it over and over again.
5
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And a lot of people do that, right?
5
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There are these certain qualities.
5
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I started this year called the Trauma Institute, OK?
5
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And it s an integrative center for bringing all the trauma modalities together
5
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integratively bringing trauma healing to the next generation of therapists and of the general public.
5
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It s a mission for me.
5
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It s like, I don t think one model is the right model.
5
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Everybody needs different things at different times.
5
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So let s pull this resource together.
5
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A lot of
5
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My friends and colleagues have made these models, and I m thankful for them to have made them.
5
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Thank you, Dick Schwartz, who made IFS.
5
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Thank you, Pat Ogden, who made sensory motor psychotherapy.
5
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Thank you, Gabor Mate, who makes Compassionate Inquirer.
5
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Bessel van der Kolk, who brings neuroscience.
5
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Dan Siegel, like all of them, amazing things.
5
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It s time to put it together in an integrative way, and that s what I hope for the Trauma Institute.
5
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What is the core thesis of IFS and why is that something that you study and teach so frequently?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, like I said, I was in therapy a long time, a lot of different modalities.
5
SPEAKER_00
I did EMDR, I did sensory motor psychotherapy.
5
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IFS was different for me.
5
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First, because I grew up in a big Italian family, and everything was about the group, never about the individual.
5
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Interesting.
5
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I m sure a lot of people can relate to that.
5
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Right, right.
5
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And a lot of ethnic groups are like that.
5
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Not only Italian.
5
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About the group, the culture, and not the individual.
5
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The individual doesn t matter, the group matters, the family matters.
5
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So I grew up there, and it was so amazing for IFS to say, go inside, you have self,
5
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And you can access that to heal.
5
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So it was really powerful for me to reclaim me.
5
SPEAKER_00
So IFS says we all have self-energy.
5
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We re born with it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it has inherent wisdom.
5
SPEAKER_00
We all have parts too.
5
SPEAKER_00
All different parts of us.
5
SPEAKER_00
How many parts of us do we have?
5
SPEAKER_00
It s, you know, I have a part that likes to run.
5
SPEAKER_00
I have a part that likes to travel.
5
SPEAKER_00
We have a lot of different parts.
5
SPEAKER_00
We have a lot of different parts.
5
SPEAKER_01
And there s positive parts and kind of wounded parts?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I love that you didn t say negative parts.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because everybody s like bad parts, you know.
5
SPEAKER_00
I worked, there s no bad parts.
5
SPEAKER_00
Dick s book, No Bad Parts, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
There s no bad parts.
5
SPEAKER_00
We look at the positive intention.
5
SPEAKER_00
So some parts protect, some parts carry pain, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
I have a part that s a therapist.
5
SPEAKER_00
I have a part that, you know, gets really stressed out and anxious, you know?
5
SPEAKER_01
So we- What are the parts that protect?
5
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What are they actually doing inside of us?
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, they re doing these behaviors and symptoms.
5
SPEAKER_00
Drinking too much, over-exercising.
5
SPEAKER_00
Over-working.
5
SPEAKER_00
Over-working.
5
SPEAKER_01
Reactive, angry, resentful, protective.
5
SPEAKER_00
And the only reason they take on those extreme roles is because of something overwhelming.
5
SPEAKER_01
Is it a sense of control?
5
SPEAKER_01
Is it a sense of protection?
5
SPEAKER_01
What is the thing?
5
SPEAKER_00
Control and protection, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Control and protection.
5
SPEAKER_01
When we say, when we do something obsessive or a particular way that we
5
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want to make sure it s done this way and it seems controlling.
5
SPEAKER_01
What is that saying about us?
5
SPEAKER_00
It s saying, what it tells me about us is that I grew up in a controlling environment.
5
SPEAKER_00
In a controlling environment.
5
SPEAKER_00
I grew up in a controlling environment and I internalized control as a way to help.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s what it says.
5
SPEAKER_01
So someone thinking they re being helpful
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
By being controlling.
5
SPEAKER_00
The part, it s like, like the part, like critic, let s talk about critics, like who doesn t have an internal critic in some way?
5
SPEAKER_00
It s because you were yelled at or criticized.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then you re like, look how effective that is.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was the recipient of that criticism.
5
SPEAKER_00
I see how powerful it is.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then some part of us says, Oh, I m going to use that to control the kid in here who keeps crying because if he shuts up, then I won t get yelled at.
5
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
5
SPEAKER_00
Do you see that?
5
SPEAKER_00
So I ll suppress my feelings, my emotions.
5
SPEAKER_00
I ll do it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Shut up, you idiot.
5
SPEAKER_00
Shut up, you jerk.
5
SPEAKER_00
If you shut, if you re quiet, we won t get yelled at.
5
SPEAKER_00
So we use what s in our environment.
5
SPEAKER_00
protectively.
5
SPEAKER_00
And if we understand that, then it s a different relationship with the critic.
5
SPEAKER_00
Not, hate your critic, get rid of it, don t be critical anymore.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, who s ever stopped drinking because you just said, and for those of you who are old enough, like Nancy Reagan, just say no to drugs.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, doesn t work.
5
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t work, you know?
5
SPEAKER_00
It s like, no.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s like, oh, where did you learn that?
5
SPEAKER_00
How is it helping?
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, okay.
5
SPEAKER_00
I get it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Are you interested in helping in a different way?
5
SPEAKER_00
Right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Would you be you want to work together here?
5
SPEAKER_00
We can team up and do it differently.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because these parts don t like the way they do things.
5
SPEAKER_00
They were forced to use what was in their environment.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s just a part of the tools that they know that they have access to.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
And when we re young and we come up with tools like kids aren t good at raising themselves.
5
SPEAKER_00
OK, but that s what they do.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right?
5
SPEAKER_00
They need to.
5
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes they raise their parents.
5
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes they raise their parents.
5
SPEAKER_01
Isn t that fascinating?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yep.
5
SPEAKER_01
What happens to someone who is maybe the oldest sibling that has to take care of their mom or father s emotions, or lack of control, or bad behavior, or they need to go work at an early age to support the parent?
5
SPEAKER_01
What happens to that type of person who experiences that in their life?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
So they become a Harvard-trained psychiatrist.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s one of the things they do.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like I was such a parentified child.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh my goodness.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was such a parentified child.
5
SPEAKER_00
I took care of my siblings.
5
SPEAKER_00
I took care of my mother.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was trying to manage my father, you know, like, so they become therapists, they become healthcare workers.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like when you learn that you have to caretake as a way of protection, like if I manage to survive,
5
SPEAKER_00
then if I manage you and your drinking, then you ll maybe take care of me.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, man.
5
SPEAKER_00
But that never happens.
5
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t happen, but it s... You just keep searching for that.
5
SPEAKER_00
But it s like you re searching for, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So if I take care of everybody, maybe I ll be loved.
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, man.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I become a consummate caretaker.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like huge, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
We have a lot of caretakers in this world of culture and society and that like ER doctors, like there s so many places where people caretake.
5
SPEAKER_00
in an attempt, first of all, to focus on somebody else instead of themselves.
5
SPEAKER_00
And secondly, in an attempt, you re going to like me and love me and then I ll get what I need.
5
SPEAKER_00
If I take care of you, I might get what I need in return.
5
SPEAKER_00
So intentions are, it sounds good, of like, I want to be of service.
7
SPEAKER_00
I know that and I still did it because my history was in me And now I don t like I am so did my kids are 16 and 20 and my son my oldest Can Helen scream at me like any 20 year old can and I don t react anymore.
7
SPEAKER_01
I don t how did you learn how to not react but also not get
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Take, you know, getting, you know, letting a boundary cross over where someone can t talk to me that way.
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I m going to walk out of this room right now.
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That is really not okay.
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I m not going to tolerate this and I m not going to engage with you when you re like this.
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I couldn t do that before.
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How did you learn to not let it boil inside of you and think, this ungrateful child who I ve given my life to.
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I didn t learn it.
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I healed it.
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That s what I did.
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I tried to learn it.
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I tried to learn it.
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So there s a difference between analytical understanding versus physical wisdom.
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That s right.
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And the physical wisdom is releasing the trauma.
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The physical wisdom, I don t have to try hard anymore.
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It s not in me.
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The trauma is not in me.
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I used to have this crazy startle.
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My kids, we d have a trampoline in the backyard.
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One would jump on me from behind and I d freak out because of my startle.
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It was like a trigger, like if someone was overreacting.
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Yeah, it was like, like this.
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And I would say to them, like, hey, remember Papa said he was hurt when he was younger, that s why he reacts this way.
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Like, I didn t want them to take responsibility for my reaction, but I still had it.
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But you didn t.
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own it and release it.
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I couldn t, at that point I didn t release it.
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Now I don t hold startle so much anymore because it was physical, it was a physical abuse I worked on early on and I released it and now I don t hold the startle.
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It s funny, we watched Stranger Things with my youngest son, he loves Stranger Things.
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It s such a trauma, talk about trauma.
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It s very stark, it s traumatizing.
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And my husband s jumping like a Mexican jumping bean and I wasn t.
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I m like, I m not, I don t have jump scares anymore like I used to because I released them.
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So it s like when you release it, you don t get activated by it anymore.
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So that s the, that s the point.
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Like I m not done, I m not done, but I am, I am so much more myself.
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than I ve ever been in my life and I can tolerate my feelings, other people s feelings so much more than I ever.
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Am I perfect at it?
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Hell no.
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But every layer that you release, you re more you.
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uncomfortable emotions.
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Yes.
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You re expanding the ability to sit with them, to witness them without being wounded by these emotions or reactions or overwhelming life experiences.
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What I told you with my mom, I m like, look, mom, if you decide never to see me again, because this is too painful for you, I can, I ll handle that.
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Like that.
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I was like, that s right.
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Like,
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It s not what I want.
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No, it s not what I want, but I can tolerate that because I m choosing me and I deserve to be.
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listen to, prioritize, and take, I love myself enough.
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I mean, I feel like there s a lot of people watching or listening that have probably experienced some type of challenge in family or relationships or whatever it might be, where they have love and also frustration and hate with someone in their life, right?
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That s right.
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Family member, an uncle, a father, whatever, a grandparent, whatever it might be, right?
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We all do.
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And my intention is never to break people up, to get them to leave a relationship or end or create a divorce.
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That s never my intention.
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because I believe it is powerful to be a family and connected, even if there s discomfort or frustration or someone doesn t approve of your life choices or whatever it might be.
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So how can people not say, screw you, you don t understand me, you frustrate me, so I m going to tell you that this doesn t work for me, I m gonna divorce you in this relationship, family member, friend, whatever it is.
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How can they cautiously communicate in a loving, appreciative way and create a boundary if someone doesn t want to receive that?
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Or they re not kicking them out of their life forever.
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So the screw you or kicking them out of your life forever is a protector.
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That s a protective response, a wounded response.
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It s I m wounded.
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So I m gonna do do this to you to protect myself.
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Okay.
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So and we do that all the time.
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And that is a reactivity or the shutting down and disconnecting the ghost ghosting people and never calling back, you know, like those are those are setting a boundary from a protector
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to protect our pain, which is very different than what I did with my mom.
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I m like, I love you.
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I was setting a boundary from self.
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I love you.
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I care about you.
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I want you in my life.
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I ll do anything I can to help you.
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If you can t join me for whatever reason,
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That s up to you and I will deal with the consequences of that.
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But I love myself and I m choosing me over disconnection to make you feel better.
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Okay, so that s coming from a different place.
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So we set boundaries from a place of love.
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Yes.
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You know, I organized a funeral for my dad because I wanted to.
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I wanted to give him a good send off.
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You know, and it was from a place of love.
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You know, you could say no from a place of love, like, this doesn t work.
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So I m doing my kids now.
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It s like, that doesn t work for me.
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I m sorry.
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I don t want to be yelled at.
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You re angry.
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I m open to hearing about it, but not this way.
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Yes.
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When you re ready, let s calm down.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Yeah.
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So it s from where it comes from.
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So the boundary is different when it s reactive or shut down because that s protective versus when it s coming from a place of love.
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Wow.
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You are the expert on trauma, one of the experts on trauma in the world today.
7
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It seems like a lot of people are oversharing their traumas online, right?
7
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Before they ve actually gone through the four-step process and done the three things of transforming their traumas.
7
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And it seems like this trauma dumping is happening without a processing privately,
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or with a professional first.
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What are your thoughts on people sharing their traumas online?
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And should people share things that they ve struggled with online?
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Is the right time to do it?
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Or are people oversharing too much?
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Yeah, it s a great, that s the downside with everybody joining up to try to help.
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When we all come together to try and help, not everybody s doing it from
7
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the healthiest place, right?
7
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So that s one of the downsides.
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What I say to people, and even if you want to confront somebody who s harmed you, confront a perpetrator in any form, heal first, confront second.
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Heal first, confront second.
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Because typically what you do once you heal, you see the wound in your perpetrator.
7
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That s what typically ends up happening.
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It s hard to hear this if you haven t healed.
7
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You can have compassion for the complexity of what that person was doing.
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It doesn t mean you agree or say they re okay.
7
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No, you don t agree or condone, but you can see it.
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My dad is like, he was a wounded person.
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He had limitations.
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I could see that now.
7
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And the little boy inside of me was the recipient of someone else s actions, and this is not okay, and it hurt me, and it conditioned me for many years of my life, and it ruined parts of me, and there was anger and wounds that he put me through this conversion therapy and these things, and it caused all this pain in my life.
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But if you can step back and look at it, you can still see, at least I know where it s coming from.
7
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And it s, I don t, I don t take responsibility for it anymore.
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I don t hate myself about it anymore.
7
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I don t even hate him about it.
7
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It was what was happened.
7
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It s, I wouldn t be sitting across from you right now if it wasn t for him.
7
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Wow.
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I wouldn t be care about this work.
7
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I wouldn t be a trauma expert.
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Yeah, I wouldn t be helping people.
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So I have gratitude now.
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I mean, this is a long time.
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This is a long time.
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So I m not, I don t want people to feel bad about themselves.
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If ever, we re all at different stages.
7
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I ve been, I m 60 years old.
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I ve been doing this since 60, 60 years old.
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That s because of healing.
7
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That s what I tell people.
7
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They re like, get a skincare line, Frank.
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I m like, no, it s not skincare.
7
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It s releasing trauma.
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It s releasing trauma.
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I think I look younger the more I release.
7
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I think we all do, honestly.
7
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I m not carrying it anymore, right?
7
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So yes, it s possible for people.
7
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Yes, you can do it.
7
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I don t want people to feel bad.
7
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The trauma dumping is sharing before you ve healed.
7
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And people get a lot of attention, they get a lot of like validation and then they
8
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keep doing it from a wounded place.
8
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Yes, it increases the us them mentality.
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That s the thing that I m like, ah, you re all good.
8
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And we re all bad.
8
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Like, you know, but this early premature trauma dumping doesn t really help.
8
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Now, I m trying to create I m trying as I move out of therapy.
8
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Therapy is great.
8
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Don t get me wrong.
8
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It s not enough to heal the world.
8
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There s limited resources.
8
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We don t have enough therapists.
8
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So I m trying to bring this to the general public so that people, there are safe ways for people to do that.
8
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We re creating, that s part of what the Trauma Institute is trying to create ways, if you can t afford it, you don t have those resources, that there might be ways to do that.
8
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I m really working hard on that.
8
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But trauma dumping is not helping, even though a part gets heard.
8
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It s not done safely.
8
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It s not done with permission.
8
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If you trauma dump, all parts of you don t agree to share.
8
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The internal parts of you.
8
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The internal parts.
8
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I say, is everybody okay with sharing?
8
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Is everyone in alignment with this?
8
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Is everyone in alignment?
8
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We re just the wounded part of you.
8
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Right.
8
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Then you share from a different place when everyone s aligned.
8
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So I m mixed about it.
8
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Like, yeah, there s too many people showing up, doing it,
8
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I don t want to say the wrong way, doing it in an uninformed way, re-traumatizing.
8
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It s re-traumatizing.
8
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When you relive something, we know this from neuroscience, reliving reinforces the trauma neural network.
8
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Being with it.
8
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is the space to allow the transformation stuff to occur.
8
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What s the difference between reliving it and being with it?
8
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Yes.
8
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What is that?
8
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I ll give you an example like, I m so sick and tired of you.
8
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You do this to me over and over again.
8
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That s in it.
8
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Okay?
8
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That s in it, right?
8
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And you could feel, can t you feel the energy?
8
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Yeah.
8
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And it s like, it s like all of me feels this about all of you.
8
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You always do that.
8
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Yes.
8
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I m not going to get, thanks for sharing, Frank.
8
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I m going to get a defensive response back.
8
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That s your natural instinct.
8
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I say, a part of me was so upset by what you did the other day.
8
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That really hurt me when you said that.
8
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Then you re like, oh, so he doesn t hate me.
8
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I m not all bad.
8
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I didn t ruin his life.
8
SPEAKER_02
You re like, oh, that thing I did was harmful to him.
8
SPEAKER_02
I get that.
8
SPEAKER_02
You re much more likely to say, I get it.
8
SPEAKER_02
I m sorry about that.
8
SPEAKER_02
Here s what was going on for me, right?
8
SPEAKER_02
So that s the being in it.
8
SPEAKER_02
It s so like encompassing and it s not effective.
8
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It never works.
8
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Nobody s like, thanks for sharing when we re in it.
8
SPEAKER_02
Wow.
8
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And so it s the being with.
8
SPEAKER_00
Is it possible for someone to heal without a therapist, a priest, a psychiatrist who s actually helping them release their trauma?
8
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That s what I m working on.
8
SPEAKER_02
I m not 100% certain I want to do this.
8
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There s other people working on it, as we mentioned.
8
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I want to kind of create a safe way to do this because there s peer support things that are helpful to a point.
8
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One of the things I want to teach people is when can you do it on your own and when do you need to get extra support?
8
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When you re able to be with it,
8
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you can do more.
8
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When you start slipping in it, you ve lost perspective.
8
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So that s one of the guidelines.
8
SPEAKER_02
I did a course recently with a writer who writes memoirs, also Lissa Rankin.
8
SPEAKER_00
I know Lissa, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know Lissa?
8
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Right to Heal.
8
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Right to Heal.
8
SPEAKER_02
We just did a course, and we re trying to teach people, and I did like, we set up this structure and guidelines of how to write from the part, how to write a love letter to the part.
8
SPEAKER_02
It s interesting.
8
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So we re working on different ways.
8
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I feel like we re working on, how do I heal?
8
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Because I know there s a lot of people out there who don t have these resources, and there s a lot of trauma.
8
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So I m really working on it, and I want us to collectively work on it, to bring this to people, so that if you can t, you know when you
8
SPEAKER_02
need to get help or how to get help.
8
SPEAKER_02
And I don t know you, you talked about these moments in your life, like with my husband, had so many corrective experiences with him.
8
SPEAKER_02
Like that was that s been a very healing relationship, you know, so we can heal in relationship under the right circumstances.
8
SPEAKER_02
that are not therapeutic, too, right?
8
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You know what I mean?
8
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Sometimes friendships are like, I have friends that are just like, can be so vulnerable, too, and it feels so good.
8
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I don t have a ton of them, but we can heal in a relationship.
8
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It s powerful.
8
SPEAKER_00
I wanted to ask you about drugs with mental health or trauma.
8
SPEAKER_02
I was going to say, which drugs are you talking about?
8
SPEAKER_02
There s a lot of them.
8
SPEAKER_00
I do my best to come from an open mind when it comes to, I guess, prescription drugs with someone dealing with mental health, trauma, you know, depression, all these different things.
8
SPEAKER_00
But sometimes I feel like people bypass the work first to get a relief of, I m overwhelmed, I m stressed, I m mentally struggling, I m depressed, I m suicidal thinking.
8
SPEAKER_00
Give me a drug to feel better.
8
SPEAKER_00
What are your thoughts on this?
8
SPEAKER_00
Because you ve prescribed this as a psychiatrist to patients and clients before.
8
SPEAKER_00
Do you feel like too many people are quickly jumping to prescription drugs to heal a symptom versus turning around and facing themselves, doing the process you talked about, and actually going through the pain, which feels like you re going to die sometimes.
8
SPEAKER_00
It feels life-threatening when you face the wounds.
8
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Horrendous.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I understand it is probably the hardest work you ll ever do.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
8
SPEAKER_00
But what are the complications of going for prescription, depression, anti-depression drugs first before working through the pain emotionally?
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
So I m not an anti-drug person, and I m not a drug-first person, right?
8
SPEAKER_02
I used to do a lot of psychopharmacology lectures.
8
SPEAKER_02
I teach about the neurobiology of PTSD and dissociation, and when you re in hyper-aroused PTSD,
8
SPEAKER_02
you have low serotonin, you have low GABA, you have high cortisol, high norepinephrine, there s a real bio I mean, I can I teach this stuff in my sleep.
8
SPEAKER_02
So there s real biological dysregulation.
8
SPEAKER_02
So when you have PTSD, you do can benefit from increasing your serotonin or decreasing your norepinephrine or dopamine.
8
SPEAKER_02
There are also natural ways to do that, right?
8
SPEAKER_02
There s natural ways to do it, and the drugs aren t wrong at all if they re used appropriately.
8
SPEAKER_02
I think of medications as therapy enhancers.
8
SPEAKER_02
That s the way I think of them.
8
SPEAKER_02
When somebody can t be with because they re too flooded, use the meds to help lower the intensity so you can be with.
8
SPEAKER_02
Meds don t do the work.
8
SPEAKER_02
Meds do not do the work.
8
SPEAKER_02
We can have a whole nother episode on psychedelics at another time because there s a whole world of the psychedelics, MDMA, ketamine, all those drugs.
8
SPEAKER_02
I m steeped in that world too because people are rushing to those.
8
SPEAKER_00
I get so worried about that.
8
SPEAKER_00
I know, I know.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then they re like, I m healed.
8
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And then three weeks later, they re like, I m going to break down again.
8
SPEAKER_02
Well, it doesn t work.
8
SPEAKER_02
And I have very good friends who are very thoughtful trauma therapists who are doing amazing work with psychedelics too.
8
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So they re enhancers.
8
SPEAKER_02
Got it.
8
SPEAKER_02
And if you have enough knowledge to know when, it s like, when do you need therapy?
8
SPEAKER_02
When can you do the work on your own?
8
SPEAKER_02
When would medications benefit you?
8
SPEAKER_02
And when are you using them as a replacement?
8
SPEAKER_02
Like both are true.
8
SPEAKER_02
Do you know what I mean?
8
SPEAKER_02
There s a lot of people that are like these hippie anti-drug people.
8
SPEAKER_02
I m like, that s ignoring science.
8
SPEAKER_02
And, you know, I got PTSD, took a pill.
8
SPEAKER_02
Like, that s ignoring reality.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, both extremes are harmful.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, again, I try to have an open mind about this.
8
SPEAKER_02
I can hear your energy, though.
8
SPEAKER_00
I feel it, but... And... Oh, good, there you go.
8
SPEAKER_00
Because we live in the world of ands here.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I also worry about external chemicals influencing internal
8
SPEAKER_00
The internal pharmacy that we naturally have, just like you said, the wisdom is within us at birth and at five.
8
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We have to tap into it.
8
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We ve got to shut up the clutter and the chaos and all these things.
8
SPEAKER_00
I get it.
8
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It s like, how do we know that we re going to survive?
9
SPEAKER_01
that medication also won t harm our chemistry in the future if we do too much of this.
9
SPEAKER_00
We don t know that.
9
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And shift of us needing it to then be self-regulated.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s my worry in a world of ANDS.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s a big deal with the anti-ADD meds, for example.
9
SPEAKER_00
The ADD meds are very complicated.
9
SPEAKER_01
especially from childhood as we re developing our brains.
9
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
9
SPEAKER_00
So it s very complicated.
9
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You re bringing up something that s important for people to pay attention to.
9
SPEAKER_00
And let s be thoughtful about it.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like I used them at one point in my healing.
9
SPEAKER_00
I couldn t do the work.
9
SPEAKER_00
I couldn t do the work.
9
SPEAKER_00
That makes sense.
9
SPEAKER_00
I couldn t.
9
SPEAKER_00
I was so, I was depressed.
9
SPEAKER_00
I was taken over by it.
9
SPEAKER_00
The therapy wasn t helpful because I didn t, I needed, and I did it for probably two years maybe is what I did and it helped
9
SPEAKER_01
But then you got off of it.
9
SPEAKER_00
I got off of it.
9
SPEAKER_00
It helped me do the work.
9
SPEAKER_00
It helped me do the work.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like if you can t do the work, it can help you versus use it instead of doing the work, no.
9
SPEAKER_01
If you re willing to do it and say okay I m intensely doing the work now and it s a both and, then it s like okay.
9
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If I m unable to do the work, and I ve tried and tried and done all these different things, and it s not working, then try it.
9
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But also do the work with it, right?
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Don t just take the med.
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It s not a replacer.
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It s not a replacer.
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It s an enhancer of the work.
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That s good.
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That s the way I think about it.
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I like that philosophy.
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Yeah, that s great.
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And be really thoughtful about the long term.
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effects of these medicines.
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I think it s important because there is a culture.
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Like, let s do everything quickly.
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There s such a culture in that.
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Or put a band-aid on it or just give it relief.
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Yes.
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We re so, like, technology has made us so instantaneous.
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some of the pill stuff folds right into that.
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You know what I mean?
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And like, I d rather do an MDMA session or a mushroom session, so I don t have to... And feel good in the moment.
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And I m like gone into La La Land, you know, so I don t have to do the work.
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So there s a bypass.
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We call that bypass.
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Like a lot of people use meds.
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A lot of people use meditation as bypass or spirituality as bypass.
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Let me get to a higher place and ignore my trauma.
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There s a lot of bypass in spirituality.
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There s a lot of bypass in medication.
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I m a very spiritual person.
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It can really enhance the work.
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but it can also be bypassed.
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So can medicines.
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Wow.
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If someone knows that they have blocks, they have wounds, they have pain, they have resentments, anger inside of them.
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And they also know that, man, this might take months or years to process and actually face.
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And I ve got so much at work and my family, I ve got to show up and like,
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hold the ship together.
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I can t go through this work right now because it s going to be so painful.
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It s going to take so much of my energy, my time.
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I m not going to be able to be there for my husband or my wife or my kids and my work.
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I m going to be in breakdown mode.
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What would you say to those individuals on what s available on the other side?
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And is it ever a wrong time to start the work?
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Yeah, it s a great question.
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And I face this a lot with a lot of people, I have to tell you.
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It is, I can feel it as we re talking, like it is really painful.
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It is difficult to go through this.
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I m on the other side.
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Yes.
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And my life is better than it s ever been.
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I am doing more things than I had.
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I would have never in a million years thought I would be able to live this kind of life.
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So the benefits are enormous when we are clean and clear and truly ourselves.
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The benefits are endless for all of us in different ways.
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So not everybody wants to, has the resources to, do the work to get there.
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And I say that s a choice.
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I really say that s a choice.
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Most people can t slip through life without getting stopped up by it.
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It s the third divorce.
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It s the third kid that I can t afford that I shouldn t have had.
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It s the job that I keep like failing at or another boss who hates me that I got fired for, right?
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So what I would say to people is, how is your life?
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And is it where you want it to be?
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And if not, which pieces do you wanna change when?
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This does not have to be done in the grueling all at once kind of way.
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You know, out here in L.A.
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as I m working more with people, it s fascinating that a lot of people who are in this industry are terrified to do the work because they are afraid they re going to lose their careers over it.
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I ve met a lot of people who have significant trauma.
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You don t play somebody else for a livelihood without needing to get away from something.
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I m not saying every actor has trauma.
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I m not saying that.
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I m saying I ve worked with people who are very reluctant because there s fear that they re going to lose what they do have if they do the work.
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I ll lose my family.
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I ll lose this.
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So what I say is take it one step at a time.
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Where are you unhappy?
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What do you want to change?
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And then do the work around that piece.
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Do it a little bit at a time.
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It doesn t have to be like, not everybody needs to be in therapy for 33 years.
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Sorry, I don t recommend that for everybody.
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There s a lot of money and time consuming.
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I m grateful, but I have a purpose in it, right?
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So do it in phases.
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And if it gets too hard, really stop.
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There s timing.
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I had a piece.
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I have my oldest son and my youngest son.
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They re four years and a day apart.
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And my youngest is on the spectrum.
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And he was a very challenging kid with many, many medical problems.
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And I wasn t good.
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I was too overwhelmed in my life.
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to do deep healing work then.
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During that time.
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I couldn t do it then.
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I was barely keeping afloat, right?
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So it s like, you got to balance where you want to be, where you are, and what kind of resource, energy and monetarily, do you have when.
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It s kind of a long life and different people do different work at different times, you know what I mean?
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And I can say this now at 60, like, oh, you re only 30, like you ve got to, you ve got to,
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Here you re at 30 like you ve got a long way to go like it s okay do a piece of work now You know, I did a piece of work got into a great relationship with a guy It was like I I didn t repeat anything anymore.
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I was like, I m not in repeat mode.
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I found a good relationship and then it was These years later when we had kids that stuff came up at a different layer.
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So I went back Do you know what I mean?
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So it doesn t have to be all at once interesting.
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And what would you say is the number one?
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emotion that blocks us from
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Peace, harmony, and ultimate happiness.
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Shame.
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I think it s shame.
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Like, shame is so toxic.
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And shame is usually the result of relational trauma.
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Really?
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When does shame occur?
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I write about this, it can happen.
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Brene Brown talks about shame in a way that I love also.
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I think from a, I write about shame from a trauma, a relational trauma perspective.
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And there s two shame cycles that I talk about within trauma, within relational trauma.
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One is when you re verbally or physically abused.
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You worthless piece.
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Okay, you internalize I m a worthless piece of so you have a part that holds shame.
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I shame is not I did something wrong.
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Shame is I am bad.
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So when we are when there s an external shamer.
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We develop an internal shamer and an internal shamed.
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Wow.
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Okay.
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You worthless piece of, if you behave, we won t get in trouble.
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So when you re critically abused, verbally abused, or externally shamed, you have a shame wound.
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I m bad.
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I m no good.
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Is that sexual abuse too?
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Sexual abuse can, yeah, it s, it s, yeah.
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I would say sexual abuse too.
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It s interesting.
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I just feel that so powerfully, like it adds another dimension to it.
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Like I am, it s like the vile, worthless.
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It adds another layer of shame, right?
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You can relate from your own history, right?
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So it s, it s, yeah, it s, I would say it s another depth
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It s another layer of I am horrible, I am bad.
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that can be healed, okay?
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And that s the wound, is I am no good.
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It takes a long time to heal shame wounds.
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They can be healed, but it takes a long time.
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It s such a physiologically powerful emotion, and it s so reflexive and reactive, right?
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Instantaneous.
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It s probably why you had this kind of reaction when your kids would jump on your back.
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You re like, ah!
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It s so reflexive.
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The other shame wound comes from neglect.
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And that could be big T neglect or middle T neglect, right?
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Yeah, like I am so bad that my parent doesn t even care.
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I am so bad that I m not worth food or clothing or a hug.
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Or love or affection.
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Or love or affection.
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So when it s neglect, it s, and I call the,
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This one, the hyper-aroused, you yelling and screaming.
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This one s the hypo-aroused, numb, detached, disconnected.
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And then you develop an internal shamer or disconnector.
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Those are the people who are disconnected from themselves because they ve learned that disconnection is a way of being in the world.
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See?
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So those are two such shame cycles that I work with in relational trauma.
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All different versions over and over again.
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How is someone who is disconnected or analytical and not in their body and connected to their heart, based on conditionings of neglect and shame,
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How does someone like that learn to process and heal so they re fully in their body and in their hearts and connected to themselves and the world?
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I had the smart intellectual protector in a big way.
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I m going to know it all.
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You don t get to Harvard.
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I was like, yeah.
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And it was who I was.
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Your identity.
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Who I was.
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I am smart.
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And it was intellect fills a void.
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Intellect fills the void, the shame void.
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It s like, and those parts... If I feel worthless, then this will help me not feel worthless.
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I m going to fill the space.
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I m going to figure it out.
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I m going to understand it.
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I m going to solve the problem, right?
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And those parts have a very hard time stepping back.
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If I step back, there s nothing.
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If I don t lead with my intellect or showcase my abilities or skills, I m nothing.
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I m nothing.
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And it s so powerful.
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So those take a long time to work with those.
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And I remember the moment that I wasn t fully identified with that part.
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It was like one of these,
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identity crises.
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It s like, who am I?
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Who am I if I m not smart?
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Then it was where I was like, oh, you re funny.
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And oh, you like this.
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I started seeing the other dimensions, but for the longest time,
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It was like, I write about this in the book.
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I used to run home with A s on my report card, hoping my dad will love me.
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Like this is, she s going to love me now.
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The gold stars on the report card, you know?
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Perfect.
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GPA.
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Top of the class.
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So I was driven for achievement to get love.
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Did he ever acknowledge you or love you when you had A s?
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It didn t, he acknowledged, we got a dollar for every A, back in the day, okay?
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We got a dollar for every A, okay?
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So, but it didn t get me what I wanted.
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It didn t get me love.
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Really?
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It didn t get me love, you know?
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So you got rewarded in monetary ways, but not emotional or affectionate ways.
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Exactly.
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So it took, those people that are all left-brained.
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How does someone learn how to fully love
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and love themselves and give themselves affection when their parents didn t have the tools or wasn t in their DNA to touch, hug, kiss, and love on their kids.
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And when I went to Japan last year, I saw this and I heard this from many people that said, just the culture, I m sure some people didn t do this, but the culture in general just wasn t affectionate with kids.
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And it s very academic-driven, achievement-driven type of culture.
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Again, not all parents were this way, but it seemed like this was the culture.
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And they grew up not able to express their emotions as fully based because of that.
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So if someone was raised without affection from their parents, love, attention, how do they learn to give themselves affection?
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and be comfortable receiving from others when they never received from their parents?
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Yes.
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It s a great question because it is, I m going to say it s possible.
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I do believe it s possible.
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And it s undoing a lot of family legacy, cultural trauma, transgenerational trauma.
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Okay.
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So there s a lot that comes up in transgenerational trauma around that.
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Dr. Marielle Bouquet talks about generational trouble.
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That s exactly right.
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It s huge.
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We all grow up in some form of a family that we ve internalized the messages through ethnicity, through the family culture.
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So we internalize that stuff.
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That s also not our energy.
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It s energy we absorb because of the family we re in.
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Okay?
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So once you differentiate who you are from what you were subjected to, who you are from what you were subjected to or what family you were born into,
10
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What s yours, what isn t yours, right?
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And this idea we all have love within us.
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We all have it.
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So even if you re programmed not to, we all have it.
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Your book, To Be Loved, A Story of Truth, Trauma, and Transformation by Frank Anderson is a powerful story about just kind of the life you ve been through and the different levels of traumas and challenges and therapies and experiences is a beautiful story.
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I want people to get this because I think a lot of people can relate in some way to their own life.
10
100%.
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About what they ve experienced, what they ve gone through, and how to find
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hope and healing no matter how much trauma you ve experienced, what type of disconnection you ve had, how you ve been abused, abandoned, forgotten, dismissed in your uniqueness in the world, and how to love and acknowledge people even if they ve treated you poorly as parents
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and see them from a compassionate place without condoning their behaviors and actions toward you as a child.
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One of the exercises I have experienced that is probably one of the most healing for me as I had been doing the work for a while was revisiting, I m getting chills just thinking about it, was revisiting the five-year-old in front of me.
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and having a beautiful conversation and experience with my five-year-old self.
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That s right.
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And bringing him into my heart and reconnecting with that wounded boy.
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That s right.
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And as an adult self, being able to hug and give him what he needed and also thank him for
10
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going through the challenge and the struggle for facing these confusing times as a child without the tools and saying, thank you for getting us here.
10
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I got your back now and I can take us to the next place.
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Thank you for enduring this confusing, painful life.
10
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You shouldn t have had to experience this.
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I acknowledge you for
10
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not hurting yourself more than you did, not beating yourself up more than you did, and for doing your best.
10
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I love you, I accept you, and I appreciate you, and I got you.
10
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exercises that I have done for my, all the parts of myself.
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That s right.
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That s the transformation thing I was talking about.
10
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It s a beautiful example of that.
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It is.
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Yeah.
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And I think, you know, your book gives us kind of this journey of how we can do this with ourselves and different parts of ourselves.
10
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and just understands the complexity of the human experience.
10
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Because it s, in my opinion, the most beautiful experience, but it can also be the most challenging, confusing experience at the same time, because we live in a world of ands.
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Yep.
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I love that.
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People can get the book right now, To Be Loved.
10
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Also, your website, frankandersonmd.com.
10
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You re also on social media more now, frankandersonmd.
10
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If they just Google that, they ll find all your social media links.
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You re also working on the Trauma Institute, which people can find as well on your website and learn more about how they can use the tools and training and courses to support them on their own journey if they can t afford therapy at this moment, or they re not ready for it, or they wanna do it on their own to get started and dabble in it.
11
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So I highly recommend that.
11
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You ve been in this work with the leaders of psychiatry, psychology, therapy, trauma,
11
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for decades in this work and we studied with, worked with, and know all of the top experts.
11
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You re constantly learning.
11
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So this book will be a great resource for anyone looking to reclaim themselves and to feel fully loved and healed in their journey.
11
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So I m so grateful that you re here and I acknowledge you for the pain you ve endured and the suffering that you have experienced throughout different seasons of your life.
11
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And the gift you give all of us by saying this pain is, I m going to create meaning from this pain and trauma and suffering.
11
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And I m going to find out why this is happening so I can serve people.
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So they don t have to experience this pain and suffering as well.
11
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So I want to acknowledge you for the gift of continuing your journey of growth, your gift of
11
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finding ways to bring academic research and science to the masses so that we can understand the complicated.
11
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Yes.
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And just to acknowledge you, Frank, for your big heart and tapping into your heart and getting out of your head.
11
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Yeah.
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It s your beautiful human being.
11
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Thank you.
11
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Two final questions I have for you.
11
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This is called the three truths question.
11
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So it s a hypothetical scenario.
11
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Imagine you get to live as long as you want in this world, but it s your last day.
11
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It could be as old as you want.
11
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You know, science has gotten you to 100 plus something years old.
11
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You still have the same skin, you know, at 100, so you look 30.
11
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But for whatever reason, it s the last day for you, hypothetically.
11
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You get to create everything you want, to witness, experience everything you want from this moment until then.
11
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But for whatever reason in this hypothetical question, all of your content is gone from the world.
11
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We don t have access to your book, this conversation, anything you create, for whatever reason, it s gone.
11
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But on the last day, you get to leave behind three lessons from all of your life s experience.
11
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And this is all we would have to remember and be reminded of.
11
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And I call it the three truths question.
11
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What were those three truths that you think everyone needs to know that you would share?
11
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So we all, we all have love in us, even our enemies.
11
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We all have
11
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trauma that can be healed, and really nothing else is more important than love and connection.
11
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Like it s interesting, when you were saying that, part of me instantly flashed to my kids, and then my husband, and then my siblings, right?
11
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It s like the people that are important to me.
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And then you re like, all your books and information are gone.
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The other piece was like, but wait a minute, I want to get this message of trauma blocks love, love heals trauma to the world.
11
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And so I would say the three things encapsulate that, the importance of love and connection, the fact that we all have it in us, and it can be healed.
11
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Final question, Frank, what s your definition of greatness?
11
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Love and kindness.
11
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Honestly, love and kindness.
11
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There you go, Frank.
11
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Thanks so much for being here.
11
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I hope today s episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
11
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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.
11
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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 house.
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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.