0:00

about our early experiences, the first word in the sort

0:02

of subtitle of your book is the word trauma. It's

0:05

a word that I've talked about a lot

0:07

on this podcast and I've had a lot

0:09

of people hear that have opened up about

0:11

their traumas. How do you define trauma? I

0:13

know society has defined it in its own

0:15

way, but how do you define it? I

0:17

define it very specifically. It's

0:20

not something bad that happens to

0:22

you. It's not that... I went to

0:24

this movie last night and I

0:26

was traumatized. No, you weren't. You were

0:28

just... or you had some emotional

0:30

pain, but you weren't traumatized. Trauma

0:33

means a wound. That's the literal meaning of

0:35

the word. It's a Greek word for wounding. So

0:38

trauma is a psychological wound that you sustain.

0:41

And it behaves like a

0:43

wound. So on the one hand, a

0:46

wound if it's very raw, if you

0:48

touch it, it just really hurts. So

0:50

if I have a wound around not

0:52

being wanted, then

0:54

or the belief that

0:56

I'm not. Then decades

0:58

later if anything reminds me of that

1:01

it hurts as much as it

1:03

did when I originally incurred the wound

1:05

So in in one sense trauma is

1:07

an unhealed wound that touched we

1:09

get triggered. That's what triggering means by

1:11

the way some old wound wound

1:13

gets Activated or touched and the other

1:15

thing that happens to wounds is that

1:17

they scar over and scar tissue

1:19

has certain characteristics. It's

1:21

thick It has no nerve

1:24

endings. So there's no feeling in it. So

1:26

people traumatized disconnected from their feelings. Um,

1:29

scar tissue is rigid. It's

1:31

not flexible. So we lose

1:33

kind of response, flexibility. So

1:35

when something happens, we tend

1:37

to react in typical stereo,

1:39

typical predictable, dysfunctional ways because

1:42

of the rigidity and scar

1:44

tissue doesn't grow like healthy

1:46

flash. So people are traumatized

1:48

tend to be stuck in

1:50

emotional states that characterized Their

1:53

development when they were traumatized. So

1:55

when somebody says to you do me

1:58

such a baby

2:00

Doesn't sound very pleasant, but there's some

2:02

truth to it It means that you

2:04

probably reacting according to the lines of

2:06

some wound that you sustained as an

2:09

infant and now you're you're reacting as

2:11

if that wound was happening all over

2:13

again This is what one of my

2:15

friends in the trauma world Peter Levine

2:17

calls the tyranny of the past So

2:19

something happens in the present and we

2:21

react as

2:23

if we're back there in the past when

2:25

this first happened. And we're not in

2:27

the present moment at all. And

2:30

I was trying to figure out

2:32

how many people as a

2:34

percentage of the population have trauma.

2:37

But then I read this stat with 60 %

2:39

of adults say that they've had sort of

2:41

a traumatic early upbringing or whatever or traumatic

2:43

events from their childhood. But then I thought

2:45

maybe everybody has trauma. It

2:47

depends on how we understand

2:50

trauma. So if we understand

2:52

trauma, is only the really terrible things

2:54

that happen to people, which do happen

2:56

to people. You know, in

2:58

the book I talked about a British friend

3:00

of mine who had no living in Canada. They

3:03

are a yoga teacher

3:05

and a meditation teacher and

3:07

a psychologist and an

3:09

artist actually. And they

3:11

grew up in some orphanage here

3:13

in Britain where they were racially

3:15

taunted every morning. You know,

3:17

words that are in the book by her permission, which

3:19

I'm not going to cite here publicly. And

3:22

that gave her a sense of deficient, a sense of

3:24

self that I'm just not good enough that I don't

3:26

belong and so on. There's those

3:28

obvious traumas, or the obvious trauma of

3:30

being sexually abused. So men who

3:33

are sexually abused according to Canadian study

3:35

have tripled the rate of heart

3:37

attacks as adults, you know,

3:39

and all kinds of physiological reasons, but

3:41

that should be the case. So there's

3:43

those self -evident, large, big T

3:46

traumas that we call big

3:48

T trauma, T with a capital.

3:50

T, trauma with the capital

3:52

T. There's a certain

3:54

percentage of the population, much

3:56

larger than we think, subject to

3:58

that. If you include all

4:00

the known factors such as physical,

4:02

sexual, or emotional abuse, spanking,

4:05

by the way, has now been

4:07

shown to be as traumatic as

4:09

harsher forms of physical abuse, spanking

4:11

which is still recommended by

4:14

so -called experts who should

4:16

remain unnamed for the moment, the

4:19

death of a parent. violence in

4:21

a family, violence, parental

4:23

violence against each other, a

4:25

parent being jailed, a parent being

4:27

mentally ill, did I

4:30

say a parent being addicted, a ranker's divorce,

4:32

these are the identified big traumas, big

4:34

tea traumas, not to mention poverty, not

4:37

to mention extreme inequality, war

4:39

and so on. But

4:43

then, if you

4:45

remember that trauma is not what happens

4:47

to you, but what happens inside you, is

4:50

the wound. People can

4:52

be wounded not just by bad

4:54

things happening to them, but

4:56

small children can be wounded in

4:58

loving families where they don't

5:00

get their needs met. I

5:03

mean, that's obvious in the physical sense. If

5:05

a child doesn't get proper nutrition, their

5:08

body will suffer, their mind will

5:10

suffer. We're

5:13

also creatures with emotional needs as

5:15

important as our physical needs. So

5:17

when the child's emotional needs are not met, that

5:19

child is wounded. And that's

5:21

what we call small T trauma, which is

5:23

not the big ticket events, such as I

5:25

described. But just the

5:28

child's need to be loved unconditionally,

5:30

to be held when distressed,

5:32

to be responded to, to be

5:34

seen, to be heard, to

5:36

be allowed their full range

5:38

of emotion without them being stamped

5:40

on in the name of

5:42

so -called discipline. The

5:45

right to play. creatively,

5:48

spontaneously, out there

5:51

in nature, not with these

5:53

damn digital gadgets that

5:55

subvert and hijack the child's

5:57

imagination. But

5:59

spontaneously, that's essential for brain

6:01

development. So what I'm

6:03

saying is that when these needs are

6:05

not for the unconditional loving attachment

6:07

relationship, when those needs are frustrated, children

6:09

are also hurt. And I call

6:11

that trauma as well, because it shows

6:14

up later in life as the

6:16

impact of painful wounds. So

6:19

trauma in this society, for all

6:21

kinds of reasons, is far more common

6:23

than we imagine. From sitting

6:25

here and speaking to, I don't know, somewhere

6:27

over 100 different people that come from all

6:29

walks of life, but specifically people that are

6:31

successful in their industries. And you talked about,

6:33

you know, how an

6:35

anomalous early upbringing can create sort of

6:37

abnormality in an adult. A lot

6:39

of the people I sit here are

6:42

successful because of some kind of abnormality

6:44

or at least their interpretation of some kind

6:46

of early event that caused them to have

6:49

some sort of abnormal belief about themselves that

6:51

they're not enough. So they become a billionaire

6:53

or a gold medalist or whatever it might

6:55

be. One of the things that I thought

6:57

I could predict is I thought I could,

6:59

if they told me, I thought after doing

7:01

a hundred episodes, if they told me the

7:03

traumatic event they've been through, I could predict

7:06

the outcome in them. But there's

7:08

a disconnect there because, you know,

7:10

I'd sit here with a guest who

7:12

went through one of your tall,

7:14

capital T traumas like domestic violence. And

7:17

one of them might become incredibly

7:19

angry. Yeah. And one of them might

7:21

become the most peaceful loving person

7:23

I've ever met. Yeah. And that taught

7:25

me that there's this thing in

7:27

between the event, which is what you

7:29

call interpretation. Yeah. And

7:32

I found that I found that as that kind of

7:34

makes it really difficult to diagnose. Well,

7:36

no, look, so the two examples you gave. that

7:39

really peaceful person may be

7:41

really peaceful for genuinely good reasons

7:43

such as they found the

7:45

milk of human love flowing through

7:47

their veins and they've had

7:50

some spiritual reconciliation with the world

7:52

where they may have let

7:54

genuinely learned compassion for themselves and

7:56

others but they could also

7:58

be very nice and peaceful because

8:00

they're suppressing their healthy anger

8:02

because they're actually sitting on their

8:04

rage unconsciously. which is going

8:06

to show up in the form of

8:08

some kind of health manifestation I guarantee

8:10

you later on. So you can't tell

8:12

from the outside without asking some questions.

8:16

Or I can give you the

8:18

example of a Donald Trump

8:20

who had a really traumatic childhood.

8:22

I mean, his father was, as

8:25

described by his psychologist niece,

8:27

Mary Trump, his father,

8:29

Trump's father, who is

8:31

Mary's grandfather, was

8:33

a psychopath. and

8:36

who really demeaned and

8:38

harshly treated their

8:40

children. So Trump decides

8:42

unconsciously that, by the way, I'm

8:44

not talking about his policies here.

8:46

This is not a political debate.

8:49

And in the book, I point out that

8:51

his opponent was also traumatized. Hillary Clinton

8:53

said, this is a

8:55

ecumenical view of trauma and

8:57

politics. I'm not choosing sides.

9:00

I'm just saying that you can see his trauma in

9:02

every moment he opens his mouth. His

9:05

grandiosity needs to make himself bigger,

9:07

more powerful, aggressive and eats as much

9:09

as said in his autobiography that

9:11

the world is a horrible place, a

9:13

doggy dog place where everybody is

9:15

after you. Everybody wants your wife and

9:17

your house and your wealth and

9:19

this is your friends. Never

9:21

mind your enemies. But that's the world

9:23

he lives in. Now that world that he lives

9:25

in reflects his childhood home. He developed

9:27

that world you. He came

9:29

to it honestly, you might say, because that's the world

9:31

that he lived in. And

9:34

he gets to be really successful in this

9:36

crazy world. You know,

9:38

financially, although people question,

9:41

you know, was he really as big a success as he

9:44

says he was? But he certainly was

9:46

successful politically. If by success you mean

9:48

the attainment of power. His

9:50

brother on the other hand, Mary

9:53

Trump's father, Trump's

9:55

niece's father, drank

9:57

himself to death. And

9:59

they were both responses to the same.

10:01

You can never say it's exactly

10:03

the same for two kids. But there

10:05

was a toxic home environment. One

10:08

ends up dead as an alcoholic. The

10:11

other ends up at the pinnacle of power. And

10:16

when I look at them both, I

10:18

see dysfunction there, significant

10:20

dysfunction there. So one

10:23

of the consequences of that early

10:25

upbringing was it materialized itself as

10:27

sort of addiction. And

10:29

the other got the same... reinforcement

10:31

or the thing missing from

10:33

power and work and money. Well,

10:35

Donald Trump learned that the

10:37

way to survive is to be

10:39

aggressive and harsh and competitive

10:41

and to get the other before

10:43

they get to you, which

10:45

is a faithful reproduction of his

10:47

early childhood experiences. So

10:49

for him, these were

10:52

not choices so much

10:54

as survival techniques. And

10:56

when they talk

10:58

about his lying.

11:02

Well, I don't know

11:04

when he's lying or when he's not, but

11:06

my sense is that often he actually believes what

11:08

he's saying. And actually

11:10

he's a biographer or

11:13

the person who co -wrote

11:15

his, caused the autobiographical,

11:17

the out of the deal.

11:19

This writer says that he's never met

11:22

anybody who's so capable of believing something

11:24

that's not true, to be true, if

11:26

he wants it to be true. But

11:28

that's the mark of a traumatized child.

11:31

You know, a denial of reality.

11:35

It is an inauguration. There was

11:37

a certain number of people that

11:39

came to the... He couldn't stand

11:41

it that there weren't as many

11:43

people there as came to Barack

11:45

Obama's inauguration. There were a much

11:47

smaller number of people there. He

11:50

created this reality where many more people

11:52

came to his inauguration. Now

11:54

what age behavior is that? That's

11:57

a four -year -old where more kids came

11:59

to his party than my party. That can't

12:01

be true. But that's Donald's

12:03

way of dealing with reality. It's

12:06

not a moral failing as

12:08

such. That's how you survived. And

12:11

these survival mechanisms then

12:13

get to form our

12:15

personalities. And again,

12:17

in this world, sometimes

12:19

they pay off in

12:21

certain ways. Is

12:24

that often the case with... lies,

12:26

they've learnt to lie as a

12:28

way to survive. Oh, absolutely. The

12:30

German philosopher writer Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche

12:32

said, people lie their way out

12:35

of reality who have been hurt

12:37

by reality. And

12:39

so I've lied. You

12:42

know, like when I had my

12:44

shopping addiction, I lied every

12:46

day to my wife. You know,

12:48

and even afterwards, when she

12:50

tried, when she stopped trying to change

12:52

my behaviour, I said, just

12:54

tell me. If

12:56

you're going to show up, you're going to spend

12:58

another $1 ,000 on music. Just tell me. I

13:02

still couldn't because I

13:04

was so ashamed of

13:07

it. And so

13:09

the lying became like a way

13:11

of survival for me. Defense

13:13

against reality. It's a defense against

13:15

reality and it's a defense

13:17

against being judged. Well,

13:21

that says something about my childhood. Nobody's

13:23

born a liar. As we say

13:25

in this book, there are congenital liars,

13:28

but there are no congenital liars.

13:30

No one -day -old baby tells any lies.

13:32

No one -day -old baby pretends anything. If

13:35

we end up pretending in any way at

13:37

all to the extent that we do, it's

13:39

because we had to learn that's what we

13:41

must do to survive. You

13:44

said something at the start when I gave

13:46

the example that I have this... sat with

13:48

a guest here who went through domestic abuse

13:50

and they are the calmest person. And then

13:52

you said, well, maybe they're suppressing it. And

13:54

in fact, the minute

13:56

you said that, it reminded me of

13:58

something they said, which is they

14:00

said to me on this podcast that

14:02

they had angry outbursts all the

14:04

time. So sometimes their child

14:06

will come up to them and

14:08

want to play when they're working

14:10

and they'll snap. And they're

14:12

trying to, they're trying to deal with that. That's

14:15

what I meant, that they're

14:17

sitting on this crater of volcanic

14:19

crater of anger, which sometimes

14:21

bursts out of them. So

14:24

their demeanor is

14:26

like a really

14:28

developed, suppressed way

14:31

of handling rage.

14:34

Which rage, when there were children, had

14:37

they expressed, would have got them

14:39

into more trouble. So suppressing

14:41

it, repressing it became their

14:43

survival. It's all about survival,

14:45

you see. So it became

14:47

their survival mechanism. Now, that

14:50

person, as long

14:52

as they keep it that way,

14:55

they're at risk. They're

14:57

at risk for mental health

14:59

diagnosis, like depression. Because

15:01

what is depression? It means you're pushing

15:03

something down. That's what it means. What

15:06

do we push down? Our natural

15:08

emotions. Why do we push them down?

15:10

Because we have to survive. So

15:12

that person, I don't know. I can't

15:14

prognosticate what's going to happen to them. But

15:17

if they don't work it out in

15:19

general, they're at risk for

15:21

some kind of mental or

15:23

physical manifestation. That's my experience.

15:26

You've said before, before this book that awareness is

15:28

the starting point. Yeah. I

15:30

found that to be so true in my

15:32

life, but it's not very easy. I feel like

15:34

awareness is a is a luxury or a

15:36

privilege that is very hard fought. Yeah.

15:38

Because you're guessing. You're guessing based on

15:40

pattern recognition. So I was guessing 25

15:42

years old, I can't get into relationship.

15:44

Anytime a girl comes near me, even

15:46

if I've pursued her, I run off. And

15:49

to figure out why I was doing that,

15:51

to even identify the behavior pattern and go, that's

15:53

not helpful. That's not going to lead me

15:55

to feeling whole. Where

15:57

does that come from? Took

16:00

25 years and a lot of

16:02

introspection. But most people

16:04

They're living unaware of the puppet

16:06

master of trauma that is driving

16:08

their life. That's a really good

16:10

analogy. The trauma really is like

16:12

a puppet master behind the scenes

16:14

and the unconscious pulling your strings

16:16

and you're not aware of it.

16:18

Do you remember Pinocchio? Yeah. So

16:21

you remember what Pinocchio says at the

16:23

end when he finally becomes a real

16:25

boy? Yeah. He says how foolish I

16:27

was when I was a puppet. And

16:30

to the extent that we're

16:33

being activated by these unconscious strings

16:35

that are traumas pulling behind

16:37

the scenes and reacting in our

16:39

lives when we think we're

16:41

autonomous free beings but we're actually

16:43

being controlled by something in

16:45

the past that we haven't worked

16:47

out we're puppets we're actually

16:49

puppets and and and there's not

16:51

there's not much freedom in

16:53

that there's no there's no freedom

16:55

in it at all so

16:57

I mean I suppose

16:59

the opposite of trauma, if you want

17:01

to revisit that question is liberation. Interesting.

17:07

Liberation and by reconnection.

17:09

By reconnection, but liberation

17:11

from the inexorable power

17:13

of the unconscious. Which

17:16

is like cutting the strings in a way.

17:18

Kind of brings me to, there's kind of two

17:20

ways I want to go with that. The first

17:22

question I have about trauma and the puppet

17:24

master analogy is, do we ever

17:26

really cut the strings? Or do we just kind

17:28

of learn to pull against them when they

17:30

try and tell us to do something with more

17:32

force than they're exerting in the opposite direction? That

17:36

doesn't work very well pushing against

17:38

it because they're still reactive. You're still

17:40

not in charge. You're just in

17:42

automatic resistance mode to something. There's no

17:44

freedom in that either. So

17:48

yeah. But

17:51

awareness that you mentioned is

17:53

huge because once you're aware that

17:55

there's this See the thing

17:58

about these strings may not fray

18:00

right away But once you

18:02

wear that ah This reaction of

18:04

mine It's not about what's

18:06

going on right now. There's something

18:08

old being activated here that

18:10

awareness alone weakens the it slackens

18:13

the strings a bit No,

18:15

you know, they're no longer is

18:17

taught. They're no longer is

18:19

automatically capable

18:21

of pulling on you. So

18:24

it does have to begin with awareness

18:26

of them. Ultimately, if

18:29

we realize that this puppet

18:31

master is just a desperate little

18:33

person trying to get you

18:35

to survive, the only way he,

18:37

she, they knew how, when

18:39

you were small, when they were small, if we make

18:41

friends with it, but we relieve it

18:44

of its duties. So

18:46

thanks very much, but I can handle it now. It

18:49

eventually, becomes our

18:51

friend rather than sort of

18:53

our master. On

18:55

that first step of just acknowledging,

18:57

just understanding that there is

18:59

a puppet master there controlling us

19:01

and exactly which strings that

19:04

puppet master is pulling in our

19:06

lives. How does one go

19:08

about awareness, the process of awareness?

19:10

Is there, I mean, is it introspection,

19:12

keeping a diary, therapy? What is it? Well,

19:14

all that. I mean, all or any.

19:16

But even when you ask how you go

19:18

about it, What is the

19:20

it? Well, for you to say how

19:22

to go about it, you already must

19:24

have some degree of awareness. If you

19:26

didn't, you wouldn't even be asking the

19:28

question. So that's the very first step

19:30

of realizing that there's something here to

19:32

work on. There's something here to work

19:34

through. It does not need to be the

19:36

way it is. That already is

19:38

the biggest step. The Buddha said that

19:40

to recognize the source of your suffering

19:43

is the first step towards relieving the

19:45

suffering. And so As soon as you

19:47

ask how you go about it, you've already taken a huge

19:49

step. Because a lot of people don't even

19:51

know that there's an it. They

19:53

just think this is a reality, that this is life. So

19:56

realizing that this it doesn't have

19:58

to be the way it is.

20:00

That's already a huge step now. Beyond

20:02

that, yoga, meditation,

20:06

nature, therapy

20:09

of all kinds, body

20:11

work. of

20:13

all kinds

20:16

like somatic experiencing

20:18

or craniosacral

20:20

treatments or even

20:22

massage therapy. It's

20:25

incredible what can be revealed just through body

20:27

work like that. Then all kinds

20:29

of forms of therapy, the ones I

20:31

teach, the ones other people teach. Journaling,

20:36

certain exercises in this book

20:38

that we recommend. Just

20:41

ask yourself where you have trouble saying no

20:43

in life to things you don't really want

20:45

to do and working that through on a

20:47

regular basis. So there's lots of ways. Once

20:49

you open the door, you

20:51

know, I have a

20:53

chapter on psychedelics here, which is again,

20:55

it's not like a panacea for

20:57

everyone, but certainly it's a helpful modality

21:00

for a lot of people. So

21:02

some people may actually

21:04

benefit from taking pharmaceutical

21:06

medications if their situation

21:08

is dire enough. but

21:11

not as the final answer but

21:13

as a way of getting respite that

21:15

allowed them to go to work

21:17

on the real issues that caused them

21:19

to be depressed or anxious or

21:22

tuning out you know so any and

21:24

all of these things