[SPEAKER_01]: Therapy Chat Podcast Episode 508 This is the Therapy Chat Podcast with Laura Regan, LCSWC. [SPEAKER_01]: The information shared in this podcast is not a substitute for seeking help from a licensed mental health professional. [SPEAKER_01]: And now, here's your host Laura Regan, LCSWC. [SPEAKER_00]: Hi, welcome back to Therapy Chat. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host, Laura Regan, and today, I'm bringing you a conversation that is very timely and I'm very thrilled to be bringing it to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I interviewed two wonderful teachers. [SPEAKER_00]: Thomas Hubel, Ph.D. and Dick Schwartz, Ph.D. Thomas Hubel, Ph.D. is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator, who works within the complexity of systems and cultural change, integrating modern science with the insights of humanities wisdom traditions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Based the author of Healing Collective Trauma in Attuned, a coach for executives and leaders in a visiting scholar at the Whist Institute at [SPEAKER_00]: Harvard. [SPEAKER_00]: He is the co-founder of the NGOs, the Pocket Project, and Global Restoration Institute, facilitating dialogue around collective trauma, conflict resolution, and collective healing for organizations and governments worldwide.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dick Schwartz PhD is the creator of internal family systems, a highly effective evidence-based therapeutic model that deep pathogenizes the multi-part personality. [SPEAKER_00]: His IFS Institute offers screening for professionals in the general public. [SPEAKER_00]: He's currently on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and his published five books, including No Bad Parts, Healing Traum and Restoring Holiness with the IFS model.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dick lives with his wife, Jane Nierchkago, close to his three daughters and growing number of grandchildren. [SPEAKER_00]: And together, Thomas and Dick have written the new book releasing our burdens, a guide to healing individual and ancestral and collective trauma. [SPEAKER_00]: And that topic is what we're talking about on this week's episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you've heard my interviews with Francis Weller, Dan Siegel earlier this [SPEAKER_00]: The need for an understanding that we are bigger than our individual lives in our individual brains. [SPEAKER_00]: And this week we will talk about how collective healing is the way forward for all of us. [SPEAKER_00]: So even those of us who are working with clients individually, [SPEAKER_00]: We need to be thinking about the greater context.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of us already work using systemic approaches, but we don't always think about the systems we're operating within that it's the individual, their family, the groups at their part of their cultural identity. [SPEAKER_00]: and how we are all interconnected, that is where the healing is found. [SPEAKER_00]: So the book is out now, and you can get it at the link in the show notes. [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you will find this conversation as interesting and inspiring as I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's get right to it. [SPEAKER_00]: Hi, welcome back to Therapy Chat. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host, Laura Ragan, and today, I'm so happy to be speaking with two wonderful teachers and leaders in the field, thick shorts and Thomas Hubel. [SPEAKER_00]: Dick and Thomas, thank you so much for being my guest on Therapy Chat today. [SPEAKER_02]: Great to be with you again, Laura. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for having us. [SPEAKER_00]: you're so welcome.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you two have written a book together and I'm really interested in hearing about that, but even more than the book, just this idea of expanding the way we think about healing trauma and [SPEAKER_00]: trauma therapy and healing in general. [SPEAKER_00]: But before we get into it, can we start off by each of you taking a moment to just tell everyone who's listening a little bit more about who you are and what you do? [SPEAKER_03]: The adults.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, my name is Thomas Fibil and I'm passionate about how we develop kind of a wider lens on individual healing, like individual and collective healing [SPEAKER_03]: Many wisdom traditions for thousands of years spoke about the collective dimension of healing as well as the individual. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's something great to rediscover, especially in modern Western civilization. [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm also deeply immersed in a deep contemplative path.
[SPEAKER_03]: And like I think this virtual dimension of the healing work is very, very important too.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I'm Dick Schwartz, and last 42 years I've been developing and trying to bring this internal family systems model, which started out as a former psychotherapy and is expanded to become kind of life practice, spiritual practice, and as I did that, my lens, which originally was family therapy, so originally, [SPEAKER_02]: I was interested more in systems healing, then focused in on healing people internally and these parts and stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then as I ran into what we call legacy burdens and things like that, got more and more interested in what Thomas does and how can we have groups of people work on this stuff and together what I call unburdened. [SPEAKER_02]: And so I think [SPEAKER_02]: I reached out first Thomas, because I respected what he was doing with large large groups and yeah, we've become friends and collaborators and the book is a product of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, would you like to tell us just a little bit about the book first before we get into really why this is needed?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, first of all, I like Estique said I think from the moment we met there was like a resonance and we, I felt though I'm meeting somebody that that is like very interested in combining how individual [SPEAKER_03]: In a work, which is very important, individual trauma work is connected, is not separate from our ancestral work, but it's a consequence of it. [SPEAKER_03]: And that the ancestral work is not separate from the collective trauma work.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like we have large wounds, being it racism, or being colonialism, or holocaust, or genocide, or whatever, it's like war wounds.
[SPEAKER_03]: it's all over the world so the world is a scarred place and so we have been born into scarred issue and so if we just if it just isolates attachment trauma from the rest that doesn't really make sense it's important to be able to focus but it's it's I think it's not enough to just keep that focus without taking the entire system of trauma and come [SPEAKER_03]: to account.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when I meditate, I felt, wow, we can have a dialogue and we have we were passionate about similar things. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think opening the map of healing without losing specificity, like to be able to be specific, but to have a wider context, [SPEAKER_03]: I think is very, very important, and we resonate deeply, you know, in this interest, we shared this interest.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, yeah, I think the book is a natural outcome of multiple conversations, of course that we took together a language that we refined together, and this mutual interest in each other's work, and finding the resonance patterns. [SPEAKER_03]: Totally agree.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was also that I don't [SPEAKER_00]: this is this is beautiful yeah so there's a couple things that maybe we should just sort of define before we move into our conversation because I think I know for myself I have religious trauma and so I used to really react to the word spiritual and spirituality when people would say spiritual I would be like that's just religion and another [SPEAKER_00]: another form.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now, over time, I've recognized, I've learned that spirituality is not the same as religion at all. [SPEAKER_00]: But for a lot of people that Word has turned off and a lot of trauma survivors get very activated by hearing that. [SPEAKER_00]: So can you kind of talk about what you mean when you say spirituality?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I can start on that because I was similar to you in the sense I was allergic to anything really spiritual, not because I was hurt by a spiritual religious system.
[SPEAKER_02]: But more because I come from a very scientific family and my father, [SPEAKER_02]: repeatedly would say he would blame religion for all the world's problems, all the war and so on, and so I came kicking and screaming to the idea that there are these other spiritual rounds and these huge skeptical parts, but what I got from my father was a good scientist follows the data regardless of where it takes them, even in its way outside
[SPEAKER_02]: and the data from working with clients when I would get them into these inner worlds with their parts. [SPEAKER_02]: Spiritual things would start happening. [SPEAKER_02]: You couldn't deny it. [SPEAKER_02]: I meant I tried for quite a while. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, this thing that we now call a guide would come in and I would say, okay, that's just a really nice, helpful part. [SPEAKER_02]: But then when you interview it, it says, no, I'm not a part.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm here to help and I came from this other world and, you know, the first few times, I thought, okay, well, that part's trying to pretend it's not the part. [SPEAKER_02]: But after you do that 50 times, you start to say, maybe there's something else,
[SPEAKER_02]: what I'm calling self, I couldn't understand from a psychological point of view because when I would get people by simply getting their parts to open space and the self would show up and with these seaword qualities in people who had been horribly, horribly parented and abused and tortured, there was no way I could understand from attachment theory point of view or traditional psychological point of view how people
[SPEAKER_02]: have those that kind of parenting could have those kind of qualities and it wasn't until I had some students that said, maybe what you're finding here and calling self is really what Hindu is called hotmon or or what Buddha is called Buddha nature or what Christians call Christ consciousness or [SPEAKER_02]: And I looked around, it turned out that virtually every spiritual tradition had a word for it, and almost no other psychologists in.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that opened my mind, too, more and more, to these possibilities. [SPEAKER_02]: And now, I'm the little convert. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I just totally believe in these other worlds.
[SPEAKER_02]: and that there are ways to access them that we've moved away from the indigenous populations have had for centuries and that the fact that this is [SPEAKER_02]: very related to the Thomas was saying, the fact that we've cut off from that, because our rational Western materialistic mind doesn't allow for it, has got his way off path. [SPEAKER_02]: And these spiritual guides really want us to get back on path and not destroy the planet and not destroy each other.
[SPEAKER_02]: So each of us have our ways of accessing that, but that's some of what we're trying [SPEAKER_03]: It's beautifully said, like I had a bit of a different access point, let's say like I felt already as a child that I was like I had as a child a deep connection to the divine, but I grew up in a Catholic environment around Vienna and I couldn't kind of relate to the environment. [SPEAKER_03]: It was cold, it felt this really, I don't know, I didn't speak to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that kind of church environment and it's not about it, it's not about the church itself, it's about my experience that I had in this village that I grew up in. [SPEAKER_03]: And then when I was 19, I felt this very strong call to meditate every day. [SPEAKER_03]: So I didn't know anything about meditation, I became quiet, I found this place and so at my heart where I can really be still and also, like, I felt guided.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then when I was 26, I left my medical studies and I became like a felt very strongly, I need to go out somehow, I didn't know for how long and I meditated for four years, basically.
[SPEAKER_03]: this like retreat and and this was very profound for me and throughout this time and of course my meditation continued later and it deepens through my groups and ever since it's a process that's deepening and I also studied a lot about mystical traditions and and then I understood [SPEAKER_03]: about of where they were speaking from is that mystical reality is the essence of any spiritual tradition.
[SPEAKER_03]: The religious body is the social environment that we create and often the social environment that we create is very much filtered through the understanding of everybody that is part of it. [SPEAKER_03]: That's not the place that's saints and saints speak from. [SPEAKER_03]: That's very important. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think because of that, it can create a lot of harm. [SPEAKER_03]: It can become very extreme. [SPEAKER_03]: And that creates a lot of harm.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think there is a lot of trauma being created through this kind of very extremist views. [SPEAKER_03]: But when you look at the mystical, from a mystical point of view, you wouldn't separate science and spirituality. [SPEAKER_03]: You wouldn't separate psychotherapy from a spiritual path. [SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't make sense, that separation doesn't make sense seen from a mystical. [SPEAKER_03]: And maybe it makes sense seen from the lens of separation.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, [SPEAKER_03]: I think like Dick and I became from different pathways to a similar place and and I think that's also the beauty like it's the beauty that we how we get to it is very very interesting and beautiful and so and of course healing was always like a main expression for on that path for me too, but
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the mystical understanding and the wisdom traditions, there's so much knowledge that can be so beautifully combined with conventional therapy and healing methodologies. [SPEAKER_03]: It's a very powerful combination. [SPEAKER_03]: So we often speak about this inner and outer science in dialogue, inner science being the mystical science, outer science being our academic sciences. [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, so I think it's very powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and when you speak of wisdom traditions, I think that that's a way of looking at mystical things and everything from what happens in meditation to, you know, even the alchemy between two people that happens in a therapy session or in a group setting, you know, as a therapist when you're doing groups, you know, some kind of magic happens within the group that isn't. [SPEAKER_00]: You didn't do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something that create is created, you know, from the way the space is held and the dynamic between the group participants and, you know, that happens in all of our gathering spaces.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can speak to that, and I think again, we have different words for it, but we both have seen a phenomenon a lot where when you bring people together collectively and you help them access a certain place, but forms as a, like, when I do individual work, [SPEAKER_02]: there's a self that has these great seward qualities that we can access by getting personal space.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I can be as a leader in that place and then it's it's kind of contagious and [SPEAKER_02]: Also, as everybody does the practices and so on, and there becomes a kind of group self that sort of facilitates and expedites the healing of everybody. [SPEAKER_02]: And so we can do pieces of work in that context that might take five individual sessions to happen. [SPEAKER_02]: So we're both trying to take advantage of that as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I can just underline what you just said it's like the many of our therapists in the group say the same thing like what happens here in 20 minutes it takes four or five sessions in the practice [SPEAKER_03]: I think there's such an amazing power and we have had like large groups, we had Holocaust survivors or their descendants and Nazi descendants in the room and in the moment that
[SPEAKER_03]: It's unbelievable how sacred it feels and then the deepest pain that might be in the room or the deepest tension or the deepest atrocities that have been inflicted like amazing healing can happen. [SPEAKER_03]: And so I really think that we do not utilize this power enough in modern societies.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's a lack and that's also the reason as the extent why we [SPEAKER_03]: Came together is also to speak more to the power and how to combine these different methodologies in collective healing spaces. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so Dick, do you want to say anything to that? [SPEAKER_02]: It's done completely great and Thomas has a lot more experience doing that than I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I now worked with groups of a couple hundred whereas he's been working with groups of a thousand or more.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of the vision and you know, whether we do this together or separately, [SPEAKER_02]: For me, is to have similar kinds of groups happening all over the world with no how to lead them and work on developing a protocol for leaders to do this because what I haven't talked about yet is, but Thomas mentioned, is if you bring people together who have all these what we call legacy burdens,
[SPEAKER_02]: that came down from ancestors or came down from their ethnic group or just are floating around in the culture like racism and patriarchy and so on. [SPEAKER_02]: And you have people find that in them because many people, like good liberals like us, try to pretend we don't have any of that one. [SPEAKER_00]: Good liberals like us. [SPEAKER_02]: Right, and it feels, you know, collective context [SPEAKER_02]: a lot easier to acknowledge that it's there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when you can go to it, it's possible to unload it a lot of the time pretty quickly sometimes. [SPEAKER_02]: So to me, that's part of the larger vision. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you both for what you've shared, and I'm just thinking about several things.
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing is it's, I don't know why exactly it's so poignant for me, like why for me, it's so poignant, but it's obviously it's major important work, but to think of having descendants of Nazis and descendants of Holocaust survivors, [SPEAKER_00]: together working toward healing. [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, we talked about this when you were on my podcast before Thomas about, you know, like people from the former Yugoslavia.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, all these places where genocide's have happened and civil wars have happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, [SPEAKER_00]: For one, what hasn't happened in the US, we haven't had a reckoning with the impact of our our civil war, which was more recent, and then before that, the colonization and the harm that the colonizers did to the people who were here who lived on this land, the indigenous peoples, [SPEAKER_00]: It's so palpable how you continue to see this, you know, energy of this, a grieved group, the dominant group claiming to be victimized.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, the people who have been impacted, the most marginalized groups, always being scapegoated as, this is the problem, you know. [SPEAKER_00]: What you're both talking about could be could be possible here, too, and yet we're so far from that in our culture, from even, you know, there's, as we all know there are people who don't want anyone to even talk about the fact that there is racism, or that there was
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, but that's it's just like in a family where there's been abuse that the family doesn't want to talk about the abuse and they say let's just pretend it didn't happen and sweep it under the rug and then you know the rug has a huge lump that everyone can see and nobody's talking about and you know everybody's reacting to it even though we can't feel it. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's like hopeful and discouraging all at the same time to think about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a little hard in our country to be helpful at the moment. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm very into the parallels and you start to mention the parallels between a family and the culture and it was also as parallel with this internal system. [SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of trauma survivors have parts that want to deny it happen or minimize it. [SPEAKER_02]: and just move on and focus on all the good all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that leaves these exiled parts of people suffering alone and feeling rejected. [SPEAKER_02]: And you see the same thing happening in families, but you also see it the same thing. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, Trump, [SPEAKER_02]: which is hearing the news today is really actively trying to get the Smithsonian to change history and just to focus on the great things about the U.S. and eat right.
[SPEAKER_02]: That just leaves the exiles in our culture suffering even more and feeling more rejected and denied and the truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa. [SPEAKER_02]: Try to do some of this. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know that they really did a great job with it. [SPEAKER_02]: But it's such a different approach. [SPEAKER_02]: And I even think Thomas in Germany, there was an effort to really focus on what these Nazi generations did so that it wouldn't happen again.
[SPEAKER_02]: But now, the US is really not wanting to do that at all, at least the current administration. [SPEAKER_02]: And so we kind of have to do it ourselves. [SPEAKER_02]: We have to do it underground. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I think that's exactly what needs to be done. [SPEAKER_03]: I think there is such a need. [SPEAKER_03]: I often say, like, in this conversation, so, like, you know, there was this time when we delivered babies and we didn't wash our hands or disinfect our hands.
[SPEAKER_03]: and he created a very high mortality rate, until we discovered a very way, way to moment their backs on our hands, and if we don't clean them before, so it contributes to a high mortality rate. [SPEAKER_03]: So once you know that, and you deliver babies with 30 hands, that's not, that's not at all responsible.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think given the last 40, 50 years, we know too much about trauma, [SPEAKER_03]: That we could say, well, we just leave it as it is because, you know, time will heal our wounds and say, well, you say, you know, time is a result of our wounds, maybe the way we understand time. [SPEAKER_03]: And we are stuck in the past and then we are recreating similar cycles. [SPEAKER_03]: So that's definitely not gonna heal our wounds, that will repeat a lot.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's why I think it's not responsible, you know, too much about trauma, ancestral and collective trauma to leave it that way. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think if it's not being done from a level of government, so it needs to be done from a civil society movement. [SPEAKER_03]: And people, you know, and the more evidence and the more we show it's working, and I see in many of our groups.
[SPEAKER_03]: how it's working, like how collectives can become healing environments and that we transcend the separation of individuals being separate particles and instead of being integral aspects of their environments and their ecosystems. [SPEAKER_03]: And so I think we just need to do it. [SPEAKER_03]: That's why we also put our forces together and write this book together because and more people are coming that are working in this ecosystem.
[SPEAKER_03]: and say, listen, collect the feeling is important. [SPEAKER_03]: And we will just do it. [SPEAKER_03]: And everybody who is invited or who feels similar is maybe also doing it, and so together. [SPEAKER_03]: And when you look at our collective trauma summit, we had, I don't know, somewhere between every year, between 60 and 100,000 participants. [SPEAKER_03]: So there is interest, and there is a need, and so it just needs to be done until it shows its effects.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the other thing I really believe is that as you even with the individual, if you do a piece of unburdening [SPEAKER_02]: It has ripples that are way beyond the individual. [SPEAKER_02]: And so when you do it with a large group, it has bigger ripples, well beyond just the individuals in that group, in terms of this sort of spiritual level of healing that the planet has burdens. [SPEAKER_02]: There's all those darkness in places.
[SPEAKER_02]: And [SPEAKER_02]: As we bring more self-energy and we unburden ourselves, we have more access to self-energy, and then we can access not only spiritual wisdom, but also the big self. [SPEAKER_02]: and the unburdenings start to help the kind of planetary unburdening as well. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's a message to therapists that when you're doing this work, you're doing something bigger also.
[SPEAKER_03]: And maybe when I think to it from my side to this is also that like when you with an individual client, you would look at the [SPEAKER_03]: intelligence of the defense, what I will call defense or whatever, like part, protector part is, is guarding like that exile.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so in the collective, what we are seeing is a strong [SPEAKER_03]: protected exile and so it is also part of our skill, how to relate to that because otherwise we externalize it as a problem which usually happens in individual plans that would hide inside it becomes a problem outside and so I think that similar skills speaking of parallels I think we need to also learn how to work with those collective defense mechanisms
[SPEAKER_03]: And bring those on board and see their intelligence and I think that would also add to a shift in the collective sphere in society or culture. [SPEAKER_03]: Totally agree. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I'm curious about how a couple things. [SPEAKER_00]: So in parts work or I've asked in I've asked if you are getting in touch with an ancestor or if there's a burden that you're carrying and you find that it's a legacy burden. [SPEAKER_00]: How does that work?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like how do you unburden the ancestor and what does that do? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I started getting into this maybe 25 years ago when or narrowly when we work with people, we have them focus on a part and when we get to what I call exiles, these parts are so hurt to heal them. [SPEAKER_02]: We ask them to show whether stuck in the past. [SPEAKER_02]: and people will get scenes from their history, from their families or from traumas in their lives.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we stay with that until the part feels witnessed and then we go and we get it out of where it's stuck in the past and we bring it into the present and help it unload the feelings of beliefs, which we call the burdens that it got from most times. [SPEAKER_02]: And I was doing that, and people started to witness scenes that were clearly not from their laws.
[SPEAKER_02]: That clearly were from, in many cases, their ancestors, some of them sort of recent ancestors and some go back, way, way back. [SPEAKER_02]: And that there was still an important thing to do, was to witness what happened to those people that was passed down through the generations and that this part was still carrying, not only the pain from those experiences and the shame, but also the information about what happened, because it doesn't just go away.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we've found through trial and error that not only could we then unload the, [SPEAKER_02]: the legacy burden, but we could also invite, because this would be, this start having spontaneously too, that as we went on low that legacy burden from the par, they would clients would say, I see my mother's spirit is here, or I see my grandfather is here too, and so ancestors would start showing up, and we would invite them to do the same.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as I studied other systems, [SPEAKER_02]: There's something called Soul Retrieval and Shamanism and a lot of other systems do something similar. [SPEAKER_02]: And it turned out that once a part decides it doesn't want to have to keep carrying this, they can unload it. [SPEAKER_02]: And we have a sort of spiritual way to unload it and transform the burden.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I would ask parts that they wanted to do that, some were ready, but many had fears about letting it go. [SPEAKER_02]: Some were afraid that they're betraying their people if they don't carry the pain, that they need to keep the memories alive and they need to stay hypervigilant or it could happen again, so they're never again philosophy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it took some convincing that that wasn't true and that there was a self [SPEAKER_02]: who could protect them rather than having to carry all this toxic stuff all the time. [SPEAKER_02]: And so there are a number of different objections to let he let stuff go right away that we now learn how to address.
[SPEAKER_02]: But once the part was ready, then we could have maybe the light come in and shine on the park and tell it to just give it up out of its body and let it go into the light and the part would feel much better. [SPEAKER_02]: So that's how we do it. [SPEAKER_02]: And then a woman in Tamil Afluid in particular has [SPEAKER_02]: pioneered in their after setting up connections with ancestors so that they also become helpers in your life.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't do that so much as she dies, but it's really interesting to me as well. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, Tamala, I have her book listening when part speak and it's like so great. [SPEAKER_00]: And met her and Spain went with you in the [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so then for Tamalas way of doing it, the ancestors there with the person and they can have them as a resource in their system. [SPEAKER_00]: And then how do we apply that like collectively? [SPEAKER_03]: Go ahead, Thomas.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, it's like, like, I use a bit of a different language for, like, you know, work with saying, okay, our ancestors are roots and through ancestors we are rooted as the planet because it seems like that a lot of this collective and intergenerational wounds create the experience as if my body [SPEAKER_03]: is looking at nature versus nature is looking at nature. [SPEAKER_03]: That's very different.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so what we experience is that when people heal their intergenerational ancestral wounds or disconnect our roots become more open, they become more resource. [SPEAKER_03]: So our ancestors are more part of our life and felt as a resource. [SPEAKER_03]: But one of the effects is also that I feel more connected to everything.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think one big part that many people suffer from is like a sense of isolation, a sense of separation, trauma creates this crack in the window, you know, like suddenly you have the crack and you have two. [SPEAKER_03]: And the same is true in our roots, we feel separate. [SPEAKER_03]: And then it creates an anti-social system where that is not sustainable. [SPEAKER_03]: Because traumatic stress is not sustainable. [SPEAKER_03]: It over consumes our inner resources.
[SPEAKER_03]: It over consumes physical resources just from our physical body. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's why it's over a longer time, it creates all kinds of health issues. [SPEAKER_03]: And so the more what the beautiful described is like that also grounding ourselves deeper in the roots and as the planet I see, wow, I am also planet. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not just like a party, a separate particle looking at the planet, but I feel part of an interdependent system of a data stream.
[SPEAKER_03]: and that data stream is flowing through me as it flows through everybody else too. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think that that sense gives us more like a centredness and connects us more to the collective field. [SPEAKER_03]: And then, because I think there is like trauma creates one, [SPEAKER_03]: one big illusion, one is that hope is in the future, instead of hope is in the agency. [SPEAKER_03]: And the other one is that this idea, I could have done it better.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's say we could live more sustainably. [SPEAKER_03]: And I would challenge that notion. [SPEAKER_03]: I would say, I am sure if we don't live sustainably if you overextract resources from the planet, if we burn down our biosphere, if you like, put too much CO2 out there. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if we could, in this state of awareness, could do it differently.
[SPEAKER_03]: If we stop for a moment, we reflect on what we do, we change something in our way of acting, then we can do it differently. [SPEAKER_03]: But it doesn't work just by putting more effort in trying to do it differently. [SPEAKER_03]: That usually leads to the repetition compulsion that we all know. [SPEAKER_03]: And therefore, I think the collective dimension is also the more [SPEAKER_03]: we can ground ourselves and feel as part of.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then we can really create the more sustainable society and the society to this more in tune. [SPEAKER_03]: with and as the planet and then I think a lot of how we share resources, how we live together, how we do not over-consume because we don't need it, because regulation is regulated. [SPEAKER_03]: I need what I need and I can be there for others. [SPEAKER_03]: There's a need and I will not burn myself just because I'm there for others.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's a regulation in all directions. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think so that is one, I mean, there are so many other aspects that I think that is one aspect of doing the intergenerational work and the other one is that we have a much responsibility means that I'm able to respond to the actions of my ancestors. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't need to deny it, and I'm not overly identified with it. [SPEAKER_03]: I have a healthy relationship to whatever that was.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if there was trauma, it's trauma, and if there was transgression, it's transgression. [SPEAKER_03]: But it's whatever it is, I have a responsive relationship to that. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think often when it's not looked at, then we re-enact some of these parts in our own life. [SPEAKER_03]: And so that's maybe a bit of a different language, but I think it says pretty similar things, as Dick said before. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I feel like what you said about, I mean, something that I've been thinking about regarding this conversation is that it's not just the trauma of victimization that we carry, that we all are carrying in some form, whether it's from our own direct experience or ancestors, but also the harm that we've done to others, or that our ancestors have done to others is is.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're holding both, and I think we spend so much energy denying both, denying the ways that we've been victimized, and denying the ways that we've harmed others. [SPEAKER_00]: And like, for example, the way that takes that earlier, like, you know, good liberals. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I know that was sort of tongue-in-cheek because everyone wants to be good. [SPEAKER_00]: And no one wants to be bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the truth is that all of us, you know, our harmed and cause harm, it's part of being alive. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not just about never being harmed or causing harm. [SPEAKER_00]: It's about what you do from that place, from there. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that our unwillingness to see the ways we've been harmed or the harm that we've done leads to so much additional suffering and additional harm that happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like the ways that we don't want to face our own victimization and individual trauma therapy, that's one of the biggest barriers is not recognizing that we have experienced trauma. [SPEAKER_00]: So we spend all this time trying not to be a victim, a meanwhile inside of our bodies, these chemicals are coursing through us in response to these unresolved wounds and impacting our health. [SPEAKER_00]: and our behavior long term.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I didn't really think anything. [SPEAKER_02]: You was saying, yeah, I hear in a hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, because I just presented at this Udomonia conference, which was crawling with people who were so focused on optimizing their health and their longevity. [SPEAKER_02]: And part of what I said was, you can do all the things here.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you've got a little kid stuck in a horrible scene in your past, who's constantly afraid and feels very betrayed and abandoned by you, you're not going to be healthy, ultimately. [SPEAKER_02]: And no matter how much of that other stuff you do with your diet and your breath work, and meditation, and all the bypasses, [SPEAKER_02]: So, and I started calling it a wellness bypass as like the spiritual bypass. [SPEAKER_02]: And so, yeah, I very much agree.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, our culture really reinforces that. [SPEAKER_02]: It's this is a rugged individualist culture now, especially with Trump and you're a loser if you're ever vulnerable. [SPEAKER_02]: And you have to dominate and win and so on. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's just permeating now. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think I'm just agreeing with what you say.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me add one more thing, and that is, it's equally or even sometimes harder to go to and admit to the parts that do want to hurt people. [SPEAKER_02]: And again, especially for us who people who want to pretend like were great all the time. [SPEAKER_02]: But that's been a focus of mine. [SPEAKER_02]: I consulted to a treatment center for sex offenders for a couple years and we just completed a pilot study with intimate partner abusers in state of Washington.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're hoping to get money to do a big study with that and just to have people at and it was in a group and to have these quote unquote perpetrators come together and find their perpetrating [SPEAKER_02]: what happened to make these parts the way they are and have compassion for each other and yeah, it was very powerful, pilot's day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's not that we want to say that harming people is a good thing to do but we can't just throw people away over and you know I think we all understand that everyone has you know elements of good and bad inside of us and we don't
[SPEAKER_00]: If we produce people to kind of like a, I don't know, one dimensional or two dimensional cartoon character rather than, you know, just a mix of all of the different elements of what makes us human, you know, then you do then you think that some people are just not worthy of belonging within the society and that's kind of what what we're doing here and that's what colonized.
[SPEAKER_00]: societies do but also like we can't forget it's not for no reason either but there's a group of people who are benefiting from all of us being at each other's throats and you know so it's really a subversive idea to say that like we are all interconnected and that we
[SPEAKER_00]: The way out of this planet destruction path that we're on is to come together and count on each other and to believe that there's a way forward in life that is not just the good guys beat the bad guys, but everyone comes together and for all of our survival and well being.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you said something like very powerful, so in our work, I often said, you know, because what you are pointing to that we're all interconnected, is very complex and challenging, because it's easier to say this word in Nazis. [SPEAKER_03]: I often use this as an example, it's like a poster. [SPEAKER_03]: It's a two-dimensional version. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't need to feel anything when I say that.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if somebody tells me, well, that concentration camp guard was a loving father. [SPEAKER_03]: That's already more difficult to swallow, because when I start to feel something, then I cannot just make an existence like, well, let's all bad. [SPEAKER_03]: Because even whatever is dark or painful or harmful is not just one dimension or two dimension. [SPEAKER_03]: It's not a poster. [SPEAKER_03]: It's a complexity of a human being.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that to see in our work, we call this a 2D image as a defense. [SPEAKER_03]: Like you 2D the world, you don't feel the world anymore through your body. [SPEAKER_03]: It becomes a mental image in a kind of number body. [SPEAKER_03]: And so when I don't feel anything, I can make you an image that is at the distance that helps me to feel less and make you whatever into something.
[SPEAKER_03]: but that is the state of retraumatization, because when I'm really connected to you, I cannot hurt you. [SPEAKER_03]: But when I'm not connected to you, I can say and do all kinds of things, look at social media. [SPEAKER_03]: We put stuff out that is horrifying on social media because we don't feel [SPEAKER_03]: Obviously, like when you look at millions of users, the stuff that has been said, you would most probably never save the person is in the room.
[SPEAKER_03]: I can just put it there because and I think that that defense that we become more aware if someone, if we ourselves or other people are in that state and because part of the ecosystem [SPEAKER_03]: think the more we feel when that happens. [SPEAKER_03]: And the other thing is trauma also, I believe, does something that is very simple but very impactful. [SPEAKER_03]: It hurts the brain's capacity to modulate internal and external sensory input.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the inner world is suddenly not connected anymore to the outer world except if the bridge is broken. [SPEAKER_03]: So I cannot feel myself and you at the same time. [SPEAKER_03]: And when that modulation is less and less working, [SPEAKER_03]: more and more compromised, then the outside can be X, whatever X is for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's a state, I think, very in families, a lot of traumas being re-enacted in intimate relationships and societally, that's how we other other groups. [SPEAKER_03]: But having a wider social awareness of that state, [SPEAKER_03]: that how to come back to a three-dimensional state would mean I feel my body and that's why I feel you in your three-dimensionality. [SPEAKER_03]: I can feel you as a being, you have emotions, your body, you have, you're not just my mental image.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that mechanism that you spoke to that we are really interconnected is very challenging because it takes the painkiller away. [SPEAKER_03]: And obviously we need that painkiller to keep a lot of stuff frozen that is in our legacy presence of our cultures that they frozen for a reason. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, in the book, I describe an example.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm working with Jewish woman who hated, really hated Hamas, but just hated Palestinians in general because of what happened and how to find the Holocaust legacy burden and unburdened that. [SPEAKER_02]: And it produced its huge shift in her perception.
[SPEAKER_02]: She said, [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I really see much more of the humanity of those what I thought were others and I can't other people anymore and it just is a nice example of how exactly what Thomas is saying that these protective parts and and the legacy burdens that they carry just totally close our hearts and distort our our perception through our through our eyes. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean when people do this work.
[SPEAKER_02]: They start by look through the lens of that protector and what is what is your opponent look like and then say looks like a monster, okay, now asks, you're not going to be with that person. [SPEAKER_02]: So just ask this protector to step out and suddenly they see you past the protectors of the opponent and they see the exiles, the drive them and they have compassion and so that's what both of us are trying to bring.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, I am so, so grateful for what you're doing that you came here to talk about it and that you've written this book, which will be, you know, will be out when this air so. [SPEAKER_00]: that's very exciting and you know I think this approach it just makes everything a lot more complicated and it's honestly it's a lot more painful when you look at life this way but it's it's real it's what's really going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you for the courage to try to make such an important impact [SPEAKER_00]: really make positive change. [SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate both of you. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Laura. [SPEAKER_02]: Great to be with you again. [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, lovely to be in your presence. [SPEAKER_03]: So thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: Same to you. [SPEAKER_00]: So where will we tell people that they can find the book?
[SPEAKER_00]: What, what's the, do you know the link or otherwise I'll just put it in the show notes? [SPEAKER_03]: I think releasing our burdens.com is the website. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, yes, so no later than December 2nd, it will be out there for everyone to buy and, again, thank you so much for the important work you do and for being who you are. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to Therapy Chat with your host, Laura Reagan, LCSWC.
[SPEAKER_01]: For more information, please visit Therapy ChatPodcast.com.