Wisdom of Trauma Course Transcript

Online Course
Transcript
 Wisdom of Trauma Course Transcript

Table of Contents

LESSON 01 - UNDERSTANDING TRAUMA ............................................................................................................ 2

LESSON 02 - THE NATURE AND SCIENCE OF TRAUMA ........................................................................... 11

LESSON 03 – SAYING NO: ATTACHMENT VS AUTHENTICITY ................................................................ 21

LESSON 04 – RELATIONSHIPS ..................................................................................................................... 26

LESSON 05 – ON GUILT , SHAME , ANGER AND GRIEF ....................................................................................... 33

LESSON 06 – ILLNESS AS ADAPTATION ............................................................................................................. 39

LESSON 07 – PSYCHEDELICS AND TRAUMA ...................................................................................................... 44

LESSON 08 – SPIRITUAL BYPASSING ................................................................................................................. 51

LESSON 01 - UNDERSTANDING TRAUMA

The wisdom of trauma. What does that even mean? The wisdom of trauma? What's wise about
trauma? Well, in a certain sense, there's nothing wise about trauma. It's just painful. I mean, I
don't wish it on anybody. I don't wish trauma on anybody, wisdom or no wisdom. So it's not some
kind of... I don't have some kind of spiritual point of view that says, "This is designed that way so
you can learn things". There's other ways of learning. You don't need to have trauma to learn. You
really don't. Ideally, we could and we would learn without trauma. That's true. So what does it
mean the wisdom of trauma? I mean, you wouldn't inflict trauma on a child, would you,
deliberately? So you can teach them something? You wouldn't take a two-year-old and abuse
them, so that they can then learn from the trauma. So let's not trivialize this or romanticize this
idea of the wisdom of trauma. So what does it really mean?
Let me read you a quote from one of my prime teachers who is very well known to the science
community, A.H. Almaas, A. Hameed Ali, who wrote somewhere that the fundamental thing that
happened and the greatest calamity is not that there was no lover support in childhood. The
greatest calamity which is caused by that first calamity, is that you lost the connection to your
essence. That is much more important than whether your mother or father loved you or not. In
other words, the fundamental trauma was that loss of connection to yourself. And as I'll be telling
you, when I talk about trauma, that disconnection from the self is the greatest wound. So where
does the wisdom of trauma come in? Our traumas can lead us back to ourselves. Traumas are
not random in the sense that the wounds that we sustain and how we deal with those wounds,
they're not random. They are specific manifestations of where we lost connection to ourselves
and therefore, they can be pathways back to ourselves. So what in this context, the wisdom of
trauma means is that our traumas, how they manifest, how we relate to them, can teach us to be
ourselves, can restore that connection that we lost in the first place.
So that's what I mean, when I talk about the wisdom of trauma, which also means that we can
take two attitudes, broadly speaking, towards that trauma. One is to resent it, to hate it, to want it
to go away and oh my God, why wouldn't we want it to go away and why wouldn't we resent it?
Why wouldn't we want to distract ourselves from it? Of course we do. It's only that that doesn't
help. Those approaches leave us stuck in it. It's not that we're wrong to want to escape our
traumas or their impact. It's not that we're wrong to want to let go of our dysfunctional ways of
dealing with it. Of course we do. It's only that is not helpful to do that. What is helpful is to be
curious about it, and to maintain that curiosity at every point. Okay, what can this teach me, what
can this teach me? What can this teach me? And that's where the compassion comes in, and
that's where the curiosity comes in. And that also means that a fundamental principle of this work,
at least the way we envision it in this context, is that there's nothing wrong with any of us. The only
thing that's wrong is that we think there's something wrong and even that's not wrong, because
there's a good reason why we think that way.
So rather than asking what's wrong here, we ask what does this mean? Where did it come from?
What did I make it mean? What can I learn from it? So that's the approach here. So let's begin
with the basics. So the word trauma itself comes from a weak word for wounding. So trauma is a
wound, that's what it is. If you take that metaphor of the wound, what is the nature of a wound?
And the wound has, you might say, two natures. One is that when it's open and raw, it's very
sensitive so that when you touch it or when something touches it, it really hurts. So in that sense,
trauma is an open wound. So... Somebody doesn't understand you in the present moment, and

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you feel this pain. Well there's nothing painful in itself about somebody not understanding you if
you understand yourself. There's nothing painful about somebody else not understanding you.
If I spoke to you in Hungarian right now, or to put it in another way, if you spoke to me right now
in Finnish, or in Bulgarian, or Arabic, or Hebrew, or Russian, I wouldn't understand you. Would I?
That would not be painful to you. You just realized this guy doesn't speak these various languages.
There's nothing in itself painful about not being understood. However there was a time in life,
when it was utterly painful not to be understood: when you were a small child and you needed to
be understood, but you weren't and that wounded you. So now, when somebody doesn't
understand you, that's the wound that's getting touched, that's why it's so sensitive. Because in
you there is a wound and a fear of not being understood. So that's what I mean by the sensitivity
of the wound, you just touch it, it hurts so much. But all these pains that we have, they're not about
the present, they're really about the past. And that's one of the prime teachings here, is that really,
the suffering that we undergo in the present, it's so much about wounding from the past because
we carry these traumatic wounds and they're being touched, and then it hurts. So that's one nature
of trauma, is the sensitivity of it, of the trauma wound.
And as I'll be showing you later, pretty much every time that you're upset in the present, it ain't
about the present, it's about the past, it's about your trauma. So that's the first thing, it's the
sensitivity of it. The second thing is it seems like it's adverse. When there's a wound, scar tissue
can form. Now scar tissue protects the wound. Scar tissue replaces the original issue with
something hard, something thick. And that binds the tissues together so the organism continues
to function. But what is the nature of scar tissue? While its protective, it's also very hard. It's
insensitive. When you touch it, you barely feel it because there's no nerve endings in the scar. It's
also not flexible, it's rigid. So trauma is constrictive. So trauma is both this open wound and the
scar tissue. Where we're overly sensitive, overly, I say, in comparison to the present stimulus, but
also where it's rigid and hard and insensitive, where we don't feel, where we can't grow. Scar
tissue doesn't grow. Scar tissue is not flexible.
Now the difference between psychic trauma, psychic wounding, and the physical trauma scar
tissue is that we can remove the psychic scar. We can regenerate the original healthy psychic
tissue that was hurt in the first place. We can become flexible again, we can learn how to feel
again, or we can learn not to feel more than the present moment requires. So all this is healable,
and that's the wisdom of trauma. So trauma is, first of all, a wound. You got that. And you also got
that the biggest trauma is the disconnection from the self. That's the biggest trauma. Now, there's
a wisdom in that trauma. Why did you disconnect from yourself? Well, it's not true to say that you
disconnected from yourself. It's not like it's something you did. You didn't do it. it happened. The
wisdom of your organism did it when it hurt so much and you were so small, and you were so
vulnerable, and you were so helpless, and it hurt so, so much. What could you do but disconnect?
What could you do? You couldn't do anything. What could your organism do? The wisdom of the
organism said: "I better disconnect this person from their feelings, "from their awareness, "from
themselves, otherwise they couldn't endure it." And that's the wisdom of the trauma. Is you
disconnected, and then that disconnection has created all kinds of problems in your life. (clears
throat)
But originally, there was deep wisdom in it. And that disconnection then is the deepest wound. As
Almaas said, the greatest calamity is not that this or that happened. The greatest calamity is that
you lost the connection to your essence. So when the Buddha talks about the fourth noble truth,
which is the eightfold path to mindfulness or right livelihood, right mindfulness, right action, right

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speech, so and so on. What is he talking about? He's talking about becoming true to your own
nature. Reconnecting, that's what he's talking about. Trauma shapes your view of the world, and
we think we live in the same world. In a fundamental sense we do, but in a practical sense, we
don't. Let's say somebody believes that the world is a horrible place, that everybody's out to get
everybody else, that is worse than animals, because we go after our own species and that your
friends want your house, they want your spouse, and they want your wealth. And this is your
friends, never mind your enemies. Well, let's say you believe that. And let's say somebody else
believes that the world is fundamentally a benign place. That there's beauty and there's ugliness,
but that the fundamental nature of the world is that it supports growth, that it supports safety. But
those two people live in very different worlds.
So trauma creates that view of the world, which is distorted to one degree or another. Now, the
first case, the person who says that the world is a horrible place and everybody wants what you've
got and so on. That's an extreme case of trauma. Well, we all have a version of it. I've learned
very recently, at least I experienced very recently how difficult it has been for me to trust life itself.
The difficulty trusting life itself is a trauma imprint. Now, some of you probably know that the person
who said that the world is a horrible place was until a few weeks ago, the President of the United
States. Those were his words. And we know how he developed that worldview, in a highly
traumatic home family of origin. So trauma creates your view of the world. And we know also, that
when you have that worldview, what damage you're going to inflict because you're going to insist
on remaking the world in that image. And didn't he just do everything to create a horrible world?
Everything he could. And he couldn't help it, because that's the world he lives in. So trauma
creates your worldview.
Number three. This is important. Well, it's all important. Trauma shapes your brain, or I should say
more broadly speaking, life experience shapes your brain. So the human brain is not an isolated
biological organ. It's not an organ that's genetically determined to be a certain way. Its potentials
are genetically determined. But how its potentials are realized or frustrated has to do with life
experience beginning in the womb. So already what happened to your mom when she was
carrying you was shaping your brain. Literally shaping your brain. Which circuits will develop and
which will not, which neurotransmitters, which chemicals will be present in what quantities, how
much serotonin, how much oxytocin, the connection chemical, how much endorphins, pleasure
and reward, love, pain relief, the endorphins. Dopamine, the incentive, motivation. How many
receptors for dopamine will your brain have? It has a lot to do with what your mother experienced
emotionally during pregnancy. And of course, what experiences you had early in childhood when
your brain was developing.
I can say more about brain development later, but let me just make the point here, that trauma
interferes with healthy brain development. Because healthy brain development, like any
development, requires the right conditions. And the right conditions throughout the brain
development is a nurturing environment, a physically and emotionally nurturing environment.
Trauma affects your capacity to gauge safety. So some people who are traumatized are forever
hyper vigilant. They're always looking for danger. Now, this is something that's embedded in your
nervous system. I'm telling you, I can be sitting here at my desk, typing away at my computer, and
my wife comes into the room, and I'm so intent on my writing that I'm not hearing her come up the
stairs, and all of a sudden, she comes in and calls me, and I have this startle response.
Do you know who has a startle response like that? Infants do. If you clap your hands like this next
to the ear of an infant, they go... Well, that's a trauma imprint. I was born into a situation when

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there was a lot of threat. There were bombing raids and sirens and all kinds of other threats. So
this... This startle thing, this fear thing is embedded in my nervous system. So trauma shapes the
nervous system. It affects our perception of safety. Other people who were traumatized in order
to endure the trauma, they had to shut down their perception of safety or danger, because they
were in danger all the time. So that means right now, they can walk into danger and not realize it.
Some of you have been in relationships when you've been hurt. Some of you may have been in
relationships as adults where you were physically abused, or emotionally. And... You can criticize
yourself, and be done on yourself, as people tend to do and say, "Why was I so stupid to stay in
that relationship?" So you can do that. But if you want to be compassionate you'd inquire, "What
is it in me that my sense of safety was shut down? That I couldn't protect myself?".
So trauma affects your capacity to gauge safety both ways. You can overreact and you can under
react. Trauma, of course, affects your relationship to other people. Because you will bring those
traumatic imprints into any important relationship in your life. So... Those of you that are in adult
relationships will not be surprised when I tell you that what we tend to find in an adult partner is
exactly what troubled us about our parents. And all of a sudden, you find yourself back in your
childhood, and we don't do this consciously. It's just that the template for relationship with other
people was created for us when we were small, and we carried that template into our adult lives.
And by the way, as I'm speaking to you, think of your breathing. How are you breathing right now,
when you hear these words? Shallow or deep? Are you present in your body as you're listening?
Trauma gives you a shame-based view of yourself. You know that expression? You should be
ashamed of yourself. Think about it. Let's say I promised to show up for this workshop, for which
a thousand people have signed up. But let's say I don't show up, because I decided I'd rather go
for a hike. Well, you might as well say to me, "God, you should be ashamed of yourself". On that
level it works. Except it doesn't, because nobody should be ashamed of their selves. People can
have remorse for what they've done or didn't do. Where they were out of alignment with the truth.
Where they weren't being their words. When they were not honoring their commitments.
We should have remorse for that. That's healthy. If you have no remorse, you'll be elected
president of the United States. I'm not talking about remorse. I'm talking about shame about the
self. And so trauma inflicts on you, on anybody, shame about the self. And then we think, I have
this shame because of what I did or what I didn't do. No, you don't. You have this shame because
there was a protective mechanism for you when you were small and you were suffering. It was
protective for you to believe that there's something fundamentally wrong with you. But that shame
itself, from a certain point of view, has to do with the wisdom of trauma. It was protective for you.
Hurtful, ultimately destructive, but at that time, helpful for you to develop a sense of shame about
yourself. So those are the points about trauma I wanted to make. Disconnection from the self.
The wound, the sensitivity, the scarring, the pain that you carry from early experience, the
disconnection from the self which I mentioned, disconnection from others, or the misalignment of
your relationship with other people. The distortion of your view of the world. The difficulty of being
in the present moment because the past keeps showing up, how it affected your brain and your
nervous system, and the shame-based sense of self. Trauma as a wound So trauma is a
wounding, it's a wound. But it's a wound that hasn't healed because if it heals, you're not
traumatized. So there are two features of a wound that hasn't healed properly, that you will notice.
One is that it can remain an open wound and that means if you touch it, it really hurts. And so that
certain events, certain phases, certain looks on somebody's face, certain experiences will really,
really hurt you, and you think that you're being hurt in the present moment. But actually, it's an old
wound that's being touched that hasn't healed.

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So, I'll give you a trivial example and some of you have heard me talk about this before, but I also
put it in my new book, I arrived home from a speaking trip from Philadelphia, this actually
happened I think four or five years ago now. So I was very young then. I was only about 71 years
old. And... The airplane lands. It's a beautiful flight. I had a good trip. Good reception to my talk.
On the way home, I was bumped up to first class, so I'm just feeling like I'm on top of the world.
And we land in Vancouver, and my wife, Ray, I'm expecting her to pick me up at the airport, instead
of which I get a text message saying, "I'm still at home. Do you still want me to come?". And so
my response is a very thirst text back, "Never mind". I tense up. I mean, I'm furious, actually. And
I get my luggage and I take a taxi home. It takes about 15 minutes from the airport right there, And
I come in the house and I barely look at my wife of at that time 46 years. And for a day or two I'm
just in a sullen mood, until finally she says, "Knock it off already".
And I consider it a great sign of growth and maturation on my part, but after 24 hours I was able
to knock it off. But what did I have to knock off? What was going on for me? I mean... It's just no
big deal that my artist wife, who is a painter, when she's in her studio... And I've only known this
for 50 years, when she's in her studio, time disappears. If you're an artist, you know what I'm
talking about. You're just in the flow. You have no bladder, you have no belly, you have no clock.
You have nothing except the art that you're working on. So that's what happened. But what am I
doing with all that information? That information is not available to me at that moment. Because if
it was, I'd say, "Okay, honey, I'll grab a cab", or "Yeah, I'll wait for you. Come and pick me up".
What's actually happening for me? What's happening for me, of course, as many of you will intuit,
is that... I am having an experience of abandonment and betrayal. Well, of course that's one way
to look at it. I mean, maybe she was abandoning and betraying me. Or maybe she just forgot to
look at the clock or she was into her art. But I'm reacting as if my system really knows that this is
abandonment and betrayal.
So those of you that know my history will know that when I was 8 years old, my mother gave me
to a stranger and I didn't see her for six weeks, and that was to save my life. Well, guess what?
It's an incident. I experienced that as an abandoned and as a betrayal. 71 years later, this woman
on whom I'm relying for presence and support and love, doesn't show up. Guess what gets
triggered? My abandonment betrayal scenario which pushed me into a rage. That's what I mean
by a wound that's not healed. When you touch it even slightly, you get as if the event was
happening right now. And of course that's the essence, and I'm not saying I have PTSD, I'm not
going to the diagnostic criteria, but an aspect of it is that you can't tell the present stimulus from
the past event that first hurt you. So trauma is a wound that way, that hasn't healed. Number one.
Number two, what happens in a wound is that you get a lot of scar tissue, that scar tissue is
sometimes necessary. But what is the nature of scar tissue as compared to normal flesh? It's
hard, it's thick, it's inflexible. It has no nerve endings in it. So there's no feeling in it.
So another way that trauma shows up is through this hardness, this inflexibility. This... This
difficulty actually feeling anything. So I begin with trauma as a wound looked at in those two ways.
Now, if you also notice about my reaction to my wife Ray, am I in the present moment? I'm not in
the present moment. In the present moment, I'm a 71-year-old internationally respected teacher
and trauma worker and author and physician, all the credentials you want to throw after my name.
That's what I'm in the present moment. And I'm an adult whose partner simply said, "I'm sorry. I'm
not at the airport." That's what's happening in the present. But I'm not in the present. I'm in the
past. So trauma makes it difficult for you to be in the present moment. So typically, in the extreme
case of trauma, what we call PTSD, and by the way, PTSD itself is a misnomer. Misnomer

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because post-traumatic stress disorder it's not a disorder. It's a perfectly normal response to
something terrible. Not a disorder. Not a disease.
But... One feature of that constellation that we call PTSD is that you hear a car backfiring in the
street and you think you're back in battle. And I'm telling you, every time you get upset, I mean
every time you get upset, 99.99% of the time, you're not in the present moment. Let's take an
example. Let me give you a very famous example. I'm sure all of you have seen that infamous
video with this woman called Amy Cooper walking her dog in Central Park in New York. And this
black American man who's name also happens to be Cooper for some unearthly reason, is a bird
watcher. And he's telling her, "Put your dog on a leash. "This is not an off-leash area, and it
threatens the birds". And you know the outcome. She ends up calling the police saying, "This Afro-
American man is threatening my life and my dog". Now... We can look at that incident purely
through the prism of racism, and there's an aspect of racism that I'll touch upon. But fundamentally
her response, her physiological response, it's not about racism. It's actually about sensing that
she's in danger. She really feels menaced. And if you listen to the video, if you actually watch it,
what you see is a person completely dysregulated from the point of view of polyvagal theory.
Listen to her voice. The stridency of her voice, and the expression on her face.
Now, it's the mark of a racist society and white privilege that a white person can pour her trauma
and give it a racist expression, and endanger the life of a black person, which is what happened.
So I'm not minimizing the racism here. What I'm actually saying is that in the racist society, the
trauma of one person can endanger another. But her initial response, let me tell you, has to do
with her childhood. And I read newspaper articles where she's had these episodes before. Not
around race, but just episodes where she overreacted to some perceived threat and became
dysregulated. So that dysregulation and overreaction, that's an aspect of trauma. And she was
not in the present moment. Well, another aspect of trauma, I've just mentioned, is physiological
dysregulation. And you get thrown into physiological states that are responses to threat or life
danger.
So when you go back to my situation with my wife, well, being separated from my mother, that
was a real threat to me. And... Then my body, my 71-year-old body then goes into a physiological
state that reflects danger Even when there's no danger present at all. And that's Stephen Porges,
and the Vagus, and how the mature vagus nerve gets shut down, and you go into either freeze or
flight or fight mode. Stephen Porges, while I'm speaking about him, also talks about neuroception.
Neuroception is an automatic unconscious process by which parts of the brain gauge the degree
of safety that you're experiencing at the moment. And that's a natural built-in mechanism,
obviously essential for human, for any mammalian life. We have to know when we're safe and
when where we're not safe. In trauma, the neuroceptive mechanisms of gauging, recognizing
safety and the degree of danger get confused and disabled. So people will not recognize danger
when there is danger. At the same time, they'll imagine danger when there isn't any. And so... I'm
sure some people here have had the experience of being in an abusive relationship. As a matter
of fact, if you want to acknowledge that this happened to you, just raise your hand.
Have you ever been in an abusive relationship? And here's what I want to ask you: Before the
abuse started, I'm not asking, I'm not gonna ask you what happened or who or when, but before
the abuse started, did you have any inkling that there was something wrong? Did you have any
warning, in retrospect? Did you look at and say, "Oh yeah. "I should have known there was
something that wasn't quite appropriate"? In most of the cases there was. That before the overt
abuse started, you did have some kind of indication, inclination, gut sense, you might say. "Ah,

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this isn't quite right." And what did you do with it? You ignored it. So that's another facet of trauma,
of being disconnected from your gut feelings, or ignoring your gut feelings when they arise. That's
one of the things that trauma does to you.
Now... Just to review then, the wound that's touchy, that hasn't healed, that's scarred over so you
don't feel, the incapacity or difficulty being in the present moment, the being triggered into
physiological states that are not related to any current situation, not being able to tell threat or
safety accurately. Disconnection from our gut feelings, the prefrontal cortex and there's some
more trauma impacts, and I'm trying to give you as full a picture of my understanding of trauma
as I can in a few words. So the prefrontal cortex which is the front part of our brain. It's got many
jobs, insight, awareness, regulating of body states, empathy, attuned communication to other
people but also response flexibility, so that when something happens, so when Ray doesn't pick
me up at the airport, I might notice, "Oh, I have anger here", but I can really think about it. Then I
have flexibility of response, and I'm not gonna go into a rage, I can choose.
So trauma takes away our response, takes away response flexibility. It makes our reactions
automatic and stereotypical and rigid. It's another aspect of trauma. Yet one more aspect of
trauma is that you develop a shame-based view of yourself, so that fundamentally in trauma is a
deep sense of one's unworthiness. That sense of one's unworthiness can show up in negative
self-talk, as you know, "I'm useless, I'm worthless, "I'm not worthy of survival even". Or it can show
up as absolute grandiosity. If it shows up as negative self-talk, you'll be in this workshop. If it
shows up as grandiosity, you'll be president of the United States. That's how it works. That man
is the most shame-based individual in the whole universe. Except he doesn't know it, he's totally
disconnected from it. So every act, that he participates in is designed to make himself bigger
because he feels so little. And at the core of that sense of self is deep, deep shame. And then of
course trauma shapes our view of the world.
Now, the Buddha said once that with our minds we create the world. At least he implied that.
That's the first line of his Dhammapada, his collection of sayings, is that everything is thought and
it leads to how we think about things. It leads our actions. Totally true. So with our minds we
actually create the world. So... That's true. But what the Buddha didn't say, and that's the modern
psychologists' job, is to point that out, is that before with our minds we create the world, the world
creates our minds. So the world creates our world view. So if you had maybe imperfect, but
generally a nurturing experience in the world where sometimes you were hurt, but basically you
were loved and taken care of, you'll develop a view of the world that, yes, there's pain in the world,
but there's also love in the world, and I can have a degree of trust that I can find that love, that's
your worldview which sometimes you forget, and sometimes you go into a state of there's no love
in this world, but you come back to it.
But if you never experienced being loved, which is what Donald Trump's niece says about the
man, the other worldview that the world is dangerous, the world is out to get me, that the world is
hostile, that I have to fight for everything, I have to mistrust people because everybody's out to get
me that then will become your worldview. And that means that... And I quote to you a depiction of
that: "The world is a horrible place. "Lions kill for food, but people kill for sport. "People try to kill
you mentally, especially if you're on top. "We all have friends who want everything we have. "They
want our money, our business, house, car, wife and dog. "Those are our friends. "Our enemies
are even worse. "You've got to protect yourself in life." I'm quoting Donald Trump. That's the world
that he lives in. That's his world view. Well, that man is totally isolated. If that's how he thinks of
his friends, he has no friends. So trauma at the extreme isolates us from the world.

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And ultimately, ultimately trauma disconnects us from ourselves, so that we no longer know who
we are. I had a bit of trouble sleeping last night. I was too excited. I was working on my book until
midnight and I got all excited about today. In the middle of the night, I was lying there reading Bob
Dylan's Chronicles and at some point, he says, and I'll get you the quote, but he says something
like... I've lost myself inside somewhere, I have to find myself. So in trauma, we lose this
connection with ourselves, and that's the ultimate trauma. So the trauma wasn't what happened
to you, it was that disconnection from yourself, which by the way, also peter Levine defines trauma,
which is a disconnection from the self, and from others and from the world. But primary from
ourselves. And the overarching point I'm making here is that trauma is not what happened to you.
People say that the trauma was that I was sexually abused. No, that wasn't the trauma. No. That
was traumatic, but it wasn't deep trauma. The deep trauma was what that caused to happen inside
yourself. All these disconnections that I've been talking about. If you had been sexually abused...
God forbid. But if you had the support, the understanding, the validation, and then the protection
that it wouldn't happen again, you would not necessarily have been traumatized.
The trauma is actually what happens inside of us as a result. Which is good news. It's very good
news, because if the trauma is what happened to you a long time ago, what somebody did to you
or what somebody didn't provide for you, if that was the trauma, guess what? We're in trouble.
there's nothing we can do about what happened a long time ago. But if the trauma is the
disconnection from ourselves, hey, that's available to us this very moment. which is the very
intention of this workshop from my perspective, is that we should get as connected to ourselves
as we can be. Trauma as a virus You know, the COVID virus, the Coronavirus... Well, those of
you that have a medical background, who have studied the science of it. You know that viruses
don't replicate themselves. They don't reproduce. What they do is they take over the metabolism
of the host cell, and basically, they force the host's DNA to make more viruses. So they cannibalize
the host in a sense. Now with the Coronavirus, that's part of the problem.
Another big part of the problem is that the people get really sick with it. It seems it's not the effect
of the virus that's creating much of the difficulty, but the immune system response to it, which ends
up attacking the body itself. It's almost like an autoimmune disease in that sense, in many severe
cases. But the point is that it's something foreign and external that takes you over, and then uses
your materials and your cells and your DNA to perpetuate itself. That's how viruses work. Now...
There's something about trauma that’s similar to that, I was thinking last night. If we don't think of
trauma purely as person A did something to person B, but if we think of it as a virus, as a
perpetrator energy... Because, you see, the perpetrator has already been taken over by the virus.
They have already been taken over by the perpetrator energy. Now, as with viruses, they can be
more or less virulent, vicious. Some perpetrated energies are Hitler-like in their hatred, and their
violence, and their ruthlessness, and their cruelty, and their self-aggrandizement.
In the human nervous system and in the human soul, there's an expectancy. In fact, the human
organism or any organism is in expectancy from a certain point of view. An acorn is in expectancy
for soil and irrigation, isn't it? And without that, nothing happens. You can put that acorn on your
table. Nothing will happen. Your lungs are in expectancy for oxygen. Without oxygen, your lungs
would not have evolved. Your lungs evolved because there's oxygen, as an expectation for
oxygen. A whole organism is an expectation for what? For support. For love. For nurturing. That's
built into our nervous system. When we don't get those needs met, we experience that as a
perpetration. Not quite, not as egregious as being abused, but I'm not talking about the intentions
of the parent, or the subjectivity of the child. I'm talking about B as an organism or an expectation
for that nurturance. When we don't receive that, we experience that as a perpetration.

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So the perpetration energy can show up in the form of abuse. But it can also show up when my
mother doesn't pick me up, and I'm crying for an hour and a half because I need to be held and
fed. And it's not personal to her. That's the perpetration energy that she absorbed growing up and
in a certain culture and in a certain family. And then I yelled at my kids. And then I... When they
wanted to come to our bed at night, and I was harshly rejecting them. No, you can't. I was
translating that perpetration energy. And it's not personal to me, and it's not personal to any of us,
but it takes us over. Now, when you experience despair, I'll tell you something that I learned very
recently, when you experience despair the perpetration energy has taken you over. And it's
multiplying itself. It's not you. That's the perpetration energy. Because despair is not a feeling. It
has associated feelings, but fundamentally it's a point of view. And what is the point of view of
despair? That there's no support and I'm alone. That's the point of view. Well, that's the
perpetration energy. And what I learned recently is that I don't have to grant the perpetrators that
victory. I don't have to do that. And neither do you.
Now... Asked about a week ago, I wouldn't have said this. It's just that I learned something. I
experienced something. And so, notice that perpetration energy in you. It's not personal to you.
It's not personal even to the people through whom it came to you. It's part of the culture. Don't
believe it. Or at least notice it. Okay? Just notice it.

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LESSON 02 - THE NATURE AND SCIENCE OF TRAUMA

So I'm gonna talk to you this morning a bit more about the nature and science of trauma. So the
first thing to... I've already talked to you that trauma... It's not what happens to you, it's what
happens inside you as a result of what happens to you. And sometimes it's even more subtle
than that. And trigger warning, ok? I'm gonna talk about sexual abuse now. That might be
upsetting for some of you. People often think that sexual abuse was their trauma. And of course,
it's very traumatic. And I've thought about, well, why is that so particularly traumatic? I mean,
you can actually see on brain scans... ...the impact of sexual abuse. You can look at brain scans
of people who've been sexually abused, like a group of women who were depressed, and some
had been and some had not been sexually abused.
In the group that had been sexually abused there is a difference in the brain scans. So, trauma
isn't just something that happens to you... ...that gives you bad memories or a bad sense of
yourself, it also goes underneath the skin. It actually gets into your body and into your brain. But
I maintain... And stay with me on this one because this might be upsetting when I first say it. The
primary trauma and sexual abuse is not the sexual abuse itself. And when I speak with...
...groups of people and I do this all the time, and I ask, "Raise your hand if you've been sexually
abused, "if you're willing to acknowledge it, you know." A lot of people will put their hands up. I'm
not asking you to do that here. But just... Accompany me here.
Then, I ask people who are willing to talk to me about it. Well, how long did it go on for? "From
when I was 5 to 8 years old", or "All my childhood", or "For six months", or "For a whole summer
when I was staying with an uncle" or something. And then I asked people, "Who did you speak
to about it?" "Oh, I told my mother 20 years later". I say, "No." "Who did you speak to about it
when it was happening?" And you know what the answer is? 99 times out of 100? Nobody.
Now... Then, the next question is: "Those of you with children, "if this was happening to your
child even once, "not for a whole summer, not for two years, "just once... "Who you want them to
talk to?" And all of you just say, "I would have wanted them to talk to me as the mother or the
father."
And then the next question is, "If you learned that this is happening to your child... "...and they
weren't coming to talk to you about it, "how would you explain that? How would you understand
it?" And then people say, "I'd be very upset about that". And I say, "Of course it would be. "But
I'm not asking how you would feel about it, "I'm asking how would you explain why isn't my child
coming to me?" Well because they didn't trust me, they didn't feel I would protect them. Maybe
they were trying to protect me. That's the trauma. The traumas that disconnect from the
nurturing adults that allowed the abuse to happen in the first place. So what I'm saying is not
that the abuse is not traumatic, but that before the abuse happened, there was a trauma
underneath that already.
And that's why people work for years on their sexual abuse and they never resolve it. Because
that wasn't the fundamental trauma. The fundamental trauma was the disconnect that then
made them disconnect from themselves. So that's how subtle it is. How it gets underneath the
skin. Apart from... And somebody said, "I didn't know what to say". I just saw a comment from
somebody, I didn't know what to say, so I buried it. Well, the thing is, you shouldn't have had to
say anything. All you had to do was cry. And if your parents were connected to themselves, they
would have seen you already.

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Even before you said anything. Now, how it gets underneath the skin... ...is a whole lot of
biological mechanisms. So, first of all... ...everybody... The modern thinking... ...is that
everything is genetic or things are genetic. No, they're not. Genes don't determine very much in
terms of human behavior or human health. Genes do not cause most illnesses. There are some
illnesses that are genetic. Huntington's chorea is one of them. If you get that gene, your chance
of getting the disease is 99%. Not 100%, but 99%. In my family, there's a disease called
muscular dystrophy. It just makes your muscle waste away and you get weak. My mother had it.
She died with it. My aunt had it. She died with it.
If you inherit the gene, chances are very high you will get the disease. In fact, invariably you will.
That's a genetic disease. Those genetic diseases make up maybe 1% of all diseases or less.
Even when it comes to breast cancer, which people say I got best cancer cause I got the breast
cancer gene. No, you didn't. First of all, most people with breast cancer, 95% of people, or 93%
of people with breast cancer don't have the gene. Number one.
Number 2... Even if you do have the gene, not 100% of the people get the disease. No, if you
have the gene, your chance of getting disease are much, much higher. Much, much higher. But
they're never 100%. Which means that something else happens. Something else that, in most
cases, even when there's a gene present, something has to happen to turn that gene on and off.
And here's the thing about genes. They're turned on and off by the environment. And how are
turned on and off by the environment? That's called epigenetics. Epigenetics is... Epi means on
top of, so what is it that happens on top of genes that turns them on or off?
Now, what happens is life experience. So we can, already in the uterus... ...a mother's stresses
can impact the genetic functioning of the infant. So, there was a famous study after 9/11, done in
New York on mothers who were pregnant. And some of them had post traumatic stress disorder
as a result of 9/11. Now, a year later, these infants were born. Those mothers who had PTSD, in
the second trimester, those infants had elevated stress hormone levels. That means that the
mechanism for stress regulation in their brains, the genetic functioning had been altered by the
mother's stress. So that's called epigenetics.
And this is one of the ways that we pass that, this is one of the reasons, it's not the only reason
why trauma can be multigenerational. We can actually... ...change the genetic functioning of
future generations by the traumas that we experience. Now, they studied this in mice... ...and...
...they introduced a certain smell to male mice, adult mice, along with a fearful stimulus, maybe
electrical shock or something. Their grandchildren... ...when... ...exposed to the same smell,
would have a startle response. In other words, the fear was passed on through the sperm of the
grandfather, even to the 3rd generation. So that... ...trauma is not generational in the very
biological sense. So, epigenetics.
So... A famous experiment with mice in Montreal. No, rats, sorry. That's a very famous one. Rat
mothers nurse their infants... ...in a certain position. They arch their backs so the little one can
get underneath them and nurse. They found that those mothers who nursed their babies in a
more... ...nurturing way, their offspring, when they grew up, were less anxious, had an easier
time finding their way out of a maze. When you looked at their brains... ...on an autopsy, they're
very efficient stress regulation mechanisms as compared to the infants of mothers who didn't
nurse so well. You think, well this is just genetic. Mother just passed on their genes.
No, they didn't, because you took the infants of mothers who didn't nurse well and put them with
mothers who did, their brains turned out to be perfectly normal in adulthood. In other words, the

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earliest moments in the case of the rat, of interaction with the infant, actually affected the genetic
functioning of the brain of the adult. So that's called epigenetics. I'm not gonna go into the
mechanisms of it but I'm just mentioning it. Another way that our experience gets underneath the
skin... ...is through something called telomeres.
Telomeres are strands of chromosome, strands of DNA at the end of our chromosomes. And
they've been linked to... ...the glue at the end of your shoelace that keeps the strands together.
So the more intact the telomere structure is, the more the chromosome is intact. And as we age,
our telomeres get shorter and shorter and shorter, until they unravel, and so do we. So
telomeres are a mark of aging. But they're also a marker of stress. Because you can look at the
telomeres of mothers who look after chronically ill children, their telomeres are shorter and
they're seven or 8 years older than their contemporaries. Because the stress shortens the
telomeres and trauma shortens the telomeres.
And so, this gets into social issues as well. Because of course, one of the ways that... ...that
oppression affects you, is it shorten your telomeres. So, let me read you something here.
Multiple levels of racism, including interpersonal experiences of racial discrimination and the
internalization of negative racial bias operate jointly to accelerate biological aging. Our findings
literally suggest that racism makes people old. They looked at the telomeres of black and white
middle-aged women and they were shocking. Black women were found on the average to be
biologically over seven years more aged than their Caucasian counterparts. And it's not genetic,
people, because their biological relatives in Africa don't have shortened telomeres. That's a
function of racism in America. It gets underneath the skin. So that's the second way in which
experience gets underneath the skin.
The third way is through inflammation. So... Inflammation in the body... ...elevates the risk of
autoimmune disease, of cancer, and of depression. We can measure inflammation in the body
by certain proteins that are circulating in the blood. People that were abused in their childhood,
they often have elevated levels of these inflammatory proteins. So, literally, inflammation is not
just a physiological event, it's a response to a life event. So when I talk about how early trauma
and repression and stress leads to autoimmune disease and cancer, I'm not just talking about it
theoretically. I'm saying it actually affects your body. It actually affects your body increasing
inflammation levels. Well, then there's the impact on the brain itself. Now... Scientists are very
fond of doing these brain scan studies of people and they say, "Look at the addicted brain". It
looks different, so the addiction must be a brain disease. No, it isn't. Childhood experience
makes the brain that way.
Childhood experience actually shapes the brain, which circuits will develop and which will not,
how much serotonin you will have. How much dopamine, how many dopamine receptors there
will be, which circuits are connected, over developed or underdeveloped. That's based on early
experience. So let me read you something about... About brain development. There was an
article... So these days, we have an epidemic of brain-based diseases, as it's so called, amongst
children. All these kids are being diagnosed with ADHD, and oppositional defiant disorder, and
conduct disorders, and children with manic depressive disorder, and anxiety disorder, and this,
and that, and the other.
Well, what's happening to the child's brains? What's happening is that social stresses are
actually impacting the brains of our children. Let me read you something from... ...the Journal of
Pediatrics, which is the official journal of the American Pediatric Association. This was published
in 2012. And let me tell you, I talked to a lot of doctors, they've never seen this article. That's one

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of these astonishing things, and I don't mean pejoratively, about every doctor, I'm talking about
the profession as a whole. It tends to ignore its own evidence. It's not that this evidence doesn't
exist. Is that it doesn't penetrate medical practice, psychiatric practice.
So this is an article from the Journal of Pediatrics. And the origin of the article is from the
Harvard Center on the Developing Child, which is an internationally renowned child
development research institute. They put up these papers, amazing papers. So here's what the
article says. They say that growing scientific evidence also demonstrates that social and
physical environments that threaten human development because of scarcity, stress or
instability can lead to short term physiologic and psychological adjustments that are necessary
for immediate survival and adaptation, but which may come at significant cost to long term
outcomes in learning, behavior, health, and longevity.
Then they talk about brain development and I'll set you two short paragraphs about that. The
architecture of the brain is constructed to an ongoing process that begins before birth, continues
into adulthood, and establishes either a sturdy or fragile foundation for all the health learning
and behavior that follow. So the architecture of the brain is constructed to an ongoing process
that begins before birth. Which is why, by the way, adopted kids are in so much risk. Those are
that are adopted in this group... This is not... ...foredoomed, but statistically, there's a high risk
for ADHD, for depression, for anxiety, double the risk of suicide. Why? Because you spent your
first nine months of existence in a stressed uterus and then you were separated from your birth
mother, which is a major trauma.
So that's how early this stuff begins. Then, the second paragraph on brain development. The
interaction of genes and experiences literally shapes the circuitry of the developing brain, and is
critically influenced by the mutual responsiveness of adult child relationships, particularly in the
early childhood years. Which means to say, people, that the major influence on brain
development is the quality of our interaction with our parents and our nurturing caregivers. And
all of us on this call... ...have suffered because that mutual responsiveness wasn't there.
Whether we were abused, whether we're not abused, Whether we were neglected or not
neglected, but something happened that our parents were too stressed, too distracted, too
traumatized... ...to pressured... ...to give us that responsiveness, better healthy brain
development and self-development required.
So that's how... ...trauma gets underneath the skin and into our brains. I've already said it's
multigenerational. It's multigenerational partly because of epigenetics, that I already talked
about, but partly because they just tend to pass it on without meaning to. So... I'm gonna read
your poem by Philip Larkin, British sport laureate, ok? Because I'm gonna talk to you about
multigenerational trauma. The poem goes, "They fuck you up, your mom and dad. They may not
mean to, but they do. "They fill you with all the faults they had "and add some extra just for you.
"But they were fucked up in their turn by fools in old style hats and coats "who half the time were
soppy-stern and half at one another's throats. "Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a
coastal shelf. "Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself".
Ok, so there you have it. People have said to me, "I'm worried about having screwed up my
kids". I say, "Don't worry about it". How did I pass on my stuff? So, I was diagnosed with ADHD,
A couple of my kids were. It must be genetic. No it isn't. When my kids were small, I was a
workaholic doctor. Why was I a workaholic doctor? Because of the stress of my first year and
especially my mother giving me away to a stranger. What message did I get? Not what message

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did I get, what meaning did I give the message? Again, remember this one. You're the one that
gives it meaning. You don't do it deliberately. You're not at fault. You're not being guilt-ed here.
But you're the one that gave your experiences meaning. You didn't do it deliberately or
consciously. Your brain did it. Your mind did it. The mind is a meaning making machine. So
when there's an experience, your mind will give it a meaning. What meaning did I give... ...to the
fact that my mother didn't feed me when I wanted to be fed, but she fed me on schedule? That's
because she was following her doctor's orders. What meaning did I give to the fact that she was
unhappy all the first year of my life? It's all about me. What meaning did I give it when she gave
me to a stranger? Oh, I'm not wanted. Okay.
I've said this before. If you're not wanted, you know what the best thing you can do? Go to
medical school. Now they're gonna want you all the time. When they're dying, being born, and
every moment in between they're gonna want you. Very addictive. This doctor, this poor young
woman... ...in New York who committed suicide, an emergency physician... She committed
suicide, she thought, because she couldn't help all these people. No. She committed suicide
because her sense was that if I'm not helping people, I'm not worth anything. She didn't get that
message from Covid. I guarantee you she got that message in childhood. And she got that
message in childhood without anybody meaning to give her that message. Just as I didn't mean
to give my kids any kind of message other than the fact that I love them to the end of the Earth.
But because I was a workaholic doctor and depressed much of the time, what message did they
get? That they're not that important. Work is more important. And this is how we pass it on. We
passed it on unwillingly and unconsciously. So it's multigenerational.
Not only is it multigenerational, of course, it's also collective. So, you wanna see collective
trauma? We're seeing it right now. Do you wanna see collective trauma? Look at the black
American experience. Look at how the telomeres are shorter. Look at how black American
males are at much higher risk of high blood pressure. Black American women, higher rate of
dying of cancer, breast cancer, regardless of socioeconomic group. So it's collective. And if you
look at what happened in the Canadian indigenous population or the American indigenous
population, not only the genocide, but also the utter attempt to obliterate their culture and their
spiritual ways... And that leaves a huge hole.
And how do you fill that hole? Well, guess who's got the highest rates of addiction... ...in
Canada? First nation's people. It's collective. And as a Jew, I know how collective it is. You get
this sense of... ...the world is against you. And sometimes how they compensate for that is not
very pretty. So... Trigger warning for those of you that are my fellow Jews here. But I see much
of what's happening in the Middle East and much of what the Israelis are doing to the
Palestinians as an attempt to try to... ...deal with their trauma without transforming internally, but
passing it on to somebody else. So it's collective.
And sometimes, how that plays out can be to traumatize somebody else, just as it happens
inside families. Every one of you that were traumatized by your parents were traumatized by a
traumatized parent. One of the questions that somebody asked me was: How do I forgive my
parents? Don't work at forgiveness. Once you heal, I promise you forgiveness happens. Why
does forgiveness happens? Because healing means to become whole again. That's what
healing actually means. The word healing comes from the word wholeness. If you heal... And I'm
telling you, the possibility of healing exists in everybody.

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In my 50s.... In my 40s, I should say, I was very depressed. I recently, writing the mental house
chapter of the book that I'm working on, I found some of my diaries from my mid-40s. I was
talking about wanting to kill myself. I was talking about how... ...hopeless and alienated I felt. I
was a successful doctor. Family... Head of a family or one of the two heads of a family.
Financially, with beautiful kids. Nice house. I wanted to kill myself. I felt dead inside and I said, "I
want to kill this dead person inside me." I was also very angry. Very angry. I wasn't whole. I'm
not saying... ...I have fully healed now, but believe me, I'm a different person than I was. And
what I can tell you is, as you realize your wholeness, you realize you haven't really lost anything,
you haven't been damaged. If you haven't been damaged, that means that... ...nobody...
...robbed you of anything, and if nobody robbed you of anything, there's no crime. And if there's
no crime, there's no criminal.
So I'm telling you, don't work at forgiveness, work at healing yourself. And the forgiveness will
follow. It follows automatically. Now, some people do teach forgiveness techniques, I'm not
against it, but that's never been my way. My way is... And I've seen it over and over again, as
people heal, and as they understand that the pain they received from their families was the pain
that their families had received from somebody else long before. It's like Jesus, who says,
"Forgive them, for they know not what they do". Now, I'm not advocating that you forgive, don't
work at it, don't put pressure on yourself.
To put pressure on yourself to forgive is to violate yourself, don't do it. I'm just talking about how
the process works. In his book, "Anti-Semite and Jew", Jean Paul Sartre, the French
philosopher, he says that... "We're not in a position to understand the anti-Semite", he says.
"He's a man who's afraid. "Not of the Jews, to be sure, "but of himself and of his own
consciousness. "Of his own instincts, of his liberty, of his responsibility. "Of his responsibilities,
of solitariness, "of change, of society, and of the world". In other words, when you're carrying a
lot of... if you're carrying a lot of... ...doubt fear inside yourself, there's two ways you can deal
with that.
One is you can own it, you can process it, you can transform it, you can find it a pathway back to
yourself, or you can project it onto somebody else. I'm not talking about racism now in a sense
of its political and economic uses. It has political and economic uses. If the poor American white
couldn't blame... ...his... ...difficulties... ...on... ...people of color or immigrants, he might have to
look at the system and say, "There's people on the top who are profiting of me", but that would...
...create the necessity of conflict, they might not be ready for it. It's very easy to manipulate
these people into... ...believing that their problems are caused by some minority. So there's
racism in that sense.
The system creates racism as a way of maintaining itself, as a way of splitting people up from
each other, from their natural allies, and making the natural allies into enemies, and their
enemies into actual allies. The system works that way beautifully. But I'm talking now about
racism in a personal sense, and racism in a personal sense, let me tell you, it's an outcome of
trauma.
And again, I take you back to that... I take you back to that incident in Central Park where this
Amy Cooper is walking her dog, but it is not in a leash. And this other man, this African
American man, whose name is also Cooper... ...says, "Please, leash your dog. "This is a bird
watching area". And I talked about this the other day. Just watch the video, how dysregulated
she gets. By dysregulated I mean, Betsy talked about the vagus nerve and that's connected to...
...the belly and the internal organs, and to the lungs, and associated nerves are connected to the

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voice box, the larynx and the facial expression. And that woman is in complete autonomic
nervous system reaction. That's her trauma.
It's the nature of the American system that traumatized whites can then... ...download their
trauma on people of color, and actually be confident that the authorities will show up and
support them rather than the person that they're attacking. But I'm talking about her particular
reaction. I'm talking about her particular reaction as a trauma response. People have asked... I
mentioned that all mental illnesses can be seen as originating and adaptations.
And somebody said, "Well, how can that be true, for example, of self-harm?" Well, let me read
you something about self-harm. This is from the mental health chapter of the book I'm now
working on. The incidents of self-harming behaviors is rising in our culture, particularly among
young people. If we didn't have recourse to the mental illness explanation, if we didn't say this is
a mental illness, which is what we say, you know, some kind of disorder... But if we can see that,
some of these things people do for a reason, we would simply ask why. What might be the
function of such practices be in a person's life? The answer is uniform, temporary relief.
I'm gonna quote you the comedian Darrell Hammond, who's got 59 scars on his body. And he
told me that the self-cutting gave him a manageable crisis. It creates a crisis that's more
manageable than the terror inside you. The one going on inside your head. You look at the
cutter's arms, those aren't suicide cuts, those aren't death cuts. Those are either "I want
someone to know I'm in distress", so it's a request for help. Or when I start patching this arm up,
running and finding the band aid and cleaning myself up, I have a crisis, but it's manageable.
And the one in my head was not.
And there's a young Canadian indigenous author called Hellen Knot. What a beautiful book
called... ..."In My Moccasins", "In My Own Moccasins", I think that's the title. She writes, "Those
brief moments", again, I warn you, this is painful stuff I'm reading here. "Those brief moments of
the sharp blade dragging across the skin "provided me with the relief from the hate that I felt for
myself. " It was as if the moment the skin opened up, "it became a vent "that poured out all my
fucked up rolling emotions in random places. "When I couldn't do this, "I would press my wrists
down and hard upon edges of counter-tops and tables. "Pain was the only reminder that I could
feel because I was dead inside." So there's always a payoff. A temporary payoff. Now,
delusions. How can delusions, psychosis be adaptive? Well, because they have meaning.
Now, let's say you believe that people from Mars are controlling you... ...in a pernicious way.
Well, clearly, you're nuts, right? You have a mental illness, you're crazy. There are no people in
Mars. But what if you look at the meaning of the experience? What if I asked you... ...could there
have been a time in your life when you were helpless and powerful people were controlling
you... ... in a way that was pernicious? In other words, is the emotional experience underneath
the story accurate to your life? In every case, it will be. Some manic-depressive delusions,
psychotic delusions, they always have meaning. And not only that, they have an adaptive
purpose, because the most painful thing... ...for somebody to come to terms with, is that they
weren't loved, they weren't accepted, that they were hurt by the people that were meant to
protect and nurture them. Because to recognize that brings you into conflict. It's adaptive to
believe that it's people from Mars that are controlling you. It's less painful. So, mental illness
always come from trauma and it always has a meaning.
So, the whole concept of mental illness is a construct. We constructed that. Now, it's a construct
that's useful sometimes, but it's not a useful construct to believe in as an actual reality, as a

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concrete thing. It's a process. Every disease is a process. It's not a concrete thing. Multiple
sclerosis is not a concrete thing. It's a process. Rheumatoid arthritis is not a concrete thing. It
has concrete manifestations, but it's a process. And that process has to do with mind and body.
And because it has to do with mind and body, we can have an impact on it. And the same with
mental illness.
Now, do medications help? Sometimes they do. I've taken Prozac, it's helped me. But that
doesn't mean that my depression was caused by a lack of serotonin. You know, Prozac elevates
serotonin levels. The fact that it helped me doesn't mean that my depression was caused by
lack of serotonin. If I have a fever, does that mean I have a lack of aspirin in my brain? Just
because the aspirin works, does that mean that I have a lack of aspirin in my brain?
So, what I'm saying is that, and I'm going to conclude here, is there's many ways of looking at
things. And all the ways we're looking at things are constructs of our minds. And very often, the
constructs of our culture. So we need to question everything, inquire about everything. The
source of everything. And harvest out personal experiences. And that's why compassionate
inquiry. It all goes down in your mind I said in the very beginning that trauma is not what
happens to you, trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you. And the
impact of trauma is that you carry what happens.
And from that point of view, you're restricted, narrowed in your responses. So, in every case that
I was working with somebody, it was about what are you carrying here with you... ...that is not
true for you, but you believe it to be true. Somebody said they were stuck. They were not stuck.
Their mind was telling them that they were stuck. That's the teaching. The teaching is not that I
do therapy with people. The teaching is... ...how is this person carrying the past with them and
how is carrying the past limiting their experience of the present? And how is that too for me?
That's what the teaching is about.
So, in every case, look for that. If you don't see it, ask me about it. But I will do what I can to
articulate it. The second teaching... ...that has been... ...emphasized over and over again, is that
the truth of what you're carrying is in your body, not in your thoughts. Notice every time I work
with somebody, I say, "What's happening in your body right now? "What's going on and where
are you carrying that?"
A little later on, Betsy and I will each talk to you a little bit about... ...somatic experiencing and
compassion inquiry, not so much about people asking what are the differences. It's more like
what is the essence of them both? But one thing they do have in common, is that the truth of you
is in your body. So that's where you look, that's where you seek the experience. That's been a
teaching that I've been... ...portraying, I believe. Thirdly... Whatever you're experiencing right
now, I gave the example of myself at the airport. It's an echo. It's a memory. It's a resonance of
something that happened a long time ago. In almost every case. And that goes back to what I
said that you're not upset about what you think you're upset about.
The teacher, writer, whose book I'll mention later, Michael Brown, says that every upset is a
setup. Every upset is a set up, so that every time we're upset. That's a setup for us to learn
something. And that includes here... A number of you have posted comments, and that's
perfectly fine, which are contain an element of upset. The emotional residence is that of upset.
Now, there's two things you can do with that. One thing is you can get attached to the content of
what your mind is telling you. This is happening. I don't like it, this is not happening.

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Or you could experience the upset inside yourself... ...and you could do a compassionate inquiry
about: what am I upset about? How familiar is this upset to me? When else have I felt it? What
do I actually believe here? What is the belief that has me upset? So in other words, this is a
teaching in every interaction here. That's what I'm gonna ask you to look for. Again, there's
nothing wrong with being triggered. But notice that you're triggered. Rather than believing the
content of what your mind is telling you. Your mind is just making up a story to explain your
emotion to you. You think you're upset because of what your mind is telling you.
No. You're upset and then the mind tells you a story to explain why you're upset. And as long as
you're caught in the upset and you believe it, that's your trauma showing up. Now, James
Baldwin, he said that not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed
until it is faced. Not everything that can be... Not everything that... ...that is faced can be
changed, but nothing can be changed until it's faced. So we have to face it all. And then we can
see if we can change it. If we don't face it, don't look at it, if you don't take ownership of it, if you
don't take responsibility for it, we cannot change it. Now. Somebody wrote in that... How can we
take responsibility in a world where governments are oppressive, where systems are
manipulative... ...and so on?
Well, that's true in a certain sense, that the world is a certain way. And one of the... ...lies... ...of
modern psychiatry and a lot of therapeutics is that they always look for the source of the
problems of the individual. So you're depressed because you don't have serotonin in your brain,
let's give you something to elevate your serotonin levels. But in fact, the problem is we live in a
society that actually doesn't meet human needs. And so that... What that person wrote, there's
some truth in it, but at the same time, if you say how can I take responsibility when government
this and systems that... Well, what are you doing? You're saying, I am helpless. I am helpless.
Your mind is telling you that you're helpless. You've got this sense of futility, of not being able to
change things. And then your mind tells you a story. And the problem with the story is that it's
both true and also... ...not true. And what is actually true, that person who wrote that, is that
when they were small, they really couldn't take responsibility and they shouldn't have had to. But
they lived in an environment where other people who were making decisions we're using them
and manipulating them and not seeing them. And that gave them their experience of the world
and of themselves, and now they think it's governments and systems.
Well, here's the problem. It is governments and systems, but that doesn't make us helpless.
That doesn't take away our capacity to respond. It doesn't take away our response ability. And if
you want an example of that, just think of Nelson Mandela. Sitting in jail for all those decades or
however long he was there. Did he ever have a sense of lack of responsibility, that he can't
respond? Not for one second, at least. I don't know, he might have gone through his moments of
doubt, but he didn't stay with it. And... The other thing I wanna say to you is that I keep saying
that... ...it all goes down in your mind. Now, that's another deep teaching. And we've been
demonstrating it, because notice what happens when I work with somebody. They have one
point of view.
And that point of view... ...gives them a certain feeling... ...and a sense of restriction and futility.
And then, you talk for a few minutes, and now they're in a totally different state. But what does
that tell you? I'm not teaching you, I'm not doing therapy with that person. I'm demonstrating for
you that it all goes down in your mind. But when you have a different... When you when you get
to be with something and look at it differently, all of a sudden everything changes. So that's the

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teaching. It all goes down in your mind, including your reactions to this workshop, whether
they're positive, or negative, or neutral, or a mixture of them. It goes down in your mind.
And there was a saying in the term of the... ...Jewish book of philosophy, wisdom, ritual and so
on. One of the rabbis said, "We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are." We don't
see things as they are. We see things as we are. In other words, we project ourselves into
whatever we see. And this is where the compassionate inquiry comes in. Oh, that's how I see it.
Well, and that makes me feel a certain thing.
Well, what's going on with me? So that's the essence of it, is you keep inquiring, don't take
anything for granted. Don't take your point of view for granted. There's a certain stage in life...
...where when you're upset, you think it's gonna last forever. And when you're hungry, you think
it's gonna last forever. So if somebody says to you, "Don't worry, dinner's in half an hour", that
doesn't mean anything to you. Because all you've got is the present moment. And that's the
stage of the infant and toddler. Where difficult emotions are intolerable, not because in
themselves they're just intolerable, but because there's no confidence yet that it's gonna pass,
that is part of a process.
So for some of you that's gonna happen, you're gonna be really upset and afraid. "Oh my God,
I'm gonna be like this now for the rest of my life". There's no relief from this. Well... That itself is a
memory, that there's no relief is a memory. It's an implicit memory of your infancy and toddlerhood.
I'm not saying that as a criticism, I completely am familiar with the state in myself. It's what
somebody once called the stage of primitive agony, primitive meaning, primitive original agony.
Well, I promise you this is a process. And... Allow yourself to go through it. And keep your eyes
on the teachings.

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LESSON 03 – SAYING NO: ATTACHMENT VS AUTHENTICITY

So a lot of people have difficulty saying no. If I say no, I'm selfish. I'm a bad person. If I say no,
they won't love me. If I say no they're gonna be angry with me. If I say no, I feel guilty. So where
does that come from? So, let me just ask you a question, Queena, if you can unmute for a
moment. So the first day that... ...somebody wanted to give you some food you didn't want, you
think you swallowed it? Have you been around any babies recently?
I probably turned away, kept my mouth shut, try to push them away.
Or you went (imitates baby). So, you know how to say no. What about on the second day?
What do you imagine?
I think I would have still tried to say no.
You wouldn't have tried. You would have said it. You would have manifested "no". You know?
So... Something happens within birth and the time that we grow up that all of a sudden, we
learn, we were born knowing how to say no very powerfully. You know? Let's say you're sleepy
and your dad wants to play with you. I don't really want to play with dad but I'm gonna feel guilty
if I go to sleep so I'm not gonna go to sleep, I'm gonna play with dad. You think you did that on
your third day of life? Probably not. Ok? So something happens between birth and whatever
time, that all of a sudden we forget how to say no. And by the way, speaking of words, what is
the first word that people start saying at age one and a half?
No?
Yeah. No. Put your shoes on. No. We learn how to say no before we say yes. And there's a
good reason for that. Because if you don't know how to say no, your yeses don't mean anything.
If I phoned you up and said, "Can we go for coffee?" and you didn't know how to say no. All you
knew was how to say yes, would your yes mean anything at all? Would it mean you wanted to
be with me and were looking forward to it? That it was something pleasant that you wanted? It
wouldn't mean any of that. So in order to be able to say yes, to say genuinely yes, we have to be
able to say no. And that's why no comes along at a year and a half, which then the adults call
"the terrible two". There's nothing terrible about it, it's perfectly natural. Healthy, essential for
human development. So then something happens.
Right, so I'm gonna explain what happens. So, the child has to needs, two basic needs. The
biggest need is this word called attachment. Attachment is our drive to be close to another being
for the purpose of being taken care of. Or for the purpose of taking care of the other. So there's
an attachment pull. An attachment comes along with... Reptilians don't have much of it. Birds
have it. Birds already have an attachment drive. The little bird wants to be close to mother or
father bird and vice versa. Otherwise there's no life. Right? So attachment is just the most
powerful drive that we have. And it's with us all our lives.
But the more immature we are, the more powerful it is because the more helpless we are, the
more dependent we are, the more vulnerable we are. So, without attachment we don't get fed,
we're not protected, we’re not looked after. So it's just... That's attachment. But we have another
need. And... Speaking of product placement, this will be a chapter in my new book. And the
other need is for authenticity. Authenticity is being in touch with ourselves. Audaciousness is a
powerful drive as the attachment need is. I shouldn't say as powerful. It is as essential.

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Why is it essential? Well... Remember I talked about danger and not danger? For... Human
beings have been on Earth for 150,000 years, maybe 200,000 years. For 185,000 years, where
did we live? We lived out in nature. How long would you survive in nature if you're not in touch
with your gut feelings? Like for example... ...if... ...Laura, she was in this group. But let's say this
wasn't a group. Let's say she was out there in nature 150,000 years ago. And there's a saber
toothed tiger coming towards her and Laura goes into her mind, "Oh, is this tiger friendly or
hungry? "I wonder what it is. Let's see if I can figure it out." Just how long would Laura survive?
Not very long. So the gut feeling has to be activated immediately. Right?
That's what I mean by authenticity. Being in auto is the self. Authentic is coming from the self,
being in touch with the self. So we have these two needs, right? Authenticity and attachment.
But let's say you're my child, okay. And at two years old, you want me to give you a cookie
before dinner. And I say no, no cookies before dinner because then you won't eat your dinner.
How does a two-year-old feel about not getting a cookie before dinner? They get frustrated and
they might throw a tantrum, you know? Nothing wrong with that, why wouldn't they? You know?
But what if I grew up in a home where my parents were... ...fighting and enraged all the time and
I'm literally terrified of anger? And I can't handle seeing it in my child.
Now, do you want an example of that? I'll give you an example of that. There's this Canadian
psychologist, Jordan Peterson, who has written this book called "The 12 rules for Life" and... If I
lived 10 lifetimes, I won't sell as many books as he did with that one book. Not that I'm jealous.
But in that book, he says that... ...if a two-year-old is angry, they should be made to sit by
themselves until they become normal again. Now, what's the message to the child? The
message to the child is that when you're angry, you're not acceptable, you're not lovable. When
a child is given that message often enough, what will be their... I could be authentic and be
angry or I can go for the attachment and be loved. Which would the child go for? Queena?
Attachment.
They're gonna go for the attachment every time. And so you give up the authenticity for the
sake of being attached. Is that a good thing or it's a bad thing? It's a necessary thing. Do not
judge it as good or bad. It's simply survival. Now, I just told you your childhood history. In your
childhood, you learned that in order to be lovable and acceptable you had to suppress your true
self. Or am I wrong about that?
You're absolutely right. Right. Well, it's only because it's always true, ok? So, the difficulty in
saying no came from the survival need to choose attachment over authenticity. That's all it was.
What happens then, is that for the rest of our lives we keep acting it out. And the problem with
these defenses and all these former responses I give you are pure defenses. That's all they ever
are. What's wrong with them is that they all have their usefulness. And because we didn't adapt
them, it's not that you or anybody else in this call, decided at age two, or 1,5, or three, "Oh, I'm
gonna choose attachment over authenticity. "But boy, when I get in the world, I'm gonna be
super authentic again". It's not a conscious decision. It's an automatic dynamic. It gets
programmed into your brain and your body.
So when the very word no brings that fear for you and... ...out of pure self-protection, you
actually attack yourself when you want to say no. So this guilt that you feel is just a way to keep
yourself in line. That's all it is. And so in order not to feel the guilt, you're gonna keep saying yes
when actually there's no yes, there a no there. So, the guilt is just a stupid friend. I call it a stupid
friend, which still tries to keep you in line.

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So I say to people like you, when you feel guilty, celebrate it. Be happy about it, throw a party,
invite your friends. Hey, I'm feeling guilty. I did something for myself for a change. Don't worry
about it. You're not gonna become a sociopath. You're not gonna start ignoring people's needs.
Because if you were, you wouldn't be on this call.
Okay, so that... You decide for yourself when there's a yes or a no. And as in my book, "When
the Body Says No", I quote somebody who said to me, if there's a choice between resentment
and guilt, choose the guilt every time. Okay? Don't be afraid of the guilt. Now, I want to play you
guys a song, which I play at my retreats. I don't know if it'll work or not, but it's the clearest
example of this. I'm gonna be whoever you want me to be. Now in the meanwhile, I want to give
you guys some homework. Okay? For those that choose to accept it. This little exercise... ...can
potentially change your life, ok?
Ask yourself, the first question is: where in my life do I have difficulty saying no? I mean, where
there's a no that wants to be said, and I don't say it. Now, that usually shows up in two major
areas. It shows up at work... ...and it shows up in personal relationships. Now, let me say
something about the women here. As always, in these sessions, the vast majority of people are
women, and there's a good reason for that. Because women are more in touch and they carry
the stresses of the men as well. Which is why women get medicated more for depression, not
because they're more depressive. Let me tell you an interesting fact... ...that I found in my
research. A Swedish study showed that if you're depressed prenatally, if a woman is depressed
prenatally, that increases the chance of the baby being premature. But if the father is depressed
prenatally, the chance of prematurity is even earlier.
So the more depressed the father is, the more premature that child would be born, potentially.
That's an incredible fact. That fact tells us everything about male/female relationships, because
it means that when the man is depressed, the woman is carrying his stress and his depression.
So it magnifies her physiological dynamics. So in this society it's women who are acculturated
not to say no. Which is also the reason why women have 80% of the autoimmune disease,
because autoimmune disease happens to people that don't know how to say no. So this
difficulty in saying no, maybe it plays out in all relationships, binary, whatever, but it's certainly...
...a... ...major male/female dynamic and there's a cost to be paid for it. So the first question is,
where in my life do I have difficulty saying no? Or where this week did I have trouble saying no?
My partner wanted to go for a walk, but I was tired. I didn't say no. Or they wanted to have sex
and I didn't say no. Or my boss wanted to take on another project and I couldn't, but I took it on
anyway because I didn't want to say no.
So write it down, you should write this down. Where did I have trouble saying no? Number one.
Number two, what story did I tell myself? No. Yeah. What story did I tell myself... ...about why I
didn't say no? If I say no, I'm guilty, I'm bad. I'm selfish. I shouldn't... I don't have the right to say
no. They won't love me. I've already talked about this. So what story do you tell yourself? Just a
story. Then you're gonna ask yourself number three: is that really true? So, if I Queena phones
me up, and you ask me to go for coffee with you, and I say "No, I don't feel like it, I'm sorry, I'm
too tired right now", would you accuse me of being selfish?
Or would you be glad I was telling the truth of what it was like for me? You know? So... If you
wouldn't say it to me, why would you say it to yourself? So, that was a double standard. So is
this story true? Is it true that a person who says no is a selfish person? Number four, what is the
impact when I don't say no? So, Queena already told us. There's fatigue. There's resentment.
There might be worse consequences, physically. Ultimately, disease can come along, but really

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get the impact... ...of your problem expressing this little word no. Which all goes back to this
tragic choice, which is not a choice. The child is not aware of the choice. They don't make it
consciously.
But there's a tragic split between authenticity and attachment. And ideally, when we raise our
kids, and I didn't do that with my kids, we want them to know that their authenticity does not
threaten their attachment with us. That's how you raise healthy kids. That's all there is to raising
healthy kids, by the way. Okay? Now, I wonder, did you find that music?
("Any Way You Want Me" starts playing)

♪ I'll be as strong ♪

♪ as a mountain ♪

♪ Or weak as a willow tree ♪

♪ Any way ♪

♪ you want me ♪

♪ Well, that's how I will be ♪

♪ I'll be as tame as a baby ♪

♪Or wild as the raging sea ♪

♪ Any way you want me ♪

♪ Well, that's how I will be ♪

♪ In your hands ♪

♪ my heart is clay ♪

♪ To take and hold as you may ♪

♪ I'm what you make me ♪

♪ you've only to take me ♪

♪ And in your arms ♪

♪ I will stay ♪

♪ I'll be a fool or a wise man ♪

♪ My darling, you hold the key ♪

♪ Yes, any way ♪

♪ you want me ♪

♪ Well, that's how I will be ♪

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♪ I will be ♪
It's not just the lyrics, which is I'm what you make me. You know, I'll be anything you want me to
be. Just hold me. That's the baby. It's called a love song. It's the opposite of a love song. It's
when you're not loved that you have to sing that. And the sadness that he... ...pours into that
singing has to do with his own life. Deeply traumatized man. Who... ...was beloved by the whole
world and never felt loved at all. So the four questions again were: where did I have trouble
saying no? Where in my life I have trouble saying no? Work, personal relationships. What is the
story I tell myself... ...why I'm not saying no? Is that story true? And number four, what is the
impact... ...on me when I don't say no?
CONSEQUENCES OF SAYING NO
Yeah. There are consequences to saying no. So here's what I want you to get. This tension
between attachment and authenticity. That was the primary tension in your life when you were
very, very small. When you were small, you had no choice in the matter. You had to surrender
authenticity. Very rare is the person, there are some, but extraordinary rare, who could hold on
to authenticity... ...even in the face of losing attachment. But for all intents and purposes, the
small child doesn't have that choice.
So inevitably, and again, don't blame yourself for it, this is a brilliant survival mechanism on a
part of your organism. You surrender the authenticity in order to maintain attachment. But the
question you have to ask yourself as an adult is do I still need to do that? So, if you've got
friends who are your friends because you're always there for them, and they can always count
on you, and you never say no. You've trained them. And you've trained your family. You've
trained them. You didn't mean to, but you did. Now all of a sudden, guess what? You say no.
Bad news for you. Your spouse might not like it. If you're somebody who has sex with your
partner, not necessary because you feel like it but because you're afraid to say no, if you start
saying no, they're not gonna like it. They might even threaten to leave you.
If you have friends who are dependent on you saying no... On you saying yes automatically, and
all of a sudden you say no, you know what's gonna happen? You're gonna find out who your
friends are because your real friends are gonna say, "Hey, I'm so glad you're finally asserting
yourself. "I sure like you this way". And your non-friends are gonna say, "Oh, she's become so
selfish. "I don't want anything to do with her". They're gonna feel hurt, because they're gonna
imagine they're being abandoned. That's their trauma showing up.
So you have to make a decision in your life. Do I choose attachment... ...or do I choose
authenticity? And it's gonna have consequences. And you're gonna have to decide... ...which has
the consequences you want. Being authentic or staying attached. Because trying to stay attached
at the expense of your authenticity also has consequences, including disease, including
resentment, and all manner of things. But yes, being authentic also has consequences. Some
people will not like you. Some people will resent you. Your call. Don't say to yourself, "I should be
authentic". Don't lay a trip on yourself. Just notice the tension in you, and if you're gonna make a
decision to give up authenticity, at least do it consciously instead of automatically. Just be aware
and then be aware of what happens for you.

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LESSON 04 – RELATIONSHIPS

In my new book, there's a chapter on it... And that's the issue of being ourselves, or two selves,
in relationship. It's one thing to be your true self sitting in a meditation cushion. It's quite another
to be... ...in your true self with your spouse in the kitchen. So... And I talked about this
desperation to be held. You know what that's called, it's called attachment. And I'm not talking
about attachment in the Buddhist sense of craving and compulsively pursuing things. I'm talking
about attachment in the relational sense. So attachment is a fundamental dynamic in human life.
It is the fundamental dynamic in human life. Because what attachment is about is the
gravitational force that pulls you towards another person in order to be held, and nurtured, and
protected. So the infant is nothing but pure attachment. They don't live without it, their brains
don't develop without it.
So, attachment is the gravitational force that pulls two bodies together. Just like gravitation pulls
bodies together, so does attachment. For the purpose of being taken care of and for the purpose
of taking care of. Now, clearly without the attachment drive, if the parent didn't have it or the
child didn't have it, it would be a disaster. And what was so difficult working with autistic kids is
that the attachment drive is so... ...impaired that it is difficult to connect with them. And this
concerns the parents, they don't know what to do with it. It's very difficult... ...to connect with a
child who doesn't give you the attachment cues. Attachment is the need of both the mother, I
should say, the parent and the child. But physiologically, it's also a need of the mother.
Physiologically, it's a need of the mother.
So nature gives us all these hormones that facilitate attachment. And clearly no mammalian
infant, no bird infant even, survives without attachment. The attachment drive is embedded in
the nervous system and really in our souls. That's one need that we have. I don't have to explain
why it's necessary... ...but we have another need. That nature also... ...ingrained in us for a good
reason. And that's for authenticity. Authenticity is the need to be in touch with ourselves and with
our gut feelings. And when you think about human evolution, certainly without attachment, we
would not have developed as a species.
So instinctually, we're creatures of attachment. But we'd also never survive without authenticity.
Being in touch with our gut feelings. When you think about our evolutionary ancestors over
millions and hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands and thousands of years ago, living
out there in nature. Clearly we would not have survived without being in touch with our gut
feelings. And one of the things that aboriginal people living in nature are so good at... ...is being
in touch with their gut feelings as their gut feelings read the environment. So that's a need as
well. However, life in the modern world, at least, presents us with this tragic tension...
...because... ...when, at age 0, first felt that desperation to be held, but that need wasn't met.
You know what he felt? Rage. Fear and rage. And then, at age two, when that need wasn't met,
the same thing.
You don't have to be abused to have your needs frustrated. And frustration is rage. So the
healthy response to not having your needs met is frustration. Which is to say anger, rage. Well,
that's fine. But what if your rage... ...or the expression of your pain threatened the attachment
relationship because your parents couldn't handle who you really were and how you really felt.
They were oblivious to it. They were numb. They were traumatized. They were stressed. They

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were busy. They felt threatened. So you get the message that you better not have those
experiences, because we can't handle it.
And that means the attachment relationship is threatened. We're going to withdraw from you
emotionally or physically, or we're going to follow the advice of the experts and make you sit at
time out... ...if you're angry, kid. Well, so now there's attention. I need to stay attached. But if I
stay authentic, I will not be. Well, what choice do you think the organism makes? There's no
choice at all. In 99 or 100 cases out of 100 the organism will choose to suppress authenticity
and choose attachment, but I'm not talking about choice in any conscious sense. And so the
suppression of authenticity, our true feelings, becomes the way we survive. So the rejection of
authenticity becomes our survival mechanism.
Now, because you learned that that's how you survive, for the rest of your life, you're going to
have anxiety any time you have authentic feelings, because the feeling wants to threaten your
attachment and without the attachment, you couldn't live. 50, 30, 20 years later, you're still going
to be anxious. If I'm authentic. I'll lose their relationship. So that's the dilemma. And now, as
adults. But that suppression of authenticity leads to... That's the trauma, the loss of connection.
And it leads to physical disease in ways I won't go into now and so-called mental illness in ways
that leads to addictions and so on. So that suppression of authenticity... ...exacts a heavy price.
So this tension between authenticity and attachment plays out in all of our lives in so many of
our relationships.
And again, the giving up of authenticity was no mistake. That was the wisdom of trauma. The
role of the mother and the role of the father For the child, the mother is the world, literally. He or
she... They are conceived inside the mother. The mother's emotional states and physical states,
nutrition, everything. It's all powerful in shaping the child. And the way nature designed it, this is
not a cultural issue. It's not like a cultural preference. The way nature designed it, the mother is
not... When the baby is born, the mother continues to be the source of nourishment for her. For
them, for him. That's just the way nature designed it, and that's meant to go on for a long time.
It's not meant to go on for two months.
It's not gonna go on for three months. It's meant to go on for many, many, many months and
years, actually. In human beings, particularly, because we have the longest period of
development, that we're the least mature at birth. So, the mother is the world. The problem is not
the mother. The problem is, for the mother to be able to be the world, the world has to be there
for the mother. And the way that human beings evolved in small hunter gatherer groups, it
wasn't a question of mothers in an isolated bungalow or apartment, with or without a partner,
looking after a child. It was the whole clan, the whole group, the whole tribe, the whole... ...small
band, hunter gatherer grouping, that looked after the children and particularly made sure that the
mother was okay.
So If you want to read more about that, just give me one sec. This is technical, it's for
professionals, but it's by a woman called Garcia Narvaez, a psychologist at Notre Dame
University. And this book is called neurobiology and the development of human morality,
evolution, culture, and wisdom. And on the cover, understanding with the child. And what Garcia
is saying is that morality and compassion developed naturally when people are held, mothered
properly. But for their mothering to happen, the whole culture has to support the mothering. So
she talks about allomothering. Allomothering means other people come around, they bring food
to the mother. They hold the baby when the baby needs to be held and the mother needs to rest.

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So the mothering was never meant to be an individual one to one dynamic. It was meant to be a
group dynamic. In our society, for a whole lot of reasons, that's not happened. In fact, on the
contrary. You know, the patriarchy, women are made to feel bad about themselves. People that
are made to feel bad about themselves are not expected to bring up kids in the perfect way. In
the hunter gatherer groups, there wasn't a question of patriarchy. That's how we evolved. If
human existence... ...is as long as this pen of mine, then from here to here, we lived in small
band of hunter gatherer groups.
The rest of it is the 12,000 years when we started agriculture, and then civilization, and so on.
So we're living in a culture that completely... ...denies our evolutionary heritage. So it's not a
matter of blaming mothers. It's a question of saying that the mothering function has been
eroded, and undermined, and frustrated. Now, that happens through individual mothers. So all
the anger that men have for women, guess what it's about? They weren't mothered. But that's
not the mother's fault. So where does the father come in? The father was part of that cultural
group that supported the mother.
And the father's first job is to facilitate the mothering function, and... ...to participate in the
mothering function. There was a study done at the University of British Columbia some years
ago. Actually was done in the States, but by scientists here at UBC, and they looked at the
genetic functioning. They looked at 150 genes in adolescents. They found that 120 of them had
been affected... ...in their functioning by stress on the mother in the child's first years of life. And
30 of them have been affected by stress on the father in the preschool years. So the earlier it is,
the more the impact of the mother, and then as the father becomes more into the picture, now
his stresses starts affecting the child. But that's not the complete picture, because when you talk
about the stresses of the mother, that also includes the stresses of the father, because women
in this society are acculturated to take on the stresses of the men. So that postpartum
depression in the woman is never about the woman alone. It's about the lack of support in her
environment, including us very often.
And then we're very often dynamic, that very often happens. And I'm talking personally here,
guilty as charged, if you want to put me on trial, is that I wasn't an adult when my kids were born,
I still wanted my wife to mother me. And guess what? Now my wife had to mother children that
were babies and this baby that was 35 or 40 years old. So that took energy away from the little
children. This is a dynamic that happens in this society. So fathers really have to step up. But
that means doing their own work. To see, then, what keeps them from being nurturing parents
and partners. And that's a cultural issue. It's not, again, a question of individually blaming...
...fathers either. I also will mention that those of you that are having problems with your adult...
Those of you that are adults, well, all of you are adults.
Those of you that are having problems with your parents or those of you who have adult children
that you're having problems with, my son Daniel and I, we run a workshop called "Hello Again",
a fresh start for adult children and their parents. And that's the next book we'll write after we
finish this one. And you can Google Daniel and Gabor Maté and find a YouTube talk, the first
workshop we gave, and you can see us going at each other on stage. But I think you get a lot
from it. The capacity to be alone There's nothing wrong with being alone. In fact, it's essential
that you be alone. If you can't handle being alone, you can't be in a good relationship. It's that
simple. If you cannot accept yourself enough... ...that you can tolerate your own company, then
you will always be one in the world to make you tolerable to yourself, and it's never gonna work.

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So, this is what Rilke says: "Do not allow yourself to be confused in your aloneness "by
something within you that wishes to be released from it. "This very wish, if you will calmly and
deliberately use it as a tool, "will help to expand your solitude into far distant realms". And then
he says what, to me, is the most important thing. "People have, with the help of so many
conventions, "resolved everything the easy way, "on the easiest side of the easy. "But it is clear
that we must embrace struggle. "Every living thing conforms to it. "Everything in nature grows
and struggles in its own way, "establishing its own identity, "insisting on it at all costs, against all
resistance". The reason we're all suffering is because we weren't allowed to be ourselves. And
the suffering that you're experiencing is simply your desire to be yourself, to reconnect with the
self, to reconnect with that identity, with that essence that you lost in the beginning.
"Don't be afraid of the difficulty", he says, "Everything in nature grows and struggles in its own
way, "establishing its own identity, "insisting on it at all costs, against all resistance. "We can be
sure of very little, "but the need to court struggle is a surety that will not leave us. "The fact that
something is difficult, must be one more reason to do it". The fact that something is difficult must
be one more reason to do it. Pain as a teacher A lot of people express anxiety, overwhelm, rage,
fear, and pain... ...about their lives. But now, I want to speak to you... ...about how to approach
all those issues. Now, when I say I want to speak to you, I don't want to speak to your mind.
Because the egoic mind is very much a representation of our pain and our suffering. And it very
much develops as a defense against that pain and suffering, and that's what makes it so hard for
us to learn and to grow spiritually and to grow psychologically, is because we're so defendant
against the pain. Let me read you something.
This is from... if I can just find it, it is the "Tibetan Book of Living and Dying". And this is written
by... This is not the Tibetan Book of the Death, it is the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, a
bestseller, the author just died a couple of years ago, a Tibetan monk. And he wrote: "Whatever
you do, don't shut off your pain. "Accept your pain and remain vulnerable. "However desperate
you become, "accept your pain as it is, "because it is in fact trying to hand you a precious gift,
"the chance of discovery through spiritual practice", or I might add through psychological
practice, "what lies behind sorrow".
So the pain is trying to teach you something, he says. "And don't we know only too well "that
protection from pain doesn't work?" For example addiction, you know? "And then, when we try
to defend ourselves from suffering, "we suffer only more "and we don't learn what we can from
experience". Now there's immense wisdom in those words, and I'll say more about them later.
But it would not be complete if I didn't tell you that this man... ...was outed. He had a community,
he had followers, he wrote this bestselling book, he expressed all this truly beautiful wisdom,
and he was sexually exploiting and abusing his followers. That's how difficult it is. I'm not
condemning and I'm not judging him, but he never ran away... He ran away from his pain. He
knew better. His mind knew better.
Or something in him knew better. But he never absorbed his own wisdom. That's how split we
can be. That's how difficult it is. So, have some compassion for your self and others. But I'll read
you from a teacher that... ...I don't perceive any such contradictions in. Let me read you
something from him. So this is Almaas. And he says... Now, allow this to penetrate you, would
you? Don't agree with it and don't argue with it. Just let it penetrate you. "Your conflicts, all the
difficult things, "the problematic situations in your life, "are not chance or haphazard. "They are
actually yours. "They are specifically yours, "designed specifically for you "by a part of you that
loves you more than anything else. "That part of you that loves you more than anything else

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"has created roadblocks to lead you to yourself. "You are not going to go in the right direction
"unless there is something pricking you in the side, saying, “'Look here! This way!' "That part of
you loves you so much "that it doesn’t want you to lose the chance. "It will go to extreme
measures to wake you up. "It will make you suffer greatly if you don’t listen. "What else can it
do? "That is its purpose."
So there's two ways to perceive your suffering. One is... Your present moment suffering, I'm
talking about. I'm not talking about suffering that is inflicted on children. Okay, you must make
that distinction. I'm talking about your suffering in the present moment. There's two ways to look
at it. One is it's a problem to get rid of. How do I get rid of this? How do I get rid of the
overwhelm, the anxiety, the pain, the fear? How do I just... ...escape from them? That's the point
of view of the personality, because the personality just wants to feel good, and wants to feel
loved. And it was built around the lack of love and the lack of feeling good. So the personality...
Not completely, but in a large way, is a defensive structure. And when there's a problem, it just
wants it to go away.
Then there's the perspective of what Almaas calls your essence, which wants to develop, and
grow, and understand, and grow deeper in wisdom. And so from the point of view of the
essence, or I would say, to you... Problems come along to teach you something. What can I
learn? What is this for? So in answering your questions about overwhelming anxiety, notice
who's listening in you. The part that is just desperate to get rid of something. And I understand
that desperation, believe, I'm not putting it down, it's natural to the personality. You're not wrong.
But consider this other perspective of what can I learn here? What is this trying to teach me?
This suffering that I'm experiencing, What direction does it want to guide me in?
So, for example, yesterday, I talked about When the Body Says No. You were betraying
yourself. By you I mean anybody, your true self, you're not being your authentic self, and the
body makes you suffer, it says "Wake up!" You need to be yourself. And it cares more about
your authenticity than it cares about your health, actually, in fact, it uses your health to wake you
up. No, you don't have to buy into that. It's a perspective. It's a perspective that I've come to
understand. If it resonates with you, allow it. If it doesn't, don't accept it just because I've said it.
So, in a moment I'm gonna ask Ronald to play a song for you. This song contains... ...the two
poles... ...of our lives. Remember I've talked about my own experience as an infant, and I'm
three weeks old and I'm crying to be picked up and to be fed and I'm not, Well, at that moment,
I'm a motherless child, is what I am.
The fact that my mother is lying next to me and loving me is irrelevant, because I'm not getting
the mothering. So, I'm a motherless child. And in other times, my mother really helped me, and
loved me, and nurtured me and saw me. That also happened. And then, getting what I needed.
Now, if... ...I had never been a motherless child, I would have developed very differently, and I
wouldn't have had to defend myself. Remember yesterday, all your difficulty in saying no, is
because you just want to be loved. Well, if you're loved, you have no problem saying no,
because you're not trying to work to be loved. You just are.
If your value is seen for who you are, then you don't have to prove it to anybody by achieving
anything or to yourself. If you're made to feel important for just who you are, you don't have to
become a helper to make yourself feel important. You'll help, naturally, because compassion is
a part of us, but you will not be a compulsive helper. So, all those things happened... ...because
you were a motherless child at some point. And all of us, as parents, at some point, left our
children parent-less while we were right next to them, loving them. So, this song I'm gonna play,

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or I'm gonna ask Ronald to play for you, contains both of those poles. The baby that was
absolutely loved and nurtured and the motherless child. And as you listen, don't just listen to the
music. Consider your own experience of being a motherless child, or of love that you received,
or of both. Okay. Ronald, If you please play the Mahalia Jackson, please.
("Summertime" starts playing)

♪ Summertime ♪

♪ And the livin' is easy ♪

♪ Fish are jumpin' ♪

♪ And the cotton is high ♪

♪ Oh, your daddy's rich ♪

♪ And your ma is good-lookin' ♪

♪ So hush, little baby ♪

♪ Don't you cry ♪

♪ One of these mornings ♪

♪ You're going to rise up singing ♪

♪ You're gonna rise your wings high ♪

♪ Take to the sky ♪

♪ But 'til that morning ♪

♪ Nothing will harm you ♪

♪ With daddy and mammy ♪

♪ They'll be standing by ♪

♪ Sometime I feel ♪

♪ like a motherless child ♪

♪ Sometime I feel ♪

♪ like a motherless child ♪

♪ Sometime I feel ♪

♪ like a motherless child ♪

♪ Just a long way ♪

♪ From my home ♪

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♪ Just a long way ♪

♪ From home ♪

♪ Long way ♪

♪ From home ♪

♪ Long way ♪

♪ From home ♪

♪ Summertime ♪

♪ And the livin' is easy ♪

♪ Fish are jumpin' home ♪

♪ And the cotton is high ♪

♪ Oh, your daddy's rich ♪

♪ And your ma is good-lookin' ♪

♪ So hush, little baby ♪

♪ Don't you cry ♪

♪ One of these mornings ♪

♪ You're going to rise up singing ♪

♪ You're gonna rise your wings high ♪

♪ Take to the sky ♪

♪ But 'til that morning ♪

♪ Nothing can harm you ♪

♪ With daddy and mammy ♪

♪ They'll be standing by ♪

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 Wisdom of Trauma Online Course Transcript

LESSON 05 – ON GUILT, SHAME, ANGER AND GRIEF

Let me teach you about guilt. You think guilt is your enemy. You want to escape guilt. You just
don't want to feel it. You want nothing to do with guilt, so you're afraid to say no. But why are you
afraid of guilt? Because you think it's a bad thing. Is it a bad thing? Is it a bad thing? So let me
tell you a story from the Hebrew legends. Some of you may have heard me talking about this,
but most of you have not. Moses, in the bible, the prophet who leads the Hebrews out of Egypt,
Egyptian captivity, remember the movie "The 10 Commandments"? He had a stutter. He had a
speech impediment. If you read the bible, Moses has a speech impediment. And when they go
in front of the pharaoh to present the demand to let my people go, it's not Moses who speaks, it's
his brother Aaron who has to do the speaking for him because Moses has a speech impediment.
Now, there's a legend that's not in the bible that explains why Moses developed a speech
impediment.
Now, keep in mind I'm teaching here about guilt. I'm not just telling you a story. Now if you
remember the biblical story, there was a time... The Hebrews were slaves in Egypt. Now
historically, this never happened, by the way. There's no proof for it. In fact there's proof
otherwise. But the biblical legend is that the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt. And you know, you
don't have to look at the bible as a history. If you look at it as a spiritual teaching, it's a very
different story, interestingly enough. You know, the Hebrew word for Egypt is Mizraim, and
Mizraim means a narrow place. So guess what? The Hebrews were slaves in a narrow place,
like we all are. We're all slaves in a narrow place and we're all trying to escape. We're all trying
to find our freedom. This is what these four days is about. So that biblical legend of the Mizraim,
where the Hebrews are slaves, that's the spiritual journey that we are all engaged on.
But anyway, the story is that they are slaves in Egypt, suffering, made to work hard, beaten,
killed sometimes. And at some point, the pharaoh's soothsayers predict that a Hebrew child son,
born around now, is going to lead them out of slavery, is going to challenge the pharaoh. So
what do they have to do? They had to kill all the Hebrew firstborns. Now if you remember, the
same story appears in the Jesus story. At some point, King Herod is told that some Jewish kid
born now is going to be a messiah or prophet. So they end up killing all the firstborns in
Bethlehem, and so Jesus and his family has to flee where? To Egypt. So that this story of the
prophet who... The ruler who wants to kill an infancy, is a very common theme. But anyway,
what happens is all the Jewish newborn males have to be thrown into the Nile. And so Moses'
mother throws him into the Nile. But if you remember the story, she puts them in a wicker
basket, and Moses floats down the Nile and is pulled out of the water by remember who? The
pharaoh's daughter. By the way, Moses, "Moshe" means pulled out of the water.
So Moses is pulled out of the water and is brought up to the pharaoh's court as kind of a Prince
of Egypt, which brings you to the Walt Disney movie, Prince of Egypt. At this point, you're
wondering, what the hell does this have to do with guilt? Okay, so just stay with me. So Moses is
pulled out of the water and it's brought up by the pharaoh's daughter as kind of a prince. Now,
here's where the story comes in, this is where guilt comes in. When Moses is a toddler, the
pharaoh’s soothsayers again prophesized that this kid is going to challenge the pharaoh's
authority. And if that is true, he has to be killed. So they decide to put him to a test, and here's
the test: they put in front of the infant or the toddler Moses two sparkling bright objects. One of
them is a crown diamond of Egypt, and the other a sparkling ember of coal. Now, if Moses
chooses the diamond, that means he's got royal ambition, and he has to be destroyed. So

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there's the infant Moses, delighted with these two sparkling beautiful objects, and he starts
reaching for the diamond, at which point the Angel Gabriel, which happens to be my name,
Hungarian version of Gabriel is Gábor, but at this point, the Angel Gabriel, Gabrielle, grabs his
hand... moves it from the diamond over to the coal, and Moses then does what any toddler does:
he grabs the coal and puts it to his lips. And it burns him. Now he's got a speech impediment.
And here's my question to you: Is the angel Moses' friend or enemy? Richie, what is it? Friend or
enemy?
God... Oh my God.
Is the angel a friend or enemy? You don't have an answer? Really?
Definitely the friend. He’s definitely the friend, but... (voices overlapping)
Yes, he is. Why is he a friend?
Because he knows better, and he looks for the benefit of this child. In the long run, you're going
to survive.
Yeah. Yeah.
You will speak funny but you'll survive, otherwise he will be dead and...
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So it saved his life, didn't it?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But it hurt him at the same time, didn't it?
Yeah.
Okay. That's guilt. Guilt came along at some point to save your life. When you were a kid and
you wanted to be authentic. You wanted to be angry. You wanted to be selfish... Whatever you
needed to be. That wasn't allowed because if you did that, you would lose what? You would lose
your attachment. Now there has to be an internal mechanism to keep you in line. If I inform
myself and if I'm selfish, and if I'm being myself, I'm gonna lose my attachment. There has to be
an internal mechanism to keep you in line. That internal mechanism is called guilt. Every time
you want to do something for yourself, you feel guilty. That'll keep you in line. But you also
develop a speech impediment. Now you can't speak for yourself anymore, can you? And your
problem today is you don't recognize what a friend guilt was. So when you say no and you feel
overwhelming guilt, welcome the guilt. Oh, thank you friend. You saved my life.
Now, you know what? I don't need you anymore. You did your job when I was three years old, a
toddler, and I didn't know any better. Well, thank you. Your services are no longer required. But
you don't have to be afraid of the guilt, or push it away. Just say, okay, here it is. Welcome. Let it
be there. Believe me, if you do that, it's going to stop yakking at you so harsh, and it's gonna be
less and less and less and less, and don't worry about it, you're not going to become a
sociopath, because you're still a human being with a conscience, there's room for healthy
remorse. if I this morning, instead of showing up at nine o'clock, if I got myself stoned instead,
and I forgot all about this event, I should feel guilty. I should feel remorse. And I should give you
all your money back. That's healthy remorse. But that's got nothing to do with the guilt that
comes along with saying no when you need to say no. Shame Shame actually served us as
children. What I want you to get in this workshop is that everything, every reaction on your part,

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every dynamic in your part, at some point served a purpose. So rather than rejecting any of our
dynamics, any parts of ourselves, let's find out what purpose they served.
Now, let's take a child whose mother doesn't pick them up when they're crying or whose father
hits them. Now, there's two assumptions the child can make unconsciously. One is, "My parents
are incompetent. "they don't love me and they don't care about me". That's one assumption you
can make. What the child cannot understand is that the parents are hurt and therefore limited.
That is beyond the child. But the child can decide, "My parents don't love me. They don't care
about me. They're not competent to look after me". Or they can decide, "There's something
wrong with me. That's why this is happening to me. There's something really wrong with me at
the core". Which do you think is the safer assumption? Which assumption can a child actually
live with? Well, I think you'll understand that if they make that first assumption, that my parents
don't love me, or they hate me, or they don't care about me, that's unendurable. It's much more
adaptive to assume there's something wrong with me and maybe I can work harder and then I'll
please them. Maybe there's nothing I can do about it. Maybe I become perfect. That's a much
safer assumption. It actually gives you something you can do about it, or you think you can.
Okay? Do you understand that? That's why that shame... I could say a lot more about shame.
I'm not going to now, but that's why that negative self-regard is so much safer for the child. It's
an adaptation.
The problem is, once we adapt these things, they stick with us. So 30 years or 60 years later,
you still think you're worthless. Which was a helpful assumption when you were two years old,
but it's not helpful anymore. And that's the trauma. Is that we maintain these adaptations. Our
reactions to the virus take us over and now they destroy us. Shame... I'm ashamed of myself.
Now look at that phrase. I'm ashamed of myself. That's very different from saying... "I'm
ashamed because I promised I would do something and I didn't". So I feel some remorse. I feel
some shame about that. But to say I feel ashamed of myself... That's a very different story.
Shame is the most corrosive state you can be in. And people will do anything to escape shame.
They'll turn themselves into a pretzel. You don't have to feel ashamed. And you think shame has
to do with you having done something bad or being bad. So there's a belief about shame, that
it's about you doing something bad. So it's related to guilt, really.
Now, shame has nothing to do with you doing anything bad. You take a dog who has not done
anything bad and you talk to it in a harsh way. What's going to happen to the dog? What are you
going to see the dog doing? You're going to shame them. Animals don't have shame. But dogs
do because dogs evolved with human beings. So you can shame animals. You can shame a
dog simply by cutting off contact and by being harsh with them. Nothing to do with what the dog
did. It had to do with you being harsh with them. Now what does shame look like? I'll show you
what shame looks like. This is an over activation of a part of our nervous system called the
parasympathetic nervous system. You have... You avert your eyes. When I am feeling good
about myself, I can look you in the eye. You know the expression you can't look somebody in the
eye because you're so ashamed? It's a nervous system reaction. It's your nerves. They won't let
you do it And they won't let you keep your head up. You keep your head up high. You can't keep
your head up because you're ashamed. This is the nervous system. Literally, this is what
happens.
You avert your eyes and you hang your head down low, and you want to sink into the ground,
literally. You can do this to a nine-month-old baby who has no concept of doing anything wrong.
You want to shame a nine-month-old baby or a 10-month-old baby? Break eye contact with

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them. And speak to them in a harsh tone. Eventually you're going to get this. So shame
originally had nothing to do... A child of one year old, a child of 1.5-year-old, has no concept of
right or wrong. It doesn't exist for them. What they know is contact or lack of contact. Connection
or lack of connection. The original shame was because somebody broke connection with you.
Now, later on, and we all do this as parents. We tell the kid, "This happened because you were
bad". And then, instead of the parent reconnecting with the child... Like, sometimes a parent
inadvertently puts a kid into a shame state. Why does that happen? The kid is about to grab a
knife, and the parent is across the room, and the parent yells, "No!". As soon as the parent yells
no, the loving, nurturing connected parent disappears, and the child experiences an alien.
Sometimes it's inevitable. Nobody does it on purpose, I hope. But we do it. Now... It's up to the
parent then... So what's called the interpersonal bridge between the parent and the child is
broken momentarily. Sometimes it's inevitable. That's okay. As long as the parent does the job
of rebuilding the bridge.
As soon as it's over, you scoop up the child, "Oh, I really scared you. When mommy yelled at
you. When daddy yelled at you. You were really upset. That really hurt your feelings. Oh come
here". So you build a bridge. But when the parents don't rebuild the bridge, and especially when
parents chronically make the kid believe that the reason the bridge was broken was the child's
fault, then we develop shame. So shame is simply a response to the loss of connection. It has
nothing to do with who you are. It has nothing to do with your self. It's a memory of broken
connection that should never have happened. So the next time you experience that shame
about the self... Oh, just tell yourself, "Sweetheart, that's not something you should ever have
felt". Somebody broke the bridge and they didn't reconnect with you. That's what shame is.
Anger So I keep saying that the repression of healthy anger is a source of illness, which it is.
When you suppress your anger, you're suppressing your immune system and turning it against
you. And it's a very common finding in autoimmune disease and cancer. But on the other hand,
anger can also kill you.
In the aftermath of an anger episode, your risk of a heart attack doubles or triples for the next
few hours. Because when you're enraged, your blood vessels narrow, you have a lot of
adrenaline, your clotting factors increase, your blood pressure goes up. So what's a person to
do? If I repress the anger, I'll get cancer, immune disease, or depression. And if I'm really
engaged, I'll get a stroke. You know, there's a phrase called "Don't be apoplectic". Apoplexy is a
stroke. So when somebody is angry, they're apoplectic. So what's the solution here? The
solution is to recognize that there's healthy anger, and there's also unhealthy anger. Healthy
anger is in the present moment. If I were to encroach on your space right now, literally, if I was to
overstep your boundaries, and threaten you or make you feel uncomfortable, you might need to
get angry with me, you might say, "Back off". That's what animals do, by the way. Healthy anger.
Back off. This is my territory, back off. Guess what that does? It protects them from having to
fight and hurt each other or themselves.
That's healthy anger. It's simply a boundary defense. It's in the moment, it's a response to a
present situation, and when it's done his job, it's gone. Unhealthy anger is not about the present.
It's about the past and the future. It's about what you did to me last week. It's about what they did
to me. It's about the future, what they're going to do. And the more you get into a rage like that...
And it's not about the present moment. In rage, you're being triggered not by what's happening
right now. Because if you go back to Jeff's example, if Jeff had been totally present to himself,
and if he hadn't been programmed to choose attachment over authenticity, he just would've said
no. The first time his boundaries were overstepped, he said, "You know what? I'm out of here.

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"I'm eliminating you guys from my life. "Never mind you're eliminating me. "I'm just gone". That's
boundary defense. That's healthy anger. You know what? You will not do this to me. The rage is
when we don't do that. And then the old stuff gets triggered, and that's what kills us. So neither
the suppression or the repression of healthy anger nor the unbridled rage can support us. But
healthy anger... "No, you will not do this". "No, he will not pass this boundary". That saves you.
And you know it's healthy when it's in the present and it's done its job and it's gone. Grief Which
then leads me to grief.
And my brilliant friend, the psychologist Gordon Neufeld, let me give you his name: N-E-U-F-E-
L-D. Gordon Neufeld, is a Vancouver psychologist. I'm saying this completely advisedly, He's
the deepest, most brilliant child developmental psychologist in the universe. He understands
social development like nobody does. He's not... He's the main author of a book I co-wrote with
him called "Hold on to Your Kids". Absolutely brilliant. But he's got a lot more to say than that.
And Gordon says that you should be saved... You should be saved in an ocean of tears. When
we can experience the futility of having lost something, and really mourn it, that's when we heal.
Not that this shouldn't have happened and, you know... But this happened. And yes, I'm in grief
about it, and grief is a wave-like letting go. It's accepting the loss. It's a natural process. John
Lennon, the Beetle, was an addict. He used heroin for quite some time. He wrote a very
harrowing song called "Cold Turkey", which is about withdrawal from heroin. He also probably
had ADHD, the way I read his biography. He was very brilliant. He was creative, he was very
sensitive. He was also a cocaine user till the end of his life, I think. And he had quite a lot of
depression in his life.
When The Beatles broke up, he went to do some therapy with a California-based psychologist
called Arthur Janov, who was the founder of a way of working called Primal Scream Therapy.
And the idea was that you go back to original trauma, and you really grieve it. And you give that
scream that the kid couldn't give. So he wrote a song called "Mother", which is about the grief of
loss. His story was that his father left him just when he was born, or just before or just after. And
his mother left him too, for a long time. And then the mother came back to his life later. The
mother was in the background of his life, like kind of an aunt. He was actually raised by an aunt,
and the mother was like a family friend, it was kind of a weird arrangement. Then the mother
came back into his life, and then she was killed in a car accident. So Lennon writes a song
called "Mother". At the end of it, you'll hear him screaming. I'm warning you it's pretty painful.
And he... The song begins, "Mother, you had me but I never had you. "Father, you left me, but I
never", you know. So Ronald, if you'll please play that song. And I'm playing this for two
reasons. One is an examination of grief, but also to teach you about implicit memory, because
you've been asking me about implicit memory. Okay, so please, if you play the song.
("Mother" by John Lennon starts playing)

♪ Mother, you had me But I never had you I, I wanted you You didn't want me So, I I just got to
tell you Goodbye Goodbye Father, you left me But I never left you I needed you You didn't
need me So, I I just got to tell you Goodbye Goodbye Children, don't do What I have done I
couldn't walk And I tried to run So, I I just got to tell you Goodbye Goodbye Mama don't go
Daddy come home Mama don't go Daddy come home Mama don't go Daddy come home
Mama don't go Daddy come home Mama don't go Daddy come home Mama don't go Daddy
come home Mama don't go Daddy come home Mama don't go Daddy come home Mama
don't go ♪

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Okay. Now I'm going to play another song. I'm gonna have Ronald play another song. This is
about implicit memory. 10 years before he wrote this song, when the Beatles were still an
upcoming young group, they were recording an album and they needed one more song. So
Lennon sits down, and overnight he writes this song. It's called "I Call Your Name". You've heard
this song before. Usually when people hear it, they think they're listening to a boy-loses-girl rock
and roll wail, you know, the usual. But not that you heard "Mother", when you hear this song "I
Call Your Name", what do you hear? Will you please play that, Ronald?
And that's what they do.

♪ I call your name but you're not there was I to blame for being unfair? Oh, I can't sleep at
night since you've been gone I never weep at night I can't go on Don't you know I can't take it?
I don't know who can I'm not going to make it I'm not that kind of man Oh I can't sleep at night
but just the same I never weep at night I call your name ♪

"I can't sleep at night since you've been gone. "Am I to blame for being unfair?" What's he singing
about? He's singing about being abandoned as a child and it's his fault. He doesn't know he's
singing about that. He thinks he's just writing a rock and roll song. That's implicit memory. And...
With Lennon, and the same with Elvis, when you listen to their voices, there's kind of a plaintive,
haunting quality to them, which is their childhood traumas showing up. So this is how implicit
memory shows up.

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LESSON 06 – ILLNESS AS ADAPTATION

Almost everything we call illness begins as an adaptation. So in your case, the autoimmune
disease, I'm not saying, "No, it was an adaptation. "It helped you survive". But we know that that
creates a lot of stress, and it suppresses the immune system, and it turns the immune system
against yourself. There's a lot of research on that. But it began as an adaptation. The same thing
is true with mental illness. So those of you that have been diagnosed with mental illnesses,
virtually all of them begin in some adaptive mechanism. I've been diagnosed with ADHD. Those
of you that are interested in my take on ADHD, you can read my book "Scattered Minds", or in the
States it's called "Scattered". ADHD is considered to be a genetically inherited disease. Complete
nonsense. I won't even go into the whole genetic argument. But I'm telling you the best consensus
is that there's no gene that has ever been found to cause any single mental illness.
No matter what they say about schizophrenia or bipolar illness, there's no gene that causes
schizophrenia. There's no gene that causes bipolar illness. The most they say is that there might
be a large group of genes that together might make you more predisposed to something or other.
That's a possibility. I don't rule out vulnerabilities, but that doesn't mean that it causes their
condition. And... Because something runs in the family, that doesn't prove anything about
genetics. I mean if my son becomes a... You know, if one of my kids becomes a medical doctor,
which they haven't and they won't, but that doesn't mean that being a doctor is a genetic disease,
does it? There's all kinds of other reasons people can develop the same dynamics, but tuning out,
the absent mindedness of ADHD, what is that about? What is it? It's a defense mechanism. When
the stress is so much and I can't escape it, and I can't change the situation, my brain will tune out.
Now there I am, a Jewish infant in Hungary. The city is being bombed, jews are living on the daily
threat of being deported to Auschwitz. How's my mother feeling? How am I feeling? What do I do?
Can I run away change the situation? No, I tune out. But when am I tuning out? When my brain is
developing. Guess what? The dynamics of tuning out gets programmed into my brain. And my
neurochemicals are very sensitive to stress. But it begins as an adaptation. Depression. Those of
you that have been depressed. Guess what? It's an adaptation. What does it mean to depress
something? It means to push it down. Right? You push it down. What do you push down in
depression? You push down your feelings, you push down your anger. Why did you push down
your anger? Because you weren't allowed to express it. Because it threatened your attachment
relationships. So automatically, you don't do it. The brain does it.
It's a beautiful adaptive mechanism. But then it becomes a lifelong pattern, and now you no longer
feel alive because you're no longer experiencing your full range of emotions. Then they say,
"You've got this genetic, biological disease of the brain "caused by a lack of brain chemicals. "Let's
give you some medications". Well, sure enough, the medications can help. I've taken
antidepressants. They helped me. I'm not against them. But they're not the answer. They help you
cope, but they don't deal with the source. The source is that you depressed yourself in order to
survive. And I could go through the whole range of mental illnesses, from psychosis to bipolar
illness, and show you the same dynamic. So that, yes, everything begins as an adaptation. These
adaptations then turn against us because they were meant to be employed in a certain
circumstance. But they become chronic, they become ingrained, they become our habits, they
become our so-called personality, and now we suffer because of them. So that's my view of of
illness in general, including mental illness.

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Again, it's very complex, and I'm not saying there's any one cause here, but this is a major, major,
major factor. And it's certainly one that we can turn around and do something about. What can
you do about your genes, by the way? (piano music) The impact of trauma on the body Let's just
do a little experiment here. Those of you that have been to any kind of a specialist in the last five
years, oncologist, rheumatologist, pulmonologist, gastroenterologist, rheumatologist,
dermatologist, cardiologist, any kind of an "ologist", just raise your hand, okay? If any of these
"ologists" asked you about childhood trauma, raise your hand. If any of these ologists asked you
about how you feel about yourself as a human being, raise your hand. If any of these ologists
asked you about the state of your current relationship. How you feel about your work. Your
emotional state. So what we're seeing is a tiny fraction, and yet what I'm saying to you is that
virtually everything that took you to any one of those specialists, had to do with all the questions
that were not asked. That may seem like an extreme statement. It only just happens to be pure
science. So what happens, you see, is the mind and the body cannot be separated.
In fact, the mind is embodied. The mind is an embodied process. A study last year, a year and a
half ago, showed that women with severe PTSD have doubled the risk of ovarian cancer. And the
milder their PTSD, the less the risk of ovarian cancer. Now, if that was the only study ever done,
that should send every doctor in the world running to figure out the mind-body connection. But
there are hundreds and thousands of such studies, both in animals and human beings. Because
when you think of an emotion... Let's say anger. It's not just in your head. You're not just thinking
"I'm angry". Your body is experiencing something, isn't it? Your body is experiencing a
physiological state. Your body, your heart rate is going up, your blood pressure is going up, your
muscles are tense, it's physiological. If I were to scream at you, right now, and scare you... If I
could do that, your physiology would change like that. (snaps finger)
Hormone levels would change. Cortisol would go up, adrenaline, the stress hormones, on and on
and on. Because you see, how the immune body is constructed is that the emotional centers in
the brain are connected with the nervous system, are connected with the hormonal apparatus,
your gonads, your adrenal glands, your thyroid gland... Are connected with the immune system,
connected with the gut, with the heart. These are all connected. And it's not even true that they're
connected. They're not connected. Because when I say connected, you might think of... The city
of Vancouver is connected with New York by internet. But Vancouver and New York are two
separate entities. These systems are not connected. They're part... They're the same. They're just
different aspects of the same thing. They're there to ensure your survival and your capacity to
reproduce life, to sustain life.
So physiologically, I'm not going to go into the science of it, but it's not in any way doubted. It's
just pure straightforward laboratory science that the immune system, your bone marrow, your
blood vessels... I mean, the blood cells in your circulation, it's all one system. And your immune
system can manufacture every hormone that the brain can manufacture. So they're talking to each
other all the time. They're talking to each other chemically. They're talking to each other on means
of these chemical messengers. They're talking to each other through the autonomic nervous
system. They're talking to each other through the brain-gut connection. The gut sends many more
messages to the brain than it receives from the brain. The gut is an immune organ. The gut is an
emotional organ. It's a sensory organ. And all this is one system. So naturally, whatever happens
in one aspect of that system will happen in the other. So, for example, people that repress their
anger, they have diminished activity of some of their immune components, particularly cells that
are meant to fight bacteria, or tumors, get diminished in activity with the suppression of anger.

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People that compulsively help others, they have markers in their chromosomes that show
advanced aging compared to other people.
I won't go into the science of it, it's just a bit too complex for this conversation. I'm writing about it
all in my new book. So in other words, suppressing your own needs compulsively, while ignoring
your own, actually has an impact on your physiology, and that promotes illness. Now, I'll tell you
the characteristics of the people that I noticed, in family practice, and in palliative care, where I
was looking after dying people for seven years. What characteristics did I notice in people that
were disease-prone? And you see, I had an advantage over the specialists, because I knew
people before they got sick. So I saw who got sick. Now the things I'm gonna tell you have been
observed not only by me, but by many others. And they've been studied and documented.
So who are the people that are most prone for illness? And I'm talking about cancer, I'm talking
about autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma, chronic
fatigue, fibromyalgia, colitis, Crohn's disease, chronic psoriasis, chronic skin conditions, chronic
eczema... What traits did I notice in these people? First an outsized regard for the emotional needs
of others while ignoring their own. So that's the first one. The second one is rigid identification with
your duty and role and responsibility rather than the needs of the self. That's the second. The third
is the repression of anger. These very nice people who never get angry, they are at great risk.
Because repressing anger represses your immune system and turns it against you, and
everybody with autoimmune disease that I've ever met or talked to falls into these categories.
Everybody. I never have and will never meet an exception. There are lots of studies to back it up
as well.
And finally, I'll read you one story, I'll tell you one story. This is an obituary that appeared in the
Global Mail about a physician who died in Toronto, at age 72, of cancer. And the obituary said -
and by the way, obituaries are very interesting, because they laud and they adulate some of the
things that kill people without realizing it. So this obituary said, I'm quoting it, because I've read it
many times. "Sidney and his mother had an incredibly special relationship "that lasted until her
death." As a married man with four young children, Sydney had dinner with his parents every day
for years... and then he went home to his family, greeted by yet another dinner to eat, and to enjoy,
to "enjoy". Not wanting to disappoint or hurt either woman in his life, Sydney kept having two
dinners a day for years, until gradual weight gain began to raise suspicions. And this was
presented as a wonderfully dutiful son. Well, what are the characteristics, what are the fatal
characteristics that are being described here? I say fatal... One is the belief that you must never
disappoint anybody. And the other is that you're responsible for how other people feel.
So those are the characteristics: automatic regard for the needs of others ahead of your own, or
ignoring your own; rigid and compulsive identification with duty, role and responsibility; the
repression of anger; and the beliefs that you must never disappoint anybody, and you're
responsible for how other people feel, this is behind a lot of autoimmune disease and malignancy.
When I see behind it, I'm not saying they're the only causes, but they're always present. And the
reason it's worthwhile to recognize this is because they all represent what? They represent the
loss of authenticity over attachment, and they're reversible. So when you look at people who heal,
and this has been researched as well, the common factor is they reconnect with themselves. So
those that are struggling with these illnesses, I'm not saying reject medical treatment or forget
about other aspects, but these characteristics, if you want to heal, you'll pay attention to them.
Chronic fatigue, what do you think you're tired of? All these things. Fibromyalgia your connective
tissues and your tissues hurt because you're doing too much. So that's basically it.

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So this material for those of you that may not be familiar with it, is in my book "When The Body
Says No", and it's been published now in 25 languages internationally. So it's available in many,
many places, from Europe, Asia, to north America, of course. And one of the stories I tell in the
book... As I'm writing the book, I looked at the medical research, the science background. I
interviewed a lot of people, my own observations, and I looked up the biography of famous people
who died of certain diseases. So, for example, the comedian Gilda Radner and her ovarian
cancer. Typical, typical, typical story and typical childhood. But the story I'm gonna tell you is that
of a cellist who died of multiple sclerosis when she was 42. British, but she was unable to perform
by the time she was 27, I think, because she couldn't hold the the cello anymore, because of
multiple sclerosis. And lots of research in multiple sclerosis, I'm not going to cite it for you now,
but it relates to childhood trauma, and stress and so on, and so on. I mean, the literature is
overwhelming, and most neurologists don't have a clue about that.
So, when you go see a neurologist for multiple sclerosis, what you get is medication. But nobody
says to you, "Hmm... What might your body be saying no to?". Because I'm telling you, when
people start asking that question, they can actually stop or mitigate and even reverse the flare ups
of multiple sclerosis. I've seen that over and over and over and over again. So Jacqueline du Pré
was the cellist’s name. And Jacqueline was a musical star, I think in the 1970s, and she was one
of these prodigies that from childhood on, she was destined to be a great star of the classical
music world. But she didn't want to. She said: "I could not give up the music, "because so many
people would be disappointed in me." Jacqueline was born when her mother was still mourning
the death of her own mother or father. And from the very beginning, the job of that infant, Jackie,
was to make her mother feel better. So she never had a sense of self of her own. As her sister
said, she always had to be the Jackie that circumstances demanded.
When Jackie was seven years old, she said to her sister, Hillary: "Hill, don't tell our mommy this,
but when I grow up, I won't be able to move or walk". And that's exactly what happened. But notice
the "don't tell our Mommy". She's already protecting her mom at age seven. Then she goes to
Russia to study the cello. She's raped there. As a teenager. She comes back to England, and she
says to her sister, "Hill, don't tell our mommy this, but I was raped in Russia". Protecting her
mother. I could go on. But what I'll tell you is I'll play you a bit of her music in a moment. So she
was very famous, and when she came to Canada, she was so emotional, she played on stage
and she didn't sit there sedately. She moved, her body swayed, and her hair flared in the air and
she was full of emotion because that was this stage self. In real life, she always felt there was a
wall between herself and everybody else. So all the emotions that should be pressed came out in
her music. Her most famous performance recording is that of the cello concerto, by the British
composer Edward Elgar. And Elgar composed this piece as an aging man during the First World
War, and he was totally despondent.
And... He wrote at the time: "Everything good", because the terrible carnage of the First World
War really had him down, and he wrote: "Everything good and nice and clean and fresh and sweet
is far away, "never to return." And that pain is in the first bars of that concerto. Now, Jacqueline
recorded this piece when she was 20 years old, I think. And her sister writes, "Jackie's ability to
portray the emotions of a man "in the autumn of her life, in the autumn of his life, "was one of her
extraordinary and inexplicable capacities". Well, it was extraordinary, but it was not inexplicable.
Because she felt the same pain, but she never expressed it. Never allowed herself to really
consciously feel it. She would look at a photograph of Elgar, or a portrait, and she would say, "He
had a miserable life, Hill". She told her sister, "And he was ill. "Yet, throughout it all, he had a
radiant soul. "And that's what I feel in his music".

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Now, who do you think she was talking about? After she died, her sister listened to a performance,
her last public performance of the Elgar Concerto. Not the one I'll be playing for you, but this is
what Hillary wrote about it. After her sister's death, Hillary listened to the 1973 BBC tape of the
Elgar Concerto. It had been Jackie's final public performance in Britain. "A few moments of tuning,
a short pause, and she began. "I suddenly jumped. "She was slowing the tempo down. "A few
more bars and it became vividly clear. "I knew exactly what was happening. "Jackie, as always,
was speaking to her cello." They talked about her cello voice, "I could hear what she was saying.
"I could almost see tears on her face. "She was saying goodbye to herself, "playing her own
requiem. There are many beautiful performances of this concerto. None as poignant, in my
experience, as the one... The few minutes that I'm going to play for you now. So Ronald, if you'd
play the Elgar Concerto recorded by the 20-year-old Jacqueline du Pré who already in age seven
had a premonition of what was coming.
(Elgar Concerto by Jaqueline du Pré starts playing)
So she was a... I don't want to use the word typical, but a very clear example of somebody who,
because of early childhood infant programming, had to become a parent to her parents. To her
mother particularly. And so she was deprived of an experience of her true self, which she could
express only through her cello. She never wanted to become an international virtuoso. She said,
"It would kill me". And it did. Because she couldn't listen to herself. And that not listening to
ourselves and to our bodies, when our body is saying no, it'll find all kinds of ways of saying it. If
you don't heed the warnings there's consequences. All because of the unshakable, beautiful,
nature-designed, mind-body unity that we in the West ignore.

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LESSON 07 – PSYCHEDELICS AND TRAUMA

The deep therapeutic potential of psychedelics... ...resides in a fact that they get the conditioned
mind out of the way. So, people have access... ...to aspects, to reality that they're usually not in
touch with. One is the deep trauma and pain that they're carrying that they can actually look at
now, and in the appropriate, compassionate, safe context, they can experience these...
...troubled emotions and mind states without having to... ...be driven into insanity or having to
escape. So, psychedelics open that up. What psychedelics can also open up, which is for many
us really difficult to access, is our true-selves and the connection to the universe. Some people
get there through spiritual work, and when they do, that's more powerful than doing it through
psychedelics.
Once you access it that way, it's more available to you. It doesn't depend on your mind being
altered through a substance. Nevertheless... That doesn't take away from the deep value of
psychedelics in revealing that true, connected-self... ...and the unity of reality. So, both the deep
trauma... ...and the emotions associated with it, and sometimes the experiences in which they're
rooted... ...and the wondrous unity... ...and loving connection... ...are... ...hidden from the
conditioned... ...mind of the personality, and psychedelics can move that barrier. That's where
their potential lies. Again, depending much on the appropriate context, support, holding... ...and
environment. And, in some cases, ceremony and tradition.
They've been around for hundreds and thousands of years... ...in human experience. In the last
century, this is the 20th century, there was a lot of interesting research and work on
psychedelics. And then, for a whole lot of protocol and cultural reasons... ...including the fact
that some people began to use psychedelics inappropriately and advocated them
inappropriately... ...but also because, opportunistically, the system started this war on drugs and
it was useful to throw the psychedelics into the mix, there was this taboo, there was this
interdiction. Why it has now experienced a resurgence is because of the utter failure of the
western medical system to deal with people's mental health issues and the utter failure of the
western system to satisfy people's needs for spiritual meaning.
So that... To some people, psychedelics have appeared as both an antidote to the failure of the
psychiatric system, which has no idea how to heal anybody. All we know what to do is to
medicate and suppress symptoms at the very best. And sometimes you do a lot of harm.
Sometimes we do a lot of good, but, overall, we are a failure, let's face it. So, there's a natural
resurgence in modalities that look beyond that and provide an alternative. And so that, even in
the psychiatric profession now there's increasing interest in psychedelics, precisely because
they realize that their toolkit is limited.
Psychedelics are like everything else, there's no one size fits all, so everybody is an individual...
...situation. So, for some people one or two psychedelic sessions supported with therapy can be
transformational. Others would need a more long-term engagement. But I think for most people,
especially who are seeking help... ...with so-called mental health issues, it's never just a one off,
it's an ongoing process. If you are going to use psychedelics, it has to be combined with... ...a
very adapt therapy at the same time, whether in a personal or in a group context. And a lot of the
research that has been done... No research is being done by giving people psychedelics and
saying, "Off you go". It's always psychedelics being used in a therapeutic context.

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I had a deep psychedelic experience a week ago yesterday. I'm not going to go into the details...
...but I learned so much... ...including I learned... ...the depth... ...of the self-limiting stories I've
been telling myself. It's one thing to teach stuff to others, it's another to... ...really experience it
for oneself. And... Intellectually, I've always been far ahead of myself... ...or far behind myself, I
should put it. Very often when people say to me, "Thank you for writing that book, it changed my
life", you know what my response was? "Maybe I should read it myself." Because the kind of...
...liberation and... ...experience that I've been able to guide people, I've not been able to guide
there myself. So, last week I had a deep experience of all that.
I believe it was a life-changing experience. I won't say more about it, but that happened with the
help of psychedelics. Now... They're no panaceas. Psychedelics are no panaceas. A lot of
people in the psychedelic world are deeply screwed up and they're using psychedelics as a
bypass. They keep hoping for the medicines to do something for them... ...that they're not open
or willing to do for themselves. Psychedelics can be a powerful opening, because they get the
defensive mind out of the way and you get to see the terror... ...and also the love.
A love that's always there, that's always been and will be there, and the terror that you absorb
through that perpetrator energy. Sometimes people have bad trips, but there are no bad trips.
There are just difficult, painful trips, fear... ...suffused trips, but they're not bad. In the right
context... ...with the right guidance... ...you can hold it all and you can learn from it all. You can
also suffer greatly if you're with the wrong guides and context. In fact, in the psychedelic world,
we're all just as in a spiritual world.
There's abuse, exploitation, objectification, manipulation. In the hands of healers, who are very
powerful... ...just as in the spiritual world, they're powerful, spiritual masters... ...who've abused
their followers, I can list you six of them just like that, all within the last few years, and you
think... How can they know these spiritual truths and still do this? It's because they're not
complete, they're split off, they haven't dealt with the perpetuate energy inside themselves, their
own trauma. So, they can achieve these beautiful states through spiritual practice, teach from it
and talk to you about oneness... ...and then the next day... ...get drunk with women one quarter
of their age... ...and sexually abuse them.
In terms of psychedelics, there are two books that I can recommend. Michael Pollan has written
a wonderful book about psychedelics, "How to Change Your Mind", but it's more theoretical,
about research, it's less experiential. Two great books on psychedelics are "Consciousness
Medicine" by my friend, Françoise Bourzat. B-O-U-R-Z-A-T. "Consciousness Medicine:"
"Indigenous Wisdom, Entheogens, and Expanded States of Consciousness" "for Healing and
Growth". She's a great practitioner and it's a wonderful book. And specifically about ayahuasca,
a physician colleague of mine, "The Fellowship of The River" by Joe Tafur. T-A-F-U-R. Both are
really fine books. In terms of ayahuasca experiences... ...I can't recommend anything to you in
North America, it's illegal. I can't jeopardize them by making illegal recommendations.
But I can tell you, in Latin America, in Costa Rica, there's Soltara. They've good shamans, really
great shamans and integrity. In Costa Rica also there's a place called Blue Spirit, where
sometimes they have ayahuasca ceremonies. I can vouch for that place. A place that I'll not
vouch for is called Rythmia in Costa Rica, because although they've... ...good ceremonies, the
context to me is crazy, I won't say more about it. Psychedelics and Healing excerpt from The
Tim Ferriss Show Through a series of events I became aware of the potential role of
psychedelics in healing. And I've been doing work with them for ten years now. They're another
potent method, they're not for everyone, and I have to emphasize that whatever modality you

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choose of a psychedelic nature, you have to do it with adept... ...practitioners with deep integrity
and deep knowledge and experience.
But in such hands and in such a context it can be like... ...a super highway to self-awareness.
Not in isolation, but it opens doors that otherwise may take years. And so, it's not unusual for me
to... ...conduct a psychedelic session or a series of sessions, either in a group or individual
setting and have them say, "That was like 10 years of psychotherapy in one day". And I've had
the same experience myself. So, again, it's not to be isolated from other kinds of work. It has to
be integrated, but it's not a potent way of working. And, of course, as I know you're personally
aware, there's an increasing movement amongst psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists.
Medical doctors, other healers to find ways of incorporating psychedelic healing in the larger
therapeutic scheme.
You mentioned, as it related to EMDR and some of the other techniques that you listed... ...that
it is a potent way of bypassing the egoic mind. And certainly, psychedelics... ...literally mind
manifesting in that case... ...are one, very potent tool that... They are tools that have been used
for millennia in traditional or ceremonial contacts around the world for many purposes, but
including bypassing the analytical... ...rational, prefrontal cortex in many capacities. And you
mentioned a series of events, I will come back... ...to the psychedelics and ask you which you've
chosen and why to work with. But if you can mention any of them, what were the series of
events that led you... ...to this, to psychedelics.
In 2008, my book on addiction, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With
Addiction", was published in Canada and became nr 1 national bestseller, subsequently
published in The States as well. And I was on a book tour. People kept asking me, "What do you
know about addictions" "and ayahuasca as a treatment?". Ayahuasca being an Amazonian vine
that's made into a brew that has psychedelic properties. I knew nothing.
The next event somebody would ask, "What do you know about ayahuasca?" I started getting
annoyed with it, like, leave me alone. I've just written a book, I've spent years researching, my
life experience and all kinds of scientific... ...exploration went into it, ask me about something I
know about. And then I realized that maybe... ...the universe is knocking at my door. And
somebody said, 'Did you know that you can experience it in Vancouver?" There was a Peruvian
shaman leading ceremonies in Vancouver. Who am I to say no? I jumped right in. And I sat in
this tent with 50 other people.
50?
That's how they set it up. It's not what I recommend, but that's how they set it up. They played
beautiful music. And there was a little baby in the room. Mom and dad were... ...there for the
experience, the baby was in the room. The baby was cooing away and tears started falling down
my face. And these were not tears of sorrow, they were tears of joy. And I got in touch with such
profound love that I'd never consciously experienced before. And they were tears of love. It
wasn't love for anybody in particular, it was just love. And then I saw in all the ways that I had
closed my heart against love... ...in my life.
And how I'd betrayed love in my relationship with my spouse, and my children, and in other
ways, so I just got this... ...experience of love as something profound, and universal, life-
defining, something from which I was cut off in so many ways. And I got it. Because... I closed
my heart against love precisely because when I was vulnerable and small, I'd been so hurt,
owing to my mother's states of mind. She couldn't respond to me when I needed to be

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responded to. Not her fault, but she couldn't. When I was 8 years old, she gave me to a stranger
to save my life. And I didn't see her for a month, which is a huge...
Explain that for a second?
It's Budapest, Hungary. 2nd World War. January, the Russians have circled... ...Budapest and
were fighting the Germans. The government in power is a right wing, fascist, antisemitic...
...military force. And even though the deportations of Jews had stopped, the Germans had
annihilated half a million Hungarian Jews in 3 or 4 months, but now the Hungarians fascists
were killing Jews in Budapest, including in a house where my mother and I were living. So, my
mother gave me to a stranger, a Christian woman, because she didn't know if she'd be dead or
alive next day. Or that I would be. And I was quite sick.
So, I didn't see her for a month, which I experienced as a deep abandonment, how else could I
experience it? So, my heart closes... ...against love. And I got all this. And so I got that if this
plant, this plant that manifests the mind can show me both, the ways in which I've closed it off
from myself, and that I don't need to, because the love is still there, what healing potential it
has? I wish that I could say that after this experience I became a loving husband, a loving
human being, I didn't. It's not that simple, as my wife could tell you. (Tim laughing) Nevertheless,
it opened the door for me.
And I got it right away. However the thought that I had was, that I had no induction, no
introduction, no processing afterwards. Ayahuasca is a medicinal plant that's been used in the
Amazon basin for hundreds of years, maybe longer, in a cultural context... ...in a tribe, in a
village, where people know each other, know the shaman, they share the same assumptions
and history. That's not the same as a bunch of westerners, strangers come together for one
night, drinking stuff and going separate ways.
Agreed.
Immediately the question that came up for me was, "How can we create..." "...a setting that at
least resembles as best as we can..." "...fashion, the original setting". So, we came up with the
idea of a retreat, where a small number of people get together... ...with properly trained
shamans... ...who have integrity and deep experience, and with me facilitating people's...
...preparation and their post-ceremony integration. And so I've been doing that now for 10 years.
A lot of learning involved, we made mistakes.
But it evolved and the essence of it is that people don't come to it with cold, they come into a
preparation in a safe setting, where pretty soon that group becomes a family to each other,
which means that not only they love each other and support each other, but they also trigger
each other. And basically I tell people, "Guess what? You're back in your family of origin." "And
everything you've heard about them will show up here," "but in the context where it's safe for
that to happen." And so, I've seen a lot of great healing. I've had people with multiple suicide
attempts heal from depression.
I've seen people get much better with the autoimmune diseases. I've seen people deal with all
kinds of addictions, life issues, relationship problems, come out of it much more themselves,
much more able to deal with these issues, so long as the proper integration is done afterwards.
So, that was my personal experience. That then... ...introduced me to the whole world of
psychedelics. And I've realized that there's a lot of research being done these days, there's this
organization... ...MAPS, Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which is a group

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of... ...psychologists, psychiatrists, medical doctors, therapists, consulars, interested people to
study scientifically the role of psychedelics in healing.
And, as you're probably aware, interesting studies have been done around psilocybin
mushrooms and end of life anxiety. Studies have been done, which are revolutionary in using
MDMA assisted psychotherapy. MDMA being the technical name for extasy. Again, in the right
setting, with the right leadership these have proven to be very powerful modalities of healing.
So, there's a whole new resurgence of psychedelic research in a number of different areas,
some of them man-made, some plant-based. But there's a whole world that I was introduced to.
And I've learned a lot in the last 10 years. And, again, I both, practiced it in my own healing work
and I am interested in it also as a participant.
I'd love to add a few things to your second comment and ask a bunch of questions about the
first. So, for people who are interested in... ...learning more about the current scientific studies...
...and... ...mechanisms of action related to some of these compounds, what is being done, there
are a number of... ...very interesting and very competent organizations as far as I can tell. MAPS
is one, I'll actually be seeing the founder, Rick Doblin, in just a few days-time. There is the
Heffter Institute, which I've worked with, primarily run by Mds and PhDs.
The board is comprised of scientists and medical doctors. It was through the Heffter Foundation
and directly with Johns Hopkins, so I've had some involvement with Soul 7 studies. Actually,
thank you, to many of you... ...to many of you in my audience, who helped through crowdfunding
campaign to raise funds for a study at Johns Hopkins related to a treatment-resistant depression
and Soul 7. So, Heffter Institute, an excellent organization to look into. And then Usona also,
which I believe is primarily focused on Soul 7, whereas MAPS at this point has done great work
on many levels, including helping to facilitate MDMA being designated a breakthrough therapy,
and effectively getting fast-tracked into phase three trials.
By the FDA.
That's right. And these are all organizations that I'd encourage people to look into. And... It's
really an exciting time and also a fragile time... ...as it relates to these compounds, which have
certainly demonstrated historically accepting MDMA. Let's just look at the studies, many of
which were done starting in 50s and 60s. Looking at the clinical efficiency of using these
compounds for everything, ranging from alcoholism to nicotine addiction, to many of the things
you've mentioned.
What is little known, but that Bill Wilson, Doctor Bill, one of the founders of AA, actually had
some powerful LSD experiences, which helped him in his spiritual growth. AA don't talk about it
very much, but it's a fact. If I may hypothetically say, as much as I support The Twelve Steps,
what AA also doesn't tend to talk about is the trauma that causes the addiction. Bill Wilson
himself was a traumatized child, he was abandoned by his parents when he was very young.
And so, it's interesting that AA, for all the good work that it does, which I support. I don't support
people being forced into any form of treatment, but as a self-chosen form of treatment it can be
helpful to many people. But they don't talk about two interesting things. One is the psychedelic
part, the other's the trauma part.
Yeah, it's... For me, just looking at my own... ...childhood experiences and... ...exploring
recovery defined as you defined it, in the last several years, especially in the last 6 months it's
been fascinating and frustrating to discover and try to piece together these various elements.
But the...

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What is the frustrating part?
That there is... It may exist, but I couldn't find one-stop shopping that checks all the boxes.
There aren't any.
Right. So, it's been exercise in collecting various tools and piecing them together, like you
said... AA does incredible work, what they've done in terms of the distributed, free service with
social accountability and support is incredible.
Absolutely.
The psychedelic component, which Bill actually wanted to make one of the steps of AA,
needless to say, was hard to get widespread leadership support for that. And then you have the
trauma piece, so these are all... ...tools and the toolkit people can use for their own... ...approach
in some respects. Coming back to ayahuasca specifically, and I should just point out, because I
know these tools are very powerful, I have first-hand familiarity from past experiences and I
have been very engaged with this scientific community for some time now, they can be misused.
There are many charlatans.
Unfortunately, there's more than that. There's some very powerful shamans, who exploit
people sexually and financially.
Very common.
And this is not just restricted to the ayahuasca world, it also happens in the spiritual world. How
many spiritual leaders with tremendous power, healing influence have at the same time
exploited men and women and created all kinds of further trauma? Unfortunately, when you
have that much power and you haven't totally done your integration work, you can start misusing
that power. And that happens in all of the healing modalities, as we know, but it certainly
happens in the psychedelic world.
It's very... It's... I wish I could say it's rare. It's not. But it's... ...something to safeguard against,
especially in that vulnerable state. I would recommend people to see a documentary, "Kumaré",
which is very much worth watching. The brief overview is, it's an Indian filmmaker, who begins
studying various gurus and healers in the US... ...in hopes of, I believe the original... ...impetus
was to simply do a documentary on charlatans. And then he went to India and said, "It's just as
bad here, it's 99% just as bad or worse". And he decides to make himself a guru as an
experiment. It's a very thought-provoking documentary that I think will...
He becomes a fake guru?
That's right.
I remember it.
Then he unveils it. I don't want to give too much away, but it's worth watching, because it helps
to prepare you psychologically to... ...not lose yourself in a dangerous way.
And here's the problem. What I said about the essence of trauma is that you lose connection to
yourself. And that means you lose connection to your gut feeling. As long as your gut feeling are
with you and you honor them, they'll protect you. But the very essence of trauma is the loss of
that, which means that when you lose connection to your gut feelings, then you're vulnerable to

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being exploited. And when you talk to people who were exploited in any context, psychedelic or
not, if you ask them, "Do you have any vague sense that this is not right?", they'll say, "Yeah, but
I didn't listen to it".
And the fact that they didn't listen to it is already a marker of trauma. So, since it's traumatized
people, which is most of us, who seek healing, it's also vulnerable people who seek healing. And
this is what some of these people can exploit. So, the very portal into healing, which is opening
up to vulnerability that we've shut down against is also the portal for potential loss, so people
have to do that with diligence. And I am not trying to create paranoia, but people should be
careful.
You just mentioned something that I'd really love to just pause and emphasize. You mentioned a
few things. Number one is that your... ...gut feeling... ...slash physiological intuition... ...can help
you and that's something that... ...for many reasons, I completely muted or ignored for a very
long time. It's been a process of getting reacquainted with that. I would say two things that I
found helpful. If you have any comments, on the second particularly, I'd love to hear. One was
dramatically decreasing my caffeine intake, which I found was almost like turning up the volume
on static, made it very difficult for me to read or feel other things, I was using it... ...maybe for
many reasons, but it had the side effect of muting.
Maybe that was why I did it subconsciously, many of these feelings. The second was... ...in fact,
a video that was recommended to me, but it corresponds to a book called "The Gift of Fear" by
Gavin de Becker, who actually owns a company... ...does protective services and executive
security. So, you have to keep in mind maybe you don't always want to ask a barber if he needs
a haircut. Keeping that in mind, it also... ...in brief, points to the benefits of some of these...
...reactions or emotional states that we're prone to labeling negative.
And the... As you said, not to make anyone paranoid, but rather to inform them, these are
currently existent risks. And one of the hopes certainly with say, ultimately better researching
these compounds after they've been... ...really unfairly, but for understandable reasons
politicized and put into the same schedule in the US as heroin and cocaine, to have them
rescheduled, so they can be prescribable. If then that happens, the ability to... ...certify
therapists, to regulate and to maintain... ...a broad type of quality control goes up. So, that's also
of the hopes it that it will... ...decrease the likelihood of bad actors and allow appropriate
punishment for bad actors.

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LESSON 08 – SPIRITUAL BYPASSING

So, if you look at the spiritual world... I mean, in the last... ...100 years, and certainly in the last
several decades, there's been just an intense movement in the west towards spirituality. As the
institutions of western capitalism fail us emotionally and spiritually, we look for other ways. And
by that, I may also mean the organized religions. So people look for alternate ways. And there's
been a tremendous interest... ...in the spiritual aspects of religion. So for example, there's a
powerful... ...spiritual movement inside Catholicism, and there always has been. Some of the
great teachers, great spiritual teachers, like Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross, and
other Christian mystics. Thomas Merton being a modern representative of that. The Jesuit
monk. Whereas in the Jewish religion, the renewed interest in the Kabbalah, the mystical
tradition. In Islam, Sufism. And then, there's also all the eastern non-monotheistic teachings
from India, and Tibet, and so on. And if you look inside that world, sometimes it's shocking.
So the head of Shambhala, the organization that was started by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche,
who founded Naropa University, just had to leave his... I think it was his grandson, he had to
leave his position because he was sexually exploiting... ...participants. Trungpa Rinpoche
himself... ...drank himself to death. Harbhajan, Yogi Bhajan, It's a... ...kundalini yoga tradition,
right? So it turns out he was sexually abusing people, exploiting people for a long time. Suzuki
Roshi, who wrote this beautiful book, "Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind". And he founded the Zen
center in San Francisco, the dharma heir that he appointed to take his place... ...sexually
abused people. Sasaki Roshi, who had... Is it Manchester? In California, but Leonard Cohen
was his most famous student.
And Sasaki, I sat with him once. I participated in an eight-day retreat. He was a great teacher.
You know what a great teacher he was? I sat in his sun retreat for eight days, it started at five in
the morning. It was one of the toughest things I've done, I came back on Saturday. On Sunday I
joined my usual soccer group, I scored three goals. I couldn't do wrong. I passed beautifully. I
headed it in. I was totally alert, present. I saw the ball coming before it was coming. I'm telling
you that's a great teacher. And he sexually exploited women. And when he put his... Touched
women inappropriately, some of his followers would say to these women, "Well Buddhism is all
about not attachment. "Why are you so attached to your body? If he wants to touch your body,
let him".
And these are great teachers. It's not that what they taught was wrong. It's not that what they
channeled wasn't from the source. But something happened. They had bypassed their own shit.
They went into the spiritual realm and they completely bypassed... ...their own... ...egoic... ...hurt
little minds. I was interviewing the spiritual teacher, Adyashanti, and he said that... ...these
people can be spiritual giants... ...and emotional infants. So the spiritual bypass is when you use
your mind... ...to go in these spiritual directions and not deal with what's actually there. So that's
what the bypass is.
And you see a lot of that in the spiritual world, I'd rather have people do emotional work than
spiritual work if it comes to a choice. Now, I don't think it needs to come to a choice. And... In
fact, it's tragic if it did, but if I was gonna do one or the other, do the emotional work first. Let the
emotional work support that. But don't let the emotional work preempt. Sorry, don't let the

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spiritual work preempt... ...the personal emotional work, because otherwise you're gonna get
disasters. And now of course, the thing to really understand is that the two don't need to be
separate at all. Because this book and this psychiatrist, Mark Epstein that I mentioned, he wrote
a book called "The Trauma of Everyday Life".
And I quoted from that book. and he pointed out something really... ...simple... ...that I was
actually wondering why didn't I notice that myself. Buddha was a traumatized child. Buddha's
mother died when he was a week old. Now, if you read the biographies, all this is presented in a
spiritualized, romanticized way that you know, she went to heaven and her place was taken by
her sister. And Buddha had this beautiful childhood. The hell. What's it like for a one-week-old to
lose their mother? What is it like? And so, Mark Epstein points out that Buddha's spiritual work
actually began as a way of dealing with...
The Buddhist story is that Buddha lives a totally happy life until he saw somebody sick or
somebody old and then he learned about suffering. No, he learned about suffering when he was
a week old. And what does he do? What does he develop? He develops this method of
meditation... ...where he sits under the bodhi tree, the legend is, and he's assaulted by the
armies of Mara, you know, the devil, the representation of evil. Aggression, violence, sexual
temptation, lust. And he just holds them all. And so, what he does, he becomes his own
container. He learns to hold himself, just like his mother would have held him ideally had she
been alive. So, this beautiful spiritual teaching... ...arises really out of trauma. That's one way to
look at it. And... It becomes a kind of holding.
So there's a real way in which emotional work and spiritual work... ...can coalesce... ...and
support one another, but they both have to be done. Otherwise, you'll have beautiful
experiences. I've seen people... ...have beautiful experiences with psychedelics, or beautiful
experiences sitting in a meditation couch, they get unity, they get the oneness, they get the
connection... ...on a cushion. Then, somebody looks at them the wrong way, looks at them in the
wrong way next day at a bus stop and they get all upset. What happened to all the unity? If you
want to know whether you've been practicing spiritual bypass or not, look at yourself the next
time you're upset. Or the next time something happens that would ordinarily get you upset. If
you can stay present... ...and hold your experience, that's genuine spiritual work. If you can't,
you've been doing a bypass.

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