Let us know what you thought of this episode!
When Ryan Hassan shared his tale of addiction and the profound healing that followed, I knew it was a narrative that needed to be heard.
Joined by the co-founder of the Centre for Healing, we traverse the intimate connection between trauma, addiction, and mental health, delving into the concept of 'undigested life experiences' that so often fuel addictive behaviours.
It's a discussion that not only reveals the inner workings of addiction but also offers hope, showing that the road to recovery, albeit challenging, is laden with transformative potential.
As we unpack the addiction spectrum, we confront the socially accepted dependencies that are often overlooked, from our glasses of wine to our scrolling through social media. It's a candid reflection on the patterns that bind us and the collective journey towards self-awareness and change.
Closing on a note of compassion and understanding, we approach the complexities of addiction as more than just a series of bad choices or a quest for pleasure. Instead, it's a narrative threaded with the common human experience of seeking relief from pain, a behaviour that transcends socio-economic statuses and personal histories.
With Ryan's insights, we underscore the value of a supportive environment and the power of introspection in fostering lasting change, shining a light on the nuanced dance of trauma and recovery.
Join us as we embark on this heartfelt exploration, one that aims to educate, inspire, and empower.
Find The Centre For Healing here
Find Out About The Healing Hub Membership here
Watch full episode on YouTube here
Speaker 1: Hello, hello, it's Nadine here, and I'm here with
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this week's episode of Life, health and the Universe.
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Almost 12 months ago, I spoke with a guest, ryan Hassan, who's
00:00:16
the co-founder of the Centre for Healing.
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In our discussion, we spoke about trauma, which Ryan refers
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to as undigested life experiences.
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The Healing Centre offers training and accreditation for
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coaches and therapists who want to understand and support their
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clients using specifically designed techniques, and they
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also offer a range of free materials and short courses
00:00:39
through their website, some of which I have followed.
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The Centre for Healing has recently created a membership
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option called the Healing Hub, and this is a place where its
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members can be supported as they integrate self-healing into
00:00:57
their own daily lives.
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The Healing Hub gives members access to many of the paid
00:01:02
courses and weekly practice videos, plus lots more.
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When I learned that this offering, this new offering, was
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available and was being launched, I knew that I wanted
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to help get it, get the message out about it, and so that's why
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today's episode is an abbreviated version of the
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conversation that I had with Ryan last year is an abbreviated
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version of the conversation that I had with Ryan last year.
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By all means, go back and check out the original, but for now
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check this one out.
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In this abridged episode, we cover mental health, addiction
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and trauma.
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We talk about self-administered addiction as pain relief from
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emotional experiences and discuss the benefits of talk
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therapy versus embodied processing, with some very
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valuable insights.
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You'll find links to the center for healing in the notes, along
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with the link to their new offering, and you can also watch
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the original and full episode on youtube, which I'll also put
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in the notes.
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But for now, I definitely think this episode, either right now
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listening to the abridged version, or going back and
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checking out the original.
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There's so much valuable information.
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I hope you enjoy the conversation.
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Thank you for listening.
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Here we go so, ryan, you are a coach, practitioner, teacher.
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I don't know if you call yourself a therapist, um,
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although that's certainly part of the work you do.
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You're the co-founder, um, of the center for healing and
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you're the creator of uh, the embodied processing technique,
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amongst other things.
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I believe you have a partner who also works with you and you
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have one babe, I think, but since I've watched you online,
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you may have had more and you're on a mission.
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You're on a mission to empower individuals with the
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understanding and skills to help themselves.
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I'm reading this from my notebook and others relieve
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stress and trauma in the body and that this can help to change
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the world.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Look, and it sounds pretty lofty mission.
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I think I went through a lot of suffering in my life
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unnecessary suffering, I would call it.
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Part of being a human being is to suffer to some degree.
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Some guy named the Buddha or something talked about that two
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and a half thousand years ago but.
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I went through a lot of unnecessary suffering.
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We could call it necessary because it led to something
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positive.
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But you know, I struggled a lot with mental illness, with
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anxiety, with all sorts of issues that manifested in drug
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addiction, with all sorts of issues that manifested in drug
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addiction.
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So I went down that path and really just self-destructed,
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destroyed my life in a material sense.
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You know, using methamphetamine and GHB every single day,
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dealing drugs run-ins with the law.
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You know my life consisted of being awake for about between
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four and six days and then sleeping for about 30 hours.
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Then I'd wake for four to six days sleep.
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The body's a wonderful thing how it can recover from the way we
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treat it by the way, because I feel fantastic now, and so, you
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know, I went down a pretty dark path there, which I find myself,
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you know.
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Yes, it took some initiative on my part, but a large part of
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its luck or grace, you know I happened to end up in the right
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person's office at the right time, where I was open to
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hearing a message and and open to, I guess, addressing some of
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the root causes and drivers behind my drug addiction and my
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general dysfunction as a human being.
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I was able to open up and deal with a lot of the trauma, the
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emotional baggage, all the stuff that I one thing that we use,
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you know, often it's like undigested life experiences, so
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these things that we go through that haven't quite metabolized,
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they haven't made it all the way through.
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And when we have an accumulation of those and I had
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about 30 years of those that I refused to look at then we start
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to run into issues in our life, and that may be mental illness,
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it may be physical illness, it can be drug addictions, it can
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be any form of escape or distraction, it can be stress,
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you know, whatever it is.
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And so I was very lucky to be able to do that work, to open up
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, to feel the things that I hadn't been able to feel for my
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whole life and sort of stop using drugs and not only stop
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using drugs but, you know, feel a real level of peace within
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myself, which is that's the thing.
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Like, I speak to so many people who are interested in addiction
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or they've been through addiction, or you know family
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members or someone's loved ones going through addiction, and I
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think it's like we just need them to stop the behavior,
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whatever it is.
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But the problem is, whenever we stop the behavior, all the
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reasons why we do it in the first place start to come to the
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surface.
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That's why any type of addiction, it's not about
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stopping, it's about staying stopped.
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You know, that's that's the hard bit.
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That's when we have to really address the reasons why and not
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just try and remove ourselves from a behavior or a substance.
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And so it was at that point when I came out the other side of my
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addiction and everything that I had, the spark of inspiration
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that I was going to change the world.
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Change the world actually means something a bit different to me
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these days than it did back then.
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It's kind of playing a small role in an overall bigger
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picture and a bigger movement in the way that we deal with
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mental health issues and addictions and that kind of
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thing.
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So I'm kind of happy to play my part from my little corner of
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Australia down here, even though the company that I run now has
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reaches all over the world, which is absolutely fantastic.
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So, like you said, I'm a family man.
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Now I have a son.
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It's just the one.
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He would have been a baby when I recorded the course that
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you've taken.
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He's four and a half now.
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He's still my baby, right.
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But, he's pretty big now, right, but still only the one, my
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partner, melissa.
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You know we started the Center for Healing together.
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When I spoke about being in someone's office at the right
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time, you know, at the right place, it was actually her
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office.
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That's another story.
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We started the Center for Healing, you know, end of 2015,
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start of 2016.
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And you know, we were business partners first and then became
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life partners not too long after that and we sort of had a
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beautiful life.
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Now we ran an outpatient clinic down here in Melbourne treating
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people with all the conditions that we spoke about.
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We would, you know, advertise.
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You know we want to help people with addictions in any form.
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That takes mental health issues , depression, anxiety, bipolar.
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We had people, you know, coming out of psych wards.
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We would have CEOs who would have stressed out, didn't know
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what the hell couldn't relax without a bottle of whiskey at
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night.
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You know all that.
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And what we were doing was we were doing trauma therapy, you
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know.
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Or if someone didn't like the word trauma, then these
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undigested life experiences.
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Right, we were just always asked why, you know, this surface
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level manifestation of, let's say, depression manifests for a
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very good reason.
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We just don't understand that reason and we maybe get told by
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society and a lot of health professionals that, well, you've
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got an issue with your brain chemistry.
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You know, you have a lack of serotonin in the brain.
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You know, we have, you know, something called an
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antidepressant, which, but its name sounds great, doesn't it?
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You know, I wish they worked as advertised antidepressant.
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I would have taken them when I was depressed, you know.
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And so we have this orientation that whatever I'm going through
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is something that I'm just going to have to manage for the
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rest of my life, and a lot of addicts talk that way too.
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It's like, you know, it's called white knuckling, you know
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, in the industry, where it's like, maybe I've been clean for
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like a few years and everything, but I'm barely holding on.
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You know, I'm angry at the world every day.
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I'm just trying to not do this certain behavior, which is not
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freedom to me in any sense of the word.
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And so we had wonderful results in there at the clinic.
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You know, we started our business.
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We were laughed at early on, um , especially by a lot of the
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mainstream professionals uh in the area, um, but it's only a
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few years later that those same professionals were referring
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clients uh, to us, um, and so, yeah, we had a great journey
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there when we had our baby, who we've mentioned a couple of
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times now, at the end of 2018, um, we spent 2019 working out
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how we could, um, change our business a little bit, start to
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move more into the educational space, because we'd have so many
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people asking us what are you guys doing in there?
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You know, teach us more, like no, because we'll.
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You know, we want to open up multiple clinics and all this
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stuff, but having a kid and I always tell people I would have
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been the biggest hypocrite in the world, right, because I was
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working my ass off at that center, you know, 14 hour days,
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six days a week, and a lot of the time I'd be sitting in
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session with men who were like bawling their eyes out in front
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of me just saying I wish my dad was around when I was younger.
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You know he'd home, he'd buy me all the things he'd do, all
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this stuff.
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I didn't want all that crap.
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I just wanted him to be there while I grew up, and so that's
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what I wanted, and so, same with Melissa, that's what we wanted
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for our son.
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So we moved online and it's funny, I know the universe and
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the title of this particular podcast.
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Funny how the universe works, because we moved online right at
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the end of 2019.
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So sort of December or January 2020.
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And it was only a couple of months later that we would have
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had to move online anyway, due to good old COVID.
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So you know, we went traveling, we got stuck I'm using inverted
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commas to those that are listening Stuck on Koh Samui,
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thailand, for about over a year during COVID, did you?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, our plane went out.
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We wanted to travel with our son while he was young.
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We were going to do a lot of different countries, but we got
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to Koh Samui March of 2020 and all the airports were getting
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shut down and, yeah, we were there for nearly a year and a
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half.
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Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, there's places you could be
00:10:21
stuck, I guess.
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Speaker 2: I'd be sitting there on a FaceTime thing with one of
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my friends because we're from Melbourne and this is the most
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locked down city in the world and I'd be sitting there on my,
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you know, balcony, looking out over this ocean on a tropical
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island, and I'm like so what should I try and like get home.
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And they're like do not come back here.
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And so, you know, we were in a big rush to get home, and so
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we're at a place now where we sort of have educational courses
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for the general public, people who are interested in the topics
00:10:51
of mental health, addiction and trauma, and then a big part of
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what we do is we train people, so practitioners or people that
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are looking to get into the industry of helping people
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oftentimes people who've been through their own personal
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journey and so we teach modalities around being able to
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work with trauma in a safe and effective way now, and we have
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practitioners now all around the world Australia, new Zealand,
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all over Europe, america, canada , india, china so it's just
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amazing to see all these like-minded people, you know,
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getting together, learning these new skills and also working
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through their own stuff as that comes up you've talked about
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addiction, and I think that this is a really interesting area,
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because when we think of addiction and you said that you,
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you know what you experienced was, um, quite extreme and
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probably from the perspective of someone from the outside,
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that's kind of like what we would call addiction.
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Speaker 1: Right, it's someone who is basically living um
00:11:53
day-to-day, you know, on drugs or alcohol.
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They're the two things that we usually think of, right.
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But you talk about there being a spectrum of addiction, right,
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and that we all have the potential for addictive behavior
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.
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Hands up, right, I stopped drinking alcohol a year and a
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half ago.
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I stopped drinking alcohol a year and a half ago and I didn't
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think I was an addict, because and I think you might have some
00:12:30
things to say about this because it was socially acceptable,
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right.
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Having stepped away from that, I have realized how much it was
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covering up and I'm still kind of getting, you know, getting
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the hang of all of that stuff.
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So, can you tell us a little bit about what your perspective
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of addiction is?
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I know you've had your own personal experience, but, like,
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when you talk about this spectrum of addiction, like,
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what can it look like?
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Because I think this is really important for people, because we
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we've got behaviors that we think are accepted by society,
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and so it's okay and it, and for me it was just like, well,
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that's just who I am, I'm.
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I'm a drinker, you know, I love a glass of wine at the end of
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the day, um, but um, it can be covering up a lot of stuff,
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right?
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So what can it look like like for the everyday joe blow like
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me, who thought I was just, you know, it's just one of those
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things I did, what could?
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What would you say about that?
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Speaker 2: that was kind of a bit long-winded and no, no, no,
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it's a great question the key word they're used is like
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spectrum, and so we all sit on a spectrum when it comes to this.
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The uh, addictive tendencies are within all of us.
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So we had there's a bit of a problem with labels, because a
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label all of a sudden starts to separate.
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So it's like if you have that label and I don't, then there's
00:13:52
like self and other, sure, and so, like you said, people have
00:13:55
this idea because everything, let's say on the news, in TV
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shows and movies, it's greatly sensationalized because it's far
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more exciting to watch.
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Okay, so like, if a lot of my addiction, you know, for the,
00:14:08
really, you know high-speed car chases, jail, you know overdoses
00:14:11
, all that was in a movie, like fuck, that's exciting.
00:14:14
But if the majority of it, which is me like sitting in a
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room using by myself, you know, you know spending hours trying
00:14:21
to get through to a deal or waiting outside the house, If
00:14:23
that was a movie.
00:14:24
But this is so fucking boring, right?
00:14:26
So it's like we have this idea of what addiction is and so that
00:14:30
we create an archetype in our mind.
00:14:32
But you know, well, before the lifestyle I described, I was
00:14:35
still addicted when I was holding down a full-time job.
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I was a tradesman holding down a full-time job, married house,
00:14:42
mortgage.
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Everyone from the outside looking in thought, man, this
00:14:45
guy is so successful.
00:14:46
I come to him for advice, he's doing great.
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Yet on the weekends I'd be out drinking and doing drugs every
00:14:52
weekend to try and escape, before I had to go back to the
00:14:55
monotony of work on a Monday.
00:14:58
And so that's.
00:14:59
You know, whether you want to call it addiction or like,
00:15:03
there's nothing wrong with anything.
00:15:04
So there's nothing wrong with methamphetamine.
00:15:07
There's nothing wrong with heroin.
00:15:08
There's nothing wrong with alcohol, right.
00:15:09
There's nothing wrong with food .
00:15:11
There's nothing wrong with gambling, right.
00:15:13
There's nothing wrong with relationships.
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Yet when we have a dysfunctional relationship with
00:15:18
any of these things, that's when we get into trouble.
00:15:20
It's very easy, especially with drug addiction, to demonize the
00:15:23
substance, and that's what most media does and people do.
00:15:26
It's like oh damn, you know, ice, like you know, it's changed
00:15:31
them and it's you know.
00:15:32
That's the problem.
00:15:33
Speaker 1: You've got to get it off the streets.
00:15:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, like that's a problem.
00:15:37
You've got to get it off the streets.
00:15:39
Yeah, like that's a whole other podcast.
00:15:40
Don't get me started on that.
00:15:41
Don't get me started on that.
00:15:43
So, basically, addiction yeah, look, we're all on a spectrum.
00:15:46
We all have this desire to move away from pain and towards
00:15:48
pleasure.
00:15:49
Okay, that's basically what the addictive nature is at the end
00:15:52
of the day.
00:15:52
You want to know what the one that everyone can identify with?
00:15:54
Yeah, it's the reaching.
00:15:58
I sit down and put the phone down and whatever, and then I'm
00:16:00
like I haven't picked up Instagram in an hour or so.
00:16:03
Maybe I've got a notification that reach for the phone.
00:16:06
It's exactly the same reach as the reach for heroin or the
00:16:09
reach from a phone to call a dealer or whatever it is.
00:16:11
It's trying to pacify us in the moment, because whatever's
00:16:15
happening in the moment we're deeming to be not enough, so we
00:16:17
need something extra added on top of it.
00:16:19
So if we want to define addiction, you could say the
00:16:27
best definition that I've heard is any behavior.
00:16:29
So right then, we're not just talking about substances, right?
00:16:30
Any behavior, okay, that I find craving to do and I possibly
00:16:33
find relief in once I do, and despite it having negative
00:16:36
consequences in other areas of my life I am unable to stop.
00:16:41
So let's say let's use an example of gambling, right?
00:16:44
So let's say that I like to have a gamble on a Saturday.
00:16:47
That's my thing, you know.
00:16:48
The horses are on.
00:16:48
Maybe I'm in a little betting club with my friends or
00:16:51
something.
00:16:52
We have a WhatsApp group.
00:16:53
We all chip in, you know a bit of money and let's say it's 50
00:16:55
bucks and I do that and it's fun .
00:16:57
But then I find myself like thinking about gambling more and
00:16:59
maybe after I do my betting with the friends, I spend
00:17:02
another 50 bucks myself, you know doing it.
00:17:05
But then I keep it to the Saturday.
00:17:06
That's 100 bucks here, whatever , no problem.
00:17:08
But then once again during the week I'm thinking about it.
00:17:11
Maybe on a Wednesday day I will .
00:17:12
Maybe the amount I spend on the Saturday goes up Now all of a
00:17:16
sudden because of that.
00:17:17
Maybe the school camp that my son is meant to go on I can't
00:17:20
quite afford it, so he's not going to go this term.
00:17:26
You can see how now it's starting to have negative
00:17:27
consequences somewhere else.
00:17:28
Yet if I find my if that's not a wake-up call and I continue to
00:17:29
gamble, you know, you could basically say I've got an
00:17:32
addiction, you've got a real or you have a dysfunctional
00:17:34
relationship with that particular thing, and so you
00:17:37
know addictions come in all shapes and sizes.
00:17:40
Shopping food, food's a massive one, one of the biggest
00:17:43
eye-openers.
00:17:44
From when I started the centre a couple of years in, I was
00:17:48
doing an audit on all of the people that were coming in, what
00:17:50
they were coming in for and all that kind of thing.
00:17:53
And eating disorders or emotional eating was actually
00:17:57
the number one common thing, and eating disorders or emotional
00:17:59
eating was.
00:17:59
It was actually the number one common thing.
00:18:00
Whether they were coming in for that predominantly or that was
00:18:01
something else that was going on , it was.
00:18:03
I could not believe it.
00:18:04
It was everywhere.
00:18:04
So that's why you spoke about alcohol, because that's socially
00:18:08
acceptable.
00:18:08
Food's something we've got to do.
00:18:11
Speaker 1: You know, it's like.
00:18:12
Speaker 2: I don't have to sit down three times a day and do
00:18:14
heroin and methamphetamine.
00:18:15
I'm going to sit down and eat, though, right, so that one can
00:18:18
be a little bit tricky.
00:18:19
But a lot of people are using food in a very addictive way.
00:18:21
But all we're trying to do is we're trying to pacify something
00:18:25
that's going on inside, and so if we look at the evolution, I
00:18:28
suppose, of the way that we view addiction, started off,
00:18:32
addiction's a moral failing.
00:18:33
It's a bad choice.
00:18:34
Now, addiction's a moral failing.
00:18:38
It's a bad choice.
00:18:38
Now.
00:18:38
Our judicial system still sees addiction that way.
00:18:39
I've been through that judicial system.
00:18:40
It is so archaic, it's unbelievable.
00:18:41
It's like you chose to do it.
00:18:44
You chose to keep doing it.
00:18:45
You're a fool, you're an idiot.
00:18:47
You need to be punished.
00:18:49
We've got decades of data on approaching addiction that way,
00:18:52
and the results are terrible.
00:18:53
They are absolutely terrible.
00:18:56
The next one is that addiction is a disease.
00:18:58
So this is the way that this is the medical model at the minute
00:19:01
that addiction is some sort of brain disease that certain
00:19:04
people have.
00:19:04
There's something genetic going on and, for whatever reason,
00:19:08
this substance or behavior is fitting into those neural
00:19:11
circuits, and so that's something that's going to need
00:19:13
to be managed from here on in.
00:19:15
That is a much better and more humane approach than the moral
00:19:19
failing and choice one.
00:19:20
However, it still does fall a little bit short.
00:19:22
Okay, or maybe we can add to it , because you know the way that
00:19:26
we see addiction and what we're seeing now with the latest
00:19:28
science and everything is that you know it's essentially
00:19:31
emotional, self-administered, emotional pain relief.
00:19:34
It's a human being in distress, whether they're conscious or
00:19:38
unconscious of it, trying to find a solution for that
00:19:41
distress.
00:19:41
And that's why there's so many different addictions, because
00:19:44
human beings will work through them to find out what works best
00:19:48
.
00:19:48
And that's why, you know, me and Matt go well together,
00:19:50
because we have a very similar history of addiction, but we're
00:19:53
very different in how our both our nervous system, adaptations
00:19:57
and trauma showed up, but also how the addiction showed up as
00:20:00
well.
00:20:00
You know so.
00:20:01
For him it's like opiates, you know.
00:20:03
Heroin, barbiturates, benzodiazepine, all these
00:20:06
massive depressants, you know, was what was the best for him.
00:20:10
I hated those.
00:20:11
They made me feel terrible, sick.
00:20:12
I was the stimulants and all that kind of thing.
00:20:15
Right Now, for other people, drugs don't work at all and
00:20:17
alcohol doesn't either.
00:20:18
But you know, the shopping might, the shopping might hit
00:20:21
that button in the right way, or the binge eating on food, or
00:20:25
the overeating and then purging of food, that kind of thing.
00:20:27
We will work through them to try and find out what will solve
00:20:31
the problem for its best.
00:20:32
So the question that we asked is what actual problem are we
00:20:36
trying to solve here?
00:20:36
Yes, so the question that we asked is what actual problem are
00:20:39
we trying to solve here?
00:20:40
Yes, yeah, so we're not.
00:20:40
This is the behavior on top.
00:20:41
Okay, that's to be acknowledged and talked about, but we need
00:20:43
to get underneath that.
00:20:44
You know, we had one lady come into our center early on.
00:20:47
I'll never forget it.
00:20:47
She'd been addicted to heroin, alcohol, all sorts of stuff,
00:20:51
been in the public system and spoken to people for over 25
00:20:54
years, and we would do an initial consultation for about
00:20:57
20, 30, 30 minutes, where we'd just come in and say this is our
00:20:59
program, this is what we do, this is how we approach things.
00:21:01
Tell me about you.
00:21:02
And about 10 minutes in she just started bawling.
00:21:05
She was crying uncontrollably and I went up to her and put my
00:21:08
arm around her.
00:21:09
I'm like, was this something I said?
00:21:10
And she goes 25 years of this shit.
00:21:14
You're the first person that's asked me why.
00:21:17
Speaker 1: Huh.
00:21:18
Speaker 2: Which is crazy to me.
00:21:19
You know it's an indictment on the way that society views
00:21:22
things, but we want to understand why.
00:21:24
Why does this behavior exist?
00:21:25
What's it trying to cover up?
00:21:27
You know, what's that underlying hurt that we need to
00:21:30
get in there and touch on and understand and meet those needs.
00:21:34
So the byproduct of that is that the addiction, addiction,
00:21:39
the behavior on the top can start to disappear.
00:21:40
Speaker 1: yeah, right, yeah, what I find um well with my own
00:21:44
um personal experience with alcohol is like I don't have um
00:21:52
off the top of my head, a recollection where I was like I
00:21:54
need to drink, I need to block something out, but I feel, feel
00:21:58
like, like you said, it's like that you try something, you
00:22:02
don't even really know why, but you're like this makes me feel
00:22:05
better, or you know it stops me thinking, or you know it was
00:22:07
like when you reach for your phone, you don't have to think
00:22:11
about the argument you've just had or the you know, the
00:22:15
upcoming meeting that you've got , or whatever it is, or the
00:22:18
chores you've got to do.
00:22:19
You can kind of switch off, and so it's almost like an
00:22:24
unconscious relief, isn't it?
00:22:27
Speaker 2: It is yeah, and then it builds up.
00:22:29
Speaker 1: Like you're like, oh, I'm going to do it again.
00:22:31
Like, even though you didn't think necessarily, I was feeling
00:22:37
this and so I did this.
00:22:39
You don't necessarily have that experience.
00:22:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of people say, like, you know, it helps
00:22:45
me unwind.
00:22:46
Right Now I'm not saying if anyone's listening, just forget
00:22:50
the word addiction for a minute and just say, you know, okay,
00:22:54
well, if that helps me unwind, it's like okay, that's okay.
00:22:57
But why are we wound up in the first place?
00:22:59
Why are we not able to unwind here first and then make a
00:23:04
decision out here?
00:23:06
And then, like you said, that can be so subtle, and the subtle
00:23:08
is it creeps in so quickly and then it becomes a habit.
00:23:12
It's just like that snowball going down the mountain.
00:23:15
But if I'm leaning on something external, let's say to unwind,
00:23:20
then I'm not dealing with the part of me that's wound up.
00:23:22
And so every day that I do that , I don't deal with the wound up
00:23:26
part.
00:23:26
So the wound up part's kind of getting tighter and tighter and
00:23:29
bigger and bigger, yeah, and so it actually becomes more of a
00:23:33
crutch then, because not only it's a habit, but I have more of
00:23:35
my kind of wound up self in there.
00:23:37
So, once again, this solution to the problem is working to an
00:23:41
extent.
00:23:41
So we keep going back to it and it sounds like your experience
00:23:44
is one that you know.
00:23:45
It can be really subtle and then it's not until you create a
00:23:48
little bit of distance from it that you can start to see it
00:23:51
more clearly.
00:23:52
You know I've worked with clients alcohol is a good one,
00:23:57
you've brought it up already because it's so socially
00:23:58
acceptable who've had, you know, been alcoholics, and some of
00:24:01
them, you know, won't drink ever again.
00:24:03
Some of them have been able to drink responsibly.
00:24:05
You know it's a question.
00:24:06
I get a lot.
00:24:07
I still enjoy a glass of wine.
00:24:08
I drink responsibly, even with my background, because we can
00:24:14
create different relationships with these behaviours because we
00:24:16
can create different relationships with these
00:24:18
behaviours.
00:24:23
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about that actually because,
00:24:25
as you've mentioned, you know we see that kind of you have an
00:24:28
addict.
00:24:28
They're doing a bad thing, they just need to stop the bad thing
00:24:32
.
00:24:32
And you know you've mentioned that you had an addiction and
00:24:40
you also talked about it not being something you fix or the
00:24:43
person doesn't need to be fixed.
00:24:44
Do you feel like you go the process that you've gone through
00:24:49
and the work that you continue to do on yourself personally?
00:24:54
Do you feel like you're fixed?
00:25:00
Like what?
00:25:01
Do you feel like an addict anymore?
00:25:04
oh no, absolutely not do you think you would ever have any
00:25:07
kind of addictive behaviors on that spectrum still, or do you
00:25:10
feel like you have the tools in your toolkit now that that's
00:25:14
just not a thing?
00:25:16
Speaker 2: I don't know what the future holds.
00:25:17
That's what people say.
00:25:18
So would you ever do ice again or this?
00:25:21
Speaker 1: because they say, once an addict.
00:25:22
Speaker 2: The thing is I don't care yeah, right you know I
00:25:27
highly doubt that would happen if I was to sit here and go
00:25:29
let's look at my future in the life I've got now.
00:25:31
I fucking highly doubt it.
00:25:32
But it's not something I think about, right, whereas you know
00:25:36
there's another saying.
00:25:36
It's like whatever we renounce, we're tied to for life.
00:25:39
And so it's like, let's say it say it's alcohol, and so I'm
00:25:43
never going to drink again, and then my whole day revolves
00:25:45
around not drinking.
00:25:46
So it's like what am I focusing on all day?
00:25:48
Not drinking?
00:25:49
What about the life that I want to create?
00:25:51
What's happening in my life now ?
00:25:52
So you know, I have a drink when I.
00:25:56
You know, before I went through my journey, if I started
00:25:59
drinking, I wouldn't stop drinking until I couldn't drink
00:26:03
anymore, or I would go and get drugs.
00:26:05
You know, now I can have a glass, maybe a glass and a half
00:26:09
of wine, or, if I'm catching up and watching the footy with some
00:26:12
friends, a couple of beers, then I stop and go home to my
00:26:14
family.
00:26:14
It's like did alcohol change?
00:26:16
It's like it's still the same substance as before.
00:26:20
Yeah, something has obviously changed within me, but it also
00:26:24
takes a level of like radical honesty.
00:26:26
I know that if I ever noticed any type of justification or
00:26:33
tendency or anything coming up, then I would pull myself up
00:26:36
immediately.
00:26:36
Yeah, but that's like because I'll, we can justify anything,
00:26:40
us human beings, especially those who've had addictions.
00:26:42
Like you get so good at bullshitting yourself, so like I
00:26:48
don't like if someone listens to this and goes, oh great, I
00:26:50
can, you know, one day drink again after getting over this
00:26:53
addiction.
00:26:53
It's like if you make that the goal, you've already messed up.
00:26:55
Speaker 1: We've talked about addiction and you've told us a
00:26:58
lot about that.
00:26:59
We talk about like where does it come from or why right?
00:27:05
So um, the certification I recently did was the
00:27:09
trauma-informed training and the uh, the.
00:27:13
The technique that you've developed in body processing is
00:27:17
about healing former um with specific um tools.
00:27:26
Trauma seems to be a word that is showing up more right I think
00:27:36
that with so many things, it's like we, those words start
00:27:40
showing up because we start to become more aware of oh shit,
00:27:45
this stuff's happening, like, and we become more, we
00:27:49
understand it more.
00:27:49
But could you talk us through?
00:27:52
Like, what does it mean?
00:27:55
What is trauma?
00:27:57
Speaker 2: yeah, yeah.
00:27:58
So it's basically a survival response.
00:28:00
So so what happens in a moment of trauma?
00:28:03
Yeah, I use words like undigested life experience,
00:28:05
emotional imprints, because I've been doing this for years now
00:28:09
and you do.
00:28:10
It's just becoming a buzzword and the word keeps popping up
00:28:13
and even I have a like, even though I teach trauma stuff, I
00:28:16
get a little bit aversion to it, you know, because I don't want
00:28:18
people.
00:28:18
It's great, it's a great sign that it's coming more into the
00:28:22
group consciousness, but also it can get a bit muddy the waters
00:28:26
and people can get turned off and that kind of thing.
00:28:32
But essentially we have a moment of perceived threat where our
00:28:33
nervous system goes on to alert.
00:28:34
And I say perceived threat because you know we live in a
00:28:37
particularly safe world right now, physically right.
00:28:41
So this is very old circuitry.
00:28:42
You know, living in hunter-gatherer tribes,
00:28:45
literally not knowing where our next meal comes from, dangerous
00:28:48
animals that can kill us at any moment, other tribes looking to
00:28:50
kill us as well, all of that kind of stuff serious threat.
00:28:54
So nowadays we don't have much of a threat to our physical self
00:28:57
, although we do in some periods of our life, but mainly to our
00:29:00
psychological self.
00:29:01
You know our identity, our self-worth and the system deems
00:29:05
that just as detrimental as a threat to our physical self.
00:29:09
So that could mean like fierce rejection.
00:29:11
When we're a kid, you know the threat to our attachment.
00:29:14
Attachment to our caregiver equals our survival, and we will
00:29:17
always choose attachment over authenticity, because that's
00:29:21
without our parents, when we're baby and an infant, we die.
00:29:23
It's as simple as that.
00:29:25
And so what happens?
00:29:26
We have a moment of perceived threat where the nervous system
00:29:29
goes on alert.
00:29:29
People have probably heard the fight, flight and freeze modes
00:29:34
of our nervous system because our nervous system is trying to
00:29:37
deal with how do I best escape this threat and survive this
00:29:41
moment?
00:29:42
We have a lot of emotional stress that comes up can be
00:29:45
guilt, shame, anger, fear, sadness, hurt.
00:29:47
A whole mixture of them comes up when we don't have a stable
00:29:51
resource in place so somebody to help us come back into a calm
00:29:54
state and this is most people especially.
00:29:58
We speak about developmental trauma a lot in our teachings
00:30:02
and it's really a symptom of the West and the way that we raise
00:30:04
children and have been taught to raise children.
00:30:07
Our parents aren't particularly okay with their emotions, so
00:30:10
it's certainly in no space to help the kids with theirs when
00:30:15
there's not a stable resource in place and I'll give an example
00:30:17
so this will make it a little bit clearer then we store that
00:30:21
stress in the body never really leaves us, and we create some
00:30:26
narratives, some beliefs about ourself or the world, and we do
00:30:29
that in order to keep ourselves safe in the future, you know.
00:30:34
So it's kind of like, you know, if we're in a hunter-gatherer
00:30:37
tribe and there was a bush and one day a sabre-toothed tiger
00:30:39
jumped out of the bush and I barely escaped, I ran away and
00:30:42
just got away, then any bush that looks similar to that will
00:30:46
have this response yeah, it's to keep the system alive.
00:30:49
You know, at the end of the day , you know, our wiring as a
00:30:52
human being isn't to make us happy and thriving, it's to try
00:30:55
and keep us bloody alive long enough to procreate as much as
00:30:57
possible.
00:30:58
We're just animals at the end of the day.
00:31:00
And so what happens?
00:31:02
You know, obviously, things like, you know, sexual abuse,
00:31:05
physical abuse, veterans being away at war and witnessing and
00:31:08
possibly doing horrific things.
00:31:10
These are serious traumas that we deal with, but they can come
00:31:13
in very subtle forms as well, and this is important to note.
00:31:16
You know, one example that myself and Matt use is.
00:31:19
You know we can have a child, you know, put their hand up in
00:31:22
grade two.
00:31:23
You know class and they don't normally answer any questions,
00:31:27
but they feel like they've got the answer to this one and they
00:31:28
put their hand up and whatever the answer is is maybe wrong or
00:31:30
didn't come out right, and the entire class, you know, starts
00:31:33
laughing at them and they're looking around and seeing
00:31:36
everybody laughing at them.
00:31:37
The human being looks for a resource in that moment, someone
00:31:40
they can connect with, even their best friends laughing at
00:31:43
them like, oh man, let me look at the teacher.
00:31:45
Surely they'll be my resource.
00:31:46
The teacher's laughing at them and so they're unresourced, in a
00:31:49
highly emotional state, and maybe this child is just wired a
00:31:52
little bit more sensitively when it comes to their nervous
00:31:54
system.
00:31:55
So they leave that still heightened.
00:31:57
Yeah, they're still massively embarrassed, they're fearful.
00:31:59
Shame all of these stories going on.
00:32:01
And they go home, and they go home to a family who isn't
00:32:05
resourced either.
00:32:06
They don't have a safe space where they can open up and
00:32:08
communicate what they went through, cry in front of their
00:32:11
mum or dad and let them hold them and come back down to a
00:32:13
regulated state.
00:32:14
So they store that okay, and maybe they create a story that
00:32:18
you know I can't speak up, it's not safe for me to speak up,
00:32:26
it's not safe for me to speak up , it's not safe for me to
00:32:28
express my needs, and then we think that, oh well, that
00:32:29
happened in grade two, it doesn't mean anything.
00:32:30
20 years later, you know I could be in a relationship and
00:32:31
my needs aren't being met and I need to speak up because it's
00:32:33
not fair in the relationship and I go to speak to my partner.
00:32:36
As soon as I go to speak up, it gets sucked back in.
00:32:39
All that fear and shame start to come up.
00:32:41
Maybe I'm in a situation at work where I need to go in and speak
00:32:44
to my boss about something, speak up and express my needs.
00:32:46
I go to knock on that door.
00:32:47
No fear, shame, walk away.
00:32:50
That's an emotional imprint or a trauma becoming active all of
00:32:54
those years later.
00:32:55
Now, us as human beings, we've got dozens of these going on.
00:32:59
You know I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough, I don't trust
00:33:03
men, I don't trust women.
00:33:04
You know it's not safe to be me , I don't deserve to be happy.
00:33:07
All of these things going on, with the emotional imprints as
00:33:10
well, and so we're kind of always on alert.
00:33:18
Speaker 1: You talk about talk therapy, right.
00:33:20
So a lot of people the majority , would you say, although it's
00:33:24
changing use talk therapy to help people process these
00:33:29
experiences.
00:33:29
But what you do is embodied processing the technique that
00:33:36
you've developed where you talk about actually feeling those
00:33:41
feelings again and exploring what it feels like in your body
00:33:44
and being able to process the emotions through your body, not
00:33:47
through your head.
00:33:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like we're trying to include everything.
00:33:52
You know, the reason we call it embodied processing is we're
00:33:55
trying to get people back into their experience of being, you
00:33:58
know, in here, in everywhere.
00:34:00
You know, because most of society lives up here basically
00:34:03
interpreting and cognizing experience and just chatter,
00:34:07
chatter, chatter, chatter.
00:34:08
So now, the reason for that is because as soon as they stop and
00:34:11
come into their bodies, it's not a comfortable place to be,
00:34:14
so no wonder we pop back up to the mind, and so what we're
00:34:17
doing is really trying to help people get back into their
00:34:19
bodies and have that experience.
00:34:21
So, yeah, embodied processing, somatic therapy, which means in
00:34:24
the body, but it also includes the mind.
00:34:26
A lot of people think we do poo poo talk therapy and we probably
00:34:29
do a little bit, but all we're saying is like that should be
00:34:33
part of the overall picture.
00:34:35
You know, um, because right now the a lot of people coming
00:34:39
forward to getting help for their mental health or their
00:34:41
addictions or whatever they've got going on their stress.
00:34:43
They'll automatically go and get a referral from a GP, and so
00:34:46
the two modes of treatment are medication and talk therapy.
00:34:49
So that's kind of if it's imagine going to a restaurant
00:34:51
and you just got those two options on the menu.
00:34:53
They'd want to be pretty fucking good for me to go back
00:34:55
to that restaurant.
00:35:06
What we want to see is many more options on the menu.
00:35:08
There are so many different ways.
00:35:08
We're all a little bit different.
00:35:08
I love a holistic approach where we're getting help from a
00:35:09
whole range of people.
00:35:10
We're working with a PT to help with our physical health and
00:35:11
our exercise and our nutrition, a somatic therapist working on
00:35:12
the underlying traumatic imprints.
00:35:13
I might be seeing a naturopath as well.
00:35:15
It's all kinesiologists.
00:35:17
All this stuff's fantastic.
00:35:18
I'm an advocate for more options on the menu.
00:35:21
So I think talk therapy has its place.
00:35:23
But you know, I think we have the data that for a lot of these
00:35:28
deeper seated issues, it can put band-aids over broken legs
00:35:32
for a while, but we've got to get to the roots to truly heal
00:35:37
if this episode has, uh, piqued your interest, please don't
00:35:42
forget to go check out the show notes, find the link to the
00:35:46
center of healing, check out their free courses, have a look
00:35:49
at the membership.
00:35:51
Speaker 1: I think that these guys are doing amazing work in
00:35:54
the world and I just wanted to get their message out there.
00:35:57
So I really appreciate you listening and, as I said, go
00:36:01
check it out.
00:36:02
You won't be disappointed until next time.
00:36:05
Bye for now.
00:36:06
Appreciate you listening and, as I said, go check it out.
00:36:07
You won't be disappointed Until next time.
00:36:08
Bye for now.