Growing Tall Poppies

Beyond the Hero Complex: Embracing Open-Hearted Healing and Sustainable Strength

• Dr Natalie Green • Season 2 • Episode 56

Share episode

Send us a Message to connect

In this deeply moving and insightful episode of Growing Tall Poppies, Dr. Nat Green welcomes the compassionate and wise Dr. Mark Seton—a researcher, educator, consultant for Sense Connexion and founder of the Embodied Vulnerability Ecosystem. With a background in working with actors, creatives, and helping professionals, Dr. Seton shares his profound personal story of trauma and recovery, offering listeners a rich exploration into the power of embodied healing, resilience, and identity restoration.

Mark courageously recounts his own lived experience with trauma, including an abusive relationship and its impact on his mental health, ultimately leading to his breakthrough realisation: our bodies are not betrayers—they’re messengers. Through this lens, Mark introduces the idea of relational resilience, self-compassion, and joy as medicine, while debunking the myth that professionals must always be strong, heroic, and self-sacrificing.

Listeners are guided through a powerful play-based exercise that encourages reconnecting with the body's wisdom, evoking joy and childlike creativity. Mark also outlines the critical need to de-acclimatise from the “peak performance” addiction in high-stakes professions and instead foster sustainable, embodied practices that honour both vulnerability and recovery.

This episode is a heart-opening reminder for therapists, creatives, and care professionals to embrace their open-hearted nature without burnout, martyrdom, or isolation. It’s an invitation into a new, empowering paradigm—one that is both deeply human and profoundly healing.

🧠 Key Topics Discussed:

  • Dr. Seton’s lived experience of trauma, isolation and breakdown
  • The power of body wisdom and embodied vulnerability in recovery
  • The myth of the hero-professional and the cost of emotional suppression
  • Practical tools for grounding, including a joy-based body movement exercise
  • The concept of relational resilience and why healing is never a solo journey
  • Navigating the “peak performance trap” and the need for de-acclimatisation
  • Helping actors, doctors, and professionals reconnect with identity beyond roles
  • Insights from Dr. Seton’s current research on Open-Hearted Professionals
  • Reframing vulnerability as strength and openness as wisdom

Dr. Mark Seton is on a mission to foster compassionate, embodied, and sustainable practices for open-hearted professionals. His current research explores how vulnerability can be redefined as open-heartedness and strength.

Email mc.seton@bigpond.com

LinkedIn

Facebook

 📊 Take the Survey for Open-Hearted Professionals: [Here]

Mark also has a foundational service, called Your Professional Uniqueness providing a Fascinate© assessment and 60 min coachin

If this episode resonates with you then I'd love for you to hit SUBSCRIBE so you can keep updated with each new episode as soon as it's released and we'd be most grateful if you would give us a RATING as well. You can also find me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/drnatgreen/ or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DrNatalieGreen

Intro and Outro music: Inspired Ambient by Playsound.

Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be deemed or treated as psychological treatment or to replace the need for psychological treatment.

Dr Nat Green:

Welcome to the Growing Tall Poppies Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Nat Green, and I'm so excited to have you join me as we discuss what it means to navigate your way through post-traumatic growth and not just survive, but to thrive after trauma. Through our podcast, we will explore ways for you to create a life filled with greater purpose, self-awareness, and a deep inner peace. Through integrating the many years of knowledge and professional experience, as well as the wisdom of those who have experienced trauma firsthand. We'll combine psychology accelerated approaches. Coaching and personal experience to assist you, to learn, to grow and to thrive. I hope to empower you to create deeper awareness and understanding and stronger connections with yourself and with others, whilst also paving the way for those who have experienced trauma and adversity to reduce their suffering and become the very best versions of themselves. In order to thrive. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. I'm really pleased and grateful today to bring you our next guest on the Growing Tall Poppies podcast. It's my absolute pleasure and privilege to welcome a lovely man who I met recently through an event for podcasters, and he has experienced and overcome considerable trauma and adversity throughout his life, and has so generously agreed to come and chat with us today about his experience. So let me start by introducing Mark to you all. Dr. Mark Seton is an honorary. Research associate in the discipline of theater and performance studies with the University of Sydney Australia. He's also an educator and consultant for Sense Connexion, which he established to empower open-hearted professionals such as actors, lawyers, and health practitioners whose capacity for empathy and sensitivity is crucial to their effectiveness and success. He was amazingly awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2009 to conduct a study tour of actor training healthcare practices in the UK. Arising from this study, the Equity Foundation in collaboration with the University of Sydney initiated an internationally groundbreaking actor's wellbeing study in 2013. And Mark is a founding member of the Australian Society for Performing Arts Healthcare, a board member on the International Performing Arts Medicine Association and Chair of the Human Research Ethics Committee of the Australian University of Theology. So that's quite a broad, range of things there, Mark. So welcome. It's so great to have you here.

Dr Mark Seton:

Thanks Natalie, and delightful to first meet you at the podcast and now to share this longer conversation. Looking forward to it.

Dr Nat Green:

Excellent. And as I said, it's a delight for me to have you here. So can we start, I know I gave a bit of an introduction, but can we start with you giving us a brief introduction of who you are and what you do in the world these days?

Dr Mark Seton:

Yes. And I like the way you frame that because who I am, I feel I'm constantly becoming more of myself, celebrating my uniqueness the things I do as you've already indicated in the area of education. I do teaching of actors, particularly in areas of wellbeing. But I also look at things like. History of theater and history of screen production those sorts of areas. But I have a growing interest in researching and advocating for the wellbeing, not only of creatives who often are subject to sacrificing themselves for their art. But I've noticed through my engagement with people like lawyers through the law wellness network of the last 12 or so years they too struggle to find that balance of being connected to others, empathetic with others, and yet also having those healthy boundaries. And also they encounter vicarious trauma. And so I felt this growing connection between myself and other professionals who maybe have encountered trauma or by necessity are working with people who have been traumatized. And bringing my own life journey of trauma and in the ways I've found resilience through my own vulnerability, that's what really drives me now is I want to provide more and more of that insight and service to professionals in that area.

Dr Nat Green:

Oh, I love this so much. And you touched on so many things that are of huge interest to me. And as you know, I've pivoted a little of late and we are really looking at what I think, and you've beautifully articulated, is a growing need to recognize the vicarious trauma. That we often aren't speaking about that when you are in a role where you are helping people and giving so much of yourself to others as you've done for so long, and the people we work with have done, I firmly believe that vicarious trauma is such a huge thing that is often underplayed, downplayed or just completely ignored, and we don't speak about it. So I'm excited for this conversation.

Dr Mark Seton:

Indeed. And I might add I just love the way you've framed it in terms of roles and hence why my beginnings, this area in the area of acting. So actors take on roles Yes. Roles that have encountered trauma. So the, that the body doesn't know the difference between fiction and reality. And so actors playing out traumatizing roles. Become traumatized and wow. Yeah. Often this has not been appreciated. In fact I wanted to provoke more discussion in the theatrical world. So I created a term post dramatic stress as my provocation to say there's post traumatic stress, which sadly has not been taken seriously in the past. You know, it used to be identified after World War I as just an issue of some, you know, people who just weren't up to being effective soldiers. Yes. Rather than recognizing as human beings. And just as it's been really hard to support people who experience either trauma directly or vicariously. Via witnessing others traumatization. It's been hard to advocate for that because it wasn't taken seriously. And so I wanted to say, I reckon it's also happening with actors as well, and we need to do more research into that area. And that, fortunately, has been done now and there's now a whole emerging conversation and practical tools to help actors prepare for traumatic roles and then debrief from those roles and destress from those roles as well. So yeah, the whole notion of vicarious trauma, taking on a role, letting go of a role, this is what I'm fascinated by.

Dr Nat Green:

What a fascinating path to navigate. Really. I hadn't even thought of that. That when you take on the role that. Your nervous system doesn't know the difference. Doesn't know whether you are experiencing it or pretending to experience it, and all of that trauma and those experiences would absolutely be stuck in your nervous system.

Dr Mark Seton:

And indeed our act of wellbeing study of 2013 found that at least 40% of actors who we surveyed and we had 768 participate in the study. So 40% of them actively acknowledged that they had troubles with debriefing from traumatizing roles. You know, while the other two thirds it's not an issue, maybe they've never had to do a traumatic role. But for those, yes. 40% it, and that was across stage and screen production. Sometimes people say, oh understandably, in the stage production, you are living the role for six weeks or maybe years if you're doing a musical theater. Such roles as playing traumatized characters in like Miss Saigon or the many opera women who die at the end of operas. These, you know, it surprised people when we put out the results that actually musical theater has a lot of trauma. And you wouldn't associate musical theater with trauma. But it's just one of the areas in which actors have difficulty in letting go and debriefing from their roles that they play.

Dr Nat Green:

And I guess that comes with someone who's really good at their job.

Dr Mark Seton:

Yes. That if

Dr Nat Green:

a good actor will take on that whole persona, the personality, everything, fully embrace that role. So it does it's part of then who they are and who they become. So it's so important that they learn a process or a way to separate themselves from that role and debrief at the end.

Dr Mark Seton:

And indeed, what I've found is that actually we need to review the way in which people believe they need to create character even before. The character they create might have trauma. How they create the character will determine how effectively they can let go of the character. And I think that's important because then when we look at other professionals, how they have trained to be an empathetic partner in, in support if they've been trained in particular ways that don't allow them to let go, that's an issue as well. So it's not just about the debriefing, it's about the preparation as well. At least that's been my lived experience.

Dr Nat Green:

Yes.

Dr Mark Seton:

Yeah.

Dr Nat Green:

It's definitely, and then we look as well as not just someone who's taking on a role or being trained, like I mentioned that you worked with lawyers, with actors, but helping professionals. So I know as a psychologist in a past life, my background was very much, that was my role and it was very much my identity.

Dr Mark Seton:

Because

Dr Nat Green:

I took it so seriously and I feel that I was born to make a difference and help people. And it very much became my role and my identity, but there really was not, you know, and I'm talking 35 years ago when I was trained in that role, that there wasn't an acknowledgement of the vicarious trauma and the impact it would have. Those realizations came later. And what we often see is that people get into certain professions because they're drawn to it, because of that empathy and those character traits that they wanna do something to help people and make a difference.

Dr Mark Seton:

Yes. Yeah. Often our own woundedness from our. Past

Dr Nat Green:

Absolutely.

Dr Mark Seton:

Becomes a thing we both understand profoundly but can also get still caught up in. And so it's that and as you say, I think identity is a really crucial factor if we are dependent on our role, our identity, rather being this rescuer helper or a rather than our identity being just me as a person prior to any agenda. Yes. Then we get that role confusion, empathy, confusion and that undid me for a significant amount of time before I came to some new insights around that shift.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah, absolutely. And I know we spoke the other day when we were preparing for this, so would you be okay if we talk a little bit now about, yeah. I'd love you to share a bit of an overview of your trauma and what has happened for you, because honestly, I think this story is so important, both what happened and the lessons you learned and. How you've worked on moving forward?

Dr Mark Seton:

Yeah. It's it was a relationship that I chose to become a part of that took me and my partner into a world of uncertainty and trauma and violence and many years of pain and isolation. So it's not like I was in a particular event as rather a relationship. So that's probably good to a way to set it up. I met a girl, I fell in love with her and possibly part of that helper that being in tune with the pain of another Yes. Possibly it was even happening then that I sense something in her was troubled in need of care and empathy. Whatever. I identified I was going to be the person the hero, the savior who who understood her, could care for her, could be with her. And that's how our relationship started. And gradually yeah, we became a couple there was an early warning sign that I was actually out of my depth in the dynamics of the relationship when I was and I can't remember all the details, whatever reason I was choosing, just to have a bit of a break from the relationship. It was a fairly intense relationship. And she was having trouble and she phoned me and we spoke and she wanted me to come over and comfort her. And I said, no, I really can't do that. And then she threatened suicide. So I went and spent the time with her. So

Dr Nat Green:

of course that of course you did, because of course I did. That's who you are and what you would do. Yeah. And for someone you care about not knowing

Dr Mark Seton:

other strategies around, yeah. Suicide ideation and so on. That, and that just pulled me in. So that very threat of suicide, which got repeated at other points. In the relationship was one of the reasons why I could not escape this relationship that I could see was not healthy, was not mutually co productive. And this is where I, you know, only in hindsight discovered this cycle of distress that could lead to violence. Was that whenever, we had a disagreement about how we were perceiving the way things were in our attempt to form a relationship and a lifestyle ahead for the two of us as two young people with different kinds of career aspirations. We'd have those times and then when there'd be conflict, increasingly I needed to see the world her way, and that if I had particular feelings, no, my feelings were inaccurate, they were wrong. It's her feelings that mattered. And so now, and if I dared to challenge that, then things would escalate to initially verbal violence and then later on within the couple of years, physical violence.

Dr Nat Green:

Okay.

Dr Mark Seton:

And then after those moments of violence, then there'd be the kind of remorse. On her part, my part in reacting, and we come back to this, what's sometimes called the honeymoon phase, where Yeah. All is well between us. And we can just get on with life and peculiarly. We are the only ones who understand each other, which isolates us Yes. From family and friends. Who increasingly can't be with us, connect with us in the same kind, in a healthier, interdependent way, rather than this codependency that we have now established for each other. Yes. Very much. Oh my goodness. What a place to be in. After then we got married. We were very fortunate that I had. Relatively stable income for a time. And indeed one of my jobs was caretaking university accommodation. So that while it didn't pay me, it provided accommodation I worked, was endeavoring to work in the creative arts. Creative arts, and not the best career if you wanna have a stable income. No. And my wife had come from a background that was far more stable. I won't identify what kind of that was, but there was clash and conflict that was not gonna get easily resolved. And then gradually I was persuaded that, you know, maybe the arts wasn't where I was gonna have a. Secure life, a stable life for us, and that maybe should look an alternative career, which I started to pursue. But her health circumstances, the dynamics of the relationship, made that harder and harder until eventually we lost that accommodation. And so in the last six to 12 months, we were effectively without a real home like we were. Bed surf. What's it?

Dr Nat Green:

Couch surfing.

Dr Mark Seton:

Couch surfing. Bed surfing. Felt like it couch surfing.

Dr Nat Green:

A lot of destabilisation

Dr Mark Seton:

Yeah. And the violence. And I was now running away from home because we'd been advised by a GP that maybe one day I might hit out in defense, she would be hurt, police would be called. It was an age 30 years ago where it was usually the man who was the perpetrator of domestic violence in my case. It was the other way around. And there were no resources that I was aware of for men running away from domestic violence. So I was using chairs at Central Station hotel lobbies libraries to catch up on sleep. And but I would always go back.

Dr Nat Green:

Can I just ask then, as you know, as you said 30 years ago, this, it was not spoken about. Even domestic violence from a male to a female wasn't really spoken about, but for that reverse, for that female towards a male was very rarely even thought that things would happen like that. So did you talk to anyone about it, or you just kept it to yourself?

Dr Mark Seton:

So we were seeing psychologists or so psychiatrists at one point. So we were trying to get counseling along the way and gp. So they were acknowledging the problem. They were pointing to why my partner needed to stop reacting in the way that she was reacting. But none of those things made for any long-term change. And we had friends who over the years we acquired and at one point those friends provided a safe place for me to be, for a night or so. But she was coming out to the front of the house and yelling for me to come out, and they were bringing the police to take her away. And so all of that. It was just a mess. Yeah, it sounds, and so there, as you say, there, there were no resources. And there, while there was the listening ear of various counselors, close friends probably the, one of the contributors to my finally breaking free this was seeing a counselor, a fresh counselor around actually vocational changes that I was okay endeavoring to make. And that person said, this isn't really what your problem is about the vocational changes. And somehow I think that gave me permission to share with this person things that maybe I hadn't had to share with others. They gave me a bit of a new perspective that effectively my relationship had died. So that was a very confronting thing to for me particularly as a person of faith as well. So I have a Christian faith as did my partner so for us to consider failure separation, these were things very foreign to the kind of church world that we had grown up with. So those were huge value things that I was now facing when I made the decision to separate.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah. So let's go to that point then. So back then, yeah. You finally were able to share a little bit more with someone independent who wasn't working with the two of you who could give you that new perspective and you hadn't seen it. Through those eyes. What happened then when you recognized that and were able to make that decision to do something different?

Dr Mark Seton:

I think there were two factors that contributed to being able to make that next move. So one was a time, just a couple of months prior to breaking away was having a kind of a quiet moment down in a park for myself. And just feeling the immensely, the burden of this responsibility and not knowing what to do and and really feeling a sense of God or higher power. However, people want to understand that. But saying that actually I was created to be me and not to try and be someone else that was. Very profound. So in terms of identity, yes, you can see why identity is crucial. So that was a really, that was a key unlocked that I should enjoy and celebrate being me and not try and fit in, pretend to be someone that I wasn't. Yeah. And that was causing me too much distress. And then the other thing that happened around the same time was I something that I had loved many years ago, which was singing and choral work music, there was a new opportunity to learn how to teach acapella singing gospel. Or African American gospel singing. And I had confidence many years ago to run a choir. And so the opportunity to run a new choir, having been trained, fed my soul in the way that I hadn't experienced for the preceding seven or eight years. And I believe that. Doing something that I enjoyed that reminded me of my own self-worth combined with owning my own identity and the inside of my relationship has died effectively. And I could start to grieve that. Yes, those three factors gave me the power, I believe on a Wednesday morning when my partner and I were just heading away from one meeting and she said, we need to now go and see the doctor and get a fresh new started. And I thought, here we go again. This is the cycle. Yeah. She went through the gates of a railway station. I said, I'm not coming with you. And I ran.

Dr Nat Green:

Oh wow. For my

Dr Mark Seton:

life. And how

Dr Nat Green:

brave really that,

Dr Mark Seton:

that was. Yeah I was hypervigilant. You know, part of trauma is hypervigilance. Absolutely. By this time I was very hypervigilant and and this was the day I actually went and found the counselor with whom I'd had these initial insights and just kind of said, this is where I'm at now. And I felt okay about that break. And then I contacted my parents for the first time to actually tell them the truth, to tell them why I had been this estranged son, and that they never really knew why I'd changed in my behavior, in my values the way I had. And I went to stay with them. And that was the beginning of my new life. That was, you can imagine there were post effect complexities, but that was the turning point.

Dr Nat Green:

Wow. And really the courage, I want to acknowledge the courage that took. Yep. And that ability now to recognize Yep. Your identity.

Dr Mark Seton:

Yes.

Dr Nat Green:

You reconnected with your values. Yes. What deep down was important, and it sounds like you did that through that creative part of you that hadn't been allowed to exist in the way that you naturally. Definitely had all your life prior to the relationship.

Dr Mark Seton:

Yes. So all those things fed that. And then as I reflected on how did I ever get to the violence space and then there was a lot of, you know, need to deal with my tendency towards codependency being the hero, being the rescuer. That was a pattern that I now needed to consciously address in ways I'd never done before. So that was a ongoing part of healing and counseling support and so on. But it was a, I recognize now the need to have interdependency Yeah. Rather than codependency. So there's a lot of new learning I needed to take as I free myself from this relationship.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah. So when you talk about you made the decision you ran for your life, how long. Was that period between that happening and when you felt that you were safe in inverted commas when you felt a bit safer to move on and be you Yep. And live the life you wanted. What sort of timeframe was that?

Dr Mark Seton:

Oh, it was a few years. It was a few years and I think various choices I made that were about exercising my independence. Because I was now needing to find I didn't have a job'cause I hadn't had a job. I'd been actually planning to train for ministry, ordained ministry. Okay. Prior to this that was not gonna work as a divorced person really in that sort of scenario. So it was starting afresh and I had. When I was thinking of making all these vocational changes with my partner at the time I had put in a application for a combined arts law degree at University of New South Wales, for which I was accepted. So I actually had a sense of a new path. Reconnecting with my arts foundation. So that was. Feeding me as well. Yeah, I did various short-term courses that also reaffirmed my creative connectedness. And so yes, I think it was around those things. It was then developing new friendships and indeed a new relationship. But now recognizing what I wasn't gonna go back to, this is a meeting of equals rather than me being a rescuer. So learning about that and not falling into, and my new partner helping me not fall back into a codependent where I was just doing things that would please her and not, you know, what did I want? So I would now be clear about what my needs were. I'm learning a new way of being in relationship, and that was important because for me, being resilient. In my vulnerability as I like to phrase it, has been a big learning over those few years and has continued. How can I be have relationships again, friendships and intimate relationships again without losing my sense of self without feeling I have to disconnect in order to be safe. I can now be safe, but I can also be open. And that's really important because I believe, you know, it's through our openness that we connect with others. And so we aren't these shut off things. And while it's appropriate, we have boundaries, I see them as now permeable, malleable boundaries that I can determine in relation to others. And so all of that reflection and lived experience happen over the few years. Immediately after the relationship broke off, I went and did a new degree. I'd never done a degree before, actually. So this is my, I was a mature age student, but this time I absolutely knew where I wanted to go with that degree. So that was in the theater and philosophy with my two majors.

Dr Nat Green:

So that lived experience really fueled your new direction. Definitely. And I love, and you've said it a couple of times, you've used the word vulnerability and I love that so much because, and this is something I see particularly in the area with helping professionals. We are very reluctant. It's almost like we have this perception that we need to be seen as strong. Yes. Together. We can't be seen as having any issues or being human really. That we're. Put ourselves on this pedestal and others often put us on that Yes. Pedestal. Yes. And it's so unrealistic. Yes. We are human. We will make mistakes, we will live through things and hopefully learn as we do that. So tell me a bit more about that vulnerability.

Dr Mark Seton:

So I'm a scholar, I'm a researcher, so I'm gonna own that part of me as well. Please do. I love the work of Margrit Shildrick and she wrote about vulnerability and she talked about it's an innate part of being human. So I feel like for those who want to not be vulnerable or think that it's a bad thing, we need to get over that.'cause I feel scholars like Margrit Shildrick have reaffirmed the innate. Essence of being vulnerable. We are vulnerable as human beings. But then I have a philosopher Rosalyn Diprose, who very nicely define vulnerability as the capacity to affect and be affected by the other. So the capacity to affect and be affected by the other. And you'll notice there's no value judgment there. It's not like that's a bad effect. It could be a bad effect or it could be a good effect. Like it's an, but it is just an effect and it's effect of my ability to affect you and others and you or others to affect me, that creates this circuit of vulnerability. And for actors, their willingness to affect and be affected by a text is what's required in order to be vulnerable and open to play that text out. That vulnerability and as you say, the perception that we have to, that somehow professional equals not being vulnerable or not being human. I see as a historical trap that we as a western culture have fallen into where we put human beings who happen to be trained in certain disciplines. We put them on a pedestal perhaps, to honor them, you know, the years of work they've done, the pay that they might attract.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah.

Dr Mark Seton:

And then we set them up for failure because they're now no longer feeling they can be a human being. They now have to be this professional who can make no mistakes. Who is almost above the law. Yeah. And then includes lawyers and. And they carry that burden of feeling. They must do it. So that sets them up for failure? Yes, definitely. Because they carry the burden and they will self-medicate to manage that. Burden through drugs, through alcohol, through whatever. And we feed that by elevating them. And so here we have a really unhealthy circle of codependency or Yes. Addictive kind of qualities. Rather than say bringing them back down and saying they're partners with us, our partners with us in healing. So it would be great for my doctor to be a human being who can partner with me in finding out what I need to do in terms of my health and wellbeing. They don't need to really position themself as the person who all has all the answers. I. Because that's actually not a human being. That's no. And the way that I attempt to, when I'm doing coaching and I can hear my client starting to elevate me, I will act actively say, no, I'm just a human being like you. I just happen to have some insights that maybe will be helpful to you and I'm delighted when they help you. And I'll make mistakes and I'll misjudge what I'm hearing you say and I'll need to apologize and we'll need to repair a relationship that's come a little wonky as soon time. But I find it so much of a relief to remind myself and to remind others that we're all human beings working hard to make meaning together. That's another. Key principle of working at to make meaning together. That's comes from complexity theory of Ralph Stacy. So I've been living out interweaving these values of we are innately vulnerable. We, vulnerability is simply the capacity to affect and be affected by the other, which I think we all need. Agreed. And in fact, we're, we are all partners in. The fact that I think Covid very aptly demonstrated how vulnerable we are because we all breathe air, and so that was a reminder that yes, we are vulnerable and to minimize vulnerability or to, I don't know, you know, that doesn't actually add up. But we can practice self-care. Perial boundaries. In fact, at the moment I'm researching what we as human bodies do at the cellular level ourselves are remarkably intelligent to know what to let in and what to let out.

Dr Nat Green:

And I think with that also adds weight to when you said the actors take on a role and the body gets confused. All that is at a cellular level too. Absolutely. That nervous system and cellular level that it's so easy to see how we can get confused. Yep. And how we can actually play such a huge part in challenging that.

Dr Mark Seton:

Yeah. And indeed. So I've now developed some practical activities to help actors how to better prepare and then debrief after taking on a traumatic role, which we may get to talk about. Yes,

Dr Nat Green:

yes, definitely. And I think as you were just saying then, I know you've got some really amazing little tricks that you're gonna share with us soon. Yep. So let's just look then, how do you think what you've been through and that experience has transformed your perspective on life, on relationships or personal values?

Dr Mark Seton:

Oh, yes. Yeah. It's a what a rich question. I think it's transformed my life in terms of understanding relationships in a more healthy way, which, and others have found, you know, I'm not the first to discover it. So understanding the difference between codependency and, in a sense, autonomy and interdependency. I have really come to appreciate and value our interdependency as human beings in the world. And the western notion of autonomy that you can just look after yourself has been challenged by some great feminist writers who talk about relational resilience. So I'm very excited by the work they've done and have embraced their discussion about that we actually can't even claim resilience just on our own. We need others to support us, nurture us keep us accountable and so on. So I think that's been profound impact on my life. I think also the work of a practice, and this actually feeds into what I'll be sharing interplay now. Interplay is a practice that was developed by two Americans about now. Probably about 40 years ago. And I started training in that practice about 25 years ago. And it's a practice of two dancer come theologian type people who didn't quite feel at home in the church world.'cause they didn't like dance, didn't feel quite at home at the times in the dance world'cause they didn't feel comfortable with religion. And they've crossed those worlds and they've brought movement and voice and song and storytelling and being playful and using these tools to help people connect with themselves and connect with each other. And so the tools that they developed and brought out to Australia, as I say about 25. So years ago, I discovered them at the beginning of my PhD, which is looking at the vulnerability of actors. And that was a remarkable liberation for me to really feel now embodied and connected in a even more profound way in terms of vulnerability. One of the key things that my teacher in interplay, who's one of the co-founders, because I was a scholar, love words, love critical thinking, but she really liberated me when she said, after observing my developing skills, and then she said I know you love working with words, but could you dance with your words? Ooh. And it was like, oh, yes, I could do that. So that, that opened up the floodgates. And she knows this. I've thanked her many times for that note saying, could you dance with your words? As that's provided a much more permeability, flexibility and honoring the primacy of play in my life, which I now pass on to others as well. So in a way, interdependency embodiment and play are core virtues, values that I seek to live out in my life and my relationships now.

Dr Nat Green:

Oh, I love that because how often, oh, you must see it as well, but I see it all the time that when I've been working with people who've been through trauma come out the other side, one thing that has become so disconnected is their capacity to have fun and to play. We've lost. It's almost like we've had to be so serious. Yes. Because of what we've gone through, that sense of responsibility and that not really wanting to be vulnerable. So we cut out that play and that fun. So now sounds like the perfect opportunity for us to have a little play. Oh yeah. And I'm going to put myself very vulnerably on the line, and I'd love to have you share what I could do, what could be a strategy for me and for all the listeners who have been through trauma or experiencing the vicarious trauma and are starting to think, oh, maybe I could learn something about this. How can you help me? What can you teach me to do? Be

Dr Mark Seton:

delighted, Natalie. And just picking up from that joy aspect of play, Dr. Brene Brown, who I suspect many of your listeners wouldn't be familiar with who my favorite

Dr Nat Green:

vulnerability researcher. And I was biting my tongue, not to say her, before

Dr Mark Seton:

I'll name her as well in the room. I but I was working on my stuff with vulnerability before she became public, so it's I'm just glad that she's there too. And it's become a face of that. But she talks about how the importance of leaning into joy. Yes. And so I see that playfulness is about part of that. Yes. What I'm gonna take us through and for your listeners just with that kind of caveat up front if this feels uncomfortable for you, just let it go. And maybe now's not the time to. To do that, but to again honor listening to ourselves and what I'm gonna do is gonna take you through what I use with actors and with lawyers have done this too. If that helps give permission to some people who are listening to go a lawyer wouldn't do that. I can say, actually, I have a whole bunch of lawyers who do this. I'm gonna take you through an activity and then I'll tell you how you'll use this activity, perhaps at the beginning of a time where you're gonna do some serious work, and then at the end of the time, so it's like a. Top and tail or a warmup and a cool down. So if you'd like to, and people listening at home, you can't see this, but we're gonna extend our arm just ahead in front of us and we're now just gonna do nice smooth movements with that hand and arm, wherever we like. There's no particular way we are going to go, but we're just doing nice smooth movements and now we're gonna do play with some jerky movements. So just letting that jerkiness, that awkwardness of our hand and arm. Do that jerkiness. And if your arm gets tired, you can swap over. And now we're gonna do slow movements with our hand and arm, slow movements. Just see how slow you can actually get with these movements. Now, fast movements and you can really play with fast movements and hand and arm. Okay. And now you're gonna stop wherever your arm and hand are, and you'll notice you've got a bit of a shape there with your hand and arm without thinking about it. Just change to a new shape with that hand and arm. And now change again and again. You are not letting yourself judge this, oh, this is not good enough, or whatever. You're just making a shape and again, and another shape, and now making contact with that hand and arm with part of your body. Just feel that connection to yourself and now making contact with another part of your body in connection to yourself. Okay, so just take a breath in and let out a sigh. Ah, wow. So those are the physical activities, so we'll just revisit that. Now we can do. Fast. We can do slow, we can do smooth, we can do jerky, we can freeze and hold a shape, and we can make contact with a part of our body. So what I'd now encourage, anyone who's just done those things is now put on a piece of instrumental music, not with words. We don't wanna be distracted by what the words are saying. We just want an instrumental music. Whatever instrumental music you just feel like connecting with them, going with, put on that piece of music, close your eyes and play with fast and slow, smooth and jerky holding stillness. Whatever you feel you, your body wants you to do in response or even counter to the music. And just do that three or four, five minutes at the end of it. Keep your eyes closed and just notice what that felt like. Particularly notice what you enjoyed, and you might then want to journal that down if you're by yourself. Journal that down what you noticed, and particularly what you enjoyed. We are really good at going, oh, I didn't trust myself enough, or, I got that wrong and I don't understand what you're trying to do. Let go of all that. What did you notice? What did you enjoy? Do that at the beginning of a whole lot of tasks. Then do it at the end. Now you might use the same piece of music and just see what you do with it. This time, maybe you now feel the need for a different kind of music, and that has been a foundational tool. I've worked with actors because they have given permission for their body. To do these handouts and they might do two hands. They might even do a full body dance, and they do that as a warmup and a cool down. It's like establishing your ground of being as you before you take on the role, and then you return to just you and the music and your body does the trick. The hand dance is one of the components of interplay and as a registered interplayer, I'm allowed to be able to use those tools in my practice.

Dr Nat Green:

And it was funny as I did that, I felt that sense of almost a rhythm and a flow going through me. And I feel even more grounded just sitting here now. And that's

Dr Mark Seton:

without the music.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah. And I didn't have the music on. So I have the music when I don't have people listening to my music.'cause it, that's may not be what they like to hear.

Dr Mark Seton:

Exactly. Yeah. By giving yourself permission to give what your body is needing by the selection of the music you choose. So you might choose something that's very melodic and peaceful or you might choose something that's really agitating and rocky kind of music. You know, different people, different needs listening to the body. Allowing the body. And that's why we avoid lyrics. Because it brings in the left hand side of the brain, I think. Where we're using text and words creative

Dr Nat Green:

part. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr Mark Seton:

And we want rather than the analytic. Yeah. Yeah. We wanna get into that away from the analytic with words and so on.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah. Oh, that, that's really helpful. And I'm sure that our listeners will have really found that of great interest and I'd love for them to send through some feedback. Yes. That would be lovely to see. To know how that felt, how felt for them. Yeah. Yeah. And I think any practical tool like that, that can help them to separate Yep. From that past stuff or the old stuff, or what else might be going on now and just get grounded in the here and now and have some joy in play.

Dr Mark Seton:

And it's really connected, like to your joy. Yes. What brings you joy, which I think so and so here we are feeding our innate self rather than prior to any identity we have in any role.

Dr Nat Green:

Or

Dr Mark Seton:

whatever. And

Dr Nat Green:

no expectations and no judgment. It's just, yeah. Going with what we need and what our. Body and soul need. Yeah. Rather than what we think it needs. Yes.'cause that cognitive level of conscious stuff just continues to shut off the unconscious level of what we know we need when we really, truly listen to our own bodies. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So tell me, do you think there's any specific qualities or personal attributes that you've noticed through your own lived experience, but also in the work that you're doing with all these people helping professionals, actors, lawyers, in the work that you are doing? Anything you'd see as key for moving from trauma and into post-traumatic growth?

Dr Mark Seton:

Yeah. Yes. I think a key thing is, one, yeah, one key thing is recognizing trauma is going to happen. So sorry about that. Yep. Any, anyone who's promising, here's the solution to trauma free, whatever. No, I'm sorry. We live in a world that is vulnerable and is subject to not only to human crises, but just natural crises that can then impact and traumatize us as well. So I think so that's when I've been writing around the work on, I say, when you experience this, yes, these are the things you need to consider. However given that's a given, if we are. Preparing our mind, heart, and soul and body to be flexible and playful and compassionate around these things, I think sets us up rather than the kind of world where we are still believing that our professionals have to be heroes and then end up becoming martyrs. Yes. That, that's setting us up for failure. And for prolonged. Trauma impacts because if our identity is caught up in being the hero, being the martyr, we then we're working at cross purposes where we are trying to be this super hero, not, we're not feeling we can say no, we're not saying we do need boundaries. We do need rest. We need recovery time from trauma. We need time for healing, we need time for renewal. We need to both acclimatize, I use the metaphor of climbing for peak performance. Yes. And I think this applies not only to actors, but I think any professional who wants to strive for peak performance. That peak performance is a pretty rarefied existence where everything is working at peak condition. You know, you're working in the top of your game. You can't sustain that for very long. And you can't live up there and there's at times a bit of a buzz in living up there, which can be very attractive, maybe even addictive I might propose. Yes. And that's where actors wanna live up in the heights of performance. And when they have to confront the post-production blues, which you actually do call this in acting post performance blues, rather than own the discomfort and the pain and process that through hand dances and various things they try to lift themselves back up into the buzz of the heights with self-medicating or try and manage the depression with self-medicating. Yeah. And this is where we end up with actors. Who are having issues with alcohol and other strategies. So we need to learn to acclimatize and then de acclimatize again. I see body wisdom teaches us this. The body can adapt to more rare idea when we are in our peak performance, but we really can't live up there. And most of our significant relationships are actually down here in the everyday of life. Actors need to know, after their role, they're gonna have to put out the washing or relate to their partner and their kids as themselves or, and their other roles as parent and so on. So we need skills to acclimatize and de acclimatize that will, I believe then enable us to manage the inevitable traumas that appear with the body's wisdom, skills. And remember the relational resilience skills Exactly. Or feed into this. So this in fact becomes an ecosystem. That's how I frame it as a you know, embodied vulnerability ecosystem that honors our vulnerability, our embodiedness, our interconnectedness, and our interdependency. And knows that we weren't meant to be these heroes come martyrs, but to be good professional human beings. I say to actors, you're not an actor. You're a human being who acts

Dr Nat Green:

Exactly. So you're not a

Dr Mark Seton:

doctor, you're a person who provides skills in healing and in fact, the good doctors probably are the ones who say, actually, I don't do, I just set up the healing environment for the body. The body is the thing that actually does the healing. And that's with great respect to my doctor. So of course I saw a physio and he knew his craft, and he could help me understand how I could partner with him in the healing of my knee. And so that was a great partnership, respecting his expertise. But I never put him on a pedestal, and he treated me as a partner, you know, given me the exercises to do so together, we achieved a good outcome. So I think it can be modeled that way

Dr Nat Green:

definitely. So that mutually respected, embodied wisdom. So we embody the wisdom of the person in that position, but it's a mutual arrangement, so they also respect us and embody that with us. Yeah. So that we're working together for this better outcome because, as you said. Given the way the world is these days, trauma is inevitable. And as you said, anyone who's lived through Covid Yep. Knows that whole community experience

Dr Mark Seton:

Yeah. Of

Dr Nat Green:

trauma and how we did or didn't manage that as well or as badly as we did regardless. It's that shared experience.

Dr Mark Seton:

Yeah.

Dr Nat Green:

And it's how we navigate that and are vulnerable and willing to embrace the feedback.

Dr Mark Seton:

And this is where the playfulness allows us to make those incremental steps back to a new place so that we are not feeling the moment we have discomfort, we become hypervigilant and we run away again. And so many of our young actors who went through Covid as much younger I. People we've found it very challenging to invite them to the same kind of level of appropriate risk Taking that a few years ago was quite comfortable for our students. They were already used to in life, you know, having a bit of a fall here, a bit of a miscommunication with the relationship there, and they lost that skill, that capacity. So we've had to find ways to help ease them back into that.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah. So as we move to wrapping the conversation up, I know that you are working on some amazing stuff at the moment and you've got a survey. So where can our listeners find out more about you and find you online, but can you also share that of how our listeners can help you?

Dr Mark Seton:

Sure. Yeah. So I think the best point of contact for me would be through my email address. So that's mcseton@bigpond.com and yes, you're right. I am currently doing a study on what I'm framing as in terms of this vulnerability. I'm avoiding using the word vulnerable and I'm talking about open-heartedness. Or open-hearted professionals. So I'll be, there's a link that be provided here as a URL link and maybe as a QR code as well. Yeah. We'll put in the show notes. Yeah. Great. So love anyone who'd like to, who identifies as an open-hearted professional come vulnerable, professional to participate in the survey. And then I will be sending to people who sign up to do the survey if they provide their email address, a final report on my findings of what does it take to be resilient. As open-hearted professionals and I hope to have that report and indeed a webinar out in mid to late June. But the survey I'm closing off either towards the end of this week or early next week for people who want to participate. But if people want to find out more about how I'm providing supportive services in terms of identity, I have created a, your professional uniqueness tool, which I can pass on to people. And then a larger program looking at embodied vulnerability ecosystem, which we've shared some of the things around that. So they're the, some of the ways that people can participate with me further if they're interested.

Dr Nat Green:

How exciting. Thank you for sharing that. And I would highly recommend that we, as many of our listeners as possible really. Participate in that survey because there's so many of our listeners who are exactly what you said, open-hearted professionals. And I think the world needs us to be vulnerable and open ourselves to what happens when we do that. Because as you've beautifully showed us today, you've gone from, you know, the absolute bottomless pit and managed to pull yourself out and are living an amazing life now.

Dr Mark Seton:

Yes, indeed. It's a great life to be out of that black hole.

Dr Nat Green:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. One thing I always like to ask my amazing guests at the end is what do you think your younger self would think of what you've achieved?

Dr Mark Seton:

I think a sense of surprise and delight. So surprising that it's not the path I thought I was going, but actual delight in that it's a more profoundly personally valuable, but also actually making a real contribution to society and to the world of human beings. So I'm just very excited to continue the journey I find myself in now. Yes, I think that's how we would look at that for me now.

Dr Nat Green:

Amazing. And really, that must be so validating to know you've come so far and that you are contributing in such an amazing way in the world. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us today and your wisdom and that amazing exercise. I look forward to engaging in more joy. So thank you, lovely for being on the show. Thank you, Mark thanks

Dr Mark Seton:

Natalie. Appreciate it.

Dr Nat Green:

Bye for now

Dr Mark Seton:

bye.

Dr Nat Green:

Thank you for joining me in this episode of Growing Tall Poppies. It is my deepest hope that today's episode may have inspired and empowered you to step fully into your post-traumatic growth, so that you can have absolute clarity around who you are, what matters the most to you, and to assist you to release your negative emotions. And regulate your nervous system so you can fully thrive. New episodes are published every Tuesday, and I hope you'll continue to join us as we explore both the strategies and the personal qualities required to fully live a life of post-traumatic growth and to thrive. So if it feels aligned to you and really resonates. Then I invite you to hit Subscribe and it would mean the world to us if you could share this episode with others who you feel may benefit too. You may also find me on Instagram at Growing Tall Poppies and Facebook, Dr. Natalie Green. Remember, every moment is an opportunity to look for the lessons. And to learn and increase your ability to live the life you desire and deserve. So for now, stay connected. Stay inspired. Stand tall like the tall poppy you are, and keep shining your light brightly in the world. Bye for now.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Dr Natalie Green

Host