Family Disappeared

Shadow Work & Inner Child Co-Regulation w/ Dr. Nima Rahmany Part 1 - Episode 119

• Lawrence Joss

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In this powerful conversation, Dr. Nima Rami joins Lawrence Joss to uncover how the parts of ourselves we try to hide are the very keys to healing. Together, they explore the transformative practice of shadow work, turning triggers into teachers and pain into purpose. They discuss how true self-regulation begins with co-regulating your younger self, and how embracing your “mess” can break lifelong cycles of trauma. This episode offers deep insights for anyone seeking to transform emotional triggers into greater self-awareness, compassion, and authentic connection.


Key Takeaways

  • Shadow work is a spiritual practice.
  • Using triggers can lead to personal growth.
  • Self-reflection is key to understanding oneself.
  • Avoiding triggers hinders personal development.
  • Embracing inner challenges fosters growth.
  • The mirror metaphor highlights self-examination.
  • Spirituality involves looking inward.
  • Growth comes from understanding our reactions.
  • Triggers can be seen as opportunities.
  • Shadow work requires courage and honesty.

Chapters

0:00 Opening: The Healing Journey
1:02 Welcome And Guest Introduction
2:35 What Shadow Work Really Means
7:35 Projections And The Mirror Of Relationships
11:29 Co‑Regulation With Your Younger Self
15:10 Triggers Explained In Plain Language
20:14 Capacity Over A Triggerless Life
24:24 Curious Not Furious: Integration Or Blame
26:47 Parenting While Triggered
32:20 Divorce Dynamics And Cycle Breaking
37:15 Repairing Bonds Across Generations
42:00 Preparing For Parenthood With Presence

If you wish to connect with Lawrence Joss or any of the PA-A community members who have appeared as guests on the podcast:

Email - familydisappeared@gmail.com
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/lawrencejoss
(All links mentioned in the podcast are available in Linktree)

Connect with Dr. Nima: https://drnima.com/

Please donate to support PAA programs:
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This podcast is made possible by the Family Disappeared Team:
Anna Johnson- Editor/Contributor/Activist/Co-host
Glaze Gonzales- Podcast Manager

Connect with Lawrence Joss:
Website: https://parentalalienationanonymous.com/
Email- familydisappeared@gmail.com

SPEAKER_01:

If we are ever given the message that those parts of you are not acceptable, we get the message that we need to hide, suppress, or what we call exile these aspects of ourselves. And they get tossed in the curb and suppressed consciously or unconsciously repressed. My mess is my message, and I teach people what I most need to learn.

SPEAKER_00:

There was a time in my life when I was overwhelmed and underwater. Those days are the inspiration for this podcast. This is by far the ultimate healing journey for all of us. Healing ourselves emotionally, spiritually, and physically is paramount to this journey. From this place of grounding, we can all go out into the world and change all our interactions and relationships. We can engage people from an integrated and resourced place. This is a journey of coming home to ourselves. In today's episode, we'll start to explore some of these issues. Let's begin the healing journey today. Welcome to the Family Disappeared Podcast. Hi, my name is Lawrence Joss, and welcome to the Family Disappeared Podcast. And we have a doozy for you today. This is one of my favorite interviews so far, and then we have a Dr. Nima Hami. He talks a lot about a lot of stuff, but we're talking about shadow work, those things that trigger us in our body. We're talking about the dynamics with our kids and we see them interacting with the other parents, how we can reparent them in a different way by reparenting ourselves. We talk about co-regulating, where that's like our nervous system feels better when someone else is there to kind of support us. And Dr. Nima talks about co-regulating with different parts of ourselves from younger years and in co-regulating with ourselves, and we're able to co-regulate with other people in a much better way. And he talks about cycle breakers, which is a program that he has. But what an interesting conversation! Like I was totally mesmerized. I had to remember to ask questions as we're going along because it was touching on so many wonderful, wonderful things. So I hope you love the show. If you're new to the community, welcome. You landed at the perfect show. And we have uh over a hundred episodes in the can if you're looking for different topics around therapists, attorneys, or panels of parents or experts like Dr. Nima from today. Yeah, some really, really rich stuff. And thanks for coming out to listen to us today. We are a 501c3 nonprofit. Love your support. You can click on the donate button in the show notes, and there's a bunch of other great stuff in the show notes. The one that I always highlight is our free 12-step program, Parental Alienation Anonymous, which is a great community. And no matter what professionals are helping us through these different phases, we still need community to help kind of like integrate everything and a place to grow that's safe and a place where people understand what we're talking about. So check out the show notes, and I'm so excited for you to listen to the show. Let's get in there. I think the first time I heard the word shadow work was probably like 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, and I had no idea what it was. And what I learned, like shadow work, was just the stuff that I couldn't necessarily see about myself that was generating a lot of my reactions and behaviors. I wanted other people to change. And if that other person would just change, then my life would be okay. And if my kid would just do that and do that. But the thing that I've come to realize, and I talk about all the time, is this interpersonal journey. Like I had to start to look at the places that I was getting triggered or had something emotional coming up, and then look at my part in that. And by looking at my part in that and kind of like uncovering stuff, I started to change my life. And as I started to change my life, I started to change my relationships. And everything that I'm doing today began with starting to look at some of my shadows. Even me having this conversation on this podcast or being part of this community had to do with me starting to uncover some of the things about myself that happened in my family of origin with my parents when I was in vitro, when I was in my mom's wound, and all these ways that I've taken into the world to be able to survive in the world. And some of those things aren't necessarily useful anymore. So shadow work is a wonderful reparative tool and so so wonderful, so wonderful. That's enough. Come on, let's see what Dr. Nima has to say. So, Dr. Nima, I'm so excited to have you on the show today. And I want to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself to the audience. If you can please let them know who you are, what you do, anything else you'd like to share? Great to be here, Lawrence.

SPEAKER_01:

My name's Dr. Nima Romani. I'm a retired chiropractor, always curious about the mind-body connection in a 20-year chiropractic practice, and started noticing patterns of patients coming in to see me that were dealing with primarily stress-related disorders. And it was in my own kind of personal growth journey of working through a divorce and several failed relationships, just my own understanding of healing and the mind-body connection and attachment styles and attachment healing. After my divorce, there was a series of failed relationships leading to a very toxic relationship that ended up becoming volatile, abusive, treating each other really poorly, and doing our best to heal it. That I wanted to break free from just being in the office and helping people with chronic pain. And now I teach, I have a global community of cycle breakers who are here to break intergenerational trauma, break the cycles of intergenerational trauma. And I have my husband and five years married on the recording of this conversation, and I have a five-year-old son. And so now I teach emotional healing and emotional mastery and attachment, bringing from insecure trauma bond codependency to secure relationship. The entire journey from where I was to where I am, my mess is my message, and I teach people what I most need to learn.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for the introduction. My mess is my message. I love that. That's super, super, super cool and sums up my life too. So I appreciate that. Yeah. And uh I love that this is your personal journey. And I'm gonna jump into some questions here. I'm actually gonna start with something that you're really proficient in, which is shadow work. Yeah. And no one, and not no one, most listeners must probably won't even understand what the term shadow work means. So before we jump into that, could you give us a definition on what shadow work would mean to you? Yeah, shadow work really saved my life.

SPEAKER_01:

We grow up in environments of with unconscious parents, usually, who are unconsciously in relationship dynamics to try to get their needs met. And unfortunately, when we are raised in an unconscious environment that is with dysregulated family systems, we are given the message when we express ourselves our authentic truth, our angry parts, our sad parts, parts of us that want attention. When we express these parts of us when we were younger, if we are ever given the message that those parts of you are not acceptable, we get the message that we need to hide, suppress, or what we call exile these aspects of ourselves. And they get tossed in the curb and suppressed consciously or unconsciously repressed. So they just kind of like, you know what? If I express my tears, for example, and my dad says, stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about. The message that I get is that this vulnerable part of me that really wants to express sadness and vulnerability is not acceptable. So what I will do is I will suppress consciously this vulnerable side of me or exile it unconsciously. I might even just kind of say, Oh, I don't even have that part. I'll just shut down that aspect of me because that makes me unlovable. And throughout my life, that energy of that vulnerable part of me doesn't actually go away. It comes up again and again through experiences, interpersonal relationships, or in the form of what's called projection, where if I'm not okay with that vulnerable part of me, I'm going to suppress it. And then I'm going to start marrying, partnering with partners that are extremely weak and vulnerable and needy, and it will trigger me. It's like, oh, it's in my face constantly. I keep attracting these weak and needy and vulnerable partners. What I can't see is that I am attracting a hidden, exiled aspect of myself that's deep in my psyche, and I project it outwards. So it's this is my shadow, and I attract events, circumstances that activate or trigger my shadow as an opportunity to, because kind of like if we can look from a spiritual dimension, the universe is more like a like a mirror. So it is constantly reflecting to me aspects of myself that I haven't really gotten completion with, that are unfinished business. Carl Jung says that anything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves. And this is an opportunity to see that we are attracting aspects of ourselves that we've exiled. And so shadow work is the spiritual practice of getting curious about what is activating and coming alive in my body, and instead of reacting to it, to get curious about it and turn towards it and try to make sense of and understand and what they call integrate. And so as I notice that I'm with this weak and needy person that's really triggering me instead of running away and then finding the next one with the exact same trait, going to the next relationship again and again, I'm summoned to kind of like see it as an opportunity, a red flag to just go, wait, hold on. Where have I been suppressing my weak, needy, and vulnerable parts? And then I can see that there's this little boy that was ashamed for expressing needs. And when I turn towards him and I integrate with him, I bring compassion, understanding, and empathy with these aspects towards these aspects of myself, I become more of an integrated person. And so, in a weird way, I don't get so triggered by those traits in other people because I've understood them and loved them and appreciated them within myself. I might even get to a place where it doesn't bother me at all anymore. So shadow work is the spiritual practice of using your triggers to be able to, instead of reacting and avoiding, to look inward, to look in the mirror, put down the magnifying glass, pick up the mirror, and use that to grow.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for that explanation. And just to bring it into simply to digest context, like for me, my partner really triggers me because I have to co-regulate her nervous system. And as you're telling me about the shadow work and stuff, I'm seeing, oh yeah, I like having my nervous system co-regulated too. So initially, my energy's out at her, you're doing something wrong. And then I'm noticing, oh, I like that too. And in that noticing, I'm like, oh, there's that shadow that's following me around. And now if I start to work on it, then I can start to transform that relationship and every other relationship where I feel people are needing something for me.

SPEAKER_01:

It goes even further, Lawrence. There's a little part of Lawrence that needs a co-regulator, that needs to be seen, needs to be understood, needs to have someone hold space for him. Maybe it was when he was younger. It's like you just look in there, and then as you turn towards him and give him kind of validation, compassion, empathy, and understanding, all of a sudden, that energy, you become the energy of compassion, empathy, and understanding towards yourself. Now, when your wife is coming to you dysregulated, you are not feeling so attacked by her neediness. You're actually able to hold space. And by the way, what you've actually done is co-regulated with the younger part of yourself. So as you co-regulate with the younger part of yourself, your nervous system is now in safety and you can more effectively co-regulate with her. Because if there's a little story you have around, oh God, here she comes again. God, why is she so needy of co-regulation? That energy, that frequency of resistance and resentment, she can pick up. And her nervous system actually then goes into the story of, oh, you know, I'm a burden, right? And so she doesn't feel safe around that. So it's the practice of one aspect of the practice is noticing, is what I have in my trigger-proof methodology is noticing. So what am I, what am I judging in her while she's needy right now? Where do I display neediness? And then I find the parts of me that do, and then I kind of go into them and I understand them and I bring compassion to them. When I do that, self-regulation is actually internal co-regulation. You're not really self-regulating, you're co-regulating with younger parts of yourself. Once you've done that, you have a sense of safety in your whole system. Now you're way better able to help regulate your wife or your child, especially with my four-year-old. You know, he's dysregulated. And when I notice myself going, God, why is he so sensitive? And then I just pause instead of walking in going, God, why are you like, what's the problem which pushes him further into dysregulation? If I just take that pause and I go, where have I displayed that? And I see the little boy inside that just wanted to be held. And I take like 10 seconds to do that with the younger part of me first. Now I become a co-regulator for my son. So it's taking that extra few seconds, Lawrence, and just that pause between stimulus and response, and then using that to go inward and use the universe out there as an opportunity to reflect parts of you that need love. And that's where you shift.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a great explanation. And I haven't heard anyone describe it before as instead of self-regulation, that you're actually co-regulating with younger parts of yourself. And for listeners out there that maybe not familiar with inner child work, like inside of us, we have teenagers, we have young kids, we have all these different parts. As Dr. Neemer's saying, we're going back and saying, Hey, teenager Lawrence, oh yeah, you want to be seen, you want to be heard, you want to be held, and now it's it's coming out in your adult self. I love the example with your child because there's so many triggers with my kids, even today as they're young adults, and when they were really young, and I'm like ready to go into some kind of fixing, changing, doing something. And as you're saying, if I'm co-regulating with myself, then it gives me a chance to actually co-regulate with them in a more useful way.

SPEAKER_01:

Which then breaks the cycle because your dysregulation and your triggers, if you recall growing up, the triggers of your parents that are unregulated, the unhealed shadows of your parents get downloaded onto you, which then get downloaded onto the kids. So this is literally the work you're doing, is breaking intergenerational patterns. So your children experience the home being a sanctuary instead of a battlefield.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that. And also, if you could just explain quickly when you're using the word triggers for folks, some folks will be familiar with the terminology, but it's just a real simple layman's kind of breakdown of what a trigger is.

SPEAKER_01:

So trauma isn't what's happening to us, it's what's happening inside of us in the absence of a really safe and empathetic witness. And so, again, that example of if I displayed emotion as a child and my father chastised me for crying, for having an emotional response, then my relationship with the vulnerable part of me, vulnerability, I start to suppress that vulnerable part of me. So what'll happen is it doesn't go away when I start to go through life and I see somebody in front of me getting vulnerable. What do you think that happens to me? It activates the frequency of that younger part of me that was vulnerable. In other words, it triggers. So a trigger is an experience on the outside that causes us to get knocked backwards in time into a wound. And what happens is we're not in the present moment anymore. We have now regressed and become that child. That past is now we're living it in the now. So a trigger is kind of like an age regression. Anytime there's reactivity, there's a wound that's been triggered or activated, and we then go back and become the 16-year-old, the 15-year-old, the 14-year-old that's right there. If you want to see what that's like, just think back on what it's like to grow up in a household where you have emotionally immature parents, where there's a conflict happening within the household, and your parent is actually yelling, screaming, or reacting, they're triggered and now they've become the child. They're parenting you, but they're coming from the aspect of a possession of a younger part of them. They've become this angry, disillusioned teenager or this weak and needy child. So when we're triggered, we're no longer living in the present anymore. We are now back to being three years old and we've regressed and become the child. And so that's what a trigger is. It's something that happens in the outside that activates something similar to what happened before and causes us to go back and become that child. And so when we're talking about parenting our children, when we're talking about having a safe and secure relationship, it is incumbent upon us to do the work to bring our adult self online so that we're not operating from child self, even running a company. You know, you could be running it from your child self or your angry teenager self. So the inner work of becoming trigger-proof is really about not at never getting triggered, but getting curious about how to use that energy to heal rather than react and then destroy your life.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that. I actually take in a moment, feel what's going on, tend to yourself, come out into the outer world or something. Correct. And have some kind of healing. Absolutely. Yeah. You just said like shadow work is not about getting rid of your triggers forever. And I'm guessing they come and they go and they fluctuate at different times. And is there ever a time you move through a trigger and that becomes kind of like in the past, and now you're working on whatever's the next thing beyond that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I teach in my Cycle Breakers Academy is because they're coming in to learn how to become trigger-proof. And the very first lesson is trigger-proof doesn't mean trigger less. So there's this one-day fantasy that I can walk around and things never bother me and I don't get triggered. And so the very first step of becoming trigger-proof is not to shame yourself when it happens. It's to really give yourself the permission to have an activation because you can't control that. What happens is it's developing a relationship that you're not shaming it, that you're not making it wrong, that you're not beating yourself up for being a failure around it. The key component of becoming trigger-proof is let me give you a classic example. About three years ago, I received a letter from the it's called the CRA in Canada. So it's like the IRS that said, you're being audited. You have all of these deductions from your income for business travel, and we just want to see the receipts of it. And this is the first time that I've ever, I've ever received an audit, right? So in that moment, I got triggered. And so it brought me back to a time where there was some tax stuff when I was in my chiropractic practice and I didn't have an account and I didn't know what the heck I was doing. Like I was just brand new to it, and I had to pay back a bunch of money. And so that was still in my body. And so when I received the letter, all of a sudden I got triggered and I got knocked back to a time 15 years prior where you know I had to pay back a bunch of money because I didn't know what I was doing early on in my practice. And so that gave me an opportunity to go back to that time 15 years prior and really see him and understand him and let him know that you made it through. The business didn't collapse, the world didn't end. And as I did that, and I worked through that, you know, activation, the nervous system activation of like, like sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight, you understand the terminology. Got through it, and then, you know, I sent off the stuff. A couple months later, I received the note from the IRS CRA, and they said, Thank you, all approved, no problem. I was like, oh, wow, okay, cool. Because I thought, like, holy crap, a letter means that I'm gonna have to pay a bunch of money. And so then two years later, I get a letter from the CRA again. And they're like, Yeah, we have this and this and this, we need to see this and this. And literally, I was like, oh, okay. And I just checked in and I was like, my heart rate didn't even go up like that. So because I had taken the time and worked through that previous trigger, my capacity for receiving an audit had expanded. So the word here is called capacity. So instead of hoping for a triggerless life, you have to reframe it, Lawrence. It's I meet whatever's in front of me and I do the trigger-proof work to bring myself into safety. And so, does that mean that I will never be triggered again? No, it means that I now have capacity to deal with that level. And so what happens is my life expands, life never gets easier. Now I can handle bigger problems. So unfortunately, my life gets bigger and I get bigger problems to solve and bigger triggers to work through. So a big part of being trigger-proof is letting go of the fantasy that I will never get triggered and that it's supposed to be easy. So you just get bigger problems to work through, right? So it's like the triggers I'm dealing with now and the stress that I confront now is way bigger than it was five years ago. But the difference is because of the inner work I've done, my capacity and resilience to carry it and hold it has grown bigger. And so it's about expanding capacity and resilience, not having a triggerless life. That's a huge distinction.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for that example. And it's super poignant that you're using the IRS or your equivalent to that. And when you mention that, I got triggered. I'm like, no, not the IRS. Oh, geez. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So it's like in conversations, they will come up. You know, when I talk about abuse, I talk about there was violence in my last relationship. And I, you know, I was both the victim and the perpetrator. Like it was a push and pull abusive relationship. And what happens is it triggers people. And most people, when they're shadow, and only our shadows get triggered. Okay, this is the key distinction. The only reason why you got triggered by that IRS conversation when I was talking about the IRS is because you made it about you. You had that experience already living in your body. So when our shadows get triggered, we have two options. Option number one is to integrate what comes up, which you would have said, oh my gosh, I have compassion towards. Wow, you were saying it, me too. I have compassion towards the part of me that had to deal with the IRS years ago. So that's a form of integration. Or option number two is to attack the mirror. So if I as held the mirror up and through my story activated your trigger, you're gonna hate me. You're gonna blame me, right? So, because what you're doing is you're projecting, it's called projection, you're projecting that energy that's happening in your body directly at me, and you're unconsciously blaming me for it. So, one of the things that I am practicing as doing this work, and I'm a book coming out about it, and where I talk about the experience of domestic violence and and all of that, I talk about all of it. It triggers a lot of people, and I it triggers people with a lot of hate towards me. And what that is, is which is triggering for me because who likes to be hated? I'm doing this work because I want everybody to love me, right? But what it does, what I'm as I'm starting to see is that when I share my story, it activates their shadows. Either they feel guilt for their role, maybe they slap their kid and they feel guilty about it and they don't like to see the reflection when I talk about it, or they themselves were harmed. And so now they project their abuser onto me. And I've become that. And so they lash out at me, but they're actually lashing out at the person that hurt them because I I don't know who they are. I'm some dude in front of a camera, right? And so it's really interesting to see the human psyche and how we react within us when we're seeing things outside of us, and so shadow work is becoming curious instead of furious and learning how to, whoa, when you shared that IRS thing, it brought me back. Wow, that's that, you know. And so to be able to have our orientation inward and get curious instead of judging and blaming other people and making our triggers in this society now. We've conflated being triggered and being harmed. Oh, you're harming me. And it's it's a trigger that's happening within you, it's happening inside your body. So it's wise for you to get curious and take responsibility to integrate that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I love everything that you're saying and your play on words, curious instead of furious. Like it's so true. Like, I it happens every day with my kids, with you know, someone at the grocery store, something happens, and then they're doing something to me, and it's like, oh, this is just something inside of me, and I actually have agency to work with this. That's the victim shadow you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01:

We all have it, Lawrence. So the parts of us that get triggered, we fall right into feeling victimized, right? Immediately you're doing it to me, and now I regress just like when I was a child and my dad did that, and then now I'm acting out towards you because you're bringing up what my dad did. And being a man, Lawrence, and myself, if we're leading groups of people, a lot of times people will be projecting their father crap onto you. If you've noticed that. Have you noticed them doing that?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm so tired.

SPEAKER_01:

That's one of the other things uh that I help leaders with is what happens when your clients, the people that you're serving, especially if you're a therapist, a coach, a helping profession, you're a woman, guess what? They're gonna project all of their mommy stuff onto you. If you're a man, they're gonna project all their daddy stuff onto you, which is one of the occupational hazards. You're being able to hold space and contain those parts of you that are hurt that are being projected on so that you can be your adult self and hold that space while they're projecting on you. It's part of the gig. It's really tricky, but it's what I love practicing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I got a bunch of follow-up questions. And first I want to just for the audience out there, just to kind of like really get into some of the meat what a lot of people are experiencing. So I'm having a conversation with my child. They could be four, they could be eight, they could be 16 or a young adult, and they're like, hey, you're the worst parent ever. I don't like you, I hate you. Explain the trigger in me, what I do, what's happening for them.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that question. All right, so here it is. My son wants to watch Paw Patrol, right? And then it's 8 p.m. I'm like, hey, bud, let's turn the Paw Patrol off. It's time to go. I don't love you. Right? And immediately, no dad, you know, I love my kid, I don't want to hear that from him, right? Immediately in that moment, I feel rejection. I feel I'm a bad parent. And what happens is my son in that moment is triggering the rejection, I'm bad aspect of my shadow, which is how old do you feel, Lawrence, when you've been rejected?

SPEAKER_00:

Me personally, yeah. Um it's super young. It's a super, super young wound. It was probably eight to ten years old. There's a lot of that stuff going on.

SPEAKER_01:

Here's the tricky part, and this is neat in our cycle breakers is when they're having conflict with their kids, they're Kids are often, when I regress them, their kids are often having they're triggering a younger part of them that's ironically the same age as the kid. So here it is, here it is. It's not about the child in front of you that's triggering you. It's about the kid inside of you that's being activated. And in that moment, it you can react and go, how dare you say that? No, I'm not. I'm your father. But you're actually regressed and you become eight years old. Instead of taking that pause, which is what I do, and I integrate with that younger part of me that felt rejected. And then I come back as my adult and go, I know, I know, buddy. I get it. I'm the bad guy. You know, I'm not very popular right now, but I love you and I want you to get some sleep. So two options. I can attack the mirror or I can integrate when the shadow gets activated. And so the the process of becoming trigger-proof, Lawrence, is learning how, because it takes time and practice and training because you're rewiring your nervous system to then when your son or you're the worst dad, your parent, I'm bad. How old is that part? Integrating with that part and then bringing your adult self online and then holding that space for them and then being able to lead them because you can't lead your child when you're eight years old in front of them.

SPEAKER_00:

Totally. And if we just go uh one layer deeper for the audience, like in an acrimonious divorce, you got the other parent saying X, Y, and Z to the child, and the child's kind of like parroting that at any age. And I'm having the conversation with a child, and in the back of my head, I'm getting activated by the other parent through the child, like you're 15 years old at that time.

SPEAKER_01:

In that moment when the other parent is talking crap about you, this brings you back to your high school age. This is gonna activate the high school time, which you know, people talk shit and people, you know, throw stones and mud at one another behind each other's backs. So during an acrimonious divorce, when you're trying to parent your child, you become the teenager, which, by the way, is traumatic for the child to watch. Because when you see the parents going at one another and they're pitted against one another, now the child is sitting there going, fuck, I wish my parents were like adults rather than being children. And so that feeling of not feeling seen and having to be the parent to these two warring factions becomes the trauma for the child that they have to live out in the next generation. So it is so important when you're stuck in that situation where you want to blame. I can't believe that she's doing this. Instead of that, you're gonna pause and you're gonna go inward and heal what this is really about, you know, because then you're just going back and forth, and then you're the victim, and then you become the perpetrator, and then you become the victim, and then the per victim perpetrator dance keeps going back and forth, and then it it wears at your nervous system. It passes on to the kids because they're sitting there going, God, I don't have this safe relationship, emotionally safe relationship with these children who are arguing with one another. I wish I had parents, right? And so by becoming trigger-proof, you can then alchemize. Alchemy is the process of turning the lead base metals into gold, is by really using this time, you know, the litigation through whatever, as a means of taking each trigger and using it to trust yourself more, to love yourself more, so that on the other side of it, you're a more regulated, self-loving, understanding, and calm individual and secure individual on the other side of working through all of those triggers? It can be done.

SPEAKER_00:

And as this is getting done with context with our children and other familial relationships, you're talking about this intergenerational trauma that's passed from our parents who were kids parenting us. And how does that healing happen as we start to repair our shadow? How does that affect the children in the long term? What happens to them? Is that the intergenerational healing you're talking about?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Well, Lawrence, I want you to imagine you being 20 years old, right? And all of a sudden, your parents have done this really deep, intensive healing work, and then they are able to have a seat and talk to you and go, hey, Lawrence, we have realized a few ways that when we raised you, we were unconscious, and there was some of the ways in which we dealt with your emotions and your experience of reality was not ideal for you. Lawrence, tell me what that was like for you. What would that have done for you?

SPEAKER_00:

That would have surprised the crap out of me. Yes, you would have expected that.

SPEAKER_01:

But what would that have done for your healing?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh my God, I felt my nervous system relax when you said that. I felt seen and heard, and that someone was actually curious about me and was available that they were actually present.

SPEAKER_01:

So can you see how, even though you're 20 and you've gone through all the shit at the age of 20, because you've been through a lot of it, if you had parents that were dysregulated and unconscious, even at the age of 20, even at the age of 30, if your parents took the time and went inward and integrated all those shadows from their woundings growing up, because they did the best they could given what they were carrying when they had you, right? You know, your mother's nervous system when you were in utero had an impact on your sense of self-worth. All of that stuff. Imagine they learned all of it and just were like, holy crap, I did not realize what an impact as I'm healing the child inside of me, I'm realizing this is what all the parents in our community say. They're like, after the first week of our trainings, they're like, holy crap, as I'm realizing how I was raised, I'm realizing I fucked it up with my kids. I was like, yeah, just let yourself feel the guilt of that because feeling the guilt is part of your breaking of that cycle. So you just proved right there that no matter how old the children are, by you taking a pause and stopping looking on the outside and just going inward and working on integrating with all of these parts of you that you had to exile and suppress in order to get your needs met and realizing the innocence of that and then bringing all of those parts home into an integrated whole, you cannot help but then look at your children with compassion for what they were carrying. And then you're able to, if you catch them early enough, because I'm lucky that I did the work before I had a kid. So the second I found out we were pregnant, I was like, I know exactly what to do. I want to create a sense of safety and security with his mother so she knows that I'm all in. And I want to talk to her belly every day and just say, we can't wait to see you. We're so looking forward to having you because I know I've worked with people who knew that they didn't have, I worked with a guy last night who is in his 40s, he can't be in a healthy relationship. And when I regressed him, he was like, My parents didn't want me. They were, it was, I was an accident, and I knew from the get-go, your system knows energetically whether you had an invitation to exist. And so, because I worked with so many people who've had that and they're carrying the burden of trying to prove their worth in life, they don't realize, but they're constantly living in duty and obligation and trying to prove their worth in their life. We regress them and it's like, oh, I never had an invitation to exist. So because I knew that, as soon as I found out that we were pregnant, I was like literally talking to her belly every day, saying, We can't wait to see you. I can't like, I am so grateful to have you. We are so excited. We can't wait. I was hugging his mother, telling her, I love you. You're safe, we've got this. Just completely relax, whatever you need. So I was lucky that I was late to the party and I did all this work thanks to my last relationship, so that I was a dad at 45 because I had done that. But everybody who learns this, they're like, oh my God, I wish I had done this before I had kids. But even then, I still said, even if you were 30, imagine your parents did the work and they had that kind of a conversation with you. So what's happening is I have clients in my program who are grandparents. He's a grandfather. He's realizing all this stuff and he's like, Holy shit, I fucked up my kids. I'm like, let's have compassion towards the parts of you that you didn't know. And now let's start facilitating conversations. And now, even with adult kids who have kids themselves, they're breaking the cycle. Like the conversation that I kind of facilitated with you, imagining your parents having that. Your nervous system felt seen, hurt, that would heal you, even at in your 20s and 30s, even in your 40s, it would. So it's never too late to begin. And the way that to answer your question, how do you break the cycle is by going inward and healing with the child inside of you and integrating all of those shadows that have been suppressed and cast aside in exile, just so that you could be lovable to your family system?

SPEAKER_00:

So the question that comes up for me as you're describing that and you're touching the mom's belly and your child's coming and you're 45 and you've done this work, as you're doing this loving thing that you think is going to be great for your child, what shadow work are you doing in that moment or what are you healing in yourself so people can understand what's actually on your inner ecosystem in that moment?

SPEAKER_01:

There's no shadow that's activated in that moment. In that moment, I just know that to meet the criteria of a child needs to have their emotional needs met to feel safe, to feel seen, to feel heard, to feel loved. So my identity is about creating a container where when people are around me, they feel seen, heard, loved, and understood. So whether you're a client, whether you're a friend, that's who I am being for the world. So that's just an identity that I've created as a result of integrating my shadows along the way. And so shadow work is something that happens ongoing when you get activated.

SPEAKER_00:

I get that, but even you creating this persona and who you are, and you've done all this incredible work, underneath that, at deeper and deeper layers, isn't that what you didn't necessarily get as a kid? And you're still correct. Consciously. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm consciously like, okay, because I didn't have my emotions validated. Now, when my son is like angry, instead of saying time out when you're angry, I'm sitting with him and I'm like, I totally understand that you're angry, Dominic. I hear you. Are you ready? You want to do some breaths? Okay, let's let's express our anger. Ready? Ah, it's okay to scream. Ah, it's okay to be angry. And so we do it together, and then he's like crying and he's angry, and then we after the third time, he's like laughing. So I co-regulate with him because I've taken the time to co-regulate with the child inside of me. Right? So, and he looks exactly like me. The joke is that he's now my outer child because he looks exactly like I did when I was his age. And so because I have taken the time to parent the younger parts of me, parenting my son is like an easy kind of extension of the love that I've given myself. And the greatest gift that I can give my son is a self-loving father.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that. Wow, wow, wow, wow. And an extra while Dr. Nima knocked it out of the park. Such a wonderful conversation, such a wonderful narrative that Dr. Nima delivers in such a digestible way. And I learned so much stuff. This is definitely something that I'll need to re-listen to. And I love some of the technology that he brought in about cycle breakers and how we can look at these different cycles and how we can generationally heal them, and we can have a different perspective with some of the hardest things we have to deal with in life. If we can just acknowledge some of these challenges and some of the things that we're getting out of the most challenging parts in our life, which is just so counterintuitive, and there's so much great information. So come back for the second part. It's better than the first part. At the end of the show, Dr. Nemo gives us some really great resources. He talks more about the cycle breakers, what it is, how to get into the six-hour training that he does. And yeah, I'm super excited to connect. He's already sent me the link for the training, so maybe I will see you there too. And thanks for coming out to listen today. Please like, share, let people know the work that we're doing. Donate if you can. We are a 501c3 nonprofit. Come check out the free 12-step meetings and let us know what you like, what you don't like. Please email me at family disappeared at gmail.com. Comment on any of our social media stuff. Uh, we want to know that you're enjoying what we're doing and it's useful, or that it's not. That's welcome too, because at a point, maybe it is. I don't know. Anyway, thanks for coming out and playing today. I had a great day doing this podcast, and I hope you loved it. And in case no one's told you yet today, I love you, and the only reason I can say that is because I'm doing my shadow work, because I learned to love myself. So being able to love other folks is pretty simple. Have a beautiful day, and we'll see you around the neighborhood. Thanks for taking the time to join me on this episode of Family Disappeared Podcast. Do you know someone who can benefit from what we are discussing on today's episode? If so, please share this podcast with them and anyone else in your community that might be interested in changing their lives. Together we'll continue the exploring, growing, and healing journey. I will see you on our next episode. Until then, happy days to all.