Soma Rising

Can Trauma Secretly Be Blocking Your Success? | With Therapist Dino Paris

• Tabitha MacDonald • Episode 78

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 48:12

Send us Fan Mail

What if the ceiling on your career, creativity, or relationships isn’t a skill gap—but an unhealed story living in your body? We sit down with Portland therapist Dino Paris, who brings 40 years of trauma work to a deeply human conversation about performance, joy, and the nervous system. Dino started in finance, burned out on meaning, and found his way into counseling where he discovered something simple and profound: when people feel safe and truly seen, healing accelerates and burnout fades.

We unpack the quiet power of small "t" trauma and neglect—the micro-moments that shape a lifelong identity of “not enough.” Dino maps a clear flow from old wounds to negative beliefs to constrained choices, then shows how to reverse it: release the charge, plant better thoughts, restore calm, and watch the outer world mirror the inner shift. He explains why thought alone can’t settle fight or flight, how breath and pacing create safety, and why building rapport is non-negotiable when emotions surface during bodywork or therapy.

If you’re ready to trade survival for joy and turn old patterns into new capacity, press play. Then share this with someone who needs hope today, subscribe for more grounded, practical healing conversations, and leave a review to tell us what landed most.

Learn more about Dino at https://www.dinoparis.com/

This is Soma Rising: Conversations for a Conscious Future —where health, wealth, love, and purpose flow together on the Golden Path of alignment.  Learn more at somatribe.org

Continue Your Journey

If this episode touched your heart, please share it with someone you love and help awaken others to the Golden Path.

Website: soma-massage.net

Instagram: @somawellness.center or @tabitharmacdonald

TikTok: @tabitharmacdonald

YouTube: @tabitharmacdonald

✨ Ready to take this work deeper?

If today’s episode spoke to your soul and you’re ready to rise into a life aligned with your truth, I’d love to invite you into Soma Tribe—my signature transformational journey for people who are done playing small and ready to reclaim their power, purpose, and intuitive knowing.

✨ Learn more and sign up online.

Tabitha MacDonald is an Intuitive Coach and Bodyworker committed to helping people overcome pain fast so they can experience the love, success, freedom, and fulfillment they deserve.

Additional Resources:


From Finance To Healing Work

SPEAKER_01

Hello and welcome. Today I am genuinely honored to introduce someone who has been quietly doing transformational work long before trauma became a buzzword on Instagram. Our guest today is Dino Paris, a licensed therapist based in Portland, Oregon, with over 40 years of clinical experience helping people navigate trauma, anxiety, performance pressure, and the deep internal patterns that shape our lives. 40 years. Just pause with that for a moment. That's four decades of sitting across from human beings in their most vulnerable moments. Four decades of witnessing breakdowns that become breakthroughs. Four decades of helping people make sense of pain and then transform it into power. And what I love about Dino's work is that it bridges two worlds. On one hand, he is deeply grounded in the clinical understanding of trauma and anxiety, the nervous system, early childhood conditioning, attachment patterns, performance anxiety, and the physiology of stress. But on the other hand, he understands something that many therapists don't always lean into the relationship between performance, identity, and joy. Because Dino doesn't just work with trauma survivors, he works with athletes, he works with creatives, he works with high performers, and he helps them not just cope, he helps them perform better, create better, and live better. And most importantly, find joy in their success. Welcome, Dino. I'm very happy to have you on the podcast today. Um, I would love to just like uh hear a little bit about you. How did you get into the work that you do? That's a big commitment for years. Most people can't even stay married that long.

SPEAKER_00

Well, thanks for the beautiful introduction and the deep understanding of what I do. I really appreciate that. And yeah, that's a great question. So as a trauma therapist, my entry into this kind of work was born of trauma. So I had my own background in trauma, and my first career was in the world of finance. I was a financial counselor. Oh I like to say ever since I was about 14 years old, and I was a camp counselor through, you know, becoming an investment counselor. And over the last 40 years, like you said, um as an emotional counselor, that I've been a counselor for a long time. And um so when I was in finance, I found that my life started feeling meaningless. And I went through a a period of deep depression and ended up leaving that career and going on sort of a vision quest, traveling, following my uh creative side, which in in my upbringing it wasn't really appropriate to be a creative. Like that you basically could either be a doctor, an accountant, or a lawyer.

SPEAKER_01

Then yeah, not a lot of creativity. I tried, you know, that's professional.

SPEAKER_00

I I didn't really I tried all those to some extent and ended up being, you know, a stockbroker, which it suited my skill set. And actually, back in the day, getting really uh involved in business and finance and marketing, I'm really grateful for it because it helps me in my business today. But I was very unhappy and I had to figure out how to become happy. And I've I noticed in my life my moments where I was happiest, I was helping other people. And that's why 40 years of this doesn't feel hard at all, because I could wake up in the morning and not feel great and then see a client or two and help them, and it it does bring me a sense of joy and fulfillment.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, I love I love that. That's um, I think that was the hardest part during COVID when I couldn't go to work because that was like that was the source of my joy was helping people. And it was really hard to not be able to do that. I think if you work in this profession, that does have to bring you joy if you're gonna maintain a long career, right? So I can I can relate.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and early in my career, I would burn out every so often, you know, just dealing with the most intense issues. But eventually I started finding very effective ways of working with people in trauma, including EMDR, the eye movement desensitization reprocessing, and working with polyvagal theory, creative arts and narrative. A lot of the methods are now recognized scientifically as really helping people with trauma. And so as I learned how to do those things, I became really effective in helping people transform their lives and how they felt. And so I stopped burning out because no matter who showed up and how bad their trauma was, um, they were able to release it and just kind of reboot their lives and become happy, fulfilled, calm.

SPEAKER_01

So nice.

SPEAKER_00

You it's amazing how helping people and being effective kind of eliminates the burnout, which was nice.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think the being effective part helps release a lot of burnout. Because I see a lot of therapists, like especially in the massage industry, where you know, they're just massaging people, they're not getting results, and I'm a results I we're similar. I'm a results-oriented practitioner. So if I'm not getting results, I get I get burned out because I'm like, oh, I came to work to make the world a better place, not to, you know, not make a difference or impact. So um I think it's a different thing.

SPEAKER_00

Well, you certainly do.

SPEAKER_01

No, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I I've been to your clinic a lot and it's helped me a lot. So you are very effective and I appreciate everything that you do. And thank you. And and this podcast is really, I'm sure, impacts a lot of people that you never even meet. So that's great.

SPEAKER_01

I every time I ask the universe for a sign about the next phase of life, because I just turned 50, I'll get like somebody text me right away who'll be like, Oh, I just listened to your podcast. Thank you. And I'm like, Oh, you're the one who downloaded it.

SPEAKER_00

What a great feeling.

Big T, Small T, And Neglect

SPEAKER_01

I didn't know how much promotion it would take. Um, and it's so funny. You go into a project and you just don't know how big it's gonna be until you're in it. And then you're like, Well, I'm in it, so I have to keep going. But um so I really we what we talked about talking about today, because I think that for me personally, I didn't know that trauma was impacting my life. I thought I had handled it. Like, I don't know if you follow the Enneagram, but I'm a social seven. And so, like, I pretty much rewrote everything into a positive, and I was like, nope, it all happened to make me a better person and it's my hero's story. And then one day I was doing a trauma course uh to help my clients better. And um I like I would not recommend this, but there was a meditation they did to unlock your memories, opened all of them up at the same time. It was a very bad day. So I started taking trauma more seriously. Um, and also realized that it had this massive impact on my like upper limit success and like what I thought I could do or was capable of. And um I don't even think, I think our trauma becomes so part of our story that we don't even know it's impacting us because you just don't know because you have like your, you know. So what are like some of the smaller traumas that you think or I wouldn't even say traumas, but like the the symptoms that someone might be experiencing who has unprocessed trauma? Like how does it show up in work and like their love life? Like those are the two big ones I always get asked about.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So if you think about trauma, I like looking at it in a very simplistic way that I find also accurate. And it's almost like a flow chart or a timeline. And experts now on the nervous system and experts on the brain are really starting to see that just about anything someone shows up to heal in therapy is really born of one sort of trauma or another. And a good way of thinking about it is there's what we call big T trauma, which would be things like being in a disaster or ha being abused. And then there are things like small tea trauma, which could be incessant, sort of dirty looks from your parents, you know, just anytime you're not doing something that they think you ought to be doing, even if it's like how you're dressed or how you style your hair, those tiny little cuts can form an intricate web of trauma that sometimes takes more time to unravel and heal than a one-time incident like a car accident.

SPEAKER_01

And so Yeah, I agree. Can we sit with that one for a minute? Because people don't register those micro traumas, I think, as much, right? They just think they it becomes their identity, like they don't realize that that can shift. Um, so those like like you said, those side glances or a lot of my clients had narcissistic parents and um they don't realize the long-term compact. Like I well, um, I don't know if you would agree, but like the program I'm taking right now calls it like complex PTSD. It's that long-term emotional neglect and abuse that makes you think that you're less worthy because of something about you.

Love, Work, And The Virtuous Cycle

SPEAKER_00

So and interestingly, you brought up neglect. I've I've had a lot of clients who were neglected over these years, and I don't think a single one of them came in with neglect as a presenting problem. Because the thing about neglect is if you're a child who's neglected, you all often become very resourceful, right? You play with your Legos or you study, and a lot of people been neglected wouldn't even say that they were neglected. That comes out throughout the process of the therapy that maybe leads to some of the symptoms. And you you brought up uh you know, romance and work. So on the topic of romance, if you've been neglected, it sometimes feels very difficult to experience and soak in love. I like to use uh the example of a sponge that hasn't had water on it for a long time. It gets so dried out that even if you pour water, and in this in this metaphor, water is like love, you pour water or love on this sponge, it takes a while to soak it in. And through the process of the counseling, eventually a little bit of water starts entering and spreading, and then you can take it. So a lot of people suffer in romance because they've had trauma or neglect. And a big part of the work that I'll do with someone in a situation like that is help them trace back either somatically through the body, through their emotions or their memories, to moments of neglect or trauma. And as they release them and heal that, they become more open and available to receiving love. So if you look at the flow chart, it starts with some sort of trauma, which leads to many things. But one of the things that the trauma leads to is a negative thinking. And often it's negative thinking about themselves. I'm not lovable, I'm not good enough. And that leads to very difficult feelings like depression, self-hate, and then that leads to actions and choices, which leads to negative outcomes, which is more trauma, is kind of the vicious cycle. And as you start releasing the trauma, you create what I call a virtuous cycle. It's now you're letting go of the trauma, you're having better thoughts about yourself, you're having more pleasant feelings, and you're able to take action and connect with others. And, you know, similar things happen at work as well that you asked about, where you might have an idea that you can only be so successful in your career, it's born of trauma. And as we start releasing that trauma, you start having a better narrative and an inner world in which everything on the inside is getting healed. And then your outer world becomes a reflection of that more positive inner world, and you start noticing nicer things are happening to you as well.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I very much agree. Like if I do a gratitude breathwork session in the morning, the world looks different than if I do a look at my overwhelming to-do list session in the morning.

SPEAKER_00

So I love that.

SPEAKER_01

Hugely different. And it's weird how fast it will change based on like one small shift in perspective. Absolutely. One day I'll look for everything, how the world is happening to me. The next second, within seconds, it's how the there's so many opportunities and how grateful I am to be able to create what I want in the world. And so it's it's it's fast if you learn the tools, right?

Thought Patterns And Simple Daily Tools

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. And you know, one of the things that I like to tell people is it's very difficult to get a negative thought out of our heads, but it's very easy to put a positive thought in our head. You basically write it on a piece of paper and read it. And really, a human being can only have one thought in their head in a moment. So I often recommend there's a list of really good thoughts. Like one of my favorite thoughts is this is the best moment of my life. I even have it on my alarm to wake me up in the morning. It's right there on my phone. And as soon as I, even if it's not true, when I say it, the mind is always listening. I say it, and then the mind hears it, and suddenly colors look more bright, the air just feels sweeter. And if people actually realized the impact of their thoughts and just putting a good thought in their head, um, it's it's really life-changing. And of course, because bad thoughts are are largely born of trauma, as you release the trauma with the EMDR and other methods, your your mind, your body are more susceptible to taking in those good thoughts. And so it actually becomes kind of easy, the healing process, once you know um how to enter it.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I think that's the thing that I have figured out the most with clients is they always say to because I I work with the body in the pain and I can see, you know, like migraine patterns and just things that are like born from trauma. And I'm like, but why aren't we addressing the root cause? And and most of the time they'll say, Well, I don't have time for that. And I'm like, but it's gonna make you sick, like it literally is. And who has time for that? So, you know, it's an interesting selling point with people. Like, um, they think that they don't have time for self-care or for self-reflection or you know, working through that stuff. Um, what do you think is the biggest hurdle? Like, why they think it's because I don't think it's the time thing. I think maybe they don't understand the process or what are your thoughts on that?

Safety First: Calming The Nervous System

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that is a great question. And what I think is going on there is the the way to heal anything, in my opinion, is it starts with safety. So if a person feels safe to be present with something, and then in the context of that safety in that container, they can be present with it, it will heal. The problem is if a person does not feel safe, their nervous system which is always searching the environment for signs of danger or safety, will hear a suggestion like, well, let's address uh what's the source of this. And uh if a person uh hears that and has a negative experience, like, well, it's too overwhelming to address it, or I've tried that before and it didn't work, the nervous system will see that as like a lion chasing them, wanting them to eat, and they'll go into perhaps fight or flight or shutdown, and they'll be like, No, I can't look at that. So the thing, the mistake that I think a lot of people make is they try to solve the overactive nervous system with thought. But there's a couple of problems with that. When we're in fight or flight or overwhelm, the mind goes to mush. We can't really think. And the other thing is thought does not heal the nervous system. Breathing, moving slowly, listening to music is what calms it down. So as opposed to trying to intellectualize or logically explain to someone that we need to do A, B, or C, if we see it as they're frightened or they don't feel safe, and then we do things to help them feel safe, like we walk them through breathing, or we just have them talk, often that goal is achieved. They become more calm and suddenly they feel safer to enter a process of release. I mean, I'm gonna take a guess. You can tell me as a massage therapist, as you're working on a client and they start to really feel safe and trusting. Do you ever find that they sometimes will have an emotional release right on the table or they'll start talking about something that was hard for them to talk about? Does that happen on your table sometimes?

Bodywork, Dissociation, And Rapport

SPEAKER_01

Every every massage therapist needs to go through trauma training. Like I'm just gonna say that as a blanket statement because we will get people who won't go see traditional therapists, and we do need to know how to walk them through those moments because the second their nervous system settles, they definitely start talking and they're like, I don't know why. I never thought about that. Or and I'm like, well, because we're engaged with your body and we're, you know, bringing you into your body, and when you're in your body, your body will tell you what your mind forgot. So it's really too, yeah. I I'm a I'm very big with um watching people's eye patterns to know that they're not dissociating when we're working on them, and also teaching my therapists how to identify that and then keep them present so that you know, if you do have someone who has unprocessed trauma, especially the ones that don't know, you can keep an eye and track and make sure that they're not re-experiencing something that's not in the present moment. And so that's a big part of education at Soma because um, especially we because we do a lot of work with like the jaw and brain injuries, they can dissociate really quickly. And um we don't want them attaching an old experience with the experience they're having right now. And I think that happens to a lot of people um more than they know. And so um, I I don't know if that answered your question, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So no, no, yeah, it's it sounds like you're doing great work. And so the line that I would draw between what you're saying and the question is whenever you happen to notice or anyone happens to notice that someone seems to be avoiding the source or getting defensive, the idea is to have compassion for them, to interpret it as they probably need to feel safe, and then do all those beautiful things that you know how to do to help them feel safe. And then you don't have to convince them the source will bubble up and they start releasing it during your practice. Yeah. I think it's all about feeling safe and not going into fight or flight.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. That that is something that we train in every time we do a training and I do them monthly, is how to build rapport with people quickly so that they feel safe. And we use like uh I studied NLP, so we use like physical rapport, you know, verbal tonality, like the whole system to create a sense of safety immediately. Because I think when you're just working with people in pain, like they need to trust you and feel safe with you so much faster than like if you were going to eat outside at a restaurant, right? So um rapport building is something that we go over every month. Like so it's it's important to me that healthcare practitioners learn about rapport because that's just important. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a part of why I had such a great experience, you know, just as a patient in your clinic is everybody knows how to connect. And uh yeah, I think that's the key. And it sounds like you know a lot about the nervous system and apply it. So that's so helpful.

EMDR For Performance And Success

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I was trained by a very um amazing massage therapist who said we we will do better as a profession. And so he was very thorough in how he trained me. So uh I bring that same. Uh those same principles to Soma so that everyone there knows how to maintain safety for people when they come in and make them put them at ease right away because it's you can't make progress with someone who doesn't trust you. It's just not gonna happen. So and you know, it's a very vulnerable thing to to be in any kind of a treatment room, right? Like therapy or massage or acupuncture. You're taking your worst pain to someone and asking them to walk you through it. Like it's you have to know how to sit with people in compassion and grace and without judgment. And that is a that is a skill I think that comes with time. I don't, I don't, you know, and practice and love and just bringing love into the work that you do. So yeah, it's important. Uh and I've seen it go awry where people who don't do it, and I you see the consequences of what happens to their their clients, and it's not good. So, um, but yeah, I'm a big, big advocate for safety and the and the vulnerable things. Okay, so I wanted to ask you about EMDR because I don't know that a lot of people know what that is, and my business coach actually has us do EMDR as part of our entrepreneur program. And I realized that it was so helpful when we do it around business and especially being seen or heard, you know, things that are trauma-related that people don't think of as being trauma related. And, you know, even when you you work with someone who maybe doesn't ask for a big enough raise or doesn't know how to advocate against a boss who's a bully because they're afraid of being fired, um, how can something like what is EMDR, first of all, and how can it really make a big difference in the way someone experiences success in their chosen career path?

Ho’oponopono And Self-Responsibility

SPEAKER_00

Yes. So whether you're talking about business and you know, going beyond your glass ceiling, you know, if you're making 10 grand a month, you want to make 50 grand a month or whatever your goal is, um, when I work with people, I call it um transformational work, transformational coaching. Usually when someone hits up against an obstacle and they're struggling to get past it, um, I believe that it's usually because they're jammed up inside somehow that, you know, they want to make more money, but they have some sort of a negative thought pattern, negative association, or negative um pattern in their body that's preventing them. And in all the years that I've been helping people with their performance, whether it's athletics, business, creativity, that it's always comes down to trauma. And uh EMDR is, in my opinion, uh it's just miraculous. If I was drawing a cartoon, I would say you'd have a picture of some cave people, and it would say the discovery of fire is to technology as the discovery of EMDR is to uh raising consciousness and becoming a being that really is a magical being. And so whenever I work with a client to help them with their performance, I use a variety of methods, including somatic methods. They may breathe into a part of their body, trace it back in time, and a trauma will bubble up or a collection of trauma. They might breathe into a feeling like resentment or frustration, something holding them back. Um and it just seems to always work. It traces back to a trauma. We use the methodology, the EMDR, which it's a terrible name. It stands for eye movement desensitization reprocessing. I've taken the unofficial liberty to change the meaning. I just call it every memory does release because it's easier to remember. So what happens is we release the traumatic memory that's leading to the blockage, and almost immediately people start making more money, have better athletic performance, are able to find a partner. I mean, it's it's funny. I have I have a secret tagline because I'm a spiritual person that I don't put on my website, that there's really only one thing in life that you can count on, and that's magic. So the magic that happens, I even have this as a reminder. Someone gave me this box that has the uh image of a magician, right? So there's a certain magic when a person taps into their innate healing ability, which I believe everyone has, an inner genius and innate healer, they start to tap into the trauma and release it. Magical things happen. And that works with the EMDR, that works with a lot of the polyvagal exercises. There's also a beautiful meditation technique called Ho'oponopono that comes from Hawaii that I use a lot. And there's not a whole lot of time to go into it now, but at some point I did a whole episode on it.

SPEAKER_01

I okay, great. So you understand it was the first thing I turned to. Yeah, when it was it was bad for me. Um, it was the first thing somebody introduced me to, and it literally changed my life. And the NLP trainer that I trained with, Matt, um oh, what's his last name? Uh doesn't matter. Uh he's from Hawaii and he integrates Ha'opono Pono into everything. Like public speaking training, hoopono. Absolutely start everything.

SPEAKER_00

So it helps with everything. And I incorporate it into EMDR. So it's just super powerful and super simple to do. I do with my clients and I teach them how to do it for themselves. It helps release negative emotions. But the other thing that it does, it helps people take responsibility but love themselves at the same time. And it even has a helpful impact if you're trying to help people around you or help the entire world. So it's really powerful. I'm glad you did an episode on it.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah. We play it in the clinic um with people, especially if they have a lot, a lot of negative thought forms. And like uh I'll play it almost everywhere I go. Like, especially if I'm going somewhere where there's a lot of denseness, I'll be like, oh, I'm gonna put the ho'opono pono on on repeat.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I did a a workshop once at the old church where I hired a bunch of musicians and we wrote a hoopono pono song. We had this woman, Saida Wright, who used to sing as a backup singer with Prince, who's a Portland native, and was super powerful. Yeah, I would I've been toying with the idea of doing it again because it was just so powerful. So it's it's such a great simple thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

When I had the idea, when I first found it, I thought, oh, we should do a ho'opono healing circle in the middle of Portland, like it needs it. Absolutely. Absolutely down there and ho-opono pono wet.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, when I've when I've done workshops together with uh Judith in our group who does the sound healing, she did the sound healing and I would do the hooponopono and the together, it just was very powerful.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it is um one of my favorite tools, and it's interesting because it's about forgiveness. And um, I know like when I started going to Al Anon, uh, because my ex-husband had a drinking problem, um, the people there were so angry that they had to pee there, be there because they were like, it's not my problem. Why am I here? And I was I learned it takes two to tango, number one. And number two, it was um releasing the the anger and resentment and the the pain actually releases that from your life. Like that person's no longer longer energetically bound to your like the the the whatever wrong they did to you. So um for me, it was so powerful. And in the beginning, because I had so much trauma, especially body-based trauma, it was very hard for me to go, why should I forgive this person for this thing they did to me? And then I realized over time that I was freeing myself from the bondage, not them. And I, you know, I'll leave them to source. But for me, it released my like my entanglement with them.

Shame, Forgiveness, And Repair

SPEAKER_00

I love that. So one of the precepts of hooponopono is things only exist in the universe because they exist in your consciousness. So it's so radical. In hooponopono, they teach us to take 100% responsibility for everything, obviously for our actions, even our thoughts and feelings. But the part that really blows people's minds a lot and is is hard to wrap their brains around, I think, initially, is you take responsibility for everything you hear about. So if I read something in the newspaper that a terrible atrocity happened, even if I had nothing to do with it, I take 100% responsibility for it. And at the same time, I love myself and I value myself. So it's this sweet spot where it's like, okay, I take responsibility for anything bad that happens in the world, but then I have something I could do about it. I do hope no pono and release it. And the idea is it doesn't only release it from me, but because the world is in my consciousness, it helps the world by me releasing it. So it's a really great tool to deal with the world we live in today, where there's so much conflict between so many people and so many wars that a person can feel helpless and powerless. And by doing hooponopono, it could help release a lot of that. And the way I like to explain it is imagine if just for a couple of minutes, everyone in the entire world took 100% responsibility for everything that was happening and did asked for forgiveness for every war, for every cruelty, and that's all everyone did, uh all war uh would end immediately. And uh it's a great method because often, you know, I work a lot with people in couples, often couples hurt each other, right? If one person has an affair, and doing hoaponopono in those situations, it it one of the big things that happens is a lot of people feel like if they did something wrong to hurt someone else, that means they're a bad person. But in hooponopono, you get to take 100% responsibility for doing something bad to hurt someone, and you get to still love yourself and value yourself. So it creates a safe environment to actually look at the behavior and correct it and not do it again. Because most people that feel like doing something bad means they're a bad person, they'll be in such denial, they won't look at it, they'll keep repeating the pattern. But if you actually say, Oh my God, I had an affair, you know, I hurt my partner, but you could still love yourself and not hate yourself as a human and value yourself, you can actually take responsibility, make amends, and do things to prevent you from having that cycle continue and you become a better partner.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think that not looking at it creates the shame. And I think shame embeds it into your identity, and then like it's hard to escape the behavior because you're so afraid to look at it because the shame is so intertwined with it. And I think what happens for a lot of people who have abuse, especially as children, is that shame is their core like state of being and they don't even know it. And it's um yeah, it was shocking to me when I figured it out. I was like, I don't have shame. And it was like everything about your behavior says you are imprisoned in shame all of the time. And I had no, I had no clue. So because it was just how I operated, and I didn't feel ashamed anymore. I felt happy and I looked happy, but everything that was blocking me was this like I'm not worthy underlying current of unconscious identity issues. So it was really interesting.

Collective Triggers And Personal Shadows

SPEAKER_00

That's a great discovery, and it takes a lot of courage. And one of the things, well, shame also underlies a lot of addiction and running away. And but the thing that I am so sort of baffled by or I don't know, just blown away by is if you look at shame as something that's sort of hidden under a rock and it doesn't get any sunlight, you don't want to look at it. If if there is some slimy substance under a rock and you pick the rock up and turn it over, the sunlight just kind of heals it. And it's similar with shame, once we find a safe way of opening up and speaking about our shame, something about that process already heals it. It brings it to the light. But until we do that, it's so frightening. And I mean, I would go to I would say terrifying to reveal these things. And then the irony is that once we finally do, we're like, oh wow, I didn't realize that was gonna work.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, it's it's very powerful. Uh just speaking it out loud, I think, is the first step. And um, I had uh this one coach I worked with, and he said, you can't like um nothing from your past is under your control, but like everything from your future is. And if you wake up every day and you remember that, then the past stops recreating your future. And that was such great advice. And um also like I think right now, especially because the world is is experiencing kind of like some pretty major trauma things coming out that people are diving deep into. It can be very triggering for people who don't who don't have a handle on their own trauma and they they might be, I don't know, you know, about the Epstein files. And like I'm really seeing a lot of people struggling with it because maybe they haven't worked through their own trauma and it is a shadow reflection of society and what we we don't look at in our own lives. And I so that's what I mean. Like when you said the whole we're creating everything, we're part of it, it's like there's shadows within us that are being mirrored to us as I think a world right now. And, you know, if if you feel very activated by some of the stuff that's going on, it's a good time to reflect in your own life about the things that you're not paying attention to. Um, and like what we're not paying attention to as a society, about how we let the standard of care for people just go unnoticed while we're you know more self-absorbed or consumed with our own stories. I don't know. What do you do you have a thought about that?

Sacred Contracts And Purpose

SPEAKER_00

Or yeah, I mean, I agree with everything you're saying. And one of the powerful things within trauma, once you create safety, is one way of describing it could be silver lining. Another way is trauma can be a portal to very deep ways in which a person is stretching their soul. I don't know if you've heard of it, but there's a great book by Carolyn Mace, M Y S S called Sacred Contracts. And the whole premise of that book is that there's a waiting list to get onto Earth, and that you're a saint before you come to Earth, you're a saint when you leave, flying around the universe, just cruising. But one nanosecond on earth, a soul can learn more, stretch itself, and fulfill itself than eons out there. And according to Carolyn Mace, we get together with other souls before we're born, and out of love, we have these sacred agreements or contracts to get a piece of our soul from them. So often it comes out of trauma. I mean, I look at my own history and I say, you know, I had a very critical mom who um really had a hard time with anxiety herself, and um, she was very negative. And I feel like somehow I needed to have that experience to really dig deep inside of myself and and learn how to transform, learn how to create a beacon of sort of warmth and love and comfort inside of me. And before my mom died, I had this revelation and I was lucky enough to be able to tell her to say, you know what, I'm actually super grateful. Like for many years, I felt really wounded and angry about the way we interacted, the way you raised me. But I realized now, because you were such a fearful person, you saw the world as a scary place. Every time you criticized me or anyone else, I get that that meant you loved me and you wanted me to be safe in a cruel world. And I had to take that in and find my own way to transform it to help fulfill my purpose of learning how to feel fulfilled on a very dangerous planet and help others feel that as well. And I imagine if I had sort of a more cheery upbringing, I never would have discovered this sense of purpose to help people with the the work that I do. I'd probably still be telling people what stocks to buy.

SPEAKER_01

You know, it's it's so interesting. It's hard to walk somebody through a forest you've never navigated. So I find that um when I work with, especially like uh people, women, especially who've had body trauma um when they were young, uh, because I've worked through it and healed it, and I they feel more comfortable with a guide who understands the experience that they had. And so that's what always keeps me going forward is like that I know I had to go through things in order to walk other people on the journey because uh my soul was brave enough to say, I'll take that so I can help the others. And I think that that's uh a powerful way to look at trauma and actually be able to turn it into purpose and power.

Turning Trauma Into Service

SPEAKER_00

I agree. Really powerful. One of the magical questions eventually that I like to ask people once they've done some trauma work with me, and what I find is asking ourselves this question helps us feel elevated, like on a higher vibration, and feel better immediately. It's like, well, when you look back at your life and you you see all the trauma that you've been through, and you look at all the torture that you've had and just how terrible it was, is there any way in which when you reflect on that, you could see how it's all that trauma helped you get more clear on your purpose in life? And when people even, even before answers start coming to them, just asking that question, I believe, raises people's vibration and helps them feel better. There's a there's an expression in Brooklyn where I'm from. It's not for nothing. Like once you start to realize I went through all this trauma, but it wasn't just this random, meaningless, useless thing. It's not for nothing. There was a purpose. It's helping me get more clear. My purpose, I find for myself and other people, you already start to feel better knowing that it wasn't for nothing and it's helping you get clear. So I I love it when when people reflect on that and start feeling better immediately.

SPEAKER_01

I think that your that question wakes the soul up. You know, it's it's like it activates the soul to go, yeah, hey, hey, no, we picked this for a reason. Sorry, not sorry, but like I have a joke.

SPEAKER_00

That's a great way of describing that's a really great way of describing it.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um, well, I I know we're out of time now, but it was so nice to have you on today. And I think this is such an important conversation. And if people want to find you, if they're in the Portland area and would like to book an appointment with you, how would they do that?

SPEAKER_00

Well, one easy way is just to go to my website, dinoparis.com, d-in o p-ar-i-s.com. There's a page there with my phone number, you can call me. There's a page where you can have a confidential message sent to me. And um, I'm very easy to find.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks. I'll put it on.

SPEAKER_00

I'm very happy to hear from people. And I can I can do therapy with anyone in the state of Oregon. They don't have to be in Portland. And I can help people with performance anywhere in the world. But as a therapist, I'm only licensed in the state of Oregon. And what a pleasure. Pleasure talking to you. I really appreciate it. I feel like I've gotten to know you a little better too, personally. And that's that was really fun. And I look forward to more contact with you. And thanks for doing what you do. It's really beautiful and healing.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's so nice to it's nice to see how people are bringing their work into the world and how we all have our own unique way of doing it. And how it's so important to have a lot of unique people doing it in a unique way, uh, so that more people can be served. So it is not, it's not an easy path all of the time working in the healing arts, but it is one that is so needed right now. So thank you for all that you do as well. And um final question. I know I didn't send this to you ahead of time.

SPEAKER_00

No, that's okay.

SPEAKER_01

If you were on a desert island and you could only bring one book with you, what would you bring?

SPEAKER_00

Wow. What a great question. One book.

Finding Dino And Closing Reflections

SPEAKER_01

One book to rule them all.

SPEAKER_00

Wow. I think I would bring a book called um. I'm trying to remember the name of it. Oh, it's something it's something about music. It's the something about the mysticism of music by Hasrat Anayat Khan. And it it talks about how uh the mystics in every religion all agree. It's it's the it's the regular religion part where people fight. And Hazrat Anayat Khan, he came here like I think in the early 1900s. He was a be magnificent musician. He was a Sufi. And he never wrote a book, but he talked a lot, and people wrote down everything he said. And there's such beautiful depth. Like every time I read this book, I get more out of it. And it's all about the healing power of sound and music and the universality of it. And if I could only bring one book, I that's the one I would take. I would just read it every day in between swims and eating coconut and fish.

SPEAKER_01

I love it. Oh, that's awesome. Thank you. I'll have to look at it.

SPEAKER_00

Of course.

SPEAKER_01

Well, thank you so much for being on today. And um, I'll put the links to your bio down below. Thank you. And um appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, back at you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks, everyone.

Head Shot

Tabitha MacDonald

Host