Journey to Well
We are not created to do this healing journey or life alone. In fact, it was Bessle Van Der Kolk who expertly shared “healing happens in the presence of an empathic witness”. That is the heart of this podcast & my business : to witness. You can expect a plethora of conversations on nervous system regulation, breathwork, human design & astrology, cycle alignment, energy & spirituality work and so much more. We are all on a journey back home to ourselves, rediscovering our innate power within & I am thrilled to take this journey to well with you. be well xx
Journey to Well
Healing | Childhood Trauma & Reconnecting with Self | Julian Bermudez
The wisdom to heal is already inside you—but what happens when trauma disconnects you from that wisdom? That's the powerful question at the heart of my conversation with Julian Bermudez, owner of a Psychedelic Integration Trauma Therapy practice in Portland, OR.
Julian shares his journey from a painful childhood—bouncing between parents who saw him as a burden—to becoming a therapist who mirrors others so they can truly see themselves. This mirroring, he explains, is the essence of therapy: helping people reconnect with parts of themselves they've disconnected from as a survival strategy.
We explore how humans have two fundamental needs: attachment & authenticity. When expressing our authentic emotions threatens our attachments—as happens in many families—we learn to suppress parts of ourselves, creating disconnection that follows us into adulthood. This plays out as achievement-seeking, people-pleasing, addiction, or the pursuit of power and status—all attempts to fill the void of unworthiness planted in childhood.
Julian challenges modern parenting approaches like "cry it out" methods, explaining how babies physically download regulation from mature nervous systems through touch and connection. The societal shift away from this natural process has created generations of disconnection, with over half of children now medicated for emotional experiences that are actually natural responses to unmet attachment needs.
What makes Julian's approach transformative is his belief that therapy isn't about fixing something broken—it's about reconnecting with the wholeness already within us. Through plant medicine and psychedelic integration, he helps people identify patterns originating in childhood wounds, develop awareness of triggers, and cultivate the agency to respond differently to life's challenges.
The next time you feel "triggered" by someone, remember Julian's powerful metaphor: a trigger is just a small mechanism that sets off a reaction. The question isn't who pulled the trigger, but who's carrying the explosive ammunition within? By turning toward our pain rather than projecting it outward, we can break cycles of trauma that have persisted for generations.
Connect with Julian : https://www.psychedelic-integration.net/ or on Instagram @psychedlicintegration
Let's connect on social media! You can find me @ _journeytowell
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be well, my friend
xx Hannah
Hello, hello, welcome back to the podcast Journey to Well. So today's a fun one because this is something that I truly have no experience in, limited knowledge in, and those sometimes are really fun conversations to have because I get to learn along with all of you listening. So today I am joined with Julian Bermudez. He is the owner of a psychedelic integration trauma therapy. He is in Portland, oregon, so we got some East Coast, west Coast going on today and we're going to talk all about psychedelic intervention and plant medicine intervention for trauma therapy. I'm super excited to have this conversation with you, julian. Thank you so much for coming.
Speaker 2:I'm very happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I would love to have open up the space for you just to kind of share a little bit about who you are, and I'm always curious what brought someone to where they are today? So what brought you to the space to open up this healing studio and why did you feel called to work in this modality?
Speaker 2:feel called to work in this modality. Yeah, well, in terms of who I am is, I think I've always been born. Since I've been born into this world, I've been a mirror to other people, so they can really see themselves through me Very interesting, dynamic, and it makes a really wonderful foundation for therapy work. So I have this incredible foundation where I can really understand and see people based off of my own experiences, and then I can help them see themselves through a different light, which, in my opinion reconnecting with yourself is the essence of therapy, and so if I can help people to find themselves or to see themselves in new light, to help them reconnect with themselves, that's where we do the therapy at. So I mean, in a gist, that's kind of who I am.
Speaker 2:I've always been that and you know it wasn't always the easiest role to play or easiest type of person to be, especially, growing up, I grew up just an average person. I grew up in a trailer park that bordered a landfill and that was where my mom lived and my dad lived in Southwest Detroit. So I bounced back and forth and neither family wanted me. They saw me as a burden. They were very young when they had me and they hated each other. So, as I was that mirror, they hated me as well, and it left me with a tremendous amount of pain. So my whole goal was to try and figure out how I could first of all live a life that I didn't want to end immediately, live a life that I didn't want to end immediately, and to ideally transform that pain so I could learn how to enjoy life and thrive a little bit. And those are the things that led me to here.
Speaker 1:Mm, hmm, and those that's what you feel like what. What are the biggest pillars that you feel like helped you transform that mindset and that maybe even like lifestyle perspective, life perspective what were the bigger pillars that kind of helped you along your way?
Speaker 2:Well, the bouncing between families as a child was that was very important. It was very painful, very stressful and it provided me this really unique lens to see my family, my caregivers, my communities and myself through different perspectives. So when I would go to my mom's house, for instance, it was an all white, super low class. And when it's we're in a trailer park, um, we lived in subsidized housing before that. Um, you know the perspectives that they had there on race and ethnicity and all these different aspects of who we are.
Speaker 2:Um, if I would have just been in that one community, I would have really ingrained a lot of that into myself, and I did. You know, I definitely developed beliefs of unworthiness I'm not good enough, I'm not deserving, I'm just not worthy of being loved or accepted. But then I would go to my dad's house and it was the exact same thing over there, when I would act like my mom's family, or when I would be at my mom's, I would act like my dad's. They would just hate me. So what I was realizing was, no matter what I did, it wasn't going to be good enough. And there's really two ways that we can look at pain like that when we're kids, which is the first one, is my caregivers. My parents are just not up to the job. They're not qualified, they're not capable, they're not willing. Whatever it is, bottom line is I'm not safe and there's kind of a dead end in that viewpoint there, there's not a lot of hope.
Speaker 2:So the viewpoint that we usually adopt is well, my parents, caregivers they do know what's going on, they have relationships, they're older, they're surviving. The problem is is I'm not worthy or I'm not good enough to get the care that they can give me. So if I could be good enough, then I'll get the thing. And don't get me wrong, I absolutely have that one too, and I've had it for a lot of my life. But that first one developed very early in me, and so that was a major pillar for me to just say enough, no more of this, I'm not doing this anymore, I'm not going to continue living in this pattern and I'm going to start to take some responsibility for myself. It was a very, very challenging one and it started very early in my life, but I think that was one of the foundational pillars and where I got to, or how I got to where I am now.
Speaker 1:What a perspective shift of maybe they don't have the tools or the ability to take care of me and to show up for me versus. I think that we all are kind of like that. I'm sure that we all have both sides. But I'm sure that we all are kind of like that and I'm sure that we all have both sides, but I'm sure that we all are more. I know that I have definitely, especially as a child, fallen into what's wrong with me and, you know, earning love, which I shouldn't even say as a child. I think you know you brought it, you said it too like we all struggle with that from time to time and I think certain relationship dynamics are depending on where we are in life.
Speaker 1:But of that so interesting that you had that perspective as a child.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's huge this idea of having to earn our parents' love is very common, very common in our society, and it shouldn't be that way.
Speaker 2:As a child we shouldn't have to work to be accepted. We're born into this world and our fundamental need is to be accepted and to be valued and to be cherished, and we should be able to rest in our connections knowing that there's nothing that we could do or there's nothing that we could be that would disconnect or destroy those connections. But it's really quite the opposite is, our parents got their own stress, they got their own pain, they're caught up in their own patterns and they need us, as children, to become their parents and to take care of their emotional needs. And yeah, that's a tremendous amount of pain and very, very traumatic for children. And I think I was maybe 12 or 13 years old where it was very, very well pronounced in my life and I remember saying that to my mom and the outcome was well, you're absolutely right, you don't live here anymore, so get out. And I mean there was a lot of things that happened in between me saying that and me leaving that house that night.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that was where I was really really learning. There was nothing I could do that was ever going to make me good enough to get the acceptance. Of course, I still have that belief that if I get the degrees, then you know I'll finally be important and accepted. No, no, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you do. You know, sometimes you just will never fulfill those roles for people who are caught up in their own pain and their own patterns themselves. And so I think the second thing that was really important for me was really learning that I had to become good enough for myself, really learning to cultivate some self-value, because it wasn't just a matter of, you know, getting the acceptance from my parents or my family or my caregivers. It was even when I accomplished the things that I thought would make me important, I still felt that tremendous amount of pain me important.
Speaker 1:I still felt that tremendous amount of pain. And what do we do with that? I mean, my goodness, that's such a pattern I realized that I saw in other people that were very close to me when I was in my 20s, that pattern of if I do this, if I get this, then I'll be happy. And maybe what you're kind of introducing is it could be rooted in this enoughness and proving yourself and you know, kind of striving for this contentment in life from outside perspective, from outside things, um, and kind of giving our power away to like, well, if I, if I get this degree, if I move to this place, if I get this person, if I find, you know, my boyfriend or my girlfriend, then I'll be happier, then I'll be happier, then I'll be enough. And then we get there and there's still this sense of emptiness and of void and of longing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can become addicted to very a ton of substances or behaviors, Anything that provides a short relief but has long term consequences. So new places, new jobs, new relationships, and you know, there's entire sectors of our economy, our, our social structures are built on this belief of unworthiness, where the marketing is you're not good, good enough unless you buy this product. Multi-trillion dollar industries that are based on this premise, so you can see it everywhere you look You're not good enough, buy this product and then people will like you. But it doesn't matter if you start changing all the things outside of us, if that fundamental belief of unworthiness and the pain thereof is still inside of us.
Speaker 1:I was in, you know Tony Robbins, so I did one of his seminars years ago, and one thing that he said has has just stuck with me forever and and it's I mean, it's the same thing that you're saying it's that we have these two, and I don't remember his exact wording so I'm going to put it in my own language but we have two like core wounds and we all have these two core wounds and it's this, this desire and this need to be enough and to be loved, and all of our actions, everything that we do and all of our thoughts and everything comes down to these core wounds that we were born with.
Speaker 1:It's just like a, not even like a generational thing, it's just like from the beginning of humanity, I guess, is from. What I recall is what he was saying and that's always stuck with me. And, like every, all of our actions are either to prove that we are enough or to earn love from those around us, whether they're people we actually actually actually want love from or not. Like why are you, you know, getting that botox done or why are you posting that thing on social media? It's to earn love and to earn adoration and admiration, whether we really care about those people or not?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, I mean, as humans we have two fundamental needs when we're developing especially, and the first need is for attachment, because human beings are, as far as I've seen in this world, the most immature, undeveloped dependent species for the longest amount of time. Dependent species for the longest amount of time, like it takes a human three, four years to learn how to run, to build the motor skills, the neurological skills, the muscles, the coordination, just to move your body a specific way to where a horse learns how to run on their first day of life. So it takes humans a tremendous amount of care and nurturing and attachment to develop your body just enough to survive physically. So we're completely dependent on that attachment.
Speaker 2:And then the second thing that we need is to be authentic, meaning that we can express what we're feeling, we can be uniquely who we are and not have that threaten our attachments. But that's kind of what's happening today is our authenticity, our expression, having emotions, having boundaries threatens our attachments, so we have to sacrifice one of them and this is the source of great pain. It shouldn't be that way and it's in our development not that way, and this is, as far as I can see, a fairly new phenomena. And it's still. There's still pockets of cultures that exist today that still have that connection.
Speaker 2:You know, you look at hunter, gatherer cultures and in our society we usually look at them as some form of lesser than society, look at them as some form of lesser than society.
Speaker 2:But when you really look at their social dynamics and their ability to live in harmony with nature and in their harmony in their society, you know they don't let their kids touch the ground for the first four years of their life. Those children are always held and always connected and always attached and there's nothing that they do that can ruin that. And if it's not the parents who are holding them, it's the uncles or the aunts or the sisters or the cousins. There's always somebody connected and those dynamics of not being good enough, we can see examples where they don't exist. So, yeah, there's ways and it's in our human nature not to have that. But that is the hallmark of, I think, one of the biggest traumas of our generation in our and and of our age right now, because our parents have it and our grandparents have it and their parents have it. It goes through all the generations as far back as we can see right now what changed?
Speaker 1:what do you? What why? Why are we kind of in this place where we are the most detached and the most dependent? And what has changed since those times that's created this?
Speaker 2:happened. You know we could trace it back to the changing of societies, having these stagnant cities where people stay here, and there's these roles that have to be fulfilled. And you know, I mean going back multiple generations, having parents that were, you know, needing to go to work, um, having to go away from the family to earn resources to bring back to the family, um, this is a big, a big disconnect in the human condition. And so, you know the the, the father goes to work, and then, you know, one, two generations in now, women have to go to work too, the mothers have to go to work. Where does the kid go? Where does the baby go? You know, I've worked in healthcare for numerous years and I'm not in it now, but I'm still connected to it, very, very deeply connected to it. And I see mothers who have seven week old babies and they're like Okay, is it time for me to start letting this baby learn how to self soothe? Do I have to hold this baby anymore? Can I send them to daycare please? You know there's so much stress and so many pressing desires or needs that have to be fulfilled just to survive right now that caring for our kids is not even on the table anymore. So, yeah, we really go back.
Speaker 2:The industrial revolution you really see, that's where we moved from what was often referred to as the household factory. So you had these intergenerational families that lived on a certain amount of land. This was very common, don't get me wrong. There were a lot of people who didn't have this as well. So it goes much further than this. But the Industrial Revolution you really start to see people moving from the household into the factories, and that's where daycares, education systems come into place too. So that's a really big moment. But of course it goes much further back than then.
Speaker 1:The self-soothing that you're talking about. I have a huge background in just childcare. I nannied a lot and I babysat and love kids and I have a degree in speech pathology and did pediatric speech pathology and the.
Speaker 1:the idea, like just even the parenting tips is so that would be such an interesting conversation to have some time on a podcast of you know, let your baby cry it out and let your you know, like he'll figure it out or let your baby like put itself to sleep, and it's just these two very opposing perspectives of you know, kind of labeling that as allowing your baby to develop independence, and then like actually putting your baby or like the co-sleeping or contact naps, like that's cultivating this dependence on parents, which, anyway, I mean you should.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:My perspective is that I mean your baby should be dependent on you. It's a baby.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it is dependent. It can't survive without that connection. So yeah, today we have lots of parents who are well-meaning and who are getting indoctrinated and propagandized by the experts and the medical professionals who are saying those exact things. Let them cry it out. They have to learn to self-soothe and to be independent and regulate their emotions.
Speaker 2:And that is so far from the truth, because babies don't have the ability to regulate their emotions yeah um dan siegel uses the term interpersonal neurobiology, meaning that the unregulated, immature, undeveloped nervous system, nervous system of the baby, can't process their own emotions, they can't regulate their own emotions, so they literally download information from the mature, regulated nervous system on how to process and soothe these emotions, and they do that through physical touch. So we know that if you take a newborn baby and you feed them and you keep them warm but you don't hold them, baby's going to die. They can't survive without that connection. And now we have all of this information in an almost very sinister way, almost seemingly malicious, and I might go too far to say intentional. But it does seem to me like there is some sort of intent behind this disconnection where we're saying to make your child independent, you have to disconnect them at a super early age. And that is so far removed from how nature works, because independence is always the end goal of nature. You look at a mother bear, for instance. Her goal is to make her cubs independent Because at some point she's not going to be around anymore and that baby cub has to go out and hunt and make a den and survive on their own. And they have to go out and have relationships. How do you make a baby independent? It's through dependence. How to survive and how to navigate this world, how to find safety. They have to learn and develop all of these customs and the way they do that is through the attachment. So no baby cub bear gets thrown out of the den or left alone. No, the mother has to raise this child to become independent. That's how it works and we are doing the complete opposite right now and, yeah, it's causing a tremendous amount of pain.
Speaker 2:I was looking into it just a couple of days ago because I was wondering. You know, my partner works in pediatric nursing and so we talk a lot about these things and I was looking up what are the stats? How many children are on medications right now? And, depending on the stats you look at, it's over 50 percent. Yeah, and I mean you know we see it every single day, and it's not just one medication. It's anti-anxiety, antidepressants, antipsychotics, you name it and these amphetamines, you know, ssris.
Speaker 2:These children are super medicated right now and the parents want they're getting the information to start the medications very early, because they're suppressing all of their parental wisdom and knowledge on how to care for their kids, because the doctors are telling them don't hold your kids and it's creating these big divides. They got to go back to work. They got to go back to their lives. They got to make money, they got to survive. They're dealing with all their own stress. They can't care for this kid and then the child's developing with so much pain and they're acting out that pain in the only ways that are available to them because they don't have connection, they don't have ways of expressing that emotion in. It's terrifying of what's happening right now.
Speaker 1:It really is. Yeah, I mean, there's so many, it can be very overwhelming. And you know, actually, since we're talking about this an interesting it's actually not interesting I am meeting more and more people that are my age, that don't have kids, that aren't married, that say, you know, I don't really know if I want kids, because it's just a. It's a terrible time. You know, like I'm afraid to like raise kids in this world today, and that is that's not the way that I was raised and that is that's not the way that I was raised. I was really not raised to live in fear and I don't choose to live in fear or get caught up in that like overwhelm, but I do know that it's such a real thing for so many people. And I mean, this is just one topic.
Speaker 1:But on the aspect of kids and medication and and really that's one of the reasons that I think it's so important to have conversations like this because whether or not you want to have kids, I mean that that should be your decision and it shouldn't be a decision made out of fear of oh well, you know, I don't want to like raise my kid, to be on all this medication and, and there's so many answers that we have that are in this world.
Speaker 1:And if I can be one person to bring like here's something to look at and here's something to consider, even just you know, just studying the attachment theory which you've referenced a few times, and kind of learning that we need physical touch and we need that as babies but we need it as humans, like we need, we're deeply lacking presence and connection, present connection these days, connection, present connection these days. And what would, what world would we live in if we came from that perspective, versus, ah, just take this medication or just take this like anxiety. I assume but I don't want to be assumptive I assume a lot of clients that come to you are struggling with I'm sorry, I don't really like using the word struggling, are dealing with a lot of these life situations. Like, do you have kind of this overarching characteristics of people that come to you or is it truly a mixed bag?
Speaker 2:No, no, you just hit on probably the biggest trauma that I think everybody's dealing with, and people do struggle with it. A lot of the times we're very harsh to ourselves and very judgmental and critical and evaluatory and punishing ourselves for the way that we navigate our adaptations to pain or to the environment that we have. So there is an internal conflict and there is a struggle that I see a lot of people going through. It shouldn't be that way, of course, but that's what we're dealing with. And, yeah, the hallmark trauma that I see is a disconnect, a disconnection from ourselves, a disconnection from each other, a disconnect, a disconnection from ourselves, a disconnection from each other, a disconnection from the world around us. And this is the result. It's an adaptation to trauma. So, again, going back to those two fundamental needs that we had as children attachment and authenticity. When your authenticity, when your emotions, when your expression, when your boundaries, when your authenticity, when your emotions, when your expression, when your boundaries, when your needs threaten your attachment meaning, if you express anger you get put in a timeout. Your parents say I'm going to disconnect from you, I'm going to isolate you until you can suppress your emotions or regulate your emotions and then you can come back. In other words, I'm going to threaten you with the thing that's most important to you your attachments and connections.
Speaker 2:We learn at a very early age having emotions is bad, so we suppress them. Or we're told that if you're going to be sad, I'll give you something to cry about, or if you're going to be mad, I'll give you something to be mad about. We learn very early on that expressing what we're feeling is dangerous. Or in other situations, we have all of these emotions, we have all this pain, we have this anger, this shame, this fear, and we don't know what to do with it because we're all alone with it. There's no one to talk to with it. So what do we do? Well, the exact same thing we would do in the other situation we suppress it.
Speaker 2:And the way we suppress it is a form of disconnection. We're trying to disconnect from those feelings because they're overwhelming, they're threatening for lots of reasons. They might threaten our attachments, might threaten my safety, they might threaten my physiological well-being, because I can't feel these things and process them. So I disconnect from them. How do I disconnect from them? I distract, I get busy, I take on tasks, I make myself agreeable, I make, I try to please people, I try to take care of other people. I go and accomplish things and you know, later in life I go and I try and please people, I try to take care of other people. I go and accomplish things and you know, later in life I go and I try and become, you know, somebody with high status, high power, high respect, high wealth, high value, all the things. I can go. Become the president of the United States, because I've never been good enough once in my life, so now I'm going to go be good enough no-transcript 1000% agree.
Speaker 1:And then the next question, of course, is how do we connect with?
Speaker 2:ourselves and then each other. Yeah, that's the essence of therapy right there. That is the fundamental premise of therapy, in my opinion, is to reconnect with yourself. See, I come into this with the belief that all the wisdom that knows how to be whole is inside of us. All the wisdom that knows how to heal is inside of us.
Speaker 2:If you look out in nature, you see it everywhere you look. Everything knows how to heal Systems, know how to heal Trees. Know everywhere you look, everything knows how to heal Systems. Know how to heal Trees. Know how to heal Animals. Know how to heal Our bodies, know how to heal the wisdom. It's inside of us, it's inherent. All we need to do is reconnect with it. So when we disconnect from ourselves that wisdom, that wholeness that's inside of us, it's still there. It hasn't been destroyed or diminished. Just because we might have a belief about ourselves not being good enough or being broken or damaged goods doesn't mean that we've lost that wisdom indefinitely. It's still there and we can reconnect with it. And so the goal of therapy, in my opinion, is to help people to reconnect with themselves, and there's lots of ways we can do that.
Speaker 1:Would you share a few of them? I'm curious. I really I'm someone that loves like concrete tools, which shows up in my human design a lot, but I'm curious and maybe even not sharing. I mean, you can share anything, but maybe just even sharing ones that have very, have spoken very deeply to you and in your life and your life journey.
Speaker 2:Mm, hmm, yeah, well, I don't really like talking about other people's experiences. I started doing that once and I was like, ah, you know, even when I'm being, I'm anonymizing it very well and even changing the details. I'm like, ah, you know, so many people have dealt with something similar to this that I don't want them to think, oh, he's talking about me right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because that's a very common theme is, you know, we develop that very early. We develop there. Here we go, so very early in life, when our parents are stressed or when they're dealing with their own pain, as children, everything's about us. We're very narcissistic. We're the center of the world and so, whenever something is happening, our parents are stressed, they're busy, they're disconnected, they're in their own pain.
Speaker 2:Whatever it is, it's our fault yeah and so here is another form of disconnect, in a way of being very critical and harsh to ourselves later in life. So when I'm working with somebody, usually within the first few minutes, really the first couple sentences they will immediately tell me about something that they're going through, whether they're aware of it or not, and something like that is very common. So today my partner went to she's working in the hospital pediatric nurse. She works remote and she works in the hospital and she rarely takes hospital shifts. But today she went in the hospital and we had some leftovers from our dinner yesterday and she took those, of course. Right, because she has to have a lunch, because she's working a 12-hour shift. Yeah, right, because she has to have a lunch because she's working a 12-hour shift.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I have a dynamic with food from being a child where, um, I wasn't allowed to eat a lot of the times and so food was always withheld from me and uh. So today I have a very difficulty. I still have difficulties with food, and so I went to make myself some lunch, because I have to very intentionally force myself to go eat something, otherwise most times I just won't eat. And so I'm going to go eat and I realized she took the. She took the rice and that was like one of the only things that we had in there. Now that belief of everything's about me can immediately get activated right away and I can say, okay, she took that and it's because she wanted to withhold food from me or because she was mad at me or whatever.
Speaker 2:And there's the childish beliefs. Those are the beliefs that I had from my childhood. They'll get activated very quickly, so something like that can get mentioned right away when I'm from my childhood. They'll get activated very quickly, so something like that can get mentioned right away. When I'm talking to somebody. They'll say I'm mad at so-and-so my partner for this reason and it might be something as simple as they just took the leftovers for lunch. And then what I do is I want to figure out why did that upset them? And so what I'm looking for are core beliefs about themselves of I'm unworthy, I'm not good enough, I'm not deserving, so and so I'm not respectable. So this person doesn't respect me. That's why they did this. They're intentionally trying to hurt me. And so once I can figure out the pattern of what people are going through, meaning they have a belief about themselves. It's causing an emotion, it's causing perceptions, it's causing behaviors, then I just help them become aware of it and I help them see these beliefs and these patterns and how they're coming up.
Speaker 2:So, right away, what we can start to do is reconnect with that initial trauma. So we ask questions like when did you first start feeling this? Where did this originate from? Where did you learn this belief? Is this the first time that you've ever gotten mad, that somebody took your food? And then, if somebody asked me that, I'd say, well, no, of course not. I have no shortage of that, and so it's not about this situation, it's about this initial pain.
Speaker 2:So this initial pain from childhood is what's showing up here in the past, and we're disconnected from it. We don't see it, we're unaware of it. It's just unconscious, just rolling around, and we just keep finding ourselves in these patterns. And so what I use is inquiry. I ask lots of questions, I try to understand the pattern and then I reflect it Again. I'm that mirror where I can help them see it, and then I help them to understand the variables that are at play, so they can start to make choices.
Speaker 2:And that's the whole game, right, there is building awareness, recognizing, identifying the patterns, the emotions, the beliefs, the feelings, the behaviors, accepting that it's here, saying, oh well, there it is again, rather than fighting it, rather than struggling with it, rather than trying to exile it or push it away. Well, here it is Now. How can I engage with this? Well, let's get to know it a little bit. Let's start to reconnect with this pattern. Let's understand where it comes from, how it developed and what needs were underlying this that went unmet. And then, how can I meet those in healthy, constructive ways? How can I nurture and take care of myself? So that's the gist of it, and you know it's different with everybody, but we can usually get there within the first couple sentences of what they're working through.
Speaker 1:That is wild, but I mean it's thank you for sharing and that's so.
Speaker 1:What I have learned in my journey is that so much of what we do is unconscious and it's coming from these. I mean, one of the things that we talked about before we hit record was, like these subconscious beliefs and these, the just the subconscious kind of showing up in our life and in our actions and the way that we speak, and it's always fascinating to me to explore that within myself and what is coming up. And you know why am I feeling this way? And, to be honest, it's very difficult, I would assume, for most people, but certainly for me. It's very difficult for me to do that alone and just myself, because we can't see, I can't see my subconscious coming out as clearly as you, for example, an outsider, could see, and then to have someone whenever I have someone point something out, I'm like whoa, that was, that was wild, that that's coming up and and being able to address it and then have the choice to change it, yeah, I think is huge, because if you don't, you don't know what you don't know you know you don't.
Speaker 1:You don't know what you're doing and what you know what these triggers are. I think that we use words like oh, I was triggered, you know, very freely now, at at least my, my community, I hear that a lot. But then what is that next step below that of okay, but do you know what the like, what the trigger was, or where it originated from? And and kind of diving through that and navigating that is very freeing, kind of like the. The energy that I'm getting throughout this whole conversation is just this invitation to freedom and this invitation to to freedom through exploration and exploring what's going on in your life and and your story.
Speaker 1:One of the quotes that I wrote down from our initial conversation was trauma.
Speaker 1:Is trauma can be bad things that happen that weren't supposed to, or good things that didn't happen that we're supposed to.
Speaker 1:And that's kind of going back to like the attachment theory thing and and the maybe the love that we didn't receive, or the way that we received the love. I remember Jay Shetty kind of talked about that on a podcast one time and he was saying um, our love languages typically develop by either like what we did receive, like you got a lot of physical touch when you were a kid. So you want that physical touch, or you got a lot of gifts as a kid and so that's how you perceive what love is, or from what we didn't receive that we really wanted, so not receiving enough physical touch, and then you like crave that, like it's insatiable. And it's just such an interesting because I think a lot of times we think of trauma as the bad things, the bad things that happen to to us, but I don't always think of trauma as the good things that didn't happen, that maybe we're supposed to, yeah, yeah, like having healthy attachments and connections and being accepted and valued.
Speaker 2:And you know, the trauma isn't about what happens. It's not about the thing that happens to us, the bad thing or the good thing that was supposed to happen, that doesn't happen, that's just the thing that happens.
Speaker 2:The trauma is what happens inside of us as a result of what happened to us. So in those situations, we learn to disconnect from ourselves, we suppress our emotions and then we get stuck in these patterns of seeking the connection, the love that we didn't get. And so we've subconsciously, unconsciously, look for the love that we didn't get all throughout our lives, and we look for it from people who can't give it to us, just like our parents couldn't. So we get stuck in these repetitive patterns that we're unaware of. And you know, just like you were saying, finding the pattern yourself is like trying to identify a color that you're blind to you just can't see it.
Speaker 2:so, yeah, we get triggered very commonly because these initial pains that we were carrying around from childhood keep getting activated. And the analogy of getting triggered is very interesting because the trigger is just a very small mechanism of a larger tool, like a gun, for instance. It's this tiny little pin where you pull it and it sets off a whole mechanical reaction which usually results in something happening in the case of a gun, a force of destruction, for instance. Happening in the case of a gun, a force of destruction, for instance. So if I got triggered, if somebody triggered me, that's to say that somebody pulled this very small pin and set off a cascade of mechanical reactions that happened. The real question is well, who's carrying around the combustible ammunition then? And where is it located? Well, it's inside of me. It's got nothing to do with the person who triggered me. It's me who's carrying that around.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, if we want to liberate ourselves from these old patterns, we want to develop freedom. The first step is cultivating awareness. We have to become aware of these patterns. We have to learn how to recognize and identify what we're feeling, what we're perceiving about what's happening in our environment or with the people that we're engaging with and what our beliefs are about ourselves and about others. And once we can start to cultivate some awareness, that's the prerequisite or the foundation for making choices, and then we can start to choose how are we going to respond to this.
Speaker 2:That's the prerequisite or the foundation for making choices, and then we can start to choose how are we going to respond to this. And the goal is to cultivate agency, choice making and to take responsibility or the ability to respond differently to these situations. And when we do those things constantly and we're always paying attention to what we're feeling and we're being present with ourselves and what we're always paying attention to what we're feeling and we're being present with ourselves, and what we're perceiving and thinking and what we're doing that's where we can start to cultivate liberation, to start to do things differently and step away from those old patterns, and this is, in my opinion, one of the most important things we can do in our life.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, yes, absolutely. I mean definitely the most important thing that we can do in our life the ability to, you know, the autonomy to make our own decisions and have authority over ourselves is I know that in again, like all I can do is really share about my journey and my journey. It gives me this ability to extend grace to other people and to see humans as human and not these perfect or, you know, robot people. It's we all have. We all have trauma, we all have things that happened to us growing up or didn't happen to us that should have happened to us, and we all are are doing the best that we can with what we have right now and it, yeah, it kind of gives this, this perspective of being able to extend grace to other people, because I guess, because I'm extending it to myself first, is really what it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean that's a testament to the work that you're doing for yourself, because the way that we treat other people is oftentimes a reflection of how we treat ourselves. So when we see these people out there who are screaming and cursing and attacking all these other people, you know that's just a mirror to their relationship with themselves and you know it's very easy to go out and judge and criticize and evaluate and want to punish other people.
Speaker 2:And you know I mean how do we feel when people do that to us? You know, and a lot of the times that's what we're doing to ourselves. So that's the pattern, that's the dynamic is evaluation, judgment, criticism, punishment. And the only way to really change those dynamics out there is to do it for ourselves. Is we've got to really start to comfort ourselves and be kind and gentle to ourselves.
Speaker 2:Look, I got this neighbor a couple of houses down from me and this guy is always on some bullshit. Let me tell you, not too long ago I was driving, and it's a small side road, and he came flying down the hill and turned his car left, right in front of my car to turn into his driveway, stopped, honked at me, flips me off, F you. He's screaming at me and I'm like Harold, I'm your neighbor, man, Come on and don't get me wrong. There was a part of me that got so angry about that and wanted to push that anger back onto him. But there's another part of me that says, man, that guy's just really going through it right now. He is what is his day looking like? Where he's in that state of ready to snap and get into, you know, a really intense conflict with his neighbor three houses down. He didn't even realize it was his neighbor, he was just going to throw it on. And then I can hear it and you know, I hear the way that he's talking to his grandkids and to his kids and it's like man.
Speaker 2:This guy is carrying around so much pain and when he dumps that onto me, when it comes bursting out the seams in inappropriate ways, Again there's that narcissistic child inside of me who only knows how to say that's because of me, he doesn't respect me, he doesn't value me, he's intentionally trying to hurt me. And I can see that and say, no, that's not the case. And I see why I believe that, because that's how it was as a kid, that's how I saw things as a child. And no, I can comfort that part of me and say, no, that's actually not true. This guy is going through some terrible stuff and regardless of who would have crossed his path right there, it would have come bursting out the seams on him regardless. So it's not about me.
Speaker 2:And to give myself that is to, you know, really soothe my experience, because that pain, it's contagious and a lot of the times what we're doing is we have so much of it built up inside of us. It's like a pressure cooker and the pressure cooker is just getting turned up higher and higher and then it pops and it bursts out the seams in super inappropriate ways on other people and that adds to their pressure cooker. And then it pops and it bursts out the seams in super inappropriate ways on other people and that adds to their pressure cooker and it just keep. We just keep popping on each other. So, yeah, I mean I can't go and interact with him and, you know, help him solve his pain and soothe his pain. And if he wanted to come to me and, you know, seek my support, I still wouldn't do it because I think that'd be a little bit of a breach of boundaries with how close he lives to me.
Speaker 2:I would gladly refer him to somebody else. But the way that I can really engage with that is by comforting and soothing the pain that's inside of me, so that way his pain doesn't add to mine and I can set boundaries even if I don't really talk to him and just say, yeah, that's got nothing to do with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what a good example and what a beautiful invitation. We are so narcissistic, we always think it has to do with us, or, like what this person is doing to me and I mean you said it so beautifully You're like wow, what? What is he going through? Like, what is what's happening in his day? You remind me of my mom. I feel like my mom used to say that be like they are clearly having a very terrible day and just kind of blessing them and that's, you know, setting that boundary of like I hope that you are able to see that someday and I hope that you know your day gets better.
Speaker 1:Whatever, however, you need to let it go and kind of cut yourself off energetically from it, because, yeah, we all, we all just walk around and we're all just. I love that. We're all just little pressure cookers. I talk about that in breathwork. I do breathwork too, and that's one of the things that I say is like creating these spaces therapy being another one, creating these spaces to release some of that pressure, to express some of that pressure, because otherwise all we're doing is we are just suppressing and pushing down and pushing down, and you know what it's going to come up sometime and a lot of times, if we're not creating these spaces, it's going to end up coming up at an inopportune moment, where we end up screaming at our partner or yelling at our kids or breaking down, you know, in the middle of the highway, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or seeking tremendous amounts of power and status so that way we can go and traumatize other people on a massive level. This pain that's inside of us, it doesn't go anywhere on its own. We have to go into it and we have to reconnect with it and we have to start to process it and express it in constructive ways and soothe and comfort this pain. Otherwise it's just going to get passed on to the next person and then that's going to keep building.
Speaker 2:And I mean that's exactly what we see all over the world right now is pain from generations just constantly coming back around. And if we don't process our pain, if we don't reconnect with that and start to engage with it, our situations in life are going to keep coming back around to that pain and it's going to keep giving us opportunities to process it and those opportunities are going to get more and more intense because it's trying to get our attention. So the only thing that we can really do well, probably the best thing we can do is start to stop running from it, to stop disconnecting. We have to pull out the anesthetic and we have to turn around and face it and start to comfort it, because most times what we're dealing with are little children who are still hurt hmm, I love that I could talk to you all day, tell everyone where they can find you, where they can connect more with you, and also, do you have your own podcast?
Speaker 1:I can't remember.
Speaker 2:I don't have my own podcast, no.
Speaker 1:I think you should.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I've been considering it actually, I've been considering doing. Thank you, I've been considering it actually. I've been considering doing conversations with people who are working through their own process and doing it live, so people could actually see what it looks like, because talking about it and doing it are two totally different things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So thank you for that. Yeah, I've really been considering it.
Speaker 1:I would listen, I would be on it. You know it's such a good point because we can talk all day. You know, like a lot of these things that that I would assume a lot of these things that we talked about a lot of listeners you've heard before somewhere in some form, right Like, what we're saying is not unique and not um, what's the word? Well, new there's a better word for that but what we're saying is not new. But how many times do we like listen to these ideas and these invitations and not actually do them? So I think that's a very, very powerful podcast idea, but anyway, where can people find you?
Speaker 1:Where can they connect? Where can they learn more from you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, my website is probably the best way psychedelic-integrationnet. We have a mailing list where you can stay up to date with what we're doing. We post articles, and if you want to reach out for support, that's the easiest way. And Instagram is a good one too. We just started that up not too long ago, so we're posting lots of clips and videos of us talking like this, and this weekend actually, I'm sure this probably air after that, but we're starting to do sessions at least once a month that you can join if you want to participate and do these exercises together. So they'll be live streamed and we'll talk about things, and then we'll be doing them as well.
Speaker 1:Is this on Instagram live stream or where is it live streamed?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm partnering up with somebody who knows how to do all that stuff, because I don't. And yeah, it'll be on Instagram, so all the links and everything are on there.
Speaker 1:Super cool, yeah, and I'll make sure to link everything down below in the description so people can um can, learn. So last question we're doing something new. For the past season of my podcast I always ask the same question and now I've decided I'm going to ask a different question, so you are the first recipient of the new question. If the world could only remember one feeling from your work, what do you hope that would be? One feeling like an emotion from your work, feeling or emotion.
Speaker 2:See, that's an interesting thing because so frequently thoughts, perceptions, feelings, emotions are all mixed up and confused and it's very difficult for a lot of people to distinguish between them. But there is a feeling of wholeness, I think, where you really reconnect with yourself and you get back into the flow of who you really are. Like when people are in, when they're healing from an addiction we call it recovery, right.
Speaker 2:And the word recover means to find something that you've lost. So when people heal an addiction, they're recovering who they were and there's that feeling of wholeness and that feeling of reconnection that's associated with recovering who you are. And, like I said, I think therapy, the goal of therapy, is to get to that spot. So if we could mass produce that or make it more accessible to people, I think that could make a very big difference in our world.
Speaker 1:It would Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on. This was such a lovely conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed connecting.