The Hidden Intelligence of Trauma: Complex PTSD, Dissociation, and Healing

What if the trauma patterns keeping you stuck are also the doorway to your deepest healing?

In this episode, Dr. Anastasia speaks with Dr. Kirsten Viola Harrison — trauma psychologist and spiritual integration expert with over 25 years of experience in complex PTSD, dissociation, and near-death experiences. They look closely at what's really happening beneath the surface of trauma, why so many healers and wellness practitioners quietly burn out, and what genuine healing looks like when clinical depth meets soul work.

Dr. Harrison explains how projective identification works in the treatment room, why surrendering to a benevolent healing energy is the antidote to holding on too tightly, and how the quantum field connects to what clients experience during dissociation and near-death states. If you've been absorbing your clients' emotional weight without realizing it, this conversation offers a clear, grounded framework for protecting your energy while staying fully present.

Check out her book we talked about on this episode: click here

When you're ready to clear old relationship patterns and restore your energetic foundation, visit scientifichealer.com/relationship for the free five-step relationship healing protocol.

Show notes at https://www.breakfreefromtheburnout.com
Discover your energy leaks.  Presentation on the Hidden Science of Energy Blocks: https://healersu.com/register

Liked this episode? Pay it forward and share it with a friend.
Love the show? Write a 5-star review — even one sentence helps us keep bringing you the content you want to hear.

More from Dr. Anastasia:

• Websites: https://www.healersu.com and https://www.scientifichealer.com
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/drachopelas
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/dranastasiachopelas
• YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/dranastasiachopelas

Some product links on this site are affiliate links, which means we'll earn a small commission for any affiliate purchases you make (at no additional cost to you). We only recommend products that we use and/or personally trust, so you can browse with confidence.

Transcript

0:00

What if the very patterns that keep someone stuck in trauma are also the doorway to their deepest transformation? Welcome to break Free from the Burnout. I'm your host, Dr. Anastasia Chopelas, physicist turned energy healer, and I'm here to help you make the quantum shifts to release the hidden blocks to your success. Your next breakthrough starts now. Today's guest is Dr. Kirsten Viola Harrison, a trauma psychologist and a spiritual integration expert who has spent over 25 years helping people navigate complex PTSD, Dissociation and profound Psychological and Spiritual Transitions. She brings a rare blend of clinical depth and compassionate soul work to reveal what true lasting healing actually looks like. You've worked with some of the most complex trauma cases, and I've been looking you up. To see what's going on. Like PTSD, dissociation, schizophrenia. Near death experiences. What, yeah. What first drew you into this depth of work and what did you begin to see the most that most traditional models were missing? thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. And I would say what drew me in was just the good old fashioned art of human relating. it started with an early relationship. I would think that I was on a pretty linear path. I was gonna go to Georgetown and I was going to become an international lawyer like my parents thought. And I had a boyfriend in high school eventually became my first husband who had, who had been adopted by a very well-meaning family in Minnesota. And he had been in an orphanage for five years in, Columbia, south America and had a lot of abuse. And, I didn't know anything about that at the time. It was really heart wrenching to watch him struggle with PTSD that was unnamed and it was showing up in all different ways. and eventually that became just my calling where I was like, I feel like the more that people can attune to this greater healing energy as a force for good in, in life and how we manifest that through our different relationships on the daily, that is what's going to ultimately be the most soul fulfilling for me. I knew that was my path then. So of course I went to study psychology, then did a little ve into medicine and went back into psychology. And in that time. Serendipitously, my brother died tragically in an accident when I was 22. And it catapulted my learning in the sense of all of a sudden near death experiences and what people had survived trauma on a very deep level without those overlaps. And that bridge generated was starting to just captivate my interest and I couldn't let go. It was a passionate pull, no deeper and further, and listened to voices in the margins that I'd never paid attention to before. And I have to say, we were talking eighties and not a lot of people were starting to bridge these, gra these gaps. These weren't in the common vernacular like they are now. so I started a lot of esoteric conferences and I just started finding a voice over time. this was my calling. Yeah, I know. I felt the pool to science in when I was seven, if you can believe it. And Oh my goodness. Yeah. And I, people would ask me, what are you gonna be when you grow up? And I say, oh, I'm gonna be a scientist. And they'd go, don't you wanna be a mommy? Don't you wanna be a teacher? Nope. Nope. Yeah. And for me it was, I'm not gonna be the sidekick.'cause this was in the fifties, of course. And in the fifties. Yes. There were no role models. The role models, like if you watched a fifties TV show about science, the women were bringing the coffee and were the side pieces. yeah, yeah. oh my goodness, that's amazing. Yeah. So that you felt that at seven. just for people to know that when you feel that pull towards something, it's like. the trauma. Trauma is a very difficult thing to treat because you're in the place where that person is at their worst, and to be able to help them without getting pulled into where you know their energy is down without getting pulled into that, that must be, that to me, seems like a real talent. Yes, it's definitely a challenge. It's an art in and of itself. Yes. To learn that compassion and to be able to navigate that pull but at the same time use your head and pull back enough that you can really be helpful so both of you don't land in the abyss and that murky muck of trying to figure it out, which is helpful to go in the murky muck. You wanna know what it feels like on some level, but you also have to be able to have that kind of that's where we bring in things. Terms like the internal self helper that helps the client see the much bigger picture but also acts as that bridge to some other space than other domain of like ultimate knowing. Because sometimes two humans going in there, you can get a little lost if you don't keep that. Yeah. You can much greater like meta, meta perspective. Yeah. And I mean it takes empathy, but it, you have to also be able to pull that empathy back and realize Yes. That you can't match the energy that they're feeling. You can't match the trauma.'cause we, women tend to wanna match and mirror each other and Yes. That's a skill in itself, but you have to learn to trust that a greater wisdom is guiding. Yes. And the whole idea of non-locality, I would love to understand your version of that as a physicist, but I, there's so much healing that works through us if we can just become an ultimately beautifully cleared out vessel to be able to allow that healing to work its magic and not overly identify with. A polarity of I'm so compassionate in my heart, but I'm blocking because I want to heal so badly. Or I've got this like cognitive frame that I want somebody to fit into. It's be open and then allow that wisdom, but then recognize it when it's coming through your body or your heart, and then be able to put that forward. Yes. So in your experience, what is complex PTSD really doing beneath the surface, not just the symptoms, but the deeper pattern or intelligence behind that? Most people don't recognize. So I would say I don't malign these symptoms in the way that some people might because they feel like it's so disruptive to their regulation or to their, daily functioning. However, there's such a deep listening that it's a begging for understand that hyper arousal, hypervigilance, startle response. These are all part of the trauma that still is saying, Hey, there's a little something here, so that we need a noticing and we need some resolution because it's not completely safe yet. And that's something that we really need to pay attention to. And then in order to resolve that, learn the skills and adaptable things that can make us realize it's gonna always be there if we need it, but we don't need to have it operating in the foreground, like in the whole gestalt in the, for all the time. Yeah. And I think that would be the goal. Yep. Not trying to get rid of it. Yeah. You're trying to have it, you're just trying to thank it and say, thank you so much for alerting me to the fact that even when I walk down my neighborhood street, yeah. There could be danger. I'm happy to know that, but I want to feel safe enough that I don't avoid the walk because there could be danger when in reality we're just putting it completely out of proportion. So it's just locking it back into its kind of more proper functional place. Yes. Yeah. As a healer, I. I am energetically sensitive to people. I can connect with them no matter where they are in the world. And so I do the same thing that you're doing is that I can reach in, feel them, and then pull right back out. So I know what their feeling, I know where their pains are, I know what their emotional state is. Yes. And yes, yes, I would say so. In more, in psych terms, we were always taught that it was something called projective identification, which is if you're in a session and all of a sudden you just feel so sad and you don't know why, because you're having a good day, but the client's not able to own their sadness, you are going to feel it. And, but then you have to identify it, realize that it's not yours to own, but then try to understand from the inside out the compassionate response or the line of inquiry or questioning that would then help draw that out for them safely. And so it's we're speaking the same language in terms of, something's happening in that field. You know that togetherness field That we are picking up on, which is how we go about learning how to translate it and how to then mirror it back and give it compassionately back so that somebody can heal. Yes. And people don't realize that our hearts are where we radiate emotions and they can be felt electronically, can be measured up to 25 feet away. Yes. So you're going to absorb it and unless you know what to do, unless you're aware, like I'm hyper aware and I can block it really easily, everybody can block it. So if they want to. So many of the people listening are healers and wellness practitioners who look like they have it together, but feel exhausted, stuck, or not fully expressed. How often do you see unresolved trauma or dissociation quietly driving burnout or limiting their impact? it's ironic because I did need to take a good 10 years off. I think it was because I was raising little ones and I found that my filtering capacity was diminished in terms of hearing very severe trauma at work. And then knowing that I, my daughters wanted to play and I just, I couldn't quite, I couldn't quite draw that balance the way that I needed to be able to give the best to both worlds. And so I had to pull away from it, for a little bit. So there's that. If you're really feeling that level of burnout, you're not helping anybody. By trying to push through. It's not something you can really push through. But that being said, when you realize that the ultimate universal energy is benevolent and that you really trust that something unseen really is caring for you and holding you, and that it wants to work its way through you, and everybody wants to be able to find a way to heal communally in the collective, and that when you trust that, then it's not as much yours to have to hold anymore, and it helps prevent some of those classic symptoms of burnout. That'd be my experience. my next question was about blending trauma psychology with spiritual integration. And that sounds exactly like what you were just saying. And so where do you see people getting stuck when they focus only on one side? Either purely clinical or purely spiritual? I'll say, again, it's a deep sense of listening and honoring and witnessing. A human to human, we can't script it. We used to have something in the hospital for, severe trauma that was called an anger room. And it was this padded room, your typical anger room type of things. But every single time I would go in with a client within two minutes of punching the walls, they would just start crying. And it was like some of the therapists had an agenda. They wanted to work through these different things with anger, but I just let it be what it was. And the sadness was really driving so much of it, and the grief, and then those profound shifts that happen when we're aligning our energies and people feel safe is where the magic happens. And it's letting spirit flow through. And to me. That's what healers do when you're giving a massage and it's a deep massage and it's a listening, some sort of like body response in somebody that you know, is this somatic opening and then somatic healing. it's who that person is and how they're bringing that healing to the fore. That's way more important than the technique or the framing or the cognitive restructuring. So that's how I would say the overlap is happening, is trust that energy field that we're extending outward is so incredibly important and healing. And it's not about doing, when we're taught and we're younger, when we're a little insecure about our skills, we're so focused on how we're doing something. We're forgetting about how we are being and how we are. co-creating in that space. Yeah. I always say we're human beings, not human doings. Yes. very true. we hear it, but it's really get it, Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I love what you just said about that, is that, getting stuck is letting it go. a lot of people, when I work with their emotions, I do a release process with them and then they go, why was I that way and what caused it? And I go, doesn't matter. Just let it go. Yeah. That is so true. That is so true. And that's the same. So when you're raising kids, it's about attuning, mis attuning, re attuning, and it's the repair happens and all those subtleties and those subtle shifts. So it's not that you have to be attuned all the time or really get it or have the perfect healing touch or whatever it's about. When these sort of things start to shift, are you then able to recalibrate reshift back in there and then be able to join and let it go together? And that witnessing is the healing and that joining is the healing. And when we're not in, direct communication or alignment with another human, remember that whole universe of healing energy is out there for us. I can't tell you the amount of really severely spiritually also abused clients that I, that had gone through the worst, like satanic ritual abuse. the things that you wouldn't even believe. And yet, when they somehow found somebody that just really held space with them to find that courage and find that ability to trust and heal again, the journey was incredible. I would hear the most horrific stories yet be the most uplifted person on the planet when I was done with the day, because I felt like, oh my goodness, We just created a whole new space, a whole new capacity for letting joy in to somebody's life. And that it's like the way I describe it is we start out as this little seed and the tree of decisions grows up. So we have all these branches and we're sitting over here on this branch. Yes. And the healing process is if you had made those decisions, you're now, or you had these events happen, you're on that branch and the healing is like an instantaneous winking out here and coming into being here, it's as if the other stuff had never happened. That's what, to me, the way I view healing. But it's, we don't have to dwell on the past. Yeah. Because when I look back, you're trying to get that nourishment coming up through the whole trunk, Yeah. And that's what we help facilitate. The different roots, the different Yes. Ways that we can take in the nourishment where the blocks are like, Yeah. And the title. And a lot of times I'll think about, 'cause I've had some trauma and some abuse in my life. And, when I think about those times, it's I don't think about them ever anymore because my life is so joyful and fun now. And, and I think that's also what creates the extra youthful state, is that I'm always in a state of wonderment and happiness and joy and enjoy every minute of every day that Yes. and people say, work, you, my, my daughter will say, mom, you work all the time. And I'll go, this is fun. Yeah. and the reality is, most of us who have gone into some sort of healing profession, there's some dark stuff we had to work through to get to the point where we could. So embrace the light, let it in, feel full of gratitude for waking up. Feel full of gratitude. I wake up, I open the slider, the birds, I'm, and it's people go, what is wrong with you? what are you on? And it's no, this is from going through some really hard stuff and just saying, I got to wake up today. Like bottom line, And so then I wanna give that sense to somebody else who might be having a little harder time. But when I was in my kind of, I would call it not burnout part where I had to take a break, and it was more like the pre-phase where I was hanging on too tightly and trying to pretend to myself that I wasn't stretched to the edge. That's when it was like I had to guard my energy so carefully because I felt like I only had a speck of it left. And that's a sign. When you're able to be magnanimous with your energy and just that's a sign of balance. And that for me, that's okay, my wellbeing is restored. I needed to do the reparative things to make that happen so I could then be an open vessel again for others. And so I think it's just that attunement and some of ours were raised in eras where, it's not okay to take time for yourself because you're supposed to be there for everybody else unconditionally. And it's like it's necessary to take care of yourself, but give permission right now. Right. That's women training. That's true. We women all got trained to give, do what everybody else says, obey. And it's yes. And I, no thanks. Yeah. And I always said that I. Like I, for a long time, I'd say, why was I born female? I like science, I like sports. I don't like keeping house. I don't wanna cook or clean. I just want somebody, I need a housewife. Yeah. Oh, I used to say that all the time. Please, I need a wife. But the reality is, maybe part of how you got to where you got though was because you weren't. a born male and it would've just been the expected in that, so I just, I can resonate with that. I also feel like professionally, when you start to go a little bit more on a limb and you start to bridge things that other people haven't quite maybe put together yet, or isn't quite accepted or mainstream yet, that we're much more apt to be labeled, oh, she's gone a little out there. she's starting to follow too many weird clients on this weird road. And it's no, I'm just able to use my capacity for intuition and empathy to, to hear what they're saying because what they're saying actually happened to them. And then what they are a guide in the healing. It's like when you go to a physician, they say that the best physicians let you be your own healer. They listen to 80% is the person coming in saying, I already know what's wrong with my body. It's just that last 20% that, that they can really. Dig into and say, but in my clinical experience or in the research, it shows X, Y, Z and I feel like that's something that, is beautiful about us being, connected. And it can be a male that's disconnected, a female that's disconnected, but staying open and attuned to that is where the beauty of everything lies. And I stopped being scared of some of the dark stories that my clients would bring because I realized that if we could work through that together, the light that we were both able to seek was that much more magnificent. Yes.'cause we braved forward, Yes. Because for every shadow the light has to shine somewhere for the shadow to, to show up. yes. Exactly. Yeah. So when someone comes to you with complex trauma, what does real healing look like in practice? So to me it's a journey and it's definitely two people showing up, session after session, trying to brave through this, inexplicable. I definitely defer to my clients about their own experience. I don't feel like I would know what that was like, just because this is what I've heard a few times or whatever. I let them lead and I let them take me places where I need to understand and then create that bigger like holding field to then also both of us throwing our hands up, going, we don't even know what to make of that. And then all of a sudden the answers come or the healing starts to come because spirit is all around at all times. And the other part is with a lot of these clients that have really been severely tested as children, all of. My belief from years and years and years of doing this 35 plus years, is that there is some sort of archetypal self-care system that is universal in origin. We have the energy that we're tapping into in that quantum field as you are an expert in. And so they would we're in it say that we're in the quantum field. Yes. And then the whole like access to that, what they call liminal space, whatever. So one of my wonderful mentors, he just passed away at 94, I think Dr. Ralph Allison was the first to talk about the spiritual side of multiple personality, which used to be called, which is now DID, dissociative identity disorder. And he would talk about, How a child's system is so overwhelmed by these traumas is that the actual original personality goes up into a place he called thought space, where it's being taught and downloaded by these celestial energies and they really like school this oversold type to come back down and then be able to have an internal self helper orchestrate the healing. So the way it manifests in therapy is that all of a sudden there might be a child state hiding under your table and you're trying to connect and then all of a sudden this very wise Oversold type of energy appears in the room and it's almost like the expansive state is just, you're just awed by it and you're like, aha, that, that is the healing energy coming through and all the wisdom. So it takes it above what's going on in the really traumatic, like reliving or re-experiencing. It takes it so beyond that and puts it in its proper kind of like meta perspective. And then you use that if you're a skilled clinician and you can use that to be able to then guide certain aspects of the therapy. And then it becomes about, can we do this containment? Can we have these two parts of self co, co conscious and starting to interact? Then all that happens, but really what's really happening is this much bigger guiding wisdom that we can allow through. Yeah, so that's where I see this, understand the parts of themselves that they've pushed away, but not as something broken, but as something that holds power or protection and healing. Yes. Yes. And they're not, of course as a young child, they're not conscious of any of this. They're not conscious of pushing it away. No. But it's the way that I see it in a very benevolent way is that this big spiritual kind of like wonderfully protective sort of pull is happening that then says, okay, like here we're gonna give you a little respite. I can't tell you the amount of clients I've had that said, I was playing on the playground with my angel mommies when that happened. Or, my angel mommy held me in her hand. And so that is what they're experiencing. And then that's a benevolence kind of coming in and saying, okay, this is a little too much for the body right now. It's too much for the mind. But then while the child's parts himself are up there, obviously in the quantum, like in the different energy, they are getting this more connected, Just like wisdom that then can flow through. And then just like people who come back from their death experiences and they start to tell the doctors, my liver needs this and this is going on. It's like, how do they know that it's because some other energy was then starting to help be a guy. So I think my version of therapy and healing has a lot to do with being able to open back up to hearing those original voices and really, gleaning that wisdom and strength and being able to then put it into the day to day when we're back in the muck of our cognitive processes and our bodies that aren't working right or whatever. Yeah. And that's the challenge. We operate from a feeling place and humans operate from a feeling place, but we've been pushed into a thinking place and that thinking place is not where it happens. Yes. what's interesting though is that the people who describe in your death experiences and being in the other realm. Or however you would say that as a physicist. talk about how everything is just, your thoughts are immediately, you don't have to use language, you don't really have to think.'cause things are downloaded right into you. Yes. And it's just this awareness that comes together. And so I feel like that is, so are, un are untapped intuition. it's just these energy states that we push away by overthinking or sometimes even over feeling because one of the aspects of that realm, and I see it in therapy when that wise kind of like over soul starts to really guide the therapy. It's not super emotional and it's not, you don't, it, it's got a different quality to it. Yes, it does. I have to say I've been there many times, So let me just blow your mind for a minute about Yes, the quantum field and what quantum reality is okay, so in that quantum field is just a field of information and we're condensed from one set of information, but all of the lifetimes we've ever lived are there running simultaneously. And it happens, it's an instant, there's no time, no space on that side. So that means that, here on our reality that we're living, it's a sec, a sequential time where in the reality of the quantum field, it's parallel time. So everything's happening at once. And if we travel at light speed, we can see the entire universe at the same time. Oh, I just, I find that so fascinating. people like Dr. Anita Murjani. A famous near-death experience, or, she tries to talk about that and how space and time, that whole thing as we know, it collapses. Yes. And that, yeah. And the people who talk about near death experiences, there's no equivalent to time. It just, it feels so, infinite when they're in that realm. But then the two Hals of the, yeah, the two halves of the brain operate. So the left side operates sequentially and the right side operates in parallel. Okay. Fascinating. Okay. So people that have had strokes, there's one woman who was a psychobiologist or something in that realm. She had a stroke on the logical side, and she said times ceased to exist for her, she had no idea what time it was or how long time had passed, and she knew that having a stroke. She knew somewhere inside herself, she needed to get help right away, but she just couldn't get to it because the time was meaningless to her. So it's really ing and that, people who dissociate say the same thing. it's either that they, if they're like in a depersonalized derealized state, like time feels like frames like a movie frame or time, just the whole dimension of time just like expands, dissolves, like just creates this different thing. So obviously dissociation is tapping into a whole nother part. with temporal lobe things, it's linked to when people talk about auras, it's all kind. Yeah, we can create that momentarily. if you, like, when I do painting, I have a lot of. I have done a lot of oil paintings and drawings and things like that, and as soon as I get into the state of creativity, the time can just go like that. Two hours feels like five minutes. Yeah. Yeah. So we can create that during a highly creative period. It doesn't matter what. Yeah. It could be writing a book, it could be writing a song, it could be singing a song. Anything that's highly creative, the time just runs by so quickly 'cause you're in that, that right brain space. Is that creativity akin to a flow state? Is that using that right brain? Yeah, it's, It's the, what people call the flow state. Yeah. Oh, I just love it. It's so fascinating. yeah, the kinds of things that you bring to all of this is just incredible because so many of the answers, when people ask me things and I'm like, okay, I know a certain amount, but I can't go past that. It's like just waiting for somebody like you with all of your training and integration to just, answer some of these questions. you, yeah. I'm always fascinated by people that have studied the psychology, which to me is a softer science than what I did. And it's not something that I engaged in, it's just something I experience. And because of my own design and nature, I don't experience it on the same level. And the rhythm of what you thought of intuitively marching, things like that. They just do something that kind of makes something lock in, Yeah. For someone listening who suspects there's a deeper layer of trauma affecting their energy, clarity, or success, what's one or two things they can begin doing right now to start restoring their internal coherence? I would say, first of all, just give it up to the universe in the sense that you are ready for some higher, deeper wisdom and healing. To come through to you being able to surrender to that kind of there is something there. It is helpful and benevolent and it wants to see me work through this and heal well. We can start with that as a baseline. There's an openness there and then you know the answer to start to find the certain kinds of therapies or to start to online go. It just starts to feel like, okay, maybe I actually can have a little bit of hope, a little bit of faith. But this might be a possibility in my life that I could heal and know that there are people, as much as they want healing, there are people who want to help facilitate that because it is our human imperative to realize that we're all in this together, and that we want to be able to rise each other up in different ways. And I can't tell you, it's just like with kids, my clients have taught me more than I've ever taught them. My kids have taught me more. And not being ashamed to seek the help, no. Trying to not keep creating more blocks between you and the possibility of getting that help. Yeah. and there's always a danger, like I've always been highly competent. Like I got always good grades and all that stuff. Yes. And the thing is that when I started to ask for help, that's when things really changed. Yes. Yes. and it is scary because of course, a couple steps forward. A couple steps back and people are scared of that. Oh no, my life is just barely hanging on. How can I, what they don't realize is that by letting it in, it's like taking a huge breath. When you're running this like insanely like grueling marathon, it's like by stopping for a second and having that water or whatever, that's when everything resets, and then you'll have more energy in the end. So being able to go, okay, if this is an inkling that's starting to come up for me, my relationships will not only survive this, but they will get much more deep and expansive, much more fulfilling because there's no more blocks to joy and love because as you're trying to tune out the trauma, you're also tuning out all the joy and the possibilities and happiness. So it's like we get this vice grip into our lives and starting to just open that up a little bit. That there is something beautifully. Beautifully magical about allowing back in the possibility of hope, and that's huge. People are so scared of hope because they want it so badly, but to hope it means that they could also invite the fear of it vulnerability and not having it happen for them. But I'm here to tell you it is going to happen. The more you can push through that and just trust, the more faith you can eventually have and the more joy, Yeah. Remember a bumper sticker when in the seventies, I was still in college, and it said I feel so much better now that I've given up hope. Oh, that. That's a good one because the hoping means you keep pushing towards a solution and when you start and you finally go, oh it's okay the way it is now. And then that's when things start to transform. At least that's been in my experience. So I actually, I do love what you're saying 'cause there is a level of acceptance when you can stop fighting it and accept as is, then it does open something. we're getting at it from different roads, but to me hope is as long as I have hope, I had, I was diagnosed in 2019 with something that they thought gave me a year to live. I had to say goodbye to my kids. It was horrendous. I still had teenagers and it ended up not after a biopsy, which was only a 2% chance that it was this other thing and it happened to fall in the 2% chance like that it was this other disease. I still have a cancer, but it's not what they thought. And I just remember just that feeling of hope flooding back in, oh my gosh, I might survive. That then was the opening to everything. And so I feel like there's always hope as long as we're drawing a breath. read Anita or Johnny's work. Yes, there is. she was at the very edge of death with all these huge tumors and then had a near death experience and her tumors just shrank. And here she is. Yes, there. There are actually quite a number of people like that. I was sitting on an airplane and I was just beginning to explore my probing people. Yeah. And I sat next to this woman and she just seemed really nice. And I go, yeah, okay. Let me test to see does she have cancer? Yeah. And I came up with a yes. And I'm going, oh my God, what do I do now? And a few minutes later she says, yeah, eight years ago they diagnosed me with an incurable cancer. And they said, I had four months to live and here I am eight years later. Oh my gosh. I love that. stories of spontaneous, healing, remission, and even just people who are just, I have a, An attorney friend who deals with all estates and trusts, and she said the amount of people that she had that thought they were passing in a year or whatever, made all these estate plans. And she's 10 years later they're traveling. They've had stage four something forever. it's not over till it's over, No, and I, and I'm Greek, I, my first language is Greek and everything, and there is an, I, one of the five blue zones in the world is on an island called Ikaria Yes. In Greece, Uhhuh. And a gentleman that got, a diagnosis of lung cancer. Oh my gosh. I was just thinking of him when you were talking. Yes. I moved back to Ikaria Yes. He moved back to Korea and he started doing all the things he used to do when he was young and, being with his friends and his neighbors and his family and. the way the Greeks live. I know because I grew up with it and they go out every night with their friends and they're always laughing and joking and loving each other, and he became cured. And I think that, and I think Robin Cousins did the same thing. He had a laugh therapy that healed him. So these Yeah. letting go of stuff. He just, he gave up hope and he just says, I'm just gonna do what I want now. Yeah. Because it doesn't matter anymore. I think that, Anita Morjani does a good job of talking about, if somebody does pass, like then that is how it's supposed to be. so that people don't feel like, oh, I failed, or My husband didn't try hard enough to stay in this realm, or he didn't release this. It's not about that. What it's about is what your own like imperative, what is coming through for you in your soul? What are you feeling like, hey, like this is really important for me right now to just open one more little portal here and to see. And that, like for me, I used to be addicted to reading every medical book journal. I have a master's in biomedical sciences, so I would just constantly be researching food as medicine, whatever. But I also started to realize that was giving me so much stress at the same time that it was healing because I was like. Needing it. Whereas when I just went, Hey, I'm gonna go out and live life, spend time with my friends, go do these things, enjoy my kids, not get caught up in all their anxiety about exams or whatever. When I was able to do that, then I might have a moment that get got downloaded into me where it was like, oh, go research that article.'cause that might be helpful. But it wasn't this like tight grip and I would say to anybody, I know it's so scary to loosen that grip, but it, that is where life is when we can loosen that a little bit, start to accept, start to see that there're with different eyes that there are more possibilities. It's so scary. trust me, been down that road so many times. I've avoided doctors for years after that because I was so terrified that any doctor was gonna say, oh, just kidding. You are really dying again. So I avoid it. I'm like, okay, that's not the answer either. that's a programming that's like a programming curse energetically onto people. Yes. And so there's two kinds of people that say, oh, the doctor is God. And they're going, they're, they proclaimed I won't live past two months and then two months to the day they die. And my mom was the opposite. Okay. So she was obstinate and people that knew her. but they always called her the Greek princess because everybody did her command kind of thing. and, she had a spinal surgery when she was 37 and they gave her a five year prognosis, five years of life. And, they bro had to break open the spinal column. They had to break it open. They had to open four bones in the back and pull out this long tumor and cyst. And, and so it compromised her a little bit, but, and they said she would be quadriplegic, but she was fully functional. Except for these, yeah, these two fingers here, they just on there. Okay. And she could only operate three fingers and she didn't have any hot cold on her hands, Wow. but she lived 45 years and not five years. See exactly, Yeah. and that's all, that all makes a lot of sense. It resonates a lot with the people that I've heard near death stories from and just how there's like this decisional point and it's usually, it's when they're having a near death experience. Do I come back? Do I wanna come back? am I ready? Do I need is my time? A lot of people don't wanna, and a lot of people don't want to, but it also affects those of us that are in this. Realm or however you would say yes. Because it's almost like there is something that's like this narrative going on in their soul where they just it all starts to click and then they're like, yeah, I think I'm good. I'm good. Yeah. I think I'm good. Yeah. Yeah. Like I wanna keep going, right? I'm having, it's too good down here. and oh my gosh, you have so much wisdom and knowledge and lived experience, and also the healing skills. I feel like we need you down here. Oh, thank you. Where do people find you? soul wise solutions.com is my kind of, it's where everything about a book I wrote with somebody who is homeless. It's everything about, what I do. just inspiring stories. So soul wise solutions.com. And then if people are curious about this, journey from this person who is homeless and now is thriving and post PTSD surviving, post PTSD thriving, then they can look up soul wise team on Instagram and TikTok. Yeah, I'll put the link to the book in the show notes. Yeah. So thank you for having me. This has been just wonderful. Yeah, you're most welcome. This conversation reveals how even the most complex trauma patterns can become a pathway to integration, clarity, and fully embodied power when approached with both science and soul. Thank you for joining us on Break Free From The Burnout. Did today's program resonate with you? Give it a thumbs up or five star rating. Share it with your friends and be sure to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any future episodes. When you're ready to bring more harmony and alignment into your relationships, check out my free five step relationship healing protocol at scientifichealer.com forward slash relationship. Resources and show notes are available at breakfreefromtheburnout.com. Until next time, I'm Dr. Anastasia Chopelas, sending you golden healing light and success vibes to becoming aligned, confident, and prosperous. Your gifts are so needed in this world.