Reclaiming the Real You: Healing the Inner Child and Ending Self-Sabotage | Nathan Simmonds

In this deeply powerful episode, Nathan Simmons takes us on a raw and revealing journey into the nature of trauma, perception, and inner transformation. Exploring the quote “What’s normal to the spider is chaos to the fly,” Nathan unpacks how our experiences shape our understanding of the world—and why no two people truly share the same reality.

Through compelling personal stories of childhood illness, bullying, addiction, and recovery, he explains how unresolved trauma leads to self-sabotage, people-pleasing, addiction, and emotional disconnection. Nathan introduces the transformative practice of inner child healing, showing how we can reparent ourselves, release buried emotions, and reclaim the parts of us that were pushed into shadow.

He explores the role of subconscious programming, the myths of forgiveness, and how to shift from self-abandonment to self-leadership. With insights into societal division, political polarisation, and the collective wounds we carry, this episode invites listeners to see discomfort not as an enemy—but as a gateway to deep personal freedom.

If you're ready to understand why your triggers are your teachers, and how healing your inner world creates outer change, this conversation is a must-listen.

About Nathan:

Nathan is a powerful mix of trauma informed Hypnotherapist and Leadership coach, speaker author. With the last 5 years working mostly, not exclusively with men both 121 and in group experiences. 

Helping people to overcome imposter syndrome, people pleasing perfectionism and procrastination. He deeply understands why people do what they do, and how they trip themselves up, hold themselves back and continue to repeat destructive behaviours without even realising they’re doing it. He brings a unique perspective to all of this, which helps men just show up healthier ways as the man they truly are. 

Whether working 121 or leading medicine ceremonies Nathan’s inspiration is to connect people with the most powerful part of their mind so they can show up as themselves.

Transcript

0:00

In this deep episode, we talk about how normal is subjective and how understanding this fosters compassion and reduces the need to argue about who is right. You can't truly understand others. But you can appreciate them, and we look at inner child healing and how to repair the wounding self. And how the key to healing is to start with the habits that are currently holding you back. Welcome to Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, where we help men navigate modern life, find their true purpose, and redefine manhood. I'm your host, James, and each week, inspiring guests share their journeys of overcoming fear Embracing vulnerability and finding success. From experts to everyday heroes. Get practical advice and powerful insights. Struggling with career, relationships or personal growth? We've got you covered. Join us on Man Quest to Find Meaning. Now, let's dive in.

James: 1:05

The normal is an illusion. What's not to the spider is chaos to the fly. Good afternoon, Nathan. Can you explain more?

Nathan: 1:16

Absolutely. So this is actually one of my favorite quotes that I repeat probably on a daily basis. Interestingly enough, it's actually more Tisha Adams from the Adams family from 1960 something said this quote, um, which always raises a smile. It's like you're quoting the Adams family. It's like, yeah, but it's so freaking true. What's normal to one person is completely, is is is something completely different to somebody else. It's like you can't argue with someone's perception. You can look at the same thing from two different sides. You know, if you write a a, a nine on your hand and show it to someone and they'll tell you it's a six'cause they're looking at it from the others other way round. You can try and tell someone who's colorblind, what red looks like, and they have no idea what the hell you are talking about. So it's kind of allowing us to really see someone else's perspective. And one of the biggest challenges I have when I'm working with people with the work that I do. Is people resign themselves and their experiences and they just say that's how life is. That's how the universe is treating them. And they just think that's the way that they have to experience their way of living. And it's not, it's a learned behavior in order to protect themselves in order to survive. So if you take a child in an abusive environment, abusive environment, and you take them and put them in a safe and loving environment, they tend to do one of two things. They'll either run away and go back to what they understand and what they know, or they'll try and turn that loving environment into a chaotic environment by breaking and, and, and, and damaging that situation, doing everything they can to turn it into what they understand love looks like. So when we start to comprehend this, that maybe we can have a little bit more compassion for other people to understand what their normal looks like, and no, it doesn't mean we have to put up with negative behaviors or abuse or anything like that. Just means that we can look at things from a different angle and kind of appreciate where people are up to in their lives.

James: 3:15

It's quite interesting because if you have an accident, if, if there's a big accident and you had to line up 10 people on their, what they say they saw, probably all different, all, all 10 statements are gonna be different. And so yeah, this is. It's very hard for us.'cause especially with myself and trying to understand what other people are going through, it's really hard because you, you just, you, you, you aren't kind of coming from their own perspective, their own upbringing in their own life.

Nathan: 3:57

Yeah, and this is, I mean, even I teach this in, in customer service training, in complaint management is in truth, you can't understand anyone else's perspective. You can't understand someone else's life. It's like, yeah, we are men. Yeah, maybe you've got kids. Yeah, maybe you do this as a job or you've got similar hobbies or whatever. But do I see the world through the same lenses that you see the world? No, can I truly understand you and everyone out there is trying to be as understanding as possible, but you don't understand someone's situation. You can't because you live a completely different life. What you can do, and it makes it easier, is you can show appreciation for where that person is. You can appraise, which is where that word appreciate comes from. It comes from the Greek word to appraise. You can look at things. It's like the jeweler looking at the quality of the craftsmanship, the quality of the cut of the diamond, and the quality of that, the gemstone, et cetera. Doesn't mean that the in and they can put a price tag on it, but it doesn't mean that the, the jeweler actually enjoys wearing jewelry. So as we come as human beings, rather than struggling to try and understand someone's life, which you can never understand'cause you've never been there, even if you were in similar situations, you have, um, yeah, you have a comprehension of it. It's like children, no, no. Two children have the same parents. Even if you are in the same family, you have completely different parents because they've grown up with different experiences. So it's the same as this is like, oh, I understand where you're coming from. I understand your experience. I understand what you're going through. No, you don't. This is where we cause our own struggle. So if we can appreciate where someone is actually, we can start to explore what's going on for them with a different level of trying to seek value from their perspective, rather than making a judgment or trying to intervene or trying to rescue them. We can do something different with that.

James: 5:47

Obviously at this current time of the political situation with what's been going on the last couple of weeks, you've got two. Different. Um, so you got the, the, the left, very left, and you got the, the right and you got them almost, almost, you're banging against each other and there's so much turmoil going on and you see it among, uh, Facebook friends and stuff, and people commenting on certain, on the right side. People on the left side, people show, uh, throw in, uh, um, anger and stuff towards the left and then towards the right. And it's this idea that. We're actually, rather than coming together, we're actually splitting ourselves off.

Nathan: 6:28

Yeah. And you know, partly that, depending what you believe, that's the plan is to keep us divided, to keep us confused, to keep us in fear, to keep us distracted from all the other stuff that's actually going on When we're looking at these things is, do we want to get into arguments with people to prove that we are right or wrong? Because the moment that I believe I'm right, you have to be wrong. The moment I take a stand, the moment I position myself, it's quantum physics and Newtonian physics. The moment you position yourself, you have to be positioned against something else. So the moment you lean a broom up against a wall, you have to have an opposing force of an equal or a greater measure in order order to equalize the force that's being applied. This is just basic physics. So when you are applying force and I'm getting upset with you because you've been like this and you've been like that, and I'm right and you are wrong, you are now gonna have to meet me with a greater force to equalize the pressure that I'm applying to you. But the moment you apply pressure to me, I now need to increase the amount of pressure I'm applying against you. So you've got these ever increasing, um, levels of frustration, agitation of emotional, mental, physical, psychospiritual force. But in this is like what all the universe wants, and what anyone really wants is just wants, it wants harmony. It wants balance, which is why it's creating these opposing forces in order to squash down the force, in order to flatten things out and create that equilibrium. But where if I'm right and you are left and all of those things, we're just gonna keep pushing each other. And it's like that tank when they show the, uh, the, the tsunami kind of demonstration in a tank. And all you've got is just this perpetual machine, one wave after another, after another, after another. And it never settles down because someone's pushing the button to make the tsunami inside that tank. And until we realize that, and we go, hold on a minute, I'm gonna take that. That position out of it, I'm gonna remove that equation. Then the other one collapses down. But at the same time, even as I'm saying that, it's like being aware that are some of these things happening in the world? Are they right or wrong? They're, they're absolutely abbo and evil. So it's how do we neutralize that stuff? How do we bring people back in and kind of help'em to reconcile the, reconcile the stuff that's going on up here individually and collectively? So that actually we can remove ourselves from that fight, from that positioning and not be overrun by someone, another ideological, persuasion way of being that actually will cause us damage.

James: 9:06

How can we, on our own, for ourselves, show more compassion towards them, but have the awareness that well obviously have the awareness and intuition to know, to know that. Perhaps their views are not like our views. Yep. But have the compassion to almost let that go and to create that balance and harmony.

Nathan: 9:31

Yep. So the first thing is, again, it's something I say to a lot of my clients and not even a lot to all of my clients, what triggers you externally is what needs to be worked on internally. Work is kind of a loose term, you know, it's not so much work, it's just understanding that whatever you are seeing out there is a reflection of what's in here and hasn't been dealt with. It doesn't matter to what level, to what, uh, to what degree. It's always gonna bring something up in you. And whatever that thing is that it's bringing up is, that's your invitation to go, okay, that's the part of the puzzle that I need to work on. I don't need to be carrying that anymore. But we're so used to externalizing our problems, externalizing our capability, externalizing the problem. That's why we're always on the news, watching the news, watching everyone else's. It's why so many people watch soap operas.'cause in short, like soap opera, the people's lives on soap operas are so much worse than ours. It's just a distraction from what's going on for us. So we watch what's going on on our but Square or East Enders or in Coronation Street or whatever, in order to make ourselves feel better about the shit that's going on in our world. And then we watch the news to make sure them they've got the problem. That's where the issue is. It's got nothing to do with me. So, whereas actually if we can go in and solve that piece of the puzzle, even on, not even on on the individual level, the success of a team, even when you're looking at leadership and business, the success of the team is made by the success of the individuals in it and how they're achieving and how they're working towards getting where they need to be. More individuals understand where they need to be and what they need to be getting on with and bringing it inward rather than outward. They will understand that actually they're removing the energetic push and dynamic that they've already contributing by watching the news, by contributing to the advertising demographic and all of those things in the social media as they remove themselves, there won't be any need for the other thing, because there won't be. Any kind of, there won't be that positioning which causes that, that interference of an opposing force.'cause there is nothing to oppose it. It won't need to, to accelerate or increase any of that stuff.'cause it just isn't there. It's just like, it's okay. You are okay where you are. I'm okay where I am, and we take that out. But at the same time, it's like how do you get people to understand that, especially in war zones, especially in historically. Malignant is probably the right word. Environments which have been perpetuated for generations. So let's kind of call it forward for what it is when you're looking at what happened in the Holocaust to the Jewish people in Germany, okay, where did that stem from? And then how did they, how were those people then moved into a piece of land that was supposedly not inhabited and completely empty, which it wasn't. And they then moved into what is now known as Israel. They're now perpetuating on other people. What was perpetuated on them? So when you boil this back, when you boil it all the way down, I think it was Dr. Sandra Wilson said, hurt people. Hurt people. So what we do is we do unto others as what? As what was done to us in order to make ourselves feel better.'cause we don't know what to do with our pain if it's not reconciled. So on an individual level, I was horrendously bullied at school. Horrendously by a group of boys from another school, a couple of years older than me.'cause I'm two foot taller than everybody else at school. I'm six foot six group of boys from another school. Made my life hell for a very long time. But what do you do with that at school? Well, one of the main driving forces then was you just became a bully because if you could be bully other people and people could see you as a threat, they would stop bullying you and kind of see you as one of their own or back down. So I became a bully. So hurt people. Hurt people. But that then that bullying then became my drug addiction, became my habits, became smoking marijuana at 15 in the back of the class.'cause I hated school and was struggling, became ecstasy at 15. Um, and then at 23 became an overdose. So it's like, where are we going with this? So if you kind of roll that up to a geopolitical level. The pains and the infliction that have been put onto other people at a, at a cultural level, how is that gonna play out now, will that be, then the people of Palestine will then carry that wound and then use that to inflict on another race or another individual somewhere? Or will they get the support, the need to reconcile their wounds as the Jewish populists need to reconcile their wounds, which they're still carrying from them.

14:04

Mm.

Nathan: 14:05

So it's all about the individuals in those spaces is coming back to, what is this bringing up for me? How do I reconcile this? Because it's got nothing to do with them and everything to do with me. That's how we change the world.

James: 14:20

So on that note, let's quickly go into your story and we'll come back to that because I think that's, that's down a deep rabbit hole at is.

Nathan: 14:31

So, yeah. So me, I, I've lived quite a shadowy life, I think in some respects, in, in different ways. It just, it never felt comfortable. So I grew up in a normal environment, normal house. My parents were both police officers at one point. My father was in the force for 28 years. My mother was the youngest woman in CID in the Southeast, um, back in the sixties and seventies. Um, and we, we, we lived a normal life. We lived through what was really kind of, um. Economic depression, et cetera, and mortgages were almost 20%, et cetera, like proper. Yeah. I mean, you couldn't even imagine that now. Um, and that was gonna, that was a reality then. Um, we didn't really know what war was. We didn't really know what conflict was. You saw the Falklands war at six o'clock on the, on the six o'clock news, and that was about it. And that's all we ever really saw. Um, so everything was fine. One day I woke up with severe abdominal pains about the age of seven, eight years old, um, and was promptly whipped into hospital for appendicitis. So I had my appendix removed, normal operation, you know, routine operation with a routine kind of recovery time. But that didn't recover. It just gradually got worse and continued. And continued. Um, and by absolute fluke, I was then diagnosed with having Crohn's disease. Full-time immune disorder, um, and rushed into hospital and told to have two pints of blood put in me and, and have a bowel resection at eight years old. So promptly had 15 inches of my bowel removed, and resectioned ended up with an abscess on it. One of my kidneys collapsed, so I was in hospital for almost a year at this point. So I'm 9, 9, 10 years old when this is happening. Um, and my mom, though, amazing mom, she was more powerful than Google in the late eighties. Googles didn't really exist at this point. So my mom's out there doing all the research, speaking to the health food practitioners, and, um, ended up treating it. So I actually don't have Crohn's disease, and most people will tell you that Crohn's is not treatable and not curable, and it actually is. Um, so there are plenty, there's plenty of research papers out there to prove how it it, how it works, and what it does. So I went through this experience. So that was a very early age, but what I was actually learning there was actually compassion. I didn't really tune into it very well, but it, that's what the story was. It was like these nurses that were there to support me at a very young age, going through this experience, being there to help me and guide me. Um, and I was extremely driven and motivated to get through that experience, but they, that's what they were teaching me was compassion. And then as I grew up a little bit and went to secondary school, I then had these horrendous bullying experiences. Um, I was sickly, very sickly looking for the first kind of year or so of school as I was still recovering from this illness at the time. So. But the school and I didn't fit square peg, round hole. They wanted me to sit on my hands for eight hours a day and pretend that I was comfortable doing that. And this is how I learned. And inside of all that, my brother was the toughest kid in school, so I wanted to be just like him. So I became very aggressive, very boisterous. All the girls wanted to be with my brother'cause he was the best looking lad. And all the boys wanted to hang out with him or fight him. And I was just like, yeah, he is my idol. But he really struggled with that. Um. And like I say, then this bullying started with these kids from another school. And then it also escalated to teachers actually bullying me. So one of my teachers was actually physically, um, bullying me to try and placate me in class. And his words verbatim were what he learned in teacher training college was if you break the biggest kid in the class, all the other kids will follow. So pretty much every day he was putting me in wrist locks and finger locks and all sorts of things to inflict pain on in order to try and get me to fall in line. And it just made it worse. So I had these experiences, but I couldn't tell my brother.'cause my brother was so big and so tough. My brother was so big and so tough. He got expelled from school when he was 15 for fighting with the headmaster, and that's on the next level. Most kids are just fighting each other. But my brother was out there fighting the teachers so. This bullying experience happened and I couldn't tell him because if I told him at 13, however old I was, if I told him I would've been less, less of a man. So I just bottled it up and then that became more aggression, me becoming a bully, me trying to keep the thoughts quiet, to keep myself down low smoking, smoking weed at school. Getting into drugs, um, getting into social disorder, all of those things. And just escalating and dropping outta school is huge. Problems, just like I say, didn't fit. Um, you know, yes, I've had some great things in life. I've been traveling. I went backpacking but promptly came back to my hometown to the same environments, just didn't know where I fitted in, and basically went on an eight month bender. Um, mostly drug fueled. Which culminated in me taking 16 ecstasy tablets and over five grams of cocaine in one sitting. Um, and that was the tipping point of my life where everything came crashing down and I started to see it for what it really was. Um, to understand the dynamics of why I do what I do and to really understand that all these things I'd been learning in psychotherapy, even up until this point in coaching dynamics, although I haven't fully implemented them at that point, I had them as a frame of reference to understand why my life was falling apart and how I needed to shift out of that. So I picked up all these huge li and lived experiences. And on my life went, I moved to Amsterdam to, to be with my wife who was, who is English. And she'd moved out there and ended up managing the customer services for, uh, time and Fortune and National Geographics International Client Base and, and Harvard Business Review. So, had some great experiences there, but still, still struggling with my mentality, with my mental wellbeing, where I am, where I'm supposed to be in the world. I came back to the UK Finance. I was in the finance sector for 12 years. Great successes in sales and in people development, but then became a leadership trainer and coach because I was struggling with the lack of depth of leadership development and the um. Yeah, what was actually needed rather than just corporate sheep dipping and putting people through the same experience, actually giving people the depth of understanding, depth of learning, using psychotherapy, using Cape Coaching, using NLP to really help people understand why their relationships are the way they are and how they actually lead and develop their teams. So I went through this experience and then towards, um, as we moved into COVID, I then went and worked for a training company. Delivering training into FSE two 50 organizations. Um, high speed, high production factory environments, all sorts of different places. Um, I'm still working with a, a couple of those right now. Um, but then as we moved into COVID, as I was working for that team, that that business, or within 48 hours, all their clients postponed and everything and the world changed quite drastically. And in that first year, I then qualified as a hypnotherapist. And I've spent the last, where are we now? Yeah, almost five years. Working majority, one-to-one with people, helping them to unpick and unpack everything that holds them back. Self-sabotage, imposter syndrome, people pleasing, perfectionism, addiction, phobias, you name it. Helping people to understand where this stuff comes from, so where they can stop holding themselves back, or using that as the, the millstone, like as I say to people, like turning the millstone into the milestone, turning the stumbling block into the stepping stone. There's a reason why this stuff is in there and doing what it's doing. It's about kind of shifting the narrative in it. Like I say, shifting that perspective. You can look at an event from one side of it and it'll be something to one person, but it'll be something else completely different to the other. You can put two twins in a room, and I've heard this story time and time again. You can put a two twins, um, in a situation and they can both witness a traumatic event and they'll both do two completely different things'cause they're looking at it from the different angle, different perception. If one could end up being a a lawyer, successful lawyer, and the other one could end up going to prison. Same situation, just two different, completely, two different angles of what's going on. So this is what I've been doing with people now. I work mostly not exclusively with men, leaders in organization, individuals dealing with addiction and, and, and relationship dynamics, all of that stuff, and just helping them get back to the truth of who they are before they learned something about the world or made the world mean something based on an experience. So they can actually get on with it being who they actually are, not who they learn to be.

James: 23:23

Let's go into that a little bit deeper. Mm-hmm. So you mentioned changing, shifting your perspective, and then taking people back to when to when it was, there's no trauma. A lack of trauma, shall I say. Yeah. Or occasions that have caused issues in their life.

Nathan: 23:43

Yeah, a hundred percent. And for me, there is no big or small trauma. I don't see it. You know, some people talk about big T trauma, little T trauma. Okay, cool. Whatever you wanna compartmentalize, fine. Your trauma is relative to you, your experience. We and, but what we do is we make our trauma comparative, not relative. So we'll grade it. Well, my bullying's a 10 out 10 to me, but hold on, everyone else is bullying. So maybe it's not a 10 out 10, maybe it's a four out 10'cause everyone else is doing it. And then I have an interview with a guy. Years ago I spoke to this guy in America, kind of really extreme example here. He was sex trafficked by his older brother when he was nine years old. All of a sudden, my trauma becomes a point too, if you're lucky, his is definitely a 10 outta 10. So we do this thing where we compartmentalize it and we just sweep it under the carpet and constantly keep sweeping it under the carpet until we had a body shaped lump in the carpet that's big enough to trip us over and, but we keep just walking over it and ignoring it. So when we see that, it's like, what is it we need to deal with? What is it we need to get into? And then we can start unpacking it. So when we're doing this or when I'm doing this. It's not about going back to relive the experience because you, that's not helpful. That's just retraumatizing. You also, you can't erase the experience because the experience is valid to your life. Without that, without that experience, if you went back in time and a time machine and changed any part of your life, your life would be completely different. Now, great, but what if you've got kids? If you change any part of your life, perhaps your kids don't exist. Would you go back and change your life if it meant your kids didn't exist?

25:25

No.

Nathan: 25:25

Not a chance. Not a chance. But what you can do is you can go back as the adult version of you to stand next to the younger version of you, which is still frozen in the moment, still frozen inside your psyche. You's still frozen in that that episode of your life, and you can stand next to them as the adult you needed in that moment. You could be the parent you wished you had in that moment and give them the sense of reassurance that actually they're okay. It's not them. They are not the failure. Someone else fails, someone else let them down. And it's not them, it's not terminal. But this is what we do is we carry it. It's like when, when something goes, when we go, I'm a failure. No, no, no, no, you are not a failure. The thing that you did failed. But that doesn't mean that you are a failure. But we wear it like parents. Parents or people say to us, you should be ashamed of yourself. You should be ashamed, you should be shameful, like filled with shame. That doesn't help. It encodes a belief structure in our heads, and we use that as the blueprint we use. We make the world mean something, and that it wasn't okay to be us. It wasn't okay to show up as ourselves'cause something happened, or we misjudged something, we misinterpreted it. And then in that moment we go, well, I can't be that, so I've gotta be this. And then we change our habits and behaviors. We make the world mean something in order to keep ourselves safe, in order to maintain some sort of sense of connection.

James: 26:49

What you are saying is you go back to, obviously you go back to when you are, you're a child. Yeah. And you re reframe it.

Nathan: 26:57

Yeah. Yeah. But re I don't, there's an element of reframing it, but what there is, is something happens. Is how I explain it to everyone. You know, there's mom and dad and they're divine, feminine, divine masculine, they're gods right, and they have to be white because human babies are the most useless creature on the planet. It's also scientifically proven, right? We'll come to that in a minute. So if you look at a dog or a buffalo or giraffe, right? And within two hours they can walk, within two days they can run. Cool. Human baby can't even wipe its own ass for the first four years of its life, if you're lucky, right? So there's mom and dad and they're gods and they have to be. Now, all we need as children is to feel safe, certain and loved, safe with these people. Certain gonna get un needs met and love for who we are. That's it, right? But then something happens and you get given this dossier of how messed up your parents are. It doesn't matter how much you love your parents, how great you get. At some point, something will happen. Most of the time it's a parent, teacher, grandparent, and it's normally between the ages of zero and seven, this stuff starts to kick in. So you get given this dossier of how messed up they are, how imperfect they are. When you had this projection and perfection, that whole thing shatters. And you know that if you open this dossier, your whole world is gonna collapse. Right now. You don't feel safe, you don't feel certain, you don't feel loved, right? But the human brain only wants you to do two things. Stay alive, make babies. That's it. Super simple, right? This is how your human species is. Continue. But in that moment where you disconnect and you don't feel safe, and you don't feel certain, your psyche, your ego starts to form.'cause it believes you're gonna die. Why? Because if you don't feel safe and you don't feel certain, if you don't get food, shelter, loving connection, warmth up until the age of seven, you can die from that psychologically, physiologically. So there's this disconnect. So it might not seem as bad, but maybe you know. Maybe you were drawing on the wallpaper. You wanted to see what orange crayon looked like on the wallpaper, or maybe your mom had just got a phone bill and was premenstrual and just had an argument with your dad and shouts at you in that moment. There's a disconnect. It believes you're gonna die'cause you don't feel safe, you don't feel certain, you don't feel loved. So the ego steps in and says, right, I'll take that dossier away from you. Little s like, well, I don't wanna feel like that. Cool. Takes away. So it reaches in and it takes a dossier. It takes the memory of the moment, it takes the emotional heat out of it. And then it says, I'm gonna lock this in this room and I'm gonna mark this room by 99 out of a hundred for shit storm. If you go in here, right, it's gonna be apocalyptic. Four horsemen, rivers of blood. Cats, like in dogs gonna be a mess, right? A little u's. Like, seriously, I'm good. I don't, I don't, I don't wanna feel like that take you away. He goes like, great. But in order for you to stay away from that room, you're gonna have to change the way you behave. Mm. And the little you is like, well, I don't wanna feel like that. What do you want me to do? And by the way, this is happening in about 0.2 of a second, okay? And sometimes this can be the hardest thing for some people to hear sometimes. And the ego says, in order for you to stay away from this room, you're gonna have to say it's all your fault. Because if it's not your fault, it's their fault. And if it's their fault, you won't feel safe. And certain. What you are actually saying is, is you are not lovable.'cause if you were lovable, they wouldn't have done that to you. But the truth is, you don't need love to stay alive and make babies. You just need to feel safe and certain. So now you are missing this component. You've now got a chasm inside of you where potentially something happens that actually there's something wrong with you because of this situation. Actually, it's got nothing to do with you. You just made the world mean something according to an external trigger, but you didn't know any better. But now you've got this chasm inside of you and your ego says, well, you can't, can't live your life feeling like you've got this hole in. You need to go outside of yourself to fill this hole, to make yourself feel better about yourself, to make yourself feel better about the world. What do you want me to do? And then he goes like, well, the first thing you can try is people pleasing. That's a really good one. That will make you feel better about yourself. And if that doesn't work, do you know what? Why don't you just add some perfectionism? Perfectionism really helps you from stop, stops you from going out. They're getting too hurt, but making sure everything's gonna be just right so you don't get let down. And maybe some procrastination as well, like, you know, just play yourself down a bit. About stuff just, and, you know, everyone's doing it, it's fine. Crack on. But then it, it turns into addiction, it turns into gambling, it turns into relationship problems. You know, we end up in the same relationship with a different person. Uh, we end up scrolling through social media, binge watching stuff on Netflix, seeking dopamine hits to backfill the chasm that we believe is inside of us to make ourselves feel better, not realizing that the chasm inside of us is. Absolutely fricking bottomless. And it doesn't matter how much you shovel in, it's never gonna fill up. But you know, this is why most alcoholics don't start on vodka. They start on larga and then they build up to that. Most people that are drug addicts don't, you know, don't start on methamphetamine. Mostly they start on cannabis and work their way up. And it's not that cannabis is a gateway drug, it's just that the trauma or experience is actually the gateway to it. Because that's what the dossier is. It's that trauma. That's the reaction inside.

James: 32:05

That's that little bit there. Then with the filling the, the chasm up with dopamine hits. Yep. Is that a place where we can sit in our discomfort and just allow ourselves just to be with the discomfort rather than trying to go for the comfort?

Nathan: 32:21

It is, and there's a couple of elements to share in that. One is. And I think it's really important to share. This is when we're looking at the dopamine hits and the addiction is we are not addicted to the substance. We're addicted to the peace and quiet. We want the noise of our mind to shut down. That's constantly driving us to do something that is constantly keeping us distracted from the original feeling. So we go out there and do that, to keep this quiet, to keep ourselves busy, to keep ourselves angry, to keep ourselves pointing outward. Then what we do is, uh, when we were ready, and by the way, there's a great quote from Marianne, faithful, famous singer songwriter from the sixties and seventies, right? She died, uh, fairly recently. A ma, a favorite quote of hers, heroin saved my life. She lived in such horrendous conditions as a child and a teenager that the heroin was the only way to help her get through life. It was a stabilizer for her. It wasn't a problem. It was a stabilizer for her, and she needed that in order to get through. And that's what we're all doing as addicts in different ways. We're using these things to stabilize, to keep the noise down so that we can not deal with what's going on up here. Why? Because your ego doesn't know you've grown up. It still thinks you are five years old and getting shouted at by your mum for drawing on the wallpaper, whatever it was, whatever extremity of a situation it was, it still thinks you are there, doesn't know that you've grown up. So what it's doing is it's using something that worked when you were five years old, but then all of a sudden you're 25, 35, 95, and what holds you together as a child is what pulls you apart as an adult. That

34:03

help, that

Nathan: 34:03

helpful habit you had, the smoking, the cigarettes, the eating, the whatever, suddenly turns into type two diabetes, turns into cancer, turns into lung cancer, whatever it is, and that stuff is actually more favorable. It believes like a long-term pain is more favorable than it actually sitting in the emotions of what it still believes you're not capable of dealing with.

James: 34:24

Yeah. Okay. So there's a couple of things there. Um, I'm reading a book called The Power of Now. Yes, she read probably two or three times I think. And, um, Aqua talks about sitting with the mind and observing it rather than connected being with it. And what I'm noticing is when I sit with it. For the, for probably two or three seconds. There's this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah kind of thing going on. And then suddenly it disappears and you perhaps get a second or two before the next one comes in. But I'm noticing the big, the bigger the gaps and there's in between the gaps, it's just a sense of nothingness in the mind. Um, that was my observation from that, but also. With regards to the, the, obviously it's the inner child healing.

Nathan: 35:19

Yep.

James: 35:20

When it comes to what is the next, what's the, what's the first step with regards to changing that, shifting that perspective.

Nathan: 35:29

The, the first part one, there's a couple of those, and it depends on the individual. The first one is to reassure your subconscious mind, which, you know, in Jungian archetypes for me is the magician, right? This is your ego. The first part is to reassure that part of your mind. You're not gonna get rid of it. So the part of you that is driving the habits and the behaviors and running the programs and running the show in the background without you realizing 98% of most people's minds is being run by their subconscious, reassure that part of you, you're not gonna get rid of it. Because what normally happens is you go, right, I'm not gonna drink. And then you have a drink and then you go, oh, why can't I get my shit together? Oh, why couldn't I follow through once? And, and then you end up beating yourself up and your ego's like, it's okay. I've got you. You don't need to worry about that. Here. Have a shot of vodka that will keep things quiet. I'll look after you. You'd be a passenger in your own car. So the first thing that we have to do is reassure the subconscious mind that we're not gonna get rid of it and actually show it some appreciation for trying to keep the important things important and to look after you because it's doing all of it. Because it loves you. It doesn't want you to feel like you did in that moment. It first showed up in your life. So it figures the thing that it's doing is actually more beneficial than actually it believing that you might die. So when you create that reassurance and that safety is like, you're not gonna get rid of it.'cause it thinks if you get rid of it, if it dies, you die. So it works even harder to look after you. Yeah, a hundred percent. And it just keeps ramping up, which is why, you know, alcoholics and drug addicts end up kind of just turning the volume up on their habits and behaviors. So the moment you create that reassurance, that sense of self, you can then start to work with it to come up with some new habits and behaviors and new structures. This is one rooting. It's like with the inner critic, most people give themselves, like the inner critic goes, oh, you can't do that. Why do you think you are special? Maybe you should get, and we end up beating ourselves up and then not doing anything. But what the easiest thing to do with the inner critic is just say thank you. Most people don't realize that. It's like you cause a pattern interrupt and your inner critic goes, what do you mean? Thank you. You've just spent the last 30 years beating yourself up when I do this, what's, what's wrong? And you're like, nothing. I just wanna say thank you for all the hard work you've been doing. You've been trying to look after me. Oh, okay. And then you start using different ways of speaking to yourself. Once you have that, it's then easy for you to change the belief structure, but also access the inner child. What part of you have you been looking after? How old was I when you first showed up in my life? What do I need to know about this part of me? And then showing up as the adult you needed in that moment. Letting the younger version of you tell you the truth of their story, the truth of what they perceived happened, whether it was real or not. It's their perception. That's what they're holding onto. Which causes the habit and behavior to be in place. Stage one is creating that safe environment to to invite them in. Step two of this is actually acknowledging the emotions. They're still harboring and holding onto that they weren't able to express. Maybe they were complete, they were really angry. Maybe they're frustrated. Maybe it's grief, maybe it's sadness. All these things they weren't allowed to express at that moment. The things they were never allowed to say or do is being able to express that inside the subconscious mind to the people that were involved in that memory. Because as one of my teachers said, forgiveness is bullshit. Most people are doing, they, they're, they're jumping straight to forgiveness. Oh, I forgive you as I forgive myself, but they're still madly angry at their parents for what they did and didn't do. Okay? So release the, the Anger Elite. Release those emotions first. Get an understanding of what the hell's going on rather than spiritually by all they did the best they could with the best. They had biggest spiritual bypass excuse that came out in the eighties. I think that one, right? Don't make excuses for people. If they fucked it up, they fucked up. Let's be honest about it. Doesn't mean that you have to hate them. It doesn't mean that you, you know, you are causing rifts in relationship. You are just getting honest with how you still have, what feeling you still have in your system that needs to be released. Unres resisted and allow that to move, which then shows the child, the inner child, that actually you are the safe person to be with. It's okay to be with you rather than hiding in the shadows. You are a safe, decent adult to be with the grownup version of you, of me. And the inner child goes, oh, that's cool. Thanks very much for that. You know, you give them the reconciliation they need. Which then enables them to integrate fully and bring back the gifts online. That part of your character that they were owning and holding and protecting, that got pushed into shadow, then comes back online, which then means you can show up with more joyfulness, more spontaneity, more playfulness. You can actually experience grief and feel safe to do that. Um, you can have more creativity, whatever it is that you felt is missing in your life. That little version of you, that inner child version has got that. But most people would just jump to, oh yeah, I'm gonna have a little cuddle with my inner child and wash their face and go, oh, they're there. It's okay. It's like, well, okay, that's great. What's your relationship with your dad? Fucking asshole. It's like, well, great, cool. There's some layers that need to be peeled here. So when you get into that, and then you can do that, it's just like, then you can show up with a different level of integrity. Actually, I've got, I know what my joy feels like. I know what my creativity feels like. I know what my grief feels like. It's not like a out there concept. It's actually a felt realization with hypnosis. It's like you can physically feel what joy feels like in your system and you have a visceral memory of it, which enables you to go back that and tap into it whenever you need it. Okay. Okay. And this creates a difference.

James: 40:53

So just to clarify, there's a. It's firstly is to acknowledge the inner child. Yep. And then create that safe space. Yep. Then it's about creating that inner communication with that inner child. Yes. The kind of figure out what happened when you're a child, so like connecting to the father, connecting to the mother, connecting to whoever else, whatever else happened as a child, and then allowing yourself to. Be with that and to feel your emotions, whether it's, um, positive or negative. I don't really like using them words, but I can't think of anything else. Yes. Um, and then it's kind of acknowledging the end of child. Like, do you know what? And bringing it in to yourself.

Nathan: 41:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, is is when I do kind of the somatic piece with people, it's like thinking of the habit and behavior situation. Whereabouts in your body do you feel that? Because wherever you feel that in your body is where the memory is stored in your system and wherever that's stored in the system, there will be things that were never said, things that were never done. And as you reconnect with the inner child's like. Perhaps they want you to speak up on, on their behalf in ways they couldn't because you didn't have the language, you didn't have the emotional wherewithal at that point in time. So rather than the five-year-old, you still holding onto it. You get to step in and speak on behalf of your phone and say, hold on a minute, you let me down. What the hell were you playing at? What sort of parenting was that? Like da, da. Whatever it is that needs to be said, you can say that. So therefore. That, that whatever was depressed in the system is unresisting and allowed to come up. And the five-year-old, you gets the relief, the adult, you gets the relief, and you are now the safe place to be. The five year old's like you are, right? Let's hang out together, let's, you know, let's make life different and see what comes up

James: 42:41

of interest. Is there a way that you can voice that opinion to another person without actually doing it physically? Yes.

Nathan: 42:49

So when I do this, um, depends how sort of a spiritual wooo you want to get into this because it's super interesting. Like even biologically, neuro, neurologically, all those is fascinating in that, in this is. You are doing this in the subconscious realms, the active imagination, as Jung talks about. So you go in and you are meeting the, the, the five yearold version of you. They're telling you their story. You are perhaps seeing the scene unfold around you or on a TV screening. So all inside your subconscious mind, and it can be as real as this conversation here, or it could be psychedelic disco or splashes, the colors, whatever it is, whatever works for the subconscious mind of the individual. But in that, when you then call in the people from the memories. Because your mind does not know what's real or imagined as far as it's concerned. You are speaking to your mum and you are saying what was never said, so therefore, you are not carrying the baggage, right? So psychologically there's this, there's this phrase that I learned a few years ago. It says, what you think of people is how you treat them. Foundational for relationship. If I think you are an idiot, how do I treat you? Like an idiot, right? Because I've got this checklist in my head, right? So I'm doing this, but then how do you react to that? Like an idiot? It doesn't matter what you do.'cause I've now, I've got a checklist where I'm literally ticking. Oh, he is angry, idiot. Oh, he is not playing out, idiot. Oh, he is ignoring me. Idiot. Whatever. Tick, tick. I'm just looking for whatever to validate my belief structure about you. So I'm gonna look for it, right? So we have this with our parents, with our people we know, like guarantee them. I do. I do similar things occasionally. As long as my mom doesn't listen to this podcast, my mom will ring up and I'm like, oh, not now. Mom, you know what? I love you, but why not? Hello? And then she says X, I say Y, she says Z. It goes on, and then about eight and a half minutes, maybe 12 at most, the end of the phone call every time. And we all do it. So I've got this checklist in my head of what I expect, and because I'm carrying that checklist, I then play out exactly what's in my checklist. So when you then deal with this stuff internally, what you are doing is you're literally taking the bricks out the backpack, looking at them, putting them down, chucking'em on the fire, doing whatever you're doing, so you're not carrying that baggage. Next time you walk into the conversation, you're not carrying that expectation. So therefore the conversation up here is different because you've had it with the individual energetically. Mentally, you know, psycho, spiritually, whatever. So therefore the conversation that comes out of your mouth has to change because you're not carrying the weight of expectation. Mm-hmm. But then at the same time, because that changes the amount of stories that I've heard, where life has changed for people's children because they've dealt with stuff that they hadn't dealt with because of their parents. Relationship dynamics, relationship with parents have changed completely. It's like, yeah, it was like people that were, had raging issues with their parents have suddenly gone on holiday with their parents for two weeks and had a great time, and you're like, where did that come from? We didn't, we didn't plan that. Like, no, it's great. Thanks. You know, it is cool, but it's, we don't even have to tell them the truth of that situation if we don't want it, as long as it's dealt with and reconciled up here, we show up with more compassion to them

James: 46:01

out there. So that's the same then with imposter syndrome, limiting beliefs, triggers, I assume they all link back to childhood.

Nathan: 46:10

All of them, they'll all, there will be a domino effect of something that kind of led into imposter syndrome, especially perfectionism, people pleasing, sense of failure, all of that early school situations. Spelling tests are horrendous for this kids doing spelling tests. The naughty step is horrendous for this. Um, timing out. Kids horrendous for this. Um, and lots of things that many people have been told to do, including letting your kids cry out. Don't recommend it. It is, you know, psychologically unhelpful. Um, and there's no judgment if you've done this or anyone's done this. It's just like, okay, how do we rebuild those connections? So once you get into that and see it, it's just like, how can I build stronger connections with the people? Where did I lose connection to people in my past? And how do I create that sense of safety and connection inside of myself? So I stopped projecting that onto other people to fill the chasm that I was led to believe was inside of me.

James: 47:02

So this is super interesting because it's by the sounds of this, the key, the key to everything that we are going through is down to inner child healing, 100%. So when it came to, if you wanted to start, if say for example, people wanted to start clearing stuff today,

Nathan: 47:23

where would you start Key foundational if it's causing physical harm? Emotional hurt or is holding you back in any way, shape, or form or other people. This is an indication that something is going on in your life that has gone in, but is, is, is out of kilter. Built on trauma, and it's remembering there is no big or small trauma. Trauma is a very big word for very few letters, right? So if it's nail biting, drinking, overworking, imposter syndrome, inner critic, lack of belief in self, whatever it is, it's just all of those things are not negative traits. They are literally windows through which to see yourself more clearly. So when you take a moment, it's like, how do I want my life to be? What habit, what behavior is holding me back? That is your entrance point, because the moment you look through that window, you can turn that window into a door, which means you can walk through that and refind yourself. You are not designed to be a people pleaser. You are not designed to be a perfectionist. That's not how the world shows up for you. It's how you've learned to show up for the world in order to maintain some sort of sense of connection. Some of those things may seem big or may seem whatever, but it's just having that initial piece of courage to step into it go, how do I then start changing this? How do I then start going and, and shifting it into something that is more beneficial for me? Hypnosis is beautiful for this breath. Work is beautiful for this. Um. Lots of different dynamics. Sematic release, sematic release kind of trauma, yoga, like doing like big stretching and yoga can help to release that stuff as well. But having the right container where someone can then talk you through these experiences without jumping over them or ignoring,'cause they're great pieces of your story and the more you understand them, the easier it is for you to reconcile and use them as building blocks rather than stumbling blocks.

James: 49:20

So just to clarify what you said there. The, the, so obviously having an idea, a clear idea of what you wanna create in your life.

49:28

Mm-hmm.

James: 49:28

And, and then any, any habits or limiting beliefs which are stopping you from achieving that, that's where you start.

Nathan: 49:36

Yeah. Any, anything that you, you are not comfortable with? Quite a lot of people that I've worked with over the last 18 months especially is like, what area of your life, of your life are you sick of? Where have you had enough of yourself? What are you absolutely done within your life? What is tripping you up, holding you back, stopping you, weighing you down? What is it you keep? You know? What is it you keep doing? It's a Spanish. Um, there's a Spanish saying like, um, not only a human would trip over the same stone twice. Not even a donkey would do that, right? And it's like, where do you keep tripping up? Where are you walking backwards in a circle with your eyes closed, and then wondering why you keep ending up in the same place. This is like, so when we get clarity on that, it's like that thing there is stopping you from stepping into the fullest expression of yourself. It doesn't matter how successful in floating speech martial are, how much money you've got, everyone is carrying something.

50:34

Hmm. Okay. So at the moment you

Nathan: 50:35

can see that, and it's like, how do I actually wanna show up in the way? How do I wanna show up as a father? How do I wanna show up as a brother? How do I wanna show up as a, as a husband, as a, as a friend? Seeing those habits and behaviors, those nuances, and just without being critical or judgmental like that needs adjusting. I could show up even more completely, even more wholeheartedly if I tweak and adjust it. What's the reason I behave like that? What's the reason that addiction's in place? What reason is that habit in place, and what do I need to do to shift it in order to show up as it even more of me?

James: 51:09

Mm-hmm. Comes to mind for me is that when I remember being at primary school and I was diagnosed with, um, I was diagnosed dumb by my teachers, but I had, I think I was dyslexic. Mildly dyslexic. And so at that time when back in the nineties. Dyslexic dyslexia wasn't really seen as dyslexia. It was probably people being, feeling, being dumb, but it's more, I remember one teacher who told my parents I'd mount to nothing, and I always remember being standing outside her classroom door. And I think I, that's, that always comes to mind. And actually see you walking around my town now and again.

Nathan: 51:57

Yep. Those words have huge implications, whether it's teachers, whether it's parents, whether it's whoever. Those moments where we're, especially where we're small and we're looking up to authority figures to adults, to the elders of our clan, whatever they represent us and they say that we carry that stuff verbatim. We carry that stuff as gospel inside of our system, and then it's like, well, I couldn't be X, so I have to be y. I couldn't be the toughest kid in the school, so I have to be the most intelligent kid. I have to be the sharpest tongue one. I have to be the most brutal one, um, verbally with people because I couldn't be that kid over there. So then we make up these stories about how we need to show up in the world, but because we're working from a sense of lack about who we actually believe we are, we're already on shaky foundations. Like, no. So I spent my whole life intellectually, my intellectualizing, my problems going into my head, learning everything, reading the books, watching the videos, going on courses, but never actually dealing with the thing that need to be dealt with. And even now, again, it's kind of magician energy. And the Jungian archetypes is I love to talk intellectualize stuff. I love to talk about and show people how much do I know about this subject matter? And it's just me. Keeping people at arms length, because sometimes what I'm talking about seems too intense for people. So it pushes people away. Mm-hmm. And actually, okay, that's part of the dynamic, that's part of the, the, the traps that we play with ourselves. So I do my best to make as many jokes about it as possible. And this is just being aware that this is where I'm going with this, and it might look like this. And actually I've got some really good friends by me, and they're gonna talk because I love the sound of my own voice and I can get really carried away with it. So you kind of have to play with it a little bit and just see where you are tripping. And it's okay to see that. Do it with curiosity, not judgment. How can we adjust it? How can you find the goal that's underneath that which enables you to flourish even more potently as you stop showing up in that way?

James: 53:56

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much, Nathan. So how can people get in contact and what, what is it

Nathan: 54:03

that you do? So I do a weird and wonderful mix of things, which is great. I think it's the A DHD creative brain. So predominantly, I'd probably say about 90% of my work is one-to-one, uh, hypnotherapy and coaching as a qualified leadership coach. It's about giving people skills, understanding, and also doing the work to unwire this stuff. So you can just find me on the website@nathansimmonscoaching.com, Simmons with a D. Another part of my work is leadership development, so I'm currently running nine week, a nine week coaching program for men, teaching them everything that I've been teaching in corporate space for 16 plus years. Also with that Jungian archetype twist, also with the hypnotherapy to understand how we do it. So we can look at imposter syndrome. You can look at the psychodynamics of relationships, your communication styles, and how you're communicating to other people and how you are unconsciously tripping yourself up by actually giving you the wherewithal, the tools to. Un trip yourself, basically. So this is one another way, and then the other way is new, new meaningful moon journey. So I love using hypnotherapy and tying it in with the storytelling of astrology every month. Um, and creating spaces where people can just drop in as in a group dynamic and just, it's like audible and steroids, beautiful deep hypnotic meditation, and then just telling you a story about what's going on and just letting that be whatever it needs to be for your subconscious mind to unwind and refined. So, yeah, that's me.

James: 55:28

Thank you very much, Nathan.

Nathan: 55:29

Super welcome. Lovely. Be here, James. Thank you.

55:33

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