Behind the Curtain: Honest Conversations about Foster Care and Adoption

Simon Benn: We Are Not Our Trauma

• Rebecca Harvin • Season 3 • Episode 10

Share episode

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

0:00 | 52:17

A single keepsake cracked open a lifetime of hidden feeling. When Simon Ben learned that his childhood teddy bear came from his birth mother, a wave of grief and anger surfaced—and so did a clear path to freedom. We sit down with Simon to explore what thriving really means for adoptees and anyone healing from old narratives: being grateful in the highs, graceful in the lows, and far less bothered by being bothered.

Simon shares how Internal Family Systems helped him see parts without becoming them, and why he trusts action over sacred thoughts. We dig into perfectionism, negativity bias, and the pull of the inner critic, plus the practical language that validates kids’ emotions without welding identity to pain. You’ll hear how a simple reframe—“fear came to visit”—can calm storms, and why “I feel” beats “I am” when it comes to healing.

We also get honest about generational context. Many adoptees felt invalidated by parents who lacked today’s trauma literacy; holding harm and goodwill together takes nuance. Simon’s biggest claim may be his most liberating: insights, not time, are the greatest healer. Beneath every story is an unwoundable Self—awareness, presence, wholeness—that trauma can hide but not harm. From that ground, therapy deepens, habits stick, and humor returns.

If you’re navigating adoption, wrestling with identity, or tired of the mental tornado that starts when thoughts judge thoughts, this one offers a map and a mirror. Listen, share with someone who needs a reframe, and tell us the insight you’re taking with you. Subscribe, leave a review, and help more listeners find their way to thriving.

Email sara@havenretreatsinc.org for more information about the upcoming Mom's Retreat.

Follow us on Instagram:

Haven Retreats- https://www.instagram.com/haven.retreats/?hl=en

Behind the Curtain Podcast- https://www.instagram.com/behind.the.curtain_pod/

SPEAKER_02:

Hey guys, thanks so much for joining me today on Behind the Curtain. I'm your host, Rebecca Harvin, and this is where we have honest conversations about foster care and adoption. Today's guest on the show is Simon Ben, and his story carries both quiet tenderness and seismic truths. Simon was adopted at five weeks old and told so early that adoption was never a secret. His childhood was good, stable, loving. Adoption wasn't a struggle, or so it seemed until he was 40. One small moment changed everything. It's when Simon discovered that his childhood teddy bear was a gift from his birth mother. And suddenly emotions he didn't know he was carrying came rushing to the surface. Anger, grief, and a deep, unsettling sense of being unloved. That moment became a turning point, a reckoning, and ultimately a calling. Simon began a deep learning process about identity, emotion, and what it really means to heal as an adoptee. Today he shares what he's learned through his work at Thriving Adoptees, helping other adoptees not just survive, but thrive. I hope that you enjoy this conversation as much as I do. Simon, thank you so much for coming on my podcast. I got to be on your podcast, and now you are returning the favor and jumping on here with a topic that I am fascinated by and very excited to talk about, which is thriving, how to set up a life that is thriving, how to live in a state that is thriving. Um and I'm really, really excited to learn from you and to hear what that looks like for you and how um how you teach others to thrive. So welcome.

SPEAKER_04:

Thank you. I've been looking forward to this all all day, right? And all week, really, Rebecca. So yeah, as we said, like I was on the half an hour early, right? So I was on half an hour early. That's how keen I was, you know. I love it. That was a mistake. Yeah. Um, so thriving is like what's thriving about? Uh yeah, it's a big one, innit? I mean, I've done 615 episodes, and you'd think I'd have a good answer to it, wouldn't you? Since I asked that everybody else. Um so for me, I guess it's it's uh it's being grateful for the highs and graceful in the lows. Tell me about that. It's being about less, it's being less cheesed off about being cheesed off. It's being less bothered by less bothered by low moods.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And just kind of like accepting them and knowing that they come and they go, or do you have specific practices for you?

SPEAKER_04:

No, not not a practice thing. You don't have any practice? Definitely not a practice. Definitely not a practice. More like a seeing thing than a doing thing.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, there I go again.

SPEAKER_02:

There you go again with what there I go again. Right.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. That that there's my there's my con that there's my conditioning playing out again. Oh, there it goes again. You've been trying to make a living by making a difference, Simon, for 15 years, and you still haven't cracked it. Oh, what sort of numpty are you? Oh, there you go again, Simon. That's the that's the that's the conditioning going in, right? That's that's my dad's um my dad's kind of scarcity mentality, and he grew up in, you know, like he he he was born just before the start of World War II, so they lived through rationing. You know, things things were tough even in the middle class household rationing. Um, you know, like when it when he first started uh when he when he married my mum, he would do some shoe repairs in bed each night before he went before he went to to sleep. Right. So uh there's a scarcity mentality. Conditioning that came through to me. So the idea of the the money and the time that I've spent in these different projects that I've pursued over the 15 years. Like inner critic, you should be you should be doing this by now, Simon. You you you uh and then on the back of that, on the back of that will be coming in things like um, well, um yeah, you you that's you know where that you know where that inner critic comes from, Simon. He's still uh he's still squawking at you and you're still listening to him. You've been exploring that for the last 18 years. Uh you should know better. Yeah. So being okay with all that stuff, being okay, being okay with the inner critic, being graceful in the lows, grateful in the highs and graceful in the lows. Not less less bothered about being bothered, less worried about being worried.

SPEAKER_02:

Right, because it kind of amplifies itself, right? Like it's yeah, you start the inner critic, and then then, like what you were saying, the inner critic has its own inner critic, and then you have a different side of your personality or or your brain that goes into all of these, like, how do I fix this? How do I do this? How do I like then the the energy that starts to swirl really gets going, right? And all of a sudden you could have one thought that turns into like a mental tornado. And so just going, oh, there I go again, like what you were saying, kind of stops that tornado from happening.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. So so as my mentor, uh Richard Wilkinson, I've spent time with this guy, so I can truly call him a proper mentor, right? Um, he would say uh the so the the voice in our head becomes uh an op an opinion that we no longer take seriously. So what what's going on really? What's going on for us really, I I think is you you come across in have you come across internal family systems?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, have I come across internal family systems? I do in therapy, we do EMDR mixed with IFS. So yes, it has changed my life.

SPEAKER_04:

Cool. So what we're talking about really is different parts arguing with each other, but the genius of IFS is actually living from the uppercase as self. You know, like it's a psycho-spiritual model. The the parts are the the parts are the psycho part of it. Uh yeah. And they're arguing amongst themselves. The parts are arguing. You know, you're living your life, you're you're living your life's words, you're living your life's purpose, Simon. Um, so stick with that. That's one part. And then the other part is Simon, you're what have you done? You've wasted all this time, you've wasted all this money. Don't be such a numpty, right? So the the parts are arguing with each other. Uh I and I'm more bothered about the whole. Right? I'm more I'm more bothered about the uppercase S side. I'm studying the I'm more interested in who I am than how I feel, or why what I think. You know, I remember I was on a course, I was on a like a weekend, a weekend course, and it was all for entrepreneurs on a on a social mission, like like you and me, right? Those sorts of people. And somebody talked about the importance of thought, right? And uh and they the the guy from the stage, you know, this idea that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. This is a Roosevelt quote, Roosevelt quote, whatever you pronounce it, right? So this kind of demonization of fear, all right, and the demonization of bad thoughts. So, you know, if you go anywhere near the manifesting world, right? Oh, right, you're you know, like if you if you think bad thoughts, Simon, you're gonna do really bad things, man, right? And you you you don't want to be doing that. So uh so this guy was asking about the the uh the the sacredness, the sacred nature of thought and how it's all thought is all important, and asked the question about the importance of thought. And yeah, so who in the audience thinks that poor uh that thinks that thought isn't important? And I'm the only one that put my hand up, and they're all looking at me like you're nuts, Simon. And yeah, and in a way I am, I am, I'm not. But I I I know that most of my thoughts are total utter BS. So I I'm less caught up in them. I I'm I I I pay less heed to the inner critic. The inner critic, the inner critic doesn't stop me. The the fear of failure doesn't stop me. And but sometimes that can be really stupid. I can just I can persist far, far too long. Um and sometimes I sometimes it I don't, right? Sometimes I persist. I we were talking about this, I I persist at swimming, but I didn't persist at rugby. I got dropped from the school team at 13 and I and I stopped playing rugby. And I wish I hadn't. I I took the inner critic in my head and said, well, there's no point, there's no point in you continuing to play rugby if you're not gonna be in the team Simon. I took, I must have taken, I must have had a thought like that. Or I couldn't bear the rejection. And you say, oh, okay, that's uh that's an adoptee issue, right? So you were rejected by you were rejected as being not good enough. And you can go, you can go go down that disappear down that rabbit hole, but but either way, it it changed.

SPEAKER_02:

It changed how you moved forward. And now if you were revisiting a situation like that, you have a different relationship with your inner critic.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

So I take less heat of it.

SPEAKER_02:

You take less heat of it unbothered by being bothered.

SPEAKER_04:

I used to be really worried about being worried.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, I understand. I know exactly what you're talking about. I know exactly what you're talking about. Where um I this shows up in my life in the sense of like I'm so annoyed by it at this point in the process.

SPEAKER_04:

But it's but it's not your parts arguing then. You know that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, there was this one we know it, but we don't do it, right? That's the thing.

SPEAKER_02:

It's this, it's this one very loud part that says if something is broken, a system is broken, uh uh way of interacting is broken. Like it can be fixed. And so instead of going, maybe it's not a first of all, broken, right? You and I have had these conversations before where people go like, I am trauma, and you're like, You're not trauma. Trauma is a thing that, right? Um, or I am broken, and and you and I would both go, no, you're not broken. There's things that here you just feel we are, yeah. Yeah, we are and so I can look at a situation or or a relationship or something like that, and go, oh, I can fix this. I can I there's like an inner perfectionist inside of me, it's particularly relationally, it shows up the most, where I want it all to be perfect, and whatever whatever that version of perfection is inside of my head, and the way that I can spin inside of my brain when it is not like that. Like I love the the idea of being less bothered by being bothered, where it's like this is, and I don't have to be, I don't have to spin out of control about this thing. What a beautiful way to live life. So I think for most people, I do get bothered. Yeah, okay. I do get bothered, but I'm less bothered.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm I'm bothered less frequently, and I'm less bothered about being bothered.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. Tell me what it looks like to be bothered.

SPEAKER_04:

Uh frustrated. Okay. Right. So coming back today, driving back from the swimming pool, right? I I've got it in my head that we're talking at two. So I'm thinking, I need to get I've cut my uh number of lap uh cut my exercise time down because I want to I want to be here for this conversation. And there's two people driving slowly in front of me. And I I I found it slightly irritating to have. But last week in something fairly a fairly similar situation, I was a little bit more irritated.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_04:

But but 20 years ago, I would have been really irritated.

SPEAKER_02:

Highly irritated. Okay. Okay. Earlier you said that um so many people think thoughts are sacred, and you know that most of your thoughts are just complete and utter BS. I if I am remembering how you said it correctly. Um it's called neuroplasticity.

SPEAKER_01:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02:

Not really, but um how what guides you then? So many people are guided by thought. What guides you?

SPEAKER_04:

Good question. Uh I'm more interested in what I'm doing than what I'm thinking.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, right?

SPEAKER_04:

So if I notice myself, I if I if I'm cont I'm sorry if I'm continuing to do what I'm doing despite stuff. Okay. So despite the fact that I'm not yet making a living by making a difference, despite the fact that my podcast numbers aren't what they could be, right? Despite that fact. So it's it's what I find myself actually doing. Rather. So my thoughts are all over the place. I'm more interested in what I'm actually doing. So I continue to go to the pool every day. That's not a mindset thing, it's just a habit thing. It's what I'm doing. So I'm more interested in what I'm doing than how I'm feeling or what I'm thinking.

SPEAKER_02:

Which is why earlier, before we started this, you said, like, I either do it or I don't do it. Like that's the kind of person you like. I'm either going, I'm either here or I'm not here.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. It's what I'm doing. It's I I'm I'm it it so there's a there must be something that is driving me right to do what I'm doing. I don't really know what that is. You know, some people could call that wisdom. But you know, I I had this really, really big thought talking to uh a coach of mine 15 years ago. So I said I'd been she'd been coaching me for a couple of years probably. Um maybe a week every week, every couple of weeks. And sh I said I want out of the blue it kind of felt like anyway. I said, I want your job, I want to help other people. And uh and and so I've on on the back of that insight I've stuck to what I'm doing. I've uh changed slightly, well not slightly, I've changed dramatically what I do, but it's all been in a there's there's been a theme of helping and and and happiness that has been underpinning my work with small business owners, my work with big business, my work in schools, and now my work in with kids. And now my work with well, yeah, I mean it's not just adoptics, but with uh let's call it the adoption cons constellation, I think that's the term people.

SPEAKER_02:

The adoption constellation, okay. Um the first part of the sentence, the grateful in the highs. What does that look like? What is how do you how do you experience that?

SPEAKER_04:

Grateful in the highs. I I would say I'm not that good at doing that.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04:

So I I you know you talked about being perfectionist. So I'm a recovering perfectionist, I'd say. So I still do it quite a lot. Um but I'm I don't tend to be I I tend to be focused on on what like like you, what's not right rather than what is right. What is going right rather than what's going on? Yeah. Focus on what's going wrong. You know, you can give me a you can you can give me a a book and I'll and I'll, you know, you know what I mean? You flick when you flick a book and and and it goes through the pages like that. Because I used to be in publishing, I'm if you flick it just like that, I'm gonna spot the apostrophe that's missing in the title of the page a third of the way in, right? Right. You know, like pub people in publishing are looking for missing apostrophes, they're looking for spelling mistakes, they're looking for grammar. Right. Auditors, accountants, they're looking for what's wrong with the numbers. Right. We have a kind of some say built built-in negativity bias.

SPEAKER_01:

Mm-hmm. Sure, it keeps us alive.

SPEAKER_04:

It keeps us alive. But an apostrophe is not a life or death matter. That's correct. We published a book for British Rail, like so like Amtrak. Okay. Amtrak Brunson. Amtrak, yeah. So our equivalent is British Rail. We published a book for British Rail, uh, and it was written by Roald Dahl, you know, the children's author, and it was called Roald's Guide to Railway Safety. And we we published that and distributed that to lots of schools. We did five million copies of it, and five million of them said, wash you hands rather than wash your hands. And nobody spotted it apart from us. Our minds fill in that gap, right? Our minds that they fill in, you know, the missing, the missing letters to to make sense of.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and I think that also speaks to like you see what you're looking for. Right? Like the people reading it are gonna read wash your hands because you're seeing what your mind is filling in the gap that you assume is there, and you see what you're looking for.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh my god, you're you're like a personal development junkie just like me. I know this you be yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it's we started really honing in on this in my family in a couple years ago. My son's self-talk was really negative. And the way that he was talking about just our life in general was very negative. And I'm all for like say the hard thing, get the feelings out, like all of that stuff, right? Like I try not to suppress my children's emotions. Um that sounds like a good idea. Theoretically speaking, it can be a little bit can be a little bit complicated sometimes. And I definitely want to.

SPEAKER_04:

Invalidating them is far invalidating them is is far more dangerous.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

So there's so many, there's so many adult adoptees who have felt invalidated. Right. So they their minds that they've been suffering like hell. And and they're this is this is the my generation of adoptees that I'm talking about, right? People in the 40s and the 50s, right? So they've the the the the uh their parents have been coming from this kind of blank slate. They've been told they they've they've been told it's a the kid is a blank slate because they're adopted for dinner, all that sort of stuff. Um so the the adoptive parent hasn't been able to um hasn't understood the trauma stuff, so has tried to talk their kid out of how they're feeling uh and that's not good. That's not good. The degree if like a generation of adoptees have got a a lot a big percentage of a generation of adoptees have felt really bad on the back of that invalidation. But it's wrong to blame I I by saying this I came up with this a few months ago, I think it's really true, right? Um it's totally unfair for us as uh yeah, it it's it's totally unfair for uh for adoptees to blame uh blame parents because we shouldn't be judging them we shouldn't be judging 20th century adopted parenting on 21st century trawler knowledge. It's totally unfair. Like that Bessel van der Koopt book, five million copies. That book didn't come out until 2014.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

I think how the impact that that's had, that that's it's it's 11 years. It's 11 years. So it's totally wrong to judge 20th century parenting how my generation of adoptees, you know, baby scoop era adoptees, um, we we would judge our parents on on 21st century trauma knowledge. It's just not fair. Because the world has learnt a lot.

SPEAKER_02:

How do you balance both things? Like that was what I was thinking when you were talking about like invalidating adoptees experiences.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm sure you wouldn't do it. Whoa. I'm sure you wouldn't do it. It's a scale. It's sure it's not a do it's not a do I invalidate or don't I invalidate, it's a scale, right? We all we all want to um to to help people who are who are suffering. I'm just saying beware invalidating it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, but I guess uh what I'm asking though is like um let's move to the parent one. That might be easier. Where it's in it's completely unfair to judge 20th century parents by 21st century knowledge. 100% completely agree, right? And we can look at our parents and we can say they did the best job that they could with the knowledge that they had at the time or with whatever with the resources that they had. Believing it is a different that is 100% correct, and so it's kind of like how to hold two things being true, right? To hold for a child or an adult who was abused, let's say, in their home, right? To sit in a space where let's say that that abuse was less than what their parent experienced in their home growing up. So to their parents' scale, they are doing better than was done to them, right? But to the child with periodic exposure to abuse, they're still being abused. As an adult, that can get really can like. Do you see where do you see where my brain is going with that?

SPEAKER_04:

Uh yeah, you you I think you're trying to left brain it a little bit too much, if I may.

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. Uh possibly, probably.

SPEAKER_04:

This is where this is where I'm I mean I'd say it's art rather rather than science. Um yeah. So let me jump to a a kind of like a a simple thing that kind of sums up what I'm trying to say. Sure. So this this is from my mentor, and I've spent time with him. I went on a retreat with this guy, yeah. Haven retreats, right? So you do retreats. I went on a retreat, I I went on a Rupert Spira retreat. Uh so this guy is is just brilliant. How he would talk to a parent about this sort of subject, right? He would he wouldn't talk about I'm not talking about abuse, I'm talking about feelings.

SPEAKER_02:

Sure.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay. So what he would advise a parent to do rather than invalidating their feelings, and I'm thinking this would be an something to say to a six or eight, eight-year-old, maybe. You could you could say um sorry, let's call the kid Johnny, right? Little Johnny. So uh so Johnny, oh so Johnny's really uh triggered and uh and terrified. Something's fear is got it right, right. So in in the moment or after the event, depending on where your uh wisdom as a uh as an adoptive mum would take you, would be to say, oh fears come to visit. Fear sometimes keeps some sometimes comes to visit me too. I tell her I I'm embal embellishing what Rupert Spiro would would say. Yeah, uh fears, yeah, um yeah, I get I get awful, you know, scare scary I changed my mind, I changed my language as you know, it's scare fears come to to to visit I I know at some point it'll go. I I'm not I I'm not scared all the time. How I feel isn't how we feel isn't who we are. Do you see what I mean?

SPEAKER_02:

I do, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

It's a disidentification, it's a disidentification from troll. It's saying, oh yeah, fears, fears, yeah, fears come to stay.

SPEAKER_02:

Fears here, like yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Fears here, yeah. Fears, fears here. But it's a visit, it's it's just come to visit, and yeah, it's not there all the time. It it's not it it it's not parts, it's not parts of us. It it comes and goes. It's not who we are.

SPEAKER_02:

We use language about um like it's on a bus, like all of our emotions are on the bus. And um we started this, I started this a couple years ago with one of my kids that has some pretty intense medical stuff and um would be fine in the routine, but anytime that the routine changed would like lots of fear, right? And I started saying, like, hey bud, it seems like seems like fear is driving your bus right now. And like kind of language where he was like, Oh, yeah, I think fear is driving the bus. I'm like, okay, you know, I I think fear can be on the bus, but it's not, it doesn't make a good driver most of the time.

SPEAKER_04:

If if the adults in your life are saying that you're safe, like if you can look at me and um and he's like, okay, I'm like, it can be it can be passenger, like that kind of stuff where it's like this kind of but you get to drive the bus, like trying to teach him this is you you get you didn't deny it, you you you made a story out of you made a story and you gave them a metaphor. You didn't say um you want to get rid of that fear.

SPEAKER_02:

No, it can be because because fighting against it really just amplifies it, I find most of the time, right? Or it's like this is for me, or like instead of just welcoming it and saying, like, hey, you can be here. Yeah, you're trying to keep me safe. I'm headed into this uh into this appointment that I don't know if my body's gonna be safe. It makes sense that fear is here. Like this is its job is to keep us safe. Um, have you seen Inside Out or Inside Out 2?

SPEAKER_04:

I have, yeah, this first one.

SPEAKER_02:

I have another kid that them we can use inside out. Inside out gave kids language about their brains, and I like I love it so so so much because um it's it just is like who's at the control panel? Who's who's on who's operating the control panels?

SPEAKER_04:

But there was a judgment, there was a judgment about it. That wasn't that sorry, they they were they were judging the emotions somehow, or maybe I maybe I misremembered that.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, joy was judging emotions. Joy was judging sadness um in the first one, and then came to understand that sadness has a role too, right? Like it's kind of this like, oh, sadness actually brings my people to me. That I she just wanted she wanted sadness to like go away altogether, and then learned like kind of two things can be true like sadness and joy can exist at the same time.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. So you know, my my work before adoption was in elementary schools, and it was based around the truth that feelings come from thoughts, like fruit, like juice comes from fruit. But we're the juicer. We're not the fruit and we're not the juice. So it's a disidentification from our feelings. It's the difference between I feel sad and I am sad. Sad, yes. You notice like I I I corrected myself a couple of minutes ago. I was gonna go, I am something, and then I changed it to I.

SPEAKER_02:

You're really careful with identifiers, aren't you?

SPEAKER_04:

Well, I it it's the clearest tool I have. It's it's the most precise tool that I that I see is disidentification from feelings. And specifically disidentification from trauma. So I I I love brevity and clarity. So when I saw that uh adoptee who is also an adoptive mum, title a quote, sorry, title a post on LinkedIn saying I am trauma. I that that was like manna from heaven for me. Because it's so wrong. I am trauma. Right. No, no, you're not. I mean, I'm not gonna tell her that.

SPEAKER_02:

Maybe hopefully if she listens to it to your podcast or mine.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, but that would be that would be invalid, that would be I didn't write underneath it, no, you're not. Yeah, I didn't put in the comment section on LinkedIn, but we are not our trauma. Yeah, like but no nobody's saying that. Well, nobody's nobody's saying that, you know, well, the story, it's a story. Well, we're not our story. We're not we're not the story in our head about who we think we are, that's for sure. We're not our we're we're not our story, we're not our trauma, we're not our feelings. We're not our feelings. Our feelings come and go. What do they come and go in? They come and go in us, but they're not that they're not innate. They're not innate to us. Um but that so the whole thing is I I'm looking for clarity, right? I'm looking for sorry, I cut you off.

SPEAKER_02:

No, no, you're fine. You're looking for clarity. You've finished that thought, and then I can ask myself.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm looking for clarity. I'm I'm I'm trying to I'm I'm trying to point to something that's true. And the better I can get at pointing, the more likely the other person is to see. Healing, like people say, right, and the the seeing thing's really, really, really important because people say uh time's the greatest healer. No, no, it's not. Like some cliches are true. Some cliches become cliches because they're true. Some cliches are not true. Time isn't the greatest healer. It may be if there's some change in the time over that time, but but that makes that makes change the greatest healer, not time. Okay, so so what is Simon? You know so much of a buddy about this, right? What what is what is the biggest healer? Insights. Insights are the greatest healers, epiphanies, aha moments, epiphanets. You've we talked about it.

SPEAKER_02:

Little Tiny, we did talk about little T.

SPEAKER_04:

You know, you go on a course and somebody's getting something really big and you're really cheesed off, right? This I'm really cheesed off, right? So I've got Epiphany and the they're getting out more. I've paid the same money, I've come further, I've done my work, I've got Epiphany and V. Well, no, I've just had an epiphany, right? Insights, epiphanies, epiphanets, aha moments, new ideas that come to us out of the blue, a shift in our perspectives, light bulb moments. So time isn't the greatest healer. Insights are. So we've got to get really good at pointing the bet the the clearer I can point, the more likely you are to see, the more precise, the more direct, the more specific I am. So more specific, yeah. But I can't I can't have that in insight for you. I can just point, I can, I can point to the truth as clearly as I can point. And the clearest thing that I can point to in the trauma world is the fact that we are not our trauma.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

There's some freedom from it then. It's not if it's me, I'm stuck with it. When I read The Primal Wound 10, 12 years ago, don't read it, ladies and gentlemen. Do not read that, do not read the book, right? Reading the primal wound, my first instinct, relief. My second instinct, I'm stuck with this. My third realization, realization, my third insight I am unwounded because I am unwoundable. You are unwounded because you are unwoundable. We are unwounded because we are unwoundable. Our essence is whole. Trauma hides us, it doesn't harm us. Trauma conceals us, it doesn't cut us. If it doesn't cut us, there's no wound. If there's no wound, there's no need to heal. I'm talking the wholeness that's underneath our psychology. Akartoni calls it presence. My guru, Rupert Spira, he calls it awareness. And you're crying. Yes. These are happy, these are happy tears, though, right?

SPEAKER_02:

I'm crying because I have been trying to explain to people in my life what I have been experiencing the last like five months. And I have called it the compounded effects of healing, right? But I was just talking to my friend, we were sitting in South Florida on the west coast of Florida on the beach in December, you know, like with a well, it should have had a cute umbrella, but it didn't have a cute umbrella in it. But you know, like setting the scene, like the the somebody steal the umbrella? No, the you know, like I just kind of think that when you're drinking a pinnacolada on a beach, it should have an umbrella in it and a slice of pile, but it didn't. Anyhow, it was we we were just kind of lost in conversation while we were waiting for the sun to set. And um one of the things that I said was this I'm returning to my body, I'm returning to myself in this, like that. This is like this compounded effects of healing, but what I'm experiencing is is the the true Rebecca coming. Like, and when you were talking about like trauma hides us, trauma, like it, it's like oh that that you're putting words to what I'm experiencing of like the the uncovering of the of your truest self underneath the layers, right?

SPEAKER_04:

It's an ex it's an excavation job.

SPEAKER_02:

It's such a worthwhile job.

SPEAKER_04:

And have I told you about the uh have I told you about the uh the the plate stacker?

SPEAKER_02:

No, go for it and I'll try to stop crying while you talk unless you're gonna make me cry.

SPEAKER_04:

These are good tears, but these are good tears, right?

SPEAKER_02:

They're so good.

SPEAKER_03:

It's so it's so like um I've never known what freedom felt like. There's a wam song in it. And I'm to what? It's a WABM song, isn't it? Freedom. It is Georgia Michael song.

SPEAKER_02:

I don't know music. I wasn't allowed to listen to anything other than Christian music growing up, so I have no musical references unless you're talking about like Amy Grant and Point of Grace.

SPEAKER_04:

Um but I I I can sing it if you want.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, why not?

SPEAKER_04:

It doesn't actually go. When I when I started singing the words, when I started singing the words, it doesn't really express it. Sorry. I I chant all over you there.

SPEAKER_02:

No, it's okay. It's just it's it's this experience of of intelligence. Eternal freedom that is um it just feels priceless to me.

SPEAKER_04:

Like it it feels like the so I feel like the excavation can be such a long process and it can be so um it can be brutal at times and coming but we're bringing up stuff that we're that we we haven't suppressed this we just haven't been you know we haven't been we haven't felt free to express it or something I don't know it it's it's subconscious stuff that comes comes up it and it's just ways of being ways of existing in the world right like ways of protection protection measures that you take yeah to I don't like yeah maybe I don't know and I don't think it's a conscious decision no I don't think it's a conscious decision that's everybody makes out that makes us wrong though yeah and it it is the Oh I wish I hadn't suppressed it well you were just doing the best that you could you were you were surviving you were you were doing what you needed to do in the in wherever it was right like this is there's a compassion that comes with the work right that you're that like kind of that's I think that that's what you're talking about with this like um where you start looking at the at the subconscious ways that we use protection to measures there's a compassion that comes alongside that that's like you just you had to I I had to exist I had to I had to you talked a lot about being wrapped in grief right yeah I can like if you un unwrap the like you you un unwrap the grief here's one for you right this is a lovely distinction that came to me a while last couple of weeks right we've got um the difference between rest in peace and rest as peace peace as the nature of our self peace that is baked in peace that comes as as the uh as the operating system it's built it's built in wisdom is built in peace is built in and it's covered over it's buried deep and then therefore it's an excavation job got you got to go through the layers of trauma the layer of grief grief loss all the stuff you're talking about uh the the the the loss of uh the the the grief uh the grief for the loss of your family as you thought it it it was gonna be and more comes up as as you I more that that's the that's the spring loaded plate stacker right if you've been to a canteen and you pick up your tray and and then and and then there's a there's a s there's a pile of plates and you take the top one off and it's spring loaded so the next one comes up that's what the work is it's more and more layers of trauma coming up in out of the darkness into the light so that we can see them and heal them.

SPEAKER_02:

And I think the process is one step at a time and you get to look back and you can't take two no I love your humor so much and I feel like the more we talk the more I get to understand your humor and I love your humor so much.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay on that note here's another one on that point right I would talk about this we can't I'm getting in my way I'm getting in my own way you know this people say this all the time I'm getting in my way you can't yeah you can't try doing it we call it a pavement you call it a sidewalk go down walk down the sidewalk and try and get in your own way like because I guarantee you you can't do it and looping that all the way back that's like less bothered by being bothered your inner critic yeah but inner critic but it's kind of just like oh there's the cycle again this is what I do yeah yeah here I am is it a is it a Bon Jovi song here I go again on here I go again on my own or something right okay yeah yeah that song I know Simon it was a pleasure thanks for making me cry thanks for talking pointing us in the direction of truth good tears good tears listeners I want to point out no no Rebecca's were hurt in the recording no Rebecca's were hurt in the recording of this podcast with Simon thanks so much you're welcome