Episode 13 | Accessing our power after complex trauma through instinct, the symbolic life and shadow work with Hannah Fraser Moore

In this episode of The Trauma Educator Podcast, I’m joined by Hannah Fraser Moore, analytical psychologist and depth psychotherapist, whose work bridges trauma, instinct, and the symbolic life. Grounded in Jungian psychology and psychoanalytic thought, Hannah explores how early relational experiences shape the nervous system, the body, and our capacity to live with agency and meaning. She is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC) and the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP), and lives in the UK with her family.

 Together, we explore how myths, stories, and the symbolic life can support people with complex trauma in making sense of their inner world and reconnecting with parts of themselves that have been cut off.

 We discuss how instinct can become suppressed through early developmental trauma, and how childhood environments can shape our relationship to desire, teaching us to move away from what we want to avoid humiliation.

 We also talk about the fear that something bad is about to happen and how to overcome it, about the difference between anxiety and intuition, what it means to make the “right” decision, and how to deal with regret over moments we believe we've made the wrong choice. 

 For more information on Hannah’s work, visit here www.hannahfrasermoore.com

 Join The Chrysalis, my signature 12-week program on depression https://courses.effiekli.com/the-chrysalis

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hello everyone and welcome to the Trauma Educator podcast. Today I have with me Hannah Fraser Moore, who is an analytical psychologist and depth psychotherapist whose work bridges trauma, instinct, and a symbolic life. Grounded in Jungian psychology and psychoanalytic thought, she explores how early relational experience shapes the nervous system, the body, and our capacity to live with agency and meaning. Through story, myth, and depth, Hannah works with what happens when instinct is cut away in the name of survival and how reclaiming it becomes central to healing, choice, and a life that feels one's own. Hanna is also a member of the British Psychoanalytic Council and the International Association for Analytical Psychology and lives in the UK with her family. Hanna, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

It's lovely to join you. It's nice to see you.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Wonderful. So I want to start with a comment about your Instagram account because I really enjoy the artwork you've been sharing. So for those of you who um aren't following Hannah yet, so she's been using um wonderful artwork, pieces of artwork as graphics in the background of her writing. And its piece is different and it's so mesmerizing. And I think it works really well with the kind of depth of your work. And I'm curious what's the thinking behind you using this combination of writing and artwork? Because I always like to go into the details of someone's um work from a creative perspective.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Okay, so I think for me that I love art. So there's a kind of selfishness in it because actually it kind of is something I'm kind of drawn to and pulled to. But from a kind of psychoanalytic point of view, I think that art and story and music and the kind of all the kind of creatives are ways that can bypass the psyche in some way. They can kind of get around our cognitive, normal kind of thinking and can kind of help land something in the body more. So it's not all just in the head, and it's about, I think, because when we're trying to think about trauma or our experience, the more we can kind of attempt to kind of meet the senses, maybe other things can happen, maybe other parts of us can kind of open up. So it's trying to kind of create something that has a feeling of story behind it as well. And I think that also makes it feel more universal.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Thank you for sharing this. So, in a way, from what I understand in what you are sharing, is also using um a specific type of music and also the artwork, you want to tat maybe unconscious aspects of the person who is engaging with your work.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Yeah. So for me, I always think that it's it's quite more straightforward to understand kind of psychologically why something happens to us. And we can kind of keep it in our head for years and years and years and years and years and do nothing, change nothing, circle the same problem again and again and again, go and read another book, think we've kind of mastered it, and it nothing really kind of shifts. And I think that we have to kind of think about different ways of actually accessing the psyche so that we can kind of rearrange things in a way that aren't going to get stuck in our head, and then we try and find a logical kind of solution and a way forward. Because lots of the places that I find really interesting are where we're stuck, where we're kind of in a kind of swamp of life, they're illogical, and so actually kind of addressing them with logic doesn't necessarily it can do, but doesn't necessarily give us the kind of pathway out to where we need to go. So that's that's kind of my thinking about it, and I think it's also because I work um a lot with dreams, and I think that what's interesting about dreams is that they don't present themselves in a kind of to-do list, which would obviously make our lives significantly easier, and so but it's always in pictures and it's taking symbols and it's trying to kind of use things from our daily life or our memory or even things that we've got never been in touch with to translate something to us to help us kind of understand what's going on within the psyche, and so it's kind of trying to kind of lift that idea about what dreams do, how they can work into an Instagram post, which is about as close as I get to, is with a bit of art and some music, but sometimes it can just really pull you out of something, and I think it's also like if you watch a movie or something on TV and there's a line in it, and it just absolutely goes straight through you, and you can really feel yourself like all your cells rearrange, and you kind of have that weird and wonderful feeling of life will never quite feel the same way, or never quite look at this problem in exactly the same way. And I think for me that's because it's gone past the thinking part and kind of hit us in the body and does something quite interesting.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

I want us to go a lot deeper into this, and um, I think a good way to start is also for you to share for people who might not understand exactly what your approach looks like, and they have experienced complex trauma, early developmental trauma, and they're on the path of um individuation um recovering after their traumatic experiences. And how do these people can use myths and storytelling to support the repair of the nervous system and also the repair of something that's deeper beyond survival?

SPEAKER_01 5:49

I think, firstly, for me, especially when you know when I've worked with stories for myself too, I think that um there's something about something being universal that in it in and of itself can make something settle within us. Because I think trauma can be very, very isolating, and also so can kind of um early developmental kind of dysfunction, families, even places where we're stuck that might feel that they're quite trivial. We can often feel that we're there alone, or you know, that kind of feelings that we have of um yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all right for them, they're gonna work out how to do this, and if only I could do this, then I'd be able to do that. And you don't see that they're kind of problems that people have been circulating for throughout the history of mankind. And I think stories, especially fairy tales, which turn up in the same, very similar stories all over the world, if just told in kind of different ways. We see patterns, we see archetypes come through, and that can actually just have something soothing within us. I also think that we can if we can see things, especially if we're thinking about kind of fairy tales, but you can do it with myths as well, you can do it with anything. I don't think we need to kind of contain it into kind of it, it could be your favourite stories, it can be things that you watch on on TV, but when there's that kind of connection with something, we can walk around our trauma a bit, we can separate, and that can be very useful working clinically because um trauma, as we know, can really you don't want to re-traumatise people. Um, and so how do you work through something when it's very acute or it's just too painful to kind of look at, or the kind of psyche hasn't got that strength and capacity yet, or the resilience needed? And I think that's where stories can really kind of step in and help us um see kind of patterns and beliefs and how they kind of play out.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

And what is the role of uh the instinct? Because this is something you've been using in your work, in your writing. Um, I also write it in your bio. So when you talk about instinct, uh can you explain what do you mean? And if you also mean intuition, or this is something else you're referring to?

SPEAKER_01 7:55

I think of intuition as a as an instinct, but I'm thinking about those really kind of core emotional states. Or so on the one side, our gut, what it's telling us, what it's wanting us to do, but also those kind of emotional places like where we might feel rage or um passion or um the kind of unkept, untidy parts, which I think for women, well, I know we all know for women have been really, really kind of repressed. I mean, they have for men, but it's in a that it's in a kind of different way. So we've had to kind of police and be kind of self-surveillance systems almost for our instinct, and it's come at a terrible price. But I think that in order for women to individuate, we really need to go back in and kind of find out where in our history we've diluted, made these instincts more palatable, you know, um kind of push them into the into what Jung would describe as the shadows, the the kind of parts of us that have been exiled because they're not socially acceptable, and that changes family to family, community to community. Um, even within peer groups, we have a kind of movement of what you know you can see, you know, each generation has a different time of what what someone wants or what someone doesn't want. We need to pull those back so that we have some choice and we make them conscious because we need them in order to kind of move anyway near towards our kind of individuation path.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

So then we can use our instinct as a way as a tool to our recovery and our healing, and also our um a way of thriving as well beyond surviving. So I'm wondering a modern woman or a modern person today, how does their path look like in terms of initiations and challenges compared to, let's say, 100 years ago? Um, in your clinical practice, what are the differences that you see that we um are encountering every day on this path that are not exactly the same as they used to be?

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Well, I think when we we obviously have very kind of clear increase in um opportunities and and um and that's that's fantastic. But I think that there's a kind of it's like a kind of split's happened, and what I see clinically quite a lot is women who can be incredibly um articulate, coherent, powerful at work, um, and then not so much at home. And it and it can happen the other way too, but definitely in kind of intimate um circumstances or places where they have to be kind of mean or they think they might be perceived as being bad. We still have a huge amount of kind of self-policing going on to kind of unlock those parts, and I think I I think I see that hugely. Um, I work a lot with uh eating disorders and addictions, and there you see a a lot of kind of cut-off and exiled instinct, and um so you might see someone who's been uh battling um uh you know, weight gain or something like that, and I'd be kind of thinking about what bigness of instinct has been chopped off or exiled that wants to come through, what bigness of creativity is trying to kind of you know break ground and come out. Where is the instinct trapped and um and and how can we kind of slowly release it without it overwhelming you know the per the person who who's got the the cut-off instinct? So I think that that's where I kind of see it a lot. Um I see it in um uh and I don't think this has changed, and I think with social media in some ways it's got worse in areas of this idea of there's a lot of pressure, I think, on women to look like they have happy lives rather than necessarily have happy lives. And um, I think that we can even not even notice where we do that with ourselves, you know, that then people end up in relationships that can look really good and they aren't, and they're kind of thinking that those instincts and those desires and those needs and those wants are negotiable somehow and they can just be kind of pushed off aside, and there's this kind of fancy that at some point in the future we will go out and find them and and then bring them back in. But until we do that, we're living in a kind of no man's land where healing's on hold, life's on hold, joys real kind of feet on the ground, feet in the earth. It's it's not that we're not actually kind of properly inhabiting ourselves. So that's what I think it's really important.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

And do you think that in some way uh women we've been sold a dream of happiness through maybe specific uh goals or paths that do not necessarily deliver happiness as such?

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

And in what way has this happened?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Um, I think that I think that for for years, well, for for all our histories, really, we only could kind of um find power through other people, through relationships. I mean, we're not that far removed from not being able to own our own land, being able to vote. I mean, it's not far enough away in the kind of you know history of of mankind. And that is still in us in a generational trauma sense, and I think we still see that. I think we have a real fear about putting our head above the parapet. I think women have still have um ideas about where they can be ambitious where they can't be ambitious, where they're allowed to want. Um, I think wanting is a very complex place for women because there's so much pressure about um kind of how dreadful it is to be seen to want and not to receive. So you're better off kind of going, actually, I never wanted that anyway. Lots of that kind of place, and that limits and limits and limits us. And um, I think that what kind of moved in a way was when we suddenly were kind of given freedom to choose these things, do the things we want. We were then almost kind of subtly and not so subtly, depending on what what area we're kind of looking at, told we could want things if we were perfect in them. So you can kind of you know want to be a ballerina as long as you're a brilliant dancer, you can want to be, you know, you can go out and think you're beautiful as long as you are completely stunningly beautiful, you can love your body as long as it's perfect, but any kind of humanness is still there's still points of friction, and that's across the board in all sorts of places. There'll be work for some people, physicality for other people, creativity, joy. You know, how how can how do we turn up? Where are we kind of limiting ourselves? And one of the things I think is very interesting is I think we have a view of what femininity is that's been written by men, and I think that that extends through kind of all the well, not all, but 90% of the kind of psychoanalytic material we might read or psychotherapy, it's all very much um male-oriented, or then kind of skewed from the male into the female rather than coming from women, and then I think we end up in friendships where we have so many women, uh, and I've been very guilty of this too. I think that my pack of girlfriends are fabulous and they're great, they're not like other girls, or they're not like, and it's like because and that's because of this kind of pulling into this idea of what we've been told femininity is like, and actually, I don't meet many women in this idea of what femininity is like, and we don't have an idea of what it means to us and how we want to invent it, who we want to be as women, what is that? How can we how can we do that so it's not one big kind of block of rules that actually doesn't mean anything to any of us anymore?

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Now, I want to talk about a little bit more about um the thing that you mentioned that when we want something, we don't want to be seen that we cannot receive that thing that we want. Yeah, because this speaks to my experience, but also to many people I've worked with. Um, it's something I've noticed in myself sometimes, especially in the past when I was not aware that I would want something and I would tell myself I don't want it. And I would completely believe that. And then after some time, I would realize actually that was a very, very deep core desire of mine, but I didn't want to admit it. So, what are we trying to avoid when we don't want to be seen not actually getting the thing that we so much want?

SPEAKER_01 16:10

I think the thing we really want to avoid is humiliation, and I think that we've women have been conditioned very effectively to not go after their wants, to not have things they want, because we couldn't for so many thousands and thousands and thousands of years. And um, so we're we're good at not, we're good at kind of keeping our wants in check, even if we want them. So we've got that to begin with, but what we really don't want is humiliation. Um, and um, and I think we want don't want humiliation even more than we do want love as well. So we won't put ourselves in those positions, and I think that is a kind of historical grief about if you were seen not wanting, not getting, not getting chosen, not being picked, um, you know, not being kind of accepted and pulled in, you were at the bottom of the pack, you were exiled, you know, you couldn't you couldn't live, you couldn't have any kind of you couldn't even have your kind of basics, let alone the things that you wanted to do. So I think it's a real avoidance of humiliation, and I think that is magnified in children that grow up where actually the things they've wanted have been mocked or laughed at or they've been told they're spoilt. A lot of girls are told they're too much, and it's it's all that we don't want to be too much, we don't want to be difficult, we don't want to be these things because we've been told over and over that we will be unlovable, and then but to be seen as being unlovable confirms those kind of early messaging we might have, and then you can start to think, Oh my gosh, I really am. You know, they've seen this awful secret about me that there's something really kind of wrong with me. I think the feeling tones of that can often be there's a kind of something wrong with me, I can't quite identify what it is. I really hope no one actually ever kind of sees it, but it starts to actually run the show, and so we're really, really trying to not have those early um kind of traumas with a small T kind of come up to the surface, and so it's like if we can have a kind of wall outside us that looks okay, we feel that we can be protected behind it, and then kind of wait for the time, then it can emerge later on. But of course, that never comes.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

What you're saying now reminds me another conversation I had with um someone else who joined the podcast, and his name is Ryan Kuja, and we were talking about uh a specific type of shame that we often develop around just existing, um, shame of being alive, of existing, of taking up space. And what you're sharing now feels like when you talk about humiliation in relation to not receiving what we want, it feels like pointing to some sort of shame around desiring, even.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Yes. But I think I think that that is um, I think wanting I think wanting is very complicated and hidden in an idea that it should be really simple. So we should kind of know what we want, you know. We should we're in an age where we should almost be able to manifest it, bring it in, and just think about it and do it. And um and that makes it sound like it's easy and that there's something kind of wrong with us if we can't kind of access this, but it's incredibly difficult, and I and you'll know this from your work, you've only got to sit with someone who's gone through any form of trauma, especially quite you know significant trauma, and they can just be like, I don't know what I want, I've just got no idea, and almost slightly embarrassed that they can't access that part of them. But if you've never been mirrored wanting in a way that's kind of healthy, um, it it can feel like you're inventing a different colour when you're thinking about what you want. You know, it's like I just don't I don't know what am I allowed to want? What what can I, you know, what what's acceptable for me to want, and that uh normally has a root in early developmental trauma about maybe being you know told to shut up and sit down, you're not allowed to want that, that's greedy, that's selfish, that's stupid, you're not allowed to want that. I think it can become complicated because um often we can want things as long as they align with what our parents or our caregivers wanted. So if we're ambitious at school, great. If that makes our parents look good, we can have that so we can think we want, we can think we know what we want, and we can think we have access to this until that same person is trying to get out of a relationship or um you know have a kind of difficult conversation around their needs being met because that's I don't want to do that, that's exposing wants, and I don't want to go there. And I think that's maybe what you're saying, maybe I've got this wrong about what you're thinking about shame of existence. It's like that that kind of footprint isn't allowed to kind of fall properly, so it's um it becomes really, really difficult. Yes, I think also that wanting, getting back in touch with wanting. I think it's what I've heard you say before about choice. Actually, it's like if we can start to um start even in the smallest possible ways to kind of think about what we want, we start to kind of bring it back and begin to kind of calm our nervous system around the idea that we can want without being exposed or annihilated. I mean, I think it's real feelings of kind of annihilation terror can go around public saying, I want this, I don't want that. It's very difficult.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Yes, yes. And in a way, our invitation sometimes is to titrate this, to do it little by little. So instead of saying, because sometimes, and I'm sure you see this with your own work and clients, um, they want, they somehow crave these big changes in their lives, but they don't know what direction to go to and they don't trust exactly what they desire. They don't know what they desire. And sometimes, based on where they are and where they want to go, the gap is quite big. And at the time, the nervous system doesn't have the capacity to actually uh take those steps required. And so it's fine. It's totally okay and normal to for people to take their time and take as small steps as necessary to get there according to their own capacity.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Definitely. I mean, I think it's far, I think it's vital because otherwise you're kind of like choosing wants that you think you ought to have.

unknown 22:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

But just in a kind of way that feels like it should be authentic, but it's just not. You know, it's kind of it's out. You've got to find what you want, and that is so complicated. But I think one of the things we can also do is we can say, um, we can think, oh, I don't know what I want, and then we can kind of think, oh, I don't know what I want, and that's a bit of a nightmare, it's a bit embarrassing, I kind of should know what I want. But if we slow it down a bit and think, what does it mean to even sit with the sentence, I don't know what I want. I mean, what does that mean that I'm, you know, such and such an age and I don't know what I want, and that I feel I can't access what I want. And when I kind of think about what I want, I get confused, I might want to run away, I might want to just think it's stupid, superfluous, you know, just that kind of thing. And even the curiosity around why you could be a kind of grown-up woman and not know what you want, I think is also an opening into how you can think about things because um that doesn't happen naturally. Babies know what they want. If they're I mean, if babies are supported and not abandoned, you know, they they cry when they're hungry, they cry when they want to get changed. They it's it's it's instinct and that's been and that's been silenced. Um, and it will be silenced to fit in, to belong, to you know, it's it's an exchange that's been made to try and kind of live in an environment that isn't attuned properly to to our needs. So it is really thinking about what our relationship was to wanting when we were little, how our things were want, what happened when we asked for things that might have been a bit odd or didn't kind of fit what was expected, and how we were made to feel then. Because I think we can then when um and I think this happens with all trauma, doesn't it? Is when the trauma thing happens in the present, it like plumb lines right down to the kind of historical part and then gets all very excited and makes a loud noise that kind of stops us doing anything and keeps us stuck. So it's really and making those parts conscious, which is a very kind of Jungian idea of you know, we need to make the unconscious as conscious as we can so we can just start to have some choice around it, some thoughts around it, it can start to move and not feel that it's our identity so much as something that we've um sometimes I think of adopted, but also forced on us. I think this I think the idea of adopting kind of defences and ways of being is a bit troublesome in a way because I think we don't have a choice, and I think I'm we can end up thinking, oh, if only my defence was that thing and not that thing, this would be this would be far more you know acceptable or far more um um this would fit in better, it wouldn't be so kind of conspicuous, but we would have chosen the defensive structures that were the only ones available to us at at the time that we needed them. So well, I think the more we kind of understand that, the more we can kind of think, hang on, actually I I did know what I wanted, and I did have choices and I did have preferences for things, so something's happened, and let's think about what that is first, rather than just trying to squash it on the top, because otherwise you're almost doing like a kind of wanting bypassing, which isn't going to get you very far.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

As we're talking about the change and choice right now, I think it's quite appropriate to also talk about sometimes this anxiety that we feel that keeps coming up as a persistent fear that something might go really wrong in our lives. And sometimes I see this in myself or I see this in other people. Uh, usually it shows up in specific scenarios. It's this specific fear that comes up and it feels so catastrophizing and like certain this thing is going to happen.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

It's gonna happen to me now. To me, to me.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

I know that this is gonna happen just because it's me. If it was someone else, no, but it because it's me, it's gonna happen. So tell me from your perspective, um, what is the message behind that fear and how can people work with that?

SPEAKER_01 26:16

I think it's like a kind of negative exceptionalism, isn't it, where we kind of think it's only me. And you know, you and I could have the same kind of situation going on, and um and I could think, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you're gonna be fine. But for me, it's not going to be fine. Um, I think this is really early messaging would be so when I see that kind of clinically, I think something's happened very, very early that's meant that those needs, those wants have not been met, and we've been left often to kind of deal with that on our own before we can understand why we haven't been attuned to. So we might have um, you know, a parent who's addicted, a parent who's going through financial struggles, a parent who's splitting up in a relationship, all sorts of stuff that we're not privy to that information, but we've been told to go to bed, we haven't been tucked in, we've been, you know, uh things have happened that have felt sad and we've had no one around us to kind of explain what's happening, and we're left with these unresolved places of we don't understand what it means. I think that's where we can start to kind of internalize that is there is something wrong with us rather than there is something wrong with the environment, and that can really get kind of stuck in there. And because there wasn't something wrong with us, it ends up in this very kind of black and white place of well, that's just the way it is. I have all the bad luck. Um, I think it's like when we think about in fairy tales when the kind of wicked witch swoops in at the front and kind of kisses the baby, and you know, that the whole story, her life is cursed from this moment, and then she grows up and she never knows why she's abandoned, and you know, and it it's got that quality to it, so it's um it's very early and it doesn't really make sense, but I think we can identify it because it isn't an argument. There isn't an argument, there's no nuance around it. It's not um uh I'm trying to think of an example of something, you know, it's it's not like I hate doing sport because at the age of six and seven I fell over on the track and everyone laughed at me, and my teacher told me I was never going to be an athlete and it was the worst thing, and I was really uncool forevermore, and all that place. That's got some kind of story around it, and you can root it in some form of logic. Whereas the places I think you're talking about is like there's a um because it's the way it is, um, and it pulls in a kind of personal superstition around the trauma that we feel we can't question, and I think that that's um we can see how powerful superstition is just in you know, taking down Christmas trees or what whatever the things are, or seeing two magpiers walking under the ladders, how they can control us because they are the way they are, we don't sit around and kind of think about them and move them, and it's definitely the way how um society has um used things to kind of make us do things as well when they don't want to, and it's where we don't question this normally something that's been kind of forced is traumatic. Um, but I think the upside of that is that when we find ourselves in that kind of either or it's just me, this only happens to me place, we can think actually, this isn't history or prediction, this is there's something traumatic going on here, there's something in the memory here that's working, and that can almost be work as an ally for us in a strange way because we can kind of think, aha, this is this is something that's got caught in a kind of pocket of something rather than a definitive, this is your destiny, this is what's going to happen. Um, so it's really, I think, questioning questioning the places where we have no questions can help us move through them and out.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

Yes, yes. And um also um what I've seen is there's a sense of powerlessness um in those situations because it feels as if we're so destined to get the same outcome that no matter what we do, this is not gonna change. And that's the sense of powerlessness. So no action, no new decision, no way of being from us is gonna make any difference.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Nothing. And also, and then we kind of look for it everywhere. So we look for confirmation of this. I always think that humans are um designed a bit like kind of the very first. Do you remember those like enormous computers that were like uh just enormous boxes with kind of we're like really kind of chunky old computers with bad kind of programming, and we will always move to something familiar rather than what feels good, you know, over and over and over again. Because we want things to be predictable, so we want this because if it's if we have an idea that something's gonna go wrong for us and it goes wrong for us, then at least we can think, oh well, I was right about that. I mean, we don't want to think that, but it keeps a kind of coherence going, doesn't it? That our world makes sense. So actually stepping into a kind of new pattern or moving out of a belief or a kind of limiting pattern really disrupts that predictability, which our nervous system hates.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Yes, yeah, just doesn't like it. And because we like predictability so much, I think very often we are asking ourselves, so what I'm feeling right now, is it my anxiety? Is it um a fear that's not very rational right now, or is it my intuition, or maybe in your own words, is instinct? So, how can someone tell one uh from the other?

SPEAKER_01 31:42

I think on the whole, instinct um might feel kind of the anxiety feels more like um it's got an excited edge to it. It's got a feeling that actually there's something quite good. It doesn't feel like you're not being you or something's it doesn't have a kind of it doesn't have a really negative pull, and it's also more nuanced um in that same way that it's like if it's a um well you can't do that because you can't, well that doesn't make any sense. It just but the feeling makes sense, but it's really kind of separating, separating the two the two things. Um, and I think we can also kind of look at it through an external internal lens, because often um instincts are kind of from from an internal place, whereas that kind of you can't do that is often linked to early messaging, peer messaging, social, you know, social cultural, cultural messaging. So it's it's um I think it's sitting with your body and seeing where your body feels about something. Um I think a very clear way to think about this is we can really get in touch with our instincts when we notice our body around people and what it and what it feels like. So you can feel very kind of I get very like my whole body goes like this with certain kind of people who I know, and I can kind of sit there thinking, what on earth is going on? Why can't I relax? This is why you know, why can't I speak properly? This is insane. Um, but it will be something about that person, and it might not be them, it might be what I'm projecting onto that person that is a memory of someone else, and that doesn't make the instinct wrong, it just means that it's it's it's there's something in the external that's being kind of um poked around, and so you can kind of think, okay, actually, this person does remember remind me of X, Y, and Z, but they're not, but there is something about this person that's making me feel unsafe, uneasy, and I should just just just think about that, just keep it here. I don't need to flatten it because I don't want to be mean, nasty, unpleasant. It doesn't mean you have to act externally, but you can hold it in yourself and not deny it. And I think that's really important because I think we can get into a place where we think, especially with healing, um, you know, I've got to have this conversation, I've got to break up with this person, I've got to, you know, tell my parents that they've been too evasive and like, and I just can't do this, and then um, and then when we feel we don't, we feel that we've failed in some way, or we're never gonna move whereas movement has been made because we're not about once we've kind of made something conscious, we're no longer abandoning ourselves there, even if externally we're still doing the same thing. And I think that's really important at the beginning, especially in the same way we're thinking about wanting in small doses, getting close to you. I think also when we're thinking about behavioural change, especially in the kind of tight relational sphere, it's really thinking about how it affects you and your body first before we kind of dive into the difficult conversation and the all the things that we the great boundaries that are um supposed to be there, because without that kind of inner strength, I'm not really sure how they work. I've never kind of seen it happen, but you you you might well have you might well have done. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

And in what you're sharing, I also hear that there's um in a way a requirement for slowing down instead of trying to really figure out is this an actual fear that I really need to pay attention now and make an urgent decision around it, or is it my intuition? And I think when we're asking ourselves this question, sometimes we put ourselves um under pressure to make a decision.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

And of course, this is not helpful at all, especially when, first of all, we don't know what would best serve us, but also um, again, the nervous system might not have the capacity sometimes to act on something, even if we feel it's the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 35:38

Absolutely. And I think that you've really hit on something really important there because I think we have this kind of um fantasy of perfect decisions, like you know, in order to leave someone, they have to be all wrong, I have to be kind of perfect and pure, you know, this this kind of place, or um, or um, which leaves no space for I'm just not happy, or something about this feels off and I don't really want to be here. It's so it moves into a bit like a defensive kind of absolute place, and I think it's the same with instinct. We kind of think, okay, if I have to trust my gut and my my kind of intuition, um, it it's got to be right. What happens if it's wrong? It's like, well, yeah, but what happens if it is wrong? Sometimes it is going to be wrong, it's not always going to be right. Sometimes we're going to make bad decisions. Um, and it's really about thinking that that's okay, but I will still check in with my intuition and I will still make decisions and I can survive them. I can survive it if I've made the wrong decision, but it will come from me rather than from fear. Um, and it will come from a place in my gut where I believed that at the time about about so if it was like taking a job. I thought that was a good job. Now you might get that wrong, but you've still done something that's true to you, and over time that it's like a muscle. And I think it's the same with nervous system work, isn't it? It's like you just get stronger at listening to yourself, at getting really good at noticing what happens in your body, what happens in your brain, what thoughts flood in when you think about um things, what what memories are being stirred in a certain situation as well. It's all information, all stuff telling you. And I think that the the more we listen to that, the more we can get in touch with kind of uh of instinct. And and I think also thinking about um, I mean, this is kind of nuanced instincts, whereas I think in reality there are quite a lot of places where we just totally cut off instincts, which are just kind of almost like throwing away half the birthday cake, you know, it it's kind of gone and put in the bin, especially around women and kind of sensuality and things like that. It's like how how how why are they exiled? What do you do with them? How and how do you kind of get them back on board?

SPEAKER_00 37:47

Something I see in people um who experience um early trauma is that often when they become adults, they live with a lot of regret. They look back on their lives when they didn't know better, and they made certain decisions based on the tools they had access to at the time and the understanding they had access to at the time, and now they're thinking, I shouldn't have left that relationship, or I should have left that relationship, or I shouldn't have taken up that job, or whatever, whatever. And it feels like um such a uh ruminating uh feedback loop going on. And how can someone work with that regret and uh break away from that loop that sometimes can be torturous for people?

SPEAKER_01 38:33

I think I think it is torturous. Um and I think that I would also want to know what the torture's doing, what the staying stuck's doing, what the ruminating is is doing, because sometimes we can um understand something, then have this kind of regret place, but actually we're still it's keeping us in the same dynamic that we're we're trying to move out from. Um and guilt can really work like that. It's like guilt can work as a kind of it's like a kind of junk food version of love sometimes in terms of attachment. You know, the guilt can keep me in this relationship, but if only I didn't have this guilt, it'd be fine and I could walk away. It's like, yeah, but the guilt's actually doing something really, really important and it's alerting us to something that has not been resolved or thought through. So, firstly, I would kind of think that. I think the other thing is that humans um it's that we we talk about kind of growth and healing, but it's we actually are forged, you know, we're kind of forged through fire and experience and relationships, and I don't think um, you know, no, well, we there's a reason that none of us, none of us have this kind of completely plain sailing place. We we learn, we learn from these places, and we learn to have um what I'd call real kind of ego strength. But I'm not meaning that in a kind of inflated ego place, I'm meaning it's that kind of solid um place we can rely on within ourselves. So when we're looking back and thinking, oh my god, I stayed in that relationship for 20 years, I why didn't I do this? Why didn't I open my mouth when I went for that job interview? Um, we're we're looking back at and we're judging someone we weren't at that time. There wasn't that person wasn't there to make those decisions, they are now, and that's why it feels so easy to kind of just look back and you know, be really horrible, isn't it? Horrible to our younger selves. And I mean, I've definitely had patients who can't even look at photos of their younger selves because it brings up all kinds of you know, I don't want to see it, I don't want to do it. But we weren't that person, and often the experiences that we've been through make us the person that we are, give us, especially once we've kind of worked through it, give us the strength that we need to look back. Um and I think also there is there is times when there's real regret and there's real loss, and I think that we can um but it can also trap us. The the lot the loss can trap us because we don't want to look at it. So we think, oh no, if I if I have to really accept that I've wasted 20 years of my life, um, that's just devastating. It's absolutely awful. So I'm just gonna stay here confused and trying to kind of make something work and being you know, rather than actually having proper loss, we have kind of like superficial sadness around something that isn't actually it's got no movement in it. It's like as if you've got a morning that's got trapped and and and kind of can't have any um any movement to go anywhere. So um it's it's more it's very is multifaceted, isn't it? Isn't it that place really?

SPEAKER_00 41:44

And it feels uh sometimes when we are so stuck in regret that in a way we're avoiding the grief process.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

Absolutely. That's you've just said it way more articulately than I I was, yeah. But that's it. I just think it is I think it's a it's a defense against grief, properly. Yeah, yeah. I find um places where we're stuck or really frustrated really interesting because I think they're back I think we feel of them as being kind of dead end like I know swamps, but they are actually really dynamic places full of life, and it's because they could tell us all these they can alert us to the fact that there's a grief that's not being processed. Um I think the other thing that can happen with grief though that can be quite interesting is that if we haven't had um if we've had a lot of needs that we should have had met, not met in childhood, we can have parts of our psyches that are still trying to get those needs met, and so we kind of stay in relationships where um the part of us that thinks that um we need to adapt more goes, well, you know, contort more, be less, be smaller, say less. And if only I just do a little bit more, I will move, I will get these needs met. And to give up that, to there's a there's a loss involved in giving up because it's you have to accept that this parent, this partner is never gonna meet those needs, and you can kind of think, gosh, I've spent 10 years trying to be this person. I don't I don't want to do that, so I'm gonna keep going on and on and on and on, and it keeps you in the same doing kind of figure of eight.

SPEAKER_00 43:18

Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned that um in stagnants often there's a lot of gold, and uh somehow I feel that um you are um maybe alluding to shadow work as well in some way. So I would love for you to touch on uh why shadow work is important and also how through shadow we can access our power more.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

Yeah. So um shadow is um a junion, a jungian term in terms of all the parts of us that we've exiled for our lives that we don't want, that are socially unacceptable, that don't fit in. And there will be things within shadow that we need to. Exile, but there's also we tend to be um quite brutal about it. So um for women, um, and we can we can see very early in young girls that they're not allowed to be angry, it's around the age of about three that boys are allowed to kind of carry on going around and fighting people in the playground, and girls have to be kind of well behaved and nice. This is really when that messaging starts to come through, but there's no real difference between girl and boy's rage. So, what happens to it? So we kind of cut it off unconsciously and put it into our shadow. So I think of this as being like as if we've got a kind of um cellar downstairs protected by a kind of nasty dog, so we kind of leave it down there, and we just want to forget about it. We want to think, well, I'm not an angry person, I'm a nice person, and I would never do these horrible things, but it it doesn't go away, so the stuff that we kind of exile into shadow just stays and then kind of bleeds out in other areas, a bit like a kind of octopus comes out. So this is why you can kind of see if we're thinking about um anger and little girls, you can see how as teenagers all that kind of bitchy girl packs can happen because actually you can't be angry, so it's all going to be passive aggressive that's that's going around and kind of doing these things. We don't have access to it. So when we don't have access to it, it we see it in other people, we project it onto other people, it just it it flies up everywhere and when it's out of our control. So the idea behind shadow work is we're actually kind of really thinking about the parts that we um don't feel we have access to, and we can kind of find these parts often when we hate something about something else. If we have a really embodied reaction, someone unfortunately it's normally because that's something that we either need or that we have exiled. So we're going to kind of think about kind of pulling it back and see um see what we kind of need about it and just make it conscious. So with anger, we need a certain amount of aggression, um, and that is a hard word for women because we've been told you know it's unladylike, we can't do it, it's it's nasty, all the all the stuff we all know. But to say no properly, you've got to have you've got to have something behind it, otherwise it's like no, you know, and we know when someone's saying no properly, and the we need that kind of um or any form of boundary, you need to have some kind of aggression for it, you need some aggression to kind of move forward and do the things you want to do. And I think that what happens when we kind of so if we're thinking about anger being pushed into the shadow, all our assertiveness goes with it too. So we can find so it's it's a way of kind of putting pulling it back and not turning into kind of murderous rage, but actually, we need that bit of assertion. How can we bring that in? How can we kind of think about where it's not, and how can we kind of notice that that's something that I don't have that I might feel really jealous about someone else and kind of think, oh, I don't like that person, but actually it's a it's a kind of me thing. Shadow turns up all the time in our romantic relationships, it's normally that's where we kind of get to kind of to see it, and but it can be really, really useful because when we kind of pull that shadow energy back in, all that energy that we've been used to kind of keep all these pots down, um, we can use for creativity to move forward for our lives. I mean, it's it it it's a it's a good place. I think that shadow is often protected by shame and by toxic shame, and so we can feel if I'm like that, that's just really embarrassing, you know. I don't want to do that, and again, it will be back to early developmental trauma. These are these are things that you've been told you can't do. So, um so for me, I was told very much that I was too loud, that I used to like run around dancing, used to like taking off my all of my clothes when I was six and running around the sitting room, and that was kind of embarrassing, you know. So I I wasn't allowed to, so it became a place of oh, I did this really embarrassing thing, but all that kind of joy and spontaneity really over the years got kind of pushed into a very shadowy place that's just the minute I felt like I kind of wanted to do anything spontaneous, I would be met with a kind of feelings of oh my gosh, this is gonna be embarrassing, this is gonna be really changing, you know. So it really policed how I turned up in the world, really. And I think when you kind of start to understand those patterns, you can work out which bits of it you want because we need things, we need all our emotional palettes, not just the ones that we think will help us fit in. They're all there for a reason. I think that nature doesn't just throw us things for the hell of it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 48:24

Yeah, when someone uh experiences depression um and they work with you, does um the shadow play a role in how you're supporting them at all?

SPEAKER_01 48:38

Usually, yeah. So um I think that um not always, but I think a lot of shadow is suppressed parts that um we've either forgotten about that we don't want to know, um, and uh it's like we've pulled energy away from big chunks of our lives. I think I often find that with depressed patients is there's a huge chunk of something that's not being given any water, not being nurtured in any way. As an example, I'm thinking really, I suppose, about people who've are actually very creative, or they've got some big idea or some big project thing they've wanted to do.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

I've seen that too.

SPEAKER_01 49:18

Yeah, and I think it really it doesn't just go to sleep that creativity, it starts to become it metastasizes and in the shadow. And I think that one of the forms of that is depression, it's really kind of mmm. Um, and I think that's what Jung's talking about with um when he talks about unlived life, you know, the how dangerous it is for children to have their parents unlived life, and I think that but we can have our own unlived life, and it's the things that we put in shadow that we haven't done that we've really um we haven't thought are important, um, and uh it it it's parts it's parts of us that we don't feed, so we might think, okay, I've got to do a very sensible job to pay the bills, but you've actually got a huge part of you that craves freedom, for example, and um, and our fear is that if we entertain that and bring it back in, we will blow up our lives, you know, we will walk out of our job, we will walk out of our marriage that might feel a bit boring, we will blow up everything. Whereas, um, and and that might be that you want you want to do that further down, but then there's a big chunk of that freedom that you can pull back in and go, actually, I know this is a part of me that needs some attention. How can I find that in other ways? What can what can I do that would give this part um give it some some love and some nourishment so that it doesn't start to try and create mischief around the place. So, as much as um I think shadow shows up in depression and it it really is, I think it's really kind of it's like starved parts of the psyche that want to kind of push through. I think it also shows up in self-sabotage a lot because that that's I think when the shadow is kind of going, well, you might have this idea that you can kind of ignore this big chunk of me, but I'm not doing it. And so, um, you know, if you don't start actually making some moves, I'm gonna start making some moves from a kind of soul place. Um, and it can be nasty, you know. I mean, I think we've all we've all had situations where almost like the soul's walked in and gone, we've had enough of you at the wheel, I'm taking charge, and suddenly you're like, oh my gosh, everything's kind of fallen apart, this is a disaster. But actually, it's probably because we've ignored something that was really fundamentally important to we are.

SPEAKER_00 51:31

Thank you for answering that question. And I want to ask you a last one that I ask uh every guest on the podcast. So when you look back on some of your hardest moments in life, what would you like to say to your younger self to reassure her, given what you now know and experience?

SPEAKER_01 51:50

I think that I would think um, and it's what you've well I've heard you say actually, but I think it's really, really spot on. Is I would tell my younger self that she had no choice, and that she did the best she could in that situation when you're when you're little. And I think that um anything that alleviates feelings of being too much, not enough, um, that uh dysfunction in in families is the child's faults, which we often internalize to try and get some kind of sense of control growing up. I think if we could all know that that wasn't our fault, we might be kind of it would just release us from these shackles of patterns that really can kind of keep us hostage until they're addressed forever. You know, they really they really can. So um I think it, I think it would it, it's really trying to, and I think this with adult um patients as well, it's it's it's really understanding that our patterns aren't who we are. It's trying to get some space between that, our identity and uh and pattern. They don't have to be like this, but we can't, they can't not be like this. I haven't found until we understand them a bit more.

SPEAKER_00 53:02

Wonderful, beautiful. And Hannah, how can people find your work uh and how do you support people?

SPEAKER_01 53:09

So um they can find me on Instagram on Hannah Fraser Moore and also on my website, which is hannafrasermoor.com. And I've got lots of courses, and at the moment I've got a membership which is going to be open for a couple of weeks, um, end of March, early April, um, but it opens sporadically throughout the year, which is a real depth look for women and a journey towards individuation and what it means for us to be alive now and how we can kind of bring some of the wildness that we kind of think fantasize out with the wolves into our sitting room and our work and our kitchen, and you know, really kind of enriching us and making us feel very empowered.

SPEAKER_00 53:46

Thank you so much for your time for joining me here today. Yeah, well, it's lovely to see you. And you guys, thank you so much for tuning in. And if you enjoy this episode, remember to follow, subscribe, rate, and share to help expand these trauma educated conversations and bring them to the people who need them the most. I'll see you soon, guys. Bye.