Ryan Hassan: A Candid Exploration of Trauma, Healing, and Overcoming Addiction

When Ryan Hassan shared his tale of addiction and the profound healing that followed, I knew it was a narrative that needed to be heard.
Joined by the co-founder of the Centre for Healing, we traverse the intimate connection between trauma, addiction, and mental health, delving into the concept of 'undigested life experiences' that so often fuel addictive behaviours.
It's a discussion that not only reveals the inner workings of addiction but also offers hope, showing that the road to recovery, albeit challenging, is laden with transformative potential.

As we unpack the addiction spectrum, we confront the socially accepted dependencies that are often overlooked, from our glasses of wine to our scrolling through social media. It's a candid reflection on the patterns that bind us and the collective journey towards self-awareness and change.

Closing on a note of compassion and understanding, we approach the complexities of addiction as more than just a series of bad choices or a quest for pleasure. Instead, it's a narrative threaded with the common human experience of seeking relief from pain, a behaviour that transcends socio-economic statuses and personal histories.
With Ryan's insights, we underscore the value of a supportive environment and the power of introspection in fostering lasting change, shining a light on the nuanced dance of trauma and recovery.

Join us as we embark on this heartfelt exploration, one that aims to educate, inspire, and empower.

Find The Centre For Healing here

Find Out About The Healing Hub Membership here

Watch full episode on YouTube here

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, hello, it's Nadine here, and I'm here with this week's episode of Life, health and the Universe. Almost 12 months ago, I spoke with a guest, ryan Hassan, who's the co-founder of the Centre for Healing. In our discussion, we spoke about trauma, which Ryan refers to as undigested life experiences. The Healing Centre offers training and accreditation for coaches and therapists who want to understand and support their clients using specifically designed techniques, and they also offer a range of free materials and short courses through their website, some of which I have followed. The Centre for Healing has recently created a membership option called the Healing Hub, and this is a place where its members can be supported as they integrate self-healing into their own daily lives. The Healing Hub gives members access to many of the paid courses and weekly practice videos, plus lots more.

Speaker 1: 1:07

When I learned that this offering, this new offering, was available and was being launched, I knew that I wanted to help get it, get the message out about it, and so that's why today's episode is an abbreviated version of the conversation that I had with Ryan last year is an abbreviated version of the conversation that I had with Ryan last year. By all means, go back and check out the original, but for now check this one out. In this abridged episode, we cover mental health, addiction and trauma. We talk about self-administered addiction as pain relief from emotional experiences and discuss the benefits of talk therapy versus embodied processing, with some very valuable insights. You'll find links to the center for healing in the notes, along with the link to their new offering, and you can also watch the original and full episode on youtube, which I'll also put in the notes. But for now, I definitely think this episode, either right now listening to the abridged version, or going back and checking out the original. There's so much valuable information. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Thank you for listening.

Speaker 1: 2:19

Here we go so, ryan, you are a coach, practitioner, teacher. I don't know if you call yourself a therapist, um, although that's certainly part of the work you do. You're the co-founder, um, of the center for healing and you're the creator of uh, the embodied processing technique, amongst other things. I believe you have a partner who also works with you and you have one babe, I think, but since I've watched you online, you may have had more and you're on a mission. You're on a mission to empower individuals with the understanding and skills to help themselves. I'm reading this from my notebook and others relieve stress and trauma in the body and that this can help to change the world.

Speaker 2: 3:16

Yeah, yeah, Look, and it sounds pretty lofty mission. I think I went through a lot of suffering in my life unnecessary suffering, I would call it. Part of being a human being is to suffer to some degree. Some guy named the Buddha or something talked about that two and a half thousand years ago but.

Speaker 2: 3:32

I went through a lot of unnecessary suffering. We could call it necessary because it led to something positive. But you know, I struggled a lot with mental illness, with anxiety, with all sorts of issues that manifested in drug addiction, with all sorts of issues that manifested in drug addiction. So I went down that path and really just self-destructed, destroyed my life in a material sense. You know, using methamphetamine and GHB every single day, dealing drugs run-ins with the law. You know my life consisted of being awake for about between four and six days and then sleeping for about 30 hours. Then I'd wake for four to six days sleep.

Speaker 2: 4:06

The body's a wonderful thing how it can recover from the way we treat it by the way, because I feel fantastic now, and so, you know, I went down a pretty dark path there, which I find myself, you know. Yes, it took some initiative on my part, but a large part of its luck or grace, you know I happened to end up in the right person's office at the right time, where I was open to hearing a message and and open to, I guess, addressing some of the root causes and drivers behind my drug addiction and my general dysfunction as a human being. I was able to open up and deal with a lot of the trauma, the emotional baggage, all the stuff that I one thing that we use, you know, often it's like undigested life experiences, so these things that we go through that haven't quite metabolized, they haven't made it all the way through. And when we have an accumulation of those and I had about 30 years of those that I refused to look at then we start to run into issues in our life, and that may be mental illness, it may be physical illness, it can be drug addictions, it can be any form of escape or distraction, it can be stress, you know, whatever it is. And so I was very lucky to be able to do that work, to open up, to feel the things that I hadn't been able to feel for my whole life and sort of stop using drugs and not only stop using drugs but, you know, feel a real level of peace within myself, which is that's the thing.

Speaker 2: 5:22

Like, I speak to so many people who are interested in addiction or they've been through addiction, or you know family members or someone's loved ones going through addiction, and I think it's like we just need them to stop the behavior, whatever it is. But the problem is, whenever we stop the behavior, all the reasons why we do it in the first place start to come to the surface. That's why any type of addiction, it's not about stopping, it's about staying stopped. You know, that's that's the hard bit. That's when we have to really address the reasons why and not just try and remove ourselves from a behavior or a substance.

Speaker 2: 5:52

And so it was at that point when I came out the other side of my addiction and everything that I had, the spark of inspiration that I was going to change the world. Change the world actually means something a bit different to me these days than it did back then. It's kind of playing a small role in an overall bigger picture and a bigger movement in the way that we deal with mental health issues and addictions and that kind of thing. So I'm kind of happy to play my part from my little corner of Australia down here, even though the company that I run now has reaches all over the world, which is absolutely fantastic. So, like you said, I'm a family man. Now I have a son. It's just the one. He would have been a baby when I recorded the course that you've taken. He's four and a half now. He's still my baby, right.

Speaker 2: 6:34

But, he's pretty big now, right, but still only the one, my partner, melissa. You know we started the Center for Healing together. When I spoke about being in someone's office at the right time, you know, at the right place, it was actually her office. That's another story. We started the Center for Healing, you know, end of 2015, start of 2016. And you know, we were business partners first and then became life partners not too long after that and we sort of had a beautiful life.

Speaker 2: 7:02

Now we ran an outpatient clinic down here in Melbourne treating people with all the conditions that we spoke about. We would, you know, advertise. You know we want to help people with addictions in any form. That takes mental health issues, depression, anxiety, bipolar. We had people, you know, coming out of psych wards. We would have CEOs who would have stressed out, didn't know what the hell couldn't relax without a bottle of whiskey at night. You know all that. And what we were doing was we were doing trauma therapy, you know. Or if someone didn't like the word trauma, then these undigested life experiences.

Speaker 2: 7:32

Right, we were just always asked why, you know, this surface level manifestation of, let's say, depression manifests for a very good reason. We just don't understand that reason and we maybe get told by society and a lot of health professionals that, well, you've got an issue with your brain chemistry. You know, you have a lack of serotonin in the brain. You know, we have, you know, something called an antidepressant, which, but its name sounds great, doesn't it? You know, I wish they worked as advertised antidepressant. I would have taken them when I was depressed, you know. And so we have this orientation that whatever I'm going through is something that I'm just going to have to manage for the rest of my life, and a lot of addicts talk that way too. It's like, you know, it's called white knuckling, you know, in the industry, where it's like, maybe I've been clean for like a few years and everything, but I'm barely holding on. You know, I'm angry at the world every day. I'm just trying to not do this certain behavior, which is not freedom to me in any sense of the word.

Speaker 2: 8:26

And so we had wonderful results in there at the clinic. You know, we started our business. We were laughed at early on, um, especially by a lot of the mainstream professionals uh in the area, um, but it's only a few years later that those same professionals were referring clients uh, to us, um, and so, yeah, we had a great journey there when we had our baby, who we've mentioned a couple of times now, at the end of 2018, um, we spent 2019 working out how we could, um, change our business a little bit, start to move more into the educational space, because we'd have so many people asking us what are you guys doing in there? You know, teach us more, like no, because we'll. You know, we want to open up multiple clinics and all this stuff, but having a kid and I always tell people I would have been the biggest hypocrite in the world, right, because I was working my ass off at that center, you know, 14 hour days, six days a week, and a lot of the time I'd be sitting in session with men who were like bawling their eyes out in front of me just saying I wish my dad was around when I was younger. You know he'd home, he'd buy me all the things he'd do, all this stuff. I didn't want all that crap. I just wanted him to be there while I grew up, and so that's what I wanted, and so, same with Melissa, that's what we wanted for our son.

Speaker 2: 9:34

So we moved online and it's funny, I know the universe and the title of this particular podcast. Funny how the universe works, because we moved online right at the end of 2019. So sort of December or January 2020. And it was only a couple of months later that we would have had to move online anyway, due to good old COVID. So you know, we went traveling, we got stuck I'm using inverted commas to those that are listening Stuck on Koh Samui, thailand, for about over a year during COVID, did you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, our plane went out. We wanted to travel with our son while he was young. We were going to do a lot of different countries, but we got to Koh Samui March of 2020 and all the airports were getting shut down and, yeah, we were there for nearly a year and a half.

Speaker 1: 10:19

Oh my goodness, there's places you could be stuck, I guess.

Speaker 2: 10:22

I'd be sitting there on a FaceTime thing with one of my friends because we're from Melbourne and this is the most locked down city in the world and I'd be sitting there on my, you know, balcony, looking out over this ocean on a tropical island, and I'm like so what should I try and like get home.

Speaker 2: 10:37

And they're like do not come back here.

Speaker 2: 10:41

And so, you know, we were in a big rush to get home, and so we're at a place now where we sort of have educational courses for the general public, people who are interested in the topics of mental health, addiction and trauma, and then a big part of what we do is we train people, so practitioners or people that are looking to get into the industry of helping people oftentimes people who've been through their own personal journey and so we teach modalities around being able to work with trauma in a safe and effective way now, and we have practitioners now all around the world Australia, new Zealand, all over Europe, america, canada, india, china so it's just amazing to see all these like-minded people, you know, getting together, learning these new skills and also working through their own stuff as that comes up you've talked about addiction, and I think that this is a really interesting area, because when we think of addiction and you said that you, you know what you experienced was, um, quite extreme and probably from the perspective of someone from the outside, that's kind of like what we would call addiction.

Speaker 1: 11:47

Right, it's someone who is basically living um day-to-day, you know, on drugs or alcohol. They're the two things that we usually think of, right. But you talk about there being a spectrum of addiction, right, and that we all have the potential for addictive behavior. Hands up, right, I stopped drinking alcohol a year and a half ago. I stopped drinking alcohol a year and a half ago and I didn't think I was an addict, because and I think you might have some things to say about this because it was socially acceptable, right.

Speaker 1: 12:31

Having stepped away from that, I have realized how much it was covering up and I'm still kind of getting, you know, getting the hang of all of that stuff. So, can you tell us a little bit about what your perspective of addiction is? I know you've had your own personal experience, but, like, when you talk about this spectrum of addiction, like, what can it look like? Because I think this is really important for people, because we we've got behaviors that we think are accepted by society, and so it's okay and it, and for me it was just like, well, that's just who I am, I'm. I'm a drinker, you know, I love a glass of wine at the end of the day, um, but um, it can be covering up a lot of stuff, right? So what can it look like like for the everyday joe blow like me, who thought I was just, you know, it's just one of those things I did, what could? What would you say about that?

Speaker 2: 13:31

that was kind of a bit long-winded and no, no, no, it's a great question the key word they're used is like spectrum, and so we all sit on a spectrum when it comes to this. The uh, addictive tendencies are within all of us. So we had there's a bit of a problem with labels, because a label all of a sudden starts to separate. So it's like if you have that label and I don't, then there's like self and other, sure, and so, like you said, people have this idea because everything, let's say on the news, in TV shows and movies, it's greatly sensationalized because it's far more exciting to watch. Okay, so like, if a lot of my addiction, you know, for the, really, you know high-speed car chases, jail, you know overdoses, all that was in a movie, like fuck, that's exciting. But if the majority of it, which is me like sitting in a room using by myself, you know, you know spending hours trying to get through to a deal or waiting outside the house, If that was a movie. But this is so fucking boring, right? So it's like we have this idea of what addiction is and so that we create an archetype in our mind. But you know, well, before the lifestyle I described, I was still addicted when I was holding down a full-time job. I was a tradesman holding down a full-time job, married house, mortgage. Everyone from the outside looking in thought, man, this guy is so successful. I come to him for advice, he's doing great. Yet on the weekends I'd be out drinking and doing drugs every weekend to try and escape, before I had to go back to the monotony of work on a Monday. And so that's.

Speaker 2: 14:59

You know, whether you want to call it addiction or like, there's nothing wrong with anything. So there's nothing wrong with methamphetamine. There's nothing wrong with heroin. There's nothing wrong with alcohol, right. There's nothing wrong with food. There's nothing wrong with gambling, right. There's nothing wrong with relationships. Yet when we have a dysfunctional relationship with any of these things, that's when we get into trouble. It's very easy, especially with drug addiction, to demonize the substance, and that's what most media does and people do. It's like oh damn, you know, ice, like you know, it's changed them and it's you know. That's the problem.

Speaker 1: 15:33

You've got to get it off the streets.

Speaker 2: 15:35

Yeah, like that's a problem. You've got to get it off the streets. Yeah, like that's a whole other podcast. Don't get me started on that. Don't get me started on that. So, basically, addiction yeah, look, we're all on a spectrum. We all have this desire to move away from pain and towards pleasure. Okay, that's basically what the addictive nature is at the end of the day.

Speaker 2: 15:52

You want to know what the one that everyone can identify with? Yeah, it's the reaching. I sit down and put the phone down and whatever, and then I'm like I haven't picked up Instagram in an hour or so. Maybe I've got a notification that reach for the phone. It's exactly the same reach as the reach for heroin or the reach from a phone to call a dealer or whatever it is. It's trying to pacify us in the moment, because whatever's happening in the moment we're deeming to be not enough, so we need something extra added on top of it. So if we want to define addiction, you could say the best definition that I've heard is any behavior. So right then, we're not just talking about substances, right? Any behavior, okay, that I find craving to do and I possibly find relief in once I do, and despite it having negative consequences in other areas of my life I am unable to stop.

Speaker 2: 16:41

So let's say let's use an example of gambling, right? So let's say that I like to have a gamble on a Saturday. That's my thing, you know. The horses are on. Maybe I'm in a little betting club with my friends or something. We have a WhatsApp group. We all chip in, you know a bit of money and let's say it's 50 bucks and I do that and it's fun.

Speaker 2: 16:57

But then I find myself like thinking about gambling more and maybe after I do my betting with the friends, I spend another 50 bucks myself, you know doing it. But then I keep it to the Saturday. That's 100 bucks here, whatever, no problem. But then once again during the week I'm thinking about it. Maybe on a Wednesday day I will. Maybe the amount I spend on the Saturday goes up Now all of a sudden because of that. Maybe the school camp that my son is meant to go on I can't quite afford it, so he's not going to go this term. You can see how now it's starting to have negative consequences somewhere else. Yet if I find my if that's not a wake-up call and I continue to gamble, you know, you could basically say I've got an addiction, you've got a real or you have a dysfunctional relationship with that particular thing, and so you know addictions come in all shapes and sizes.

Speaker 2: 17:40

Shopping food, food's a massive one, one of the biggest eye-openers. From when I started the centre a couple of years in, I was doing an audit on all of the people that were coming in, what they were coming in for and all that kind of thing. And eating disorders or emotional eating was actually the number one common thing, and eating disorders or emotional eating was. It was actually the number one common thing. Whether they were coming in for that predominantly or that was something else that was going on, it was. I could not believe it. It was everywhere. So that's why you spoke about alcohol, because that's socially acceptable. Food's something we've got to do.

Speaker 1: 18:11

You know, it's like.

Speaker 2: 18:12

I don't have to sit down three times a day and do heroin and methamphetamine. I'm going to sit down and eat, though, right, so that one can be a little bit tricky. But a lot of people are using food in a very addictive way. But all we're trying to do is we're trying to pacify something that's going on inside, and so if we look at the evolution, I suppose, of the way that we view addiction, started off, addiction's a moral failing. It's a bad choice. Now, addiction's a moral failing. It's a bad choice. Now.

Speaker 2: 18:38

Our judicial system still sees addiction that way. I've been through that judicial system. It is so archaic, it's unbelievable. It's like you chose to do it. You chose to keep doing it. You're a fool, you're an idiot. You need to be punished.

Speaker 2: 18:49

We've got decades of data on approaching addiction that way, and the results are terrible. They are absolutely terrible. The next one is that addiction is a disease. So this is the way that this is the medical model at the minute that addiction is some sort of brain disease that certain people have. There's something genetic going on and, for whatever reason, this substance or behavior is fitting into those neural circuits, and so that's something that's going to need to be managed from here on in. That is a much better and more humane approach than the moral failing and choice one. However, it still does fall a little bit short. Okay, or maybe we can add to it, because you know the way that we see addiction and what we're seeing now with the latest science and everything is that you know it's essentially emotional, self-administered, emotional pain relief. It's a human being in distress, whether they're conscious or unconscious of it, trying to find a solution for that distress. And that's why there's so many different addictions, because human beings will work through them to find out what works best. And that's why, you know, me and Matt go well together, because we have a very similar history of addiction, but we're very different in how our both our nervous system, adaptations and trauma showed up, but also how the addiction showed up as well. You know so.

Speaker 2: 20:01

For him it's like opiates, you know. Heroin, barbiturates, benzodiazepine, all these massive depressants, you know, was what was the best for him. I hated those. They made me feel terrible, sick. I was the stimulants and all that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 20:15

Right Now, for other people, drugs don't work at all and alcohol doesn't either. But you know, the shopping might, the shopping might hit that button in the right way, or the binge eating on food, or the overeating and then purging of food, that kind of thing. We will work through them to try and find out what will solve the problem for its best. So the question that we asked is what actual problem are we trying to solve here? Yes, so the question that we asked is what actual problem are we trying to solve here? Yes, yeah, so we're not. This is the behavior on top. Okay, that's to be acknowledged and talked about, but we need to get underneath that.

Speaker 2: 20:44

You know, we had one lady come into our center early on. I'll never forget it. She'd been addicted to heroin, alcohol, all sorts of stuff, been in the public system and spoken to people for over 25 years, and we would do an initial consultation for about 20, 30, 30 minutes, where we'd just come in and say this is our program, this is what we do, this is how we approach things. Tell me about you. And about 10 minutes in she just started bawling. She was crying uncontrollably and I went up to her and put my arm around her. I'm like, was this something I said? And she goes 25 years of this shit. You're the first person that's asked me why.

Speaker 1: 21:17

Huh.

Speaker 2: 21:18

Which is crazy to me. You know it's an indictment on the way that society views things, but we want to understand why. Why does this behavior exist? What's it trying to cover up? You know, what's that underlying hurt that we need to get in there and touch on and understand and meet those needs. So the byproduct of that is that the addiction, addiction, the behavior on the top can start to disappear.

Speaker 1: 21:40

yeah, right, yeah, what I find um well with my own um personal experience with alcohol is like I don't have um off the top of my head, a recollection where I was like I need to drink, I need to block something out, but I feel, feel like, like you said, it's like that you try something, you don't even really know why, but you're like this makes me feel better, or you know it stops me thinking, or you know it was like when you reach for your phone, you don't have to think about the argument you've just had or the you know, the upcoming meeting that you've got, or whatever it is, or the chores you've got to do. You can kind of switch off, and so it's almost like an unconscious relief, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 22:27

It is yeah, and then it builds up.

Speaker 1: 22:29

Like you're like, oh, I'm going to do it again. Like, even though you didn't think necessarily, I was feeling this and so I did this. You don't necessarily have that experience.

Speaker 2: 22:43

Yeah, a lot of people say, like, you know, it helps me unwind. Right Now I'm not saying if anyone's listening, just forget the word addiction for a minute and just say, you know, okay, well, if that helps me unwind, it's like okay, that's okay. But why are we wound up in the first place? Why are we not able to unwind here first and then make a decision out here? And then, like you said, that can be so subtle, and the subtle is it creeps in so quickly and then it becomes a habit. It's just like that snowball going down the mountain. But if I'm leaning on something external, let's say to unwind, then I'm not dealing with the part of me that's wound up. And so every day that I do that, I don't deal with the wound up part. So the wound up part's kind of getting tighter and tighter and bigger and bigger, yeah, and so it actually becomes more of a crutch then, because not only it's a habit, but I have more of my kind of wound up self in there. So, once again, this solution to the problem is working to an extent. So we keep going back to it and it sounds like your experience is one that you know. It can be really subtle and then it's not until you create a little bit of distance from it that you can start to see it more clearly.

Speaker 2: 23:52

You know I've worked with clients alcohol is a good one, you've brought it up already because it's so socially acceptable who've had, you know, been alcoholics, and some of them, you know, won't drink ever again. Some of them have been able to drink responsibly. You know it's a question. I get a lot. I still enjoy a glass of wine. I drink responsibly, even with my background, because we can create different relationships with these behaviours because we can create different relationships with these behaviours.

Speaker 1: 24:23

I was going to ask you about that actually because, as you've mentioned, you know we see that kind of you have an addict. They're doing a bad thing, they just need to stop the bad thing. And you know you've mentioned that you had an addiction and you also talked about it not being something you fix or the person doesn't need to be fixed. Do you feel like you go the process that you've gone through and the work that you continue to do on yourself personally? Do you feel like you're fixed? Like what? Do you feel like an addict anymore?

Speaker 1: 25:04

oh no, absolutely not do you think you would ever have any kind of addictive behaviors on that spectrum still, or do you feel like you have the tools in your toolkit now that that's just not a thing?

Speaker 2: 25:16

I don't know what the future holds. That's what people say. So would you ever do ice again or this?

Speaker 1: 25:21

because they say, once an addict.

Speaker 2: 25:22

The thing is I don't care yeah, right you know I highly doubt that would happen if I was to sit here and go let's look at my future in the life I've got now. I fucking highly doubt it. But it's not something I think about, right, whereas you know there's another saying. It's like whatever we renounce, we're tied to for life. And so it's like, let's say it say it's alcohol, and so I'm never going to drink again, and then my whole day revolves around not drinking. So it's like what am I focusing on all day? Not drinking? What about the life that I want to create? What's happening in my life now? So you know, I have a drink when I.

Speaker 2: 25:56

You know, before I went through my journey, if I started drinking, I wouldn't stop drinking until I couldn't drink anymore, or I would go and get drugs. You know, now I can have a glass, maybe a glass and a half of wine, or, if I'm catching up and watching the footy with some friends, a couple of beers, then I stop and go home to my family. It's like did alcohol change? It's like it's still the same substance as before. Yeah, something has obviously changed within me, but it also takes a level of like radical honesty. I know that if I ever noticed any type of justification or tendency or anything coming up, then I would pull myself up immediately. Yeah, but that's like because I'll, we can justify anything, us human beings, especially those who've had addictions. Like you get so good at bullshitting yourself, so like I don't like if someone listens to this and goes, oh great, I can, you know, one day drink again after getting over this addiction. It's like if you make that the goal, you've already messed up.

Speaker 1: 26:55

We've talked about addiction and you've told us a lot about that. We talk about like where does it come from or why right? So um, the certification I recently did was the trauma-informed training and the uh, the. The technique that you've developed in body processing is about healing former um with specific um tools.

Speaker 1: 27:26

Trauma seems to be a word that is showing up more right I think that with so many things, it's like we, those words start showing up because we start to become more aware of oh shit, this stuff's happening, like, and we become more, we understand it more. But could you talk us through? Like, what does it mean? What is trauma?

Speaker 2: 27:57

yeah, yeah. So it's basically a survival response. So so what happens in a moment of trauma? Yeah, I use words like undigested life experience, emotional imprints, because I've been doing this for years now and you do. It's just becoming a buzzword and the word keeps popping up and even I have a like, even though I teach trauma stuff, I get a little bit aversion to it, you know, because I don't want people. It's great, it's a great sign that it's coming more into the group consciousness, but also it can get a bit muddy the waters and people can get turned off and that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 28:32

But essentially we have a moment of perceived threat where our nervous system goes on to alert. And I say perceived threat because you know we live in a particularly safe world right now, physically right. So this is very old circuitry. You know, living in hunter-gatherer tribes, literally not knowing where our next meal comes from, dangerous animals that can kill us at any moment, other tribes looking to kill us as well, all of that kind of stuff serious threat. So nowadays we don't have much of a threat to our physical self, although we do in some periods of our life, but mainly to our psychological self. You know our identity, our self-worth and the system deems that just as detrimental as a threat to our physical self. So that could mean like fierce rejection. When we're a kid, you know the threat to our attachment. Attachment to our caregiver equals our survival, and we will always choose attachment over authenticity, because that's without our parents, when we're baby and an infant, we die. It's as simple as that. And so what happens? We have a moment of perceived threat where the nervous system goes on alert. People have probably heard the fight, flight and freeze modes of our nervous system because our nervous system is trying to deal with how do I best escape this threat and survive this moment? We have a lot of emotional stress that comes up can be guilt, shame, anger, fear, sadness, hurt. A whole mixture of them comes up when we don't have a stable resource in place so somebody to help us come back into a calm state and this is most people especially.

Speaker 2: 29:58

We speak about developmental trauma a lot in our teachings and it's really a symptom of the West and the way that we raise children and have been taught to raise children. Our parents aren't particularly okay with their emotions, so it's certainly in no space to help the kids with theirs when there's not a stable resource in place and I'll give an example so this will make it a little bit clearer then we store that stress in the body never really leaves us, and we create some narratives, some beliefs about ourself or the world, and we do that in order to keep ourselves safe in the future, you know. So it's kind of like, you know, if we're in a hunter-gatherer tribe and there was a bush and one day a sabre-toothed tiger jumped out of the bush and I barely escaped, I ran away and just got away, then any bush that looks similar to that will have this response yeah, it's to keep the system alive. You know, at the end of the day, you know, our wiring as a human being isn't to make us happy and thriving, it's to try and keep us bloody alive long enough to procreate as much as possible. We're just animals at the end of the day. And so what happens? You know, obviously, things like, you know, sexual abuse, physical abuse, veterans being away at war and witnessing and possibly doing horrific things. These are serious traumas that we deal with, but they can come in very subtle forms as well, and this is important to note. You know, one example that myself and Matt use is.

Speaker 2: 31:19

You know we can have a child, you know, put their hand up in grade two. You know class and they don't normally answer any questions, but they feel like they've got the answer to this one and they put their hand up and whatever the answer is is maybe wrong or didn't come out right, and the entire class, you know, starts laughing at them and they're looking around and seeing everybody laughing at them. The human being looks for a resource in that moment, someone they can connect with, even their best friends laughing at them like, oh man, let me look at the teacher. Surely they'll be my resource. The teacher's laughing at them and so they're unresourced, in a highly emotional state, and maybe this child is just wired a little bit more sensitively when it comes to their nervous system. So they leave that still heightened. Yeah, they're still massively embarrassed, they're fearful.

Speaker 2: 31:59

Shame all of these stories going on. And they go home, and they go home to a family who isn't resourced either. They don't have a safe space where they can open up and communicate what they went through, cry in front of their mum or dad and let them hold them and come back down to a regulated state. So they store that okay, and maybe they create a story that you know I can't speak up, it's not safe for me to speak up, it's not safe for me to speak up, it's not safe for me to express my needs, and then we think that, oh well, that happened in grade two, it doesn't mean anything. 20 years later, you know I could be in a relationship and my needs aren't being met and I need to speak up because it's not fair in the relationship and I go to speak to my partner. As soon as I go to speak up, it gets sucked back in. All that fear and shame start to come up.

Speaker 2: 32:41

Maybe I'm in a situation at work where I need to go in and speak to my boss about something, speak up and express my needs. I go to knock on that door. No fear, shame, walk away. That's an emotional imprint or a trauma becoming active all of those years later. Now, us as human beings, we've got dozens of these going on. You know I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough, I don't trust men, I don't trust women. You know it's not safe to be me, I don't deserve to be happy. All of these things going on, with the emotional imprints as well, and so we're kind of always on alert.

Speaker 1: 33:18

You talk about talk therapy, right. So a lot of people the majority, would you say, although it's changing use talk therapy to help people process these experiences. But what you do is embodied processing the technique that you've developed where you talk about actually feeling those feelings again and exploring what it feels like in your body and being able to process the emotions through your body, not through your head.

Speaker 2: 33:50

Yeah, it's like we're trying to include everything. You know, the reason we call it embodied processing is we're trying to get people back into their experience of being, you know, in here, in everywhere. You know, because most of society lives up here basically interpreting and cognizing experience and just chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter. So now, the reason for that is because as soon as they stop and come into their bodies, it's not a comfortable place to be, so no wonder we pop back up to the mind, and so what we're doing is really trying to help people get back into their bodies and have that experience. So, yeah, embodied processing, somatic therapy, which means in the body, but it also includes the mind.

Speaker 2: 34:26

A lot of people think we do poo poo talk therapy and we probably do a little bit, but all we're saying is like that should be part of the overall picture. You know, um, because right now the a lot of people coming forward to getting help for their mental health or their addictions or whatever they've got going on their stress. They'll automatically go and get a referral from a GP, and so the two modes of treatment are medication and talk therapy. So that's kind of if it's imagine going to a restaurant and you just got those two options on the menu. They'd want to be pretty fucking good for me to go back to that restaurant.

Speaker 2: 35:06

What we want to see is many more options on the menu. There are so many different ways. We're all a little bit different. I love a holistic approach where we're getting help from a whole range of people. We're working with a PT to help with our physical health and our exercise and our nutrition, a somatic therapist working on the underlying traumatic imprints. I might be seeing a naturopath as well. It's all kinesiologists. All this stuff's fantastic. I'm an advocate for more options on the menu. So I think talk therapy has its place. But you know, I think we have the data that for a lot of these deeper seated issues, it can put band-aids over broken legs for a while, but we've got to get to the roots to truly heal if this episode has, uh, piqued your interest, please don't forget to go check out the show notes, find the link to the center of healing, check out their free courses, have a look at the membership.

Speaker 1: 35:51

I think that these guys are doing amazing work in the world and I just wanted to get their message out there. So I really appreciate you listening and, as I said, go check it out. You won't be disappointed until next time. Bye for now. Appreciate you listening and, as I said, go check it out. You won't be disappointed Until next time. Bye for now.